Trey Spruance best known as the guitarist for Mr. Bungle, has been exploring his own musical direction with the `Secret Chiefs Trio'. Recruiting two other bands members of Mr. Bungle, Trevor and Danny, the Secret Chiefs Trio look towards alchemy, Islam and Peter Lombard Wilson for their inspiration. Trey talks about his life work and his numerous projects, including the ambitious internet project, `The Web of Mimicry'.

How did SC3 come to be ?
It started off just as this one off. What was it? Oh I know what it was ? They discovered the `Volante' record was to long to put on to vinyl. So we had song as a 7" but we had to do a b-side of that, I had some ideas that I was just going to go ahead and do anyway, I decided to have Trevor and Danny do'em. Mr. Bungle has the money to do it, so bang, bang, bang. It was good. So I just decided fuck, I might as well expand it. I have like sort of a long term four album vision of this whole thing. The next album is finished but isn't all recorded and the next one after that, most of it is already written. It's just sort of something I've brewed on incessantly.

What were you occupied with in the five year break in between the self titled album and `Disco Volante' ? There's a big change in the sound, that sound on Disco Volante is kind of similar to SC3. In the same direction but not really.
First of all, a lot of time went by, I personally have been doing a lot of other stuff besides Mr. Bungle, as well has everybody else in the band Mr. Bungle. As far as parallels between Secret Chiefs and Mr. Bungle, I mean that is probably inevitable in some ways but I try not to fight it too much or be too similar ?

It's sometimes that I'd notice it touches on similar issues, I'm not sure if I'm reading into it, I was wondering who titled `Chemical Marriage' ?
If you look on Disco Volante and look at what I wrote you would probably see some things in common and that is just because they are the things that I am interested in are different than some of the other guys are interested in and that is what makes Mr. Bungle interesting is that there are different view points.

I read through the sleeve notes and detected a reference to Peter Lamborn Wilson. I tracked down a few articles on the net and found he's Hakim Bey ?
Yeah that's his pseudonym.

What is it about Lamborn Wilson ? I noticed the Hassan I Sabbah references, the Assassin's Blade - And `My rock is the easiest place to hide ?'
It's actually `Punk Rock' is the easiest place to hide. I don't imagine it would be a very easy place to hide.

Once you're there no one can reach you. The Eagle's Nest.
I guess once you're there, theoretically life would be easy but it just depends on who you are in the cast system.

What are you taking from Lamborn Wilson, he's pretty across the board ? I've been trying to work out who you are so as to bring my questions into line, I mean to cut back to that Chemical Marriage thing, there's alchemy and the occult ?
Well yeah ? It's more like a . . . Yeah. I've never really answered any of these questions and nobody really sees any of this stuff. You're kind of unique ! I would say what interests me in this sort of stuff. Well, first of all there's `Tao Will', which mainly the Shiites are into this. It has to do with the burning of surfaces or appearances, sort of corroding them until a stronger or deeper reality presents itself. It's a process of decay. Intentional sort of melting; its what Philip K. Dick talks about.

I heard of but haven't read his science fiction stuff ?
You should read Valise, it's pretty happening. The alchemical thing, I've done pretty extensive reading but I can't say that I have one hundred percent command over all of the terms because it's such a fluxus to begin with. But one thing I do get is a real sense of this corrosion or the melting of the obvious. Or even outside of the obvious the falseness of what is presented to us, like what is basically the veil of illusion.

It's like the Faxed Head line I like: `The syrup that hides the spoil'
Yeah right, so the only real escape once you almost start seeing the world that way or even embark a little bit in sort of penetrating those sorts if things you can just dissolve into total chaos. Which is what tends to happen and is sort of happening with experimental music. What I am trying to do, is have it be rooted to something significant, so when those associations come bubbling up from the unconscious they're not just flying out the window, I try to insist that we have a command over some of these things, tailor make them into specific kind of moving things. And that is kind of what the Secret Chiefs is about. Taking this associative material that comes out and focusing it in a certain way.

I completely understand. I tried the reprogramming experiment for about three years and just ended up completely dysfunctional.
I think it is really damaging how certain people will like, really hammer on the importance of doing all these sorts of things but they never really like describe the dangers of that sort of shit. It's just like this `Ah we're so enthusiastic, it's optimistic we're doing blah blah blah. That's why Philip K. Dick is so important he examines the inherent dark side of madness when you open up some of things. It's not like, we're all human beings and we are all being subjected to these circumstances which are entirely beyond our control. How do we stand up to things like that ? We can't do it just by reality surfing, shifting channels, that doesn't really hold up once the entropy sets in. I think rooting yourself to deeper principles, this world is almost like a mask for deep principles.

I'm torn between that kind of idea and you see the functioning of the mind happens, the mind is placing information, the mind is creating structures and then comes the contradictions born out of semantics, where it's a problem of language.
To me just the poetic imagination is an irrational thing and the irrationality of it isn't necessarily good, its just the organising principle is just sort of stupid, its a leap of faith. You know what I mean ?

Yeah. It's a good way of putting it.
Yeah. I'm happy. I'm happy to be stupid.

I think you have to take a leap of faith with imagination or any application of the intellect in its pure sense, with a lateral movement from a point with only those tools of the mind. It's a hell of a leap of faith.
It just doesn't have to be so anal retentive and it doesn't have to be so psychedelic. You know. Aesthetically I disagree with all of that. I understand what that aesthetic is pointing at.

You'd get that a lot in San Francisco ?
Yeah, it turns me pretty bitter and sour.

I'm always picking up SF literature, M2000 and a lot of those things seem to happen, `Burning Man' and so forth ? It could be interesting ?
It sure might be. I just see it as being this big loop, San Francisco has been on this big loop for I don't know how many fucking years, circles.

Where did the visual imagery come from for both the album and the Web Of Mimicry ?
I just draw that stuff.

Some of it has an Islamic look ?
Oh yeah. Some of that stuff is just calligraphy taken, not blindly but borrowed from anonymous calligraphers who do symbolic illuminated manuscripts. Some of it is stuff that I drew and sort of embellished also sort of based on those calligraphers. I don't draw beyond just using a black pen on white paper, all the rest of the stuff is just sort of photographs.

What do you do outside of music ?
The music is the thing, the Web of Mimicry thing is just getting off the ground, I have a pretty ambitious, garagantuan, it's like my life undertaking basically, it's just starting, laying the groundwork.

I'm following a similar train.
I'm surprised that I don't see more of it, people embarking on a life work that is all connected.

I've noticed you've got a label ?
Oh, the DHR thing. I'm just distributing that record. What I'm doing is opening up a wing of the WOM. I always get asked what's good to listen to ? Especially, when you go to places when there's not a lot of information and I tell people I really love this Remsturn and Gurglestock thing and I talk to them a month later, they're like I looked everywhere. I'm trying to get this thing where I get hold of these specific titles and just offer them over or through mail order. Everything I like is from these obscure different places and there isn't like one distributor to talk to, it's a very difficult thing to put together.

Peter Lamborn Wilson ?
I really like the Peter Lamborn Wilson stuff better than Hakim Bey. Have you gotten into Henry Corbin. I've got a big tome of his, its his master thesis on Islamic philosophy. He's probably the scholastic mentor of Peter Lamborn Wilson. He was the chair of Islamic Studies at Oxford, really terrifyingly good writer and terrifyingly well read. The Islam shit is going to explode, just people's consciousness of it is going to way up. Especially, the esoteric side of it, as a religion esoteric Islam is not even considered by modern Western Esotericists, its probably the most poetic; it relies on actual inspiration. In the West we get all hung up on, `We have to train ourselves', all these Eastern forms of meditation doesn't come all that naturally, to me Islam is so conducive to the Western mind set because of the poetic imagery, it's more `flights of fancy' and inspiration than meditative discipline. We respond more to the wild imagination.

The West . . . The Eastern meditation challenges the West, we are so language dependent (written word) and they use glyphs, the word is not the thing. The Zen thing attacks the sense of the individual which underpins our society.
This is a corny term but most `wisdom schools' acknowledge the fact that the whole point of Western society is individuation. We've already got an East we have to be a good West.

When did you begin you're role as a `Producer'?
I just started crediting myself, the Mr. Bungle records, I slave over those fucking things. I've learned a lot from them and having the luxury of being able to be in a studio and tamper with things. I have my own studio and record all my own stuff, the whole thing is pretty self dependent, most of it is done in my own studio. I've tried to become pretty autonomous not totally like a prince doing everything myself, it's nice to have people around you.

Have you ever looked at putting out a CD for computers ?
A guy was hounding us for two years to do it. But the fucking record company said `No'. I have no idea why it would have been free advertising for them. We were going to do a whole big fucking thing. I just got my first computer and digital editing system going just before we got here. I'm really like very, very conscious of computer editing. I already blew my load and made this stupid computer music and now I'm like finally to the point where I don't need to fuck with this any more I can go back to visualising things in my mind and using my tools to create them.