Dylan Carlson

Hanna Bächer

Welcome to Red Bull Studios in Berlin and please welcome Dylan Carlson. [applause]

Dylan Carlson

Thank you.

Hanna Bächer

The track we just heard, it’s called “Divine and Bright” and I think it was recorded in around 1990 or 1991?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, yeah, that was our first recording session, we did it in Portland, back before Portlandia...

Hanna Bächer

Long before Portlandia.

Dylan Carlson

But, it was at Smegma Studios which was, Mike Lastra from the long-running improv band Smegma, it was his home studio basically. It was a one-inch eight track and that was... Yeah we... I had... I was... I had recently moved back to Seattle from Olympia where I started Earth in ‘89 and then Joe Preston, who was in the band, was originally from Eugene, Oregon so he had a lot of, I guess, friends, connections, etc. in Oregon so that’s why I ended up going down there and also the price was right since it was $300 for the whole kit and caboodle. [laughs]

Hanna Bächer

Joe was in Melvins later right?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, he went to the Melvins and before that he was in a band called Snake Pit, from Eugene.

Hanna Bächer

All these places that you mention for people here... I suppose most people here are, sort of, based in Berlin... Olympia, Seattle and Portland are, sort of all like, two hours away from each other, right?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, it’s about... Yeah about an hour... Seattle’s... Olympia’s about an hour from Seattle and Portland’s about three hours from Seattle, so relatively close by American standards.

Hanna Bächer

Did you grow up around there? Did you move around a bit?

Dylan Carlson

I was born in Seattle, but my dad worked for the Department of Defense so we moved around, pretty much continuously. So I lived in Philadelphia, Los Cruses, New Mexico, Ramstein, Germany, Augsburg, Germany, Wiesbaden, Germany, San Antonio, Texas, Manalapan, New Jersey, and then back to Seattle and then I went back and forth between Seattle and Olympia a couple times and then my missing years were in Los Angeles and then back to Seattle.

Hanna Bächer

You say you formed Earth around ‘89 in Olympia, at that time when you first started making music to get... I mean, Earth has gone through so many different variations, or installations of the band, but the very first you getting together with, I think four other guys, three, four other guys at that time.

Dylan Carlson

There was two, Slim Moon and Greg Babior.

Hanna Bächer

What was your... Was there any... What was the mindset? Where did you want to go?

Dylan Carlson

Well it was my third band, so this one I had... I guess this one that was... I had a... It was like, sort of conceptualized before I started it. My previous bands, I guess were less conceptual but this being the third time around I had, you know, sort of specific things I wanted to do… So, yeah this... I, like, set about to do those and then… I mean there’s a number of reasons I’ve been through so many members I guess. Since I had the concept and their idea, anything that didn’t sort of work with it, or they left for other reasons, since everyone’s life takes a different path.

Hanna Bächer

Is in your mind, is that a necessity for a really good band, to have one person that’s consistent and sort of the leader? Do you believe in equality more?

Dylan Carlson

I’ve seen very few bands that are consensual that have worked for a long period of time. Then it seems like bands where there are strong personalities tend to break up. They all go their own way. That’s just been my experience I guess. That being said, I’m not a control freak and I’m not... I have strong ideas and a strong conception of what I’m doing and what I want to do but within that, when I get people to play with me, I get them because I like what they do.

I figure what they’re going to do is going to add to it. I let them do their thing. I never tell anybody what to do or how to play something or anything like that. If I didn’t like what they did I wouldn’t work with them. They’re going to come up with ideas that I can’t come up with and hopefully add to what’s being made rather than me saying, “Oh no, the bass line has to be this.” I would never tell a trombone player what to play or a cello player what to play because I have no concept of how those instruments work. I have a hard enough time with my own side of things.

It’s open in a lot of ways, but it’s also, because I’m the main songwriter and the main guy I guess, sign the checks at the end of the day and all that [laughs] I generally try not to control people. I’m not a control freak at all. I believe in what I call happy accidents and being able to perceive those moments and not... Whenever you go into a studio to make an album you have a certain idea of how the album’s going to come out and all this, but it’s not going to be that by the time you get done with it. It’s going to be something else as it makes its way into reality. It’s usually better than what you originally thought of because things happen that you can’t plan or foresee. Then people have their input and their part and whatever they contribute. You can’t come up with that either because you’re not them and they’re not you.

Hanna Bächer

Was it an accident that there were no drums on your first proper album?

Dylan Carlson

No. Basically being around other people doing bands and a lot of other musicians, I saw people constantly, “Oh, when we find this guy, when we find the perfect drummer, then it will be ready,” or, “When we find the perfect guitar player, then we’ll be ready.” “When we build the perfect practice space, then we’ll be ready.” Always waiting for something before they would get going.

To me it was like, I don’t know if it’s impatience, but I couldn’t find a drummer at that time. For some reason drummers were very hard to find in the Seattle, PNW area. I just figured I’d get a drum machine and deal with finding a drummer at some other point in time. Then funnily enough during my missing years in LA I met a bazillion drummers. LA was crawling with drummers. But…

Hanna Bächer

You weren’t playing.

Dylan Carlson

But I wasn’t playing. Yeah, I just figured you do… To me, it’s like you do what you can with whatever you have and you don’t wait for something that may not happen. Otherwise it’s not going to... You’ll never do it.

Hanna Bächer

You don’t wait, right? In general if you have to do a thing, you do it.

Dylan Carlson

Yeah. No, I mean I try to get stuff done. I don’t know how people spend years on an album. One thing, the cost alone, I guess it must be luxurious to take seven years to do a record or 10 years to do a record. Yeah, I’ve never had that luxury.

Hanna Bächer

This first album that I mentioned earlier is kind of, I think initially there was supposed to be another album before that but it somehow didn’t happen.

Dylan Carlson

Yeah. Well, originally we recorded the album and then we were approached by Sub Pop to do a 7” which is why that song is split in two, because it was going to be an A and B side of a 7”. Then since there was a fabulous new device, the CD was just coming out at that time, they decided to do a CD EP of the two songs rather than a 7”. They ended up releasing the two songs on that. Then the rest of the album was never released.

Hanna Bächer

For those...

Dylan Carlson

Until it was... Well, it was bootlegged by Joe Preston first and then reissued by Southern Lord.

Hanna Bächer

He bootlegged his sort of stuff he was involved himself?

Dylan Carlson

Well actually, I don’t know if I should go into it, but for some reason, well, I guess I’ll just do it, why not? Basically for some reason… Basically he got his dream come true which was to join the Melvins and then promptly got kicked out. For some reason because he couldn’t strike back at Buzz he decided I was the enemy. He went to Portland, stole the masters and started bootlegging the first Earth stuff. Then also went to Sub Pop and got paid again after being reimbursed for what he had contributed to the recording costs. Yeah, I’m not sure why but… That’s that, what happened there.

Hanna Bächer

Since we’re at early ‘90s here for gossip, for those who don’t know, which role did Sub Pop play in those years for the scene sort of?

Dylan Carlson

Well, they were the local record label and they, Bruce and John, they were both very different. Bruce was I would say the more adventurous and risk-taking side of the partnership and Jonathan was the more business-oriented member of the partnership. Our original relationship was with Bruce and then after they sold part of the company to Warner Brothers Bruce basically retired from music and started pursuing other interests. Yeah, they... They pretty much are the reason Seattle is even noticed because they started out... When they first started putting out bands like Mudhoney and stuff like that they paid to fly journalists out to shows, especially English journalists. Took bands to Australia and did stuff like that. They really created the whole scene as it were and made it attractive to major labels. I always felt we were tangential to all that. It was, like everything in life, it was a two-edged sword with good and bad. I’m grateful to have been on Sub Pop and gotten the chance to put stuff out, because there’s thousands of talented bands that never get to. Although that’s changing because production is in the hands of everyone now.

What we did was not grunge and not part of that whole thing. A lot of people I think that bought the records saying Sub Pop expecting something were disappointed and then a lot of people that would’ve liked it didn’t buy it because they saw Sub Pop and expected something. Luckily I wore a Morbid Angel t-shirt on the back of the album and so metal fans were sort of the first to really embrace what we were doing. They’ve been consistent... Metal fans are great in that they don’t pay attention to trends and if they love you, they love you flat out. They’re not necessarily looking for the flavor of the month or whatever. They’re definitely a really good core audience to have.

Hanna Bächer

Maybe we should listen to a track off this then very first album that actually came out Sub Pop in 1993. This is “Seven Angels” off Earth 2.

(music: Earth – “Seven Angels”)

This is 16 minutes long?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah we can fade it.

Hanna Bächer

I know that during this time that you were writing the record you listened to but also read stuff that La Monte Young was putting out right?

Dylan Carlson

I didn’t... I was reading about La Monte Young, finding his music was much more difficult. Luckily the Gramavision, for some insane reason, they were like a New Age label of the time, did put out a box set of his Well-Tuned Piano. Which was like five LPs, I think, or something like that. Then they put out a CD of his B Flat Blues Band, as he called it. But it was mostly reading about La Monte Young and his concepts, I guess, that I found out about through, like probably most people do, the Velvet Underground and then Terry Reilly. When I formed the band I guess what I was listening to the most at that time would have been a combination of King Crimson, ’69 to ’75, and then Slayer and minimalist composers. Saying that too, I mean, I love all kinds of music. I guess they’re… Conceptually That was the strongest influences I guess. That’s why when I first started I sat down to play guitar instead of standing. I’m a bit of an adolescent trip worship.

Yeah, I mean, growing up I was exposed to a lot of music by my parents because they were of the... I was born in 1968 so a product of the Summer of Love, I guess you could say. My parents were into music and stuff since they were young when they had us. Then when I discovered music for myself and was able to buy my own records I gravitated... AC/DC’s what started this all. Hearing them is what got me into music and wanting to play music and be a rock & roll star. Yeah, I’ve always thought when I would hear a song and there’d be a cool riff or a cool part of the song I was always like, “Oh, what would it be like if they stayed on that instead of moving on to the next part?” Then I read about minimalism and stuff like that. I was like, “Oh, what if we take a Slayer-style riff and play it for 20 minutes at half speed?” I guess you could say that was my one good idea. I recognized it and ran with it. Then later discovered Indian music and stuff like that. I don’t know, maybe since I have Scottish heritage it’s some sort of atavistic bagpipe thing, but I’ve always been drawn to stuff that’s repetitive and on the slower side of the tempo.

Hanna Bächer

Kind of, yeah.

Dylan Carlson

Yeah. Then Earth 2 sort of came about. Again, Earth was very conceptual in the early days. Again, the wonderful new invention of the CD opened up at the time, however long, 73 minutes, I know they’re longer now, but at the time that was the length. We were like, “Oh, let’s fill up an entire CD with one song in three parts.” Obviously tape didn’t contribute to that because they only got 30 minutes max on recording tape back then. We had to sort of splice it or fade it in and fade up, stuff like that. Whereas nowadays with Pro Tools you could conceivably make an endless record.

Hanna Bächer

Or do John Cage pieces for 600 years.

Dylan Carlson

What?

Hanna Bächer

Or do… John Cage did a piece called “600 Years.”

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, I guess so.

Hanna Bächer

In case you don’t know, it’s in a church in Germany, I think it’s an hour south from here. It’s only a new tone every two or three years but it’s announced usually so you can go see them. When you say you were very conceptual in those early years and you talked about La Monte Young and Indian music, were you conceptual when it comes to scales and tuning as well because both La Monte Young and Indian music do?

Dylan Carlson

I never did just intonation or anything like that. I always worked with standard guitars. Later the companies started making fretless guitars and just intonated fret boards and all that kind of stuff, but by then I’d sort of moved on. Again, that was always like I’m going to work with what I have and what I have is a regular guitar. Back then I used to tune much lower and then I realized Hendrix did E flat. I defy anyone to come up with heavier riffs than that. Then Tony Iommi dropped a whole step to D and used the thinnest strings because of his fingers. It’s not about how low the guitar is tuned or how many, if you have seven or eight or nine strings now. It’s this whole kind of... Earth sort of was a response to at the time everyone was trying to be the fastest band on earth, so we’re like, “Oh, we’re going to be slow.”

Again, if you take something like that and make it the focus, then it’s like you’re turning music into sport. It’s like oh, then now there’s bands, “Oh, we’re the slowest band,” or, “We’re the lowest tuned band.” It’s like they forget it’s all about music originally and it shouldn’t be about these things because then you’re not paying attention to the music. You’re just worrying about something else, you know?

Hanna Bächer

How much is your own composition and strategy about just listening to your instrument?

Dylan Carlson

Well, I think you have to listen to your instrument. It’s like it’s a symbiotic relationship hopefully. Maybe some would say parasitic, but ultimately it’s about being able to transfer what’s coming through you through this. It’s listening to that. Wherever music comes from, it comes through people and then it takes the form it does because it’s coming through those people and through a certain instrument. It’s like you have to listen to it I guess, but the goal is obviously to be able to transcend whatever instrument you’re playing at the same time and make it deliver the music as effectively as possible.

Hanna Bächer

I’m kind of asking that because I know you once said, and I quite liked the idea that if you don’t play different notes, basically you play drones, that allows you to listen to what is happening inside this one note.

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, because of the way the human ear is built, the overtone series begins to create melodies that aren’t technically there. Then there’s a note that it produces that’s like an artificial… It’s a tonic that’s not there if you analyzed it with a frequency analyzer or whatever they use for that kind of stuff. Yeah, the human ear produces melodies of its own in response to the overtone series being produced.

I think there’s that. Everything in the universe is vibrating. Quantum mechanics is showing us that basically everything’s a wave form, even particles are actually wave forms or in string theory they are vibrating strings or whatever. Everything is a vibrational energy. It makes sense that that’s why we make music and why we’re drawn to music and why it affects us because it’s like it vibrates us physically and then down to the molecular level.

It’s why musical instruments, the more they’re played, the better they sound because the vibrations organize the molecules of the instrument. Whereas instruments that are locked away and enshrined and what not usually sound horrible because they haven’t been played. That’s what they’re meant for. Not to be put in a museum and shut away and hoarded and stuff.

Hanna Bächer

Talking about all this I would kind of assume that you would have gone into just intonation, but you didn’t, right? Why is that? Or maybe we should explain what it is.

Dylan Carlson

Basically it’s a other way of intonating an instrument, when all notes are based on a ratio of numbers. There’s this little thing called the Pythagorean interval that messes everything up and so it’s basically what you do with this. And so, conventional Western music, which is called equal temperament, they take that and they divide it up amongst the notes. So that’s why we have a 12-note scale. But other intonation systems have done it different ways and then you have like, Arabic and Persian scales with quarter-tones and stuff like that. So they have other ways of dealing with it.

Mostly I guess, like, I moved on from that. To me it’s about making music with what I have. Most of those instruments are prohibitively expensive. And again I didn’t really see the need to do that... I mean I moved... I mean I kept... I mean I still love open strings and what they call oblique motion which is the drone basically. It’s the simplest form... Or not simplest, but is a form of oblique motion where you have one note going whilst you have other notes moving against it. It’s perfectly able to do it with conventional instruments. And then there’s things you can do with conventional instruments that you can’t do with just the intonated instruments and, um… Yeah, so…

Hanna Bächer

Is oblique motion a thing that you could show with just this one guitar?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, it’s pretty simple.

Hanna Bächer

I like simple things. Things might be simple but still need to be...

Dylan Carlson

[plays guitar] Yeah, I guess that’s like oblique motion because the E is constantly going and then you play other notes that move against it. You know, like a lot of metal is oblique motion because there are like open strings, you know “[inaudible] is Broken,” for example, is oblique motion. [plays guitar]

Hanna Bächer

Thanks. [applause]

Dylan Carlson

A very fast version of that song.

Hanna Bächer

How are your fingers doing?

Dylan Carlson

What?

Hanna Bächer

How are your fingers doing after all those years?

Dylan Carlson

They’re fine. I mean. Early in my career, before I had one, I had carpel tunnel syndrome and I had to have an operation on my left wrist, but I haven’t had any problems since then. So, I mean the more you play the stronger your fingers get, unless you have an unfortunate accident or strain them or you know, somehow mess them up but I have luckily managed to avoid that.

Hanna Bächer

I think we should listen to a track from the last album before a long hiatus. Before you said you got lost in LA. This is “Tibetan Quaaludes”.

(music: Earth – “Tibetan Quaaludes”) (music: Earth – “Tibetan Quaaludes (Remixes by Russell Haswell)”)

This was a remix of the same song of “Tibetan Quaaludes” by Russell Haswell and it came out exactly 10 years after.

Dylan Carlson

Yeah. That was... the remix album was when I just sort of started doing Earth again. There had been actually a couple remixes done when I was on Sub Pop by DJ Spooky. Then Russell Haswell was someone I met the first time I came to England in 1995 because we got brought over by Paul Smith from Blast First. Bruce Gilbert who was doing a thing, DJ Bumblebee, liked to use Earth too apparently as part of his records that he was DJing, but yeah, apparently we had acquired a following amongst I guess the noisier end of electronic music folks.

So when I started doing Earth again before there was any new material out No Quarter Records decided to do a remix album of inviting electronic musicians like Russell and Autechre and DJ Spooky and some other folks to mangle some Earth songs. Yeah, “Tibetan Quaaludes” is one of the, it’s got… One of the most dissonant songs they’ve done. I guess in addition to oblique motion another thing I’ve always liked is sort of the contrast between dissonance and consonants. That’s a fairly extreme example of it since it was back in the day.

Hanna Bächer

Back in the day, you mean before your hiatus?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah. Yeah. That was the Phase 3 album that sort of almost didn’t happen. It had a number of problems seeing the light of day, which is sort of what led to the hiatus. Yeah.

Hanna Bächer

You did actually not play guitar for those eight, nine years? Or do you always play?

Dylan Carlson

No. When I moved to LA I did not own a guitar and didn’t play guitar. Well, it wasn’t eight or nine years. I mean I was in LA for four years and then I started playing again about 2001, 2002. Then we didn’t really have a label or anything like that until Southern Lord signed us in 2005 and we did Hex. Before that we’d done, there had been some reissues and a live record done by various shysters.

The No Quarter guy was a good guy. They were nice people, a nice guy to work with and a good label, but the one label that we… Well “label” that we worked with right when we came back was sort of a disaster. That guy was a con man and was selling a non-existing computer repeatedly on eBay to generate income. Later went to prison for wire fraud.

Hanna Bächer

I always wonder who those people are who do that, so that’s you.

Dylan Carlson

That was like a whole... No, I didn’t do that. That was the guy that was supposedly our label. Yeah, that’s a whole other saga that we don’t need to go into.

Hanna Bächer

To talk about later. I think you still have a very good relationship with you mentioned Southern Lord which is the label of Greg Anderson of Sunn O))) who were famously apparently named after one of your releases, Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars or named after the amps you used.

Dylan Carlson

Named after the amps.

Hanna Bächer

Yeah. How was that first contacts around 2001 when you started playing guitar again and since you were playing with a drummer etc.?

Dylan Carlson

I actually met Greg when I was in LA. He invited me to a Goat Snake show. Then we just sort of kept in contact over the years. Then he invited us. He had a little showcase night at South by Southwest in 2003, I think it was, and invited us to play at it. That’s when we decided to start working together. As I said, up to that time there had been a number of small labels and so called labels that we had worked with that hadn’t worked out very well. Yeah, and then we went in the studio and did Hex.

I got a guitar again, like I said, about 2001. I originally just started playing to play again. I had no plans to restart Earth or even do a band again or play live or record. It was just more I wanted to play guitar again. Then started drumming or I met Adrienne and we started playing together and eventually sort of morphed into music. After a period of what I call therapy music, we actually, I started writing again and even though... I’ve never wanted to make the same album over and over again. I’ve always, I’ve never understood that mentality. To me it’s like an album represents a specific period of time and a specific set of circumstances. You can’t recreate it and so there’s really no point in trying to recreate it. I guess a lot of people, they have a successful album and so they think, “Oh, we’ve got the formula,” and they repeat it ad nauseam. Coldplay. [laughs]

I’ve never thought that way. As you grow and change as a musician you want to grow and change as a recording artist and do different things and try. You have different concepts for a record. To me that’s always been important. Not only should a song have an arc, but the album should also have an arc. Every album is different and has a different set of circumstances. It’s a period of time that won’t be the same and you’re preserving it, kind of, unlike the live experience where it’s like a moment in time that will never be repeated and is not being preserved. It’s a luxury to get to go into a recording studio and work on stuff, a time to try and do your best work and do something different and experiment.

Hanna Bächer

For this album that then came out, Hex, as you just said you introduced Adrian, said that you met Adrienne Davies who played drums with you for a couple of albums. How did that change you to work with a drummer as Earth for the first time?

Dylan Carlson

I’d worked with a drummer on Pentastar. It made my life easier in some respects because I didn’t have to program a drum machine anymore, and then obviously you’re working with another musician, so they’re contributing something that you can’t. I’d worked with drummers in the two bands I was in before Earth, so it wasn’t strange. I’d never been opposed to having a drummer. It had just always been difficult to find one.

Hanna Bächer

Let me maybe put it differently. You mentioned consonance and dissonance before, especially in this dual setup of Adrienne and you. Would you ever approach a dual setup as one person in the dissonant one and one being the consonant one?

Dylan Carlson

No.

Hanna Bächer

Aiming at resolution?

Dylan Carlson

No. Everyone... Drums to me are not… They’re melodic but in a different way than a guitar or a cello or whatever, but they’re rhythmic, and then sometimes time keeping and sometimes not. They’re a timbre and color instrument that adds something and holds things together, I guess, is the way I look at it. But it’s not… Drums to me aren’t consonant or dissonant. They’re their own thing. Unless there’s tuned percussion like, say, a tabla, which is melodic or tuned cymbals or bells and stuff like that that can be melodic or harmonic like a vibraphone or something, but drums in and of themselves I don’t consider that way.

Hanna Bächer

You started touring, I think even Russell Haswell had you set up an early tour? Is that right?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah.

Hanna Bächer

You started touring around that time. How did that feed back into the tracks that you made?

Dylan Carlson

I began to write a lot of stuff while we were touring and I’d work on songs in a live situation and introduce songs in a live situation. Then we’d always play new stuff on tour as well as the stuff on the album that we were touring on. We’d always have new stuff to play for the next album, hopefully. That was the biggest change… Not just writing at home and then recording. It was showing stuff to the audience before it was finished.

Hanna Bächer

There’s another double album that you did, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, and I want to listen to a track off that, and I want to listen to a track that I think was specifically not improvised but composed which is “Old Black.”

(music: Earth – “Old Black”)

I could let this run forever. As I said, this was a composed track. Maybe you want to explain in this specific session, how would you move on from that, having one composed track as an opener?

Dylan Carlson

The arc of the album was from composed, the most composed track that opened the record, to the ending track which was completely improvised in the studio. That was the arc of that session. Then I composed “Old Black.” When I’m writing, I sometimes will set little jobs for myself or try something that I haven’t done before. That specific song, oh, I’m going to write in a minor key and I want to do a traditional structure, ABABC I believe is how it comes out. It’s verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and then an outro. That’s how that song originated, I guess you could say. That and, yeah. That was sort of it, was the little task I’d set myself songwriting. Then like I said the Angels Of Darkness albums were recorded all at the same time, both albums, but there was too much to do just one record. It kind of came about, I had had liver failure and was diagnosed with hepatitis B, wild-type, and so I booked a two week tour with Wolves in The Throne Room and went into the studio afterward. I wasn’t sure if that was going to be it for both Earth and myself. It turned into a very productive session and we did a lot of material, especially with all the improvising, which I credit Lori Goldston for helping me with that. She’s an amazing cello player and an amazing musician period. Probably the most formidable musician, all around musician, I know I would say.

When I was talking about albums having an arc, that was the arc of that project was to... Cos there were some composed songs that I had worked on on the tour with the Wolves and then we would also improvise quite a bit every night. I mean the improvising part sort of started with the Bees Made Honey album. I was listening to a lot of jazz stuff, I guess. I’m a self-confessed Dead head. That was one of the things I always loved about the Grateful Dead was their improvisatory nature and the fact that none of their live shows were the same and none of the songs were the same night after night.

That’s the way I look at the live thing. I’ve never understood the concept of like, “Oh we’re going to try to recreate an album on stage.” I mean to me I would just go mad, that would drive me crazy. Then also the fact that if I want to hear the record I will play the record, that’s why it was recorded. Just put the record on and lip sync, or pretend to play if you want to recreate it live night after night.

Whereas to me I’ve always thought live, I mean what I love about the live experience is that it’s not the same and it’s always different and it’s different every night, even if you’re playing the same songs it’s different every night. I’ve always tried to leave, well especially since the Bees album, always tried to leave moments where improvisation is possible or required cos that’s what’s exciting about the live thing, is like you and an audience are coming together to create this moment that will never happen again, and the song will never be played the same way again, and you’re opening yourself up to music and letting music dictate what’s happening.

Hanna Bächer

What would be the compositional tasks or challenges that you set up for yourself, or maybe even you would suggest for people to set up specific ones?

Dylan Carlson

I never suggest them to other people. Like I said I do the bulk of the songwriting, when there is songwriting. Then even in the improvisatory tracks I’ll usually come up with the riffs or whatever that are going to be used for that. The exceptions was the Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light track which was just, like we rolled tape and, you know, started playing.

I don’t know it’s usually stuff like, “Oh I’ll try something that’s like conventional song writing”, or so-called conventional songwriting, just trying structures that are, you know, like something that’s a recognized way of doing something I guess. So I guess that would be it, or I want to try and do a piece that does this or a piece that does that or does this evoke this. I want to do a quiet piece or stuff. I mean they only really make it on... They’re like tasks in my head a bit. I guess to a lot of people they’re just songwriting.

Hanna Bächer

Another album you did after this, Primitive and Deadly, and I think it was first conceived, or parts of it was first conceived for your solo project and we have to talk to you about your solo project. We have to talk about Albion and I think it’s maybe mostly Germans are in this room, not all people would know what Albion stands for. What does it…

Dylan Carlson

Albion is an old name for England. It’s also a name that connotes the mythic Britain or magical Britain. The original name for the island was white, alba, Latin for white, because of the cliffs of Dover and I guess also because of all the mist. I guess it was during Angels of Darkness really I was listening to a lot of English folk rock bands like the Pentangle and Fair Port Convention and Mr. Fox. I guess I’m primarily of English and Scottish extraction with a heavy dose of Swedish and Finn in there as well. I don’t know if being near my end made me think about my roots or something like that, but I’d always liked...

My grandmother came from Scotland right after the war to America so when we lived in Germany we would visit relatives in Scotland, and so I’d been to England a number of times and always enjoyed it. Then when I was touring extensively, once Earth was going again, we played in England a lot. That was our first, I guess the first country outside the US that really embraced us. I’ve always liked it there and been into the history and then I got into history and occult folklore of the island and so I started doing... I didn’t want that, because that influence, the Angels records, I didn’t want Earth to be tied to that, so that Earth could change and do its thing album to album, so I started a solo project that was devoted to that.

Hanna Bächer

And where you would do field recordings?

Dylan Carlson

I mean that was like I was recording environmental sounds, I guess, I mean it was on a trip for a specific purpose, but none of them turned out to be usable, so…

Hanna Bächer

Do you mind explaining what psychogeography is?

Dylan Carlson

Well, I guess psychogeography is a term... I’m not that familiar with the term myself but it was a term coined by the writer Iain Sinclair. I think he coined the term, or maybe the critics coined the term to describe what he does. I don’t know. Apparently it’s like being open to the psychic influences of geographical locations and perceiving the sort of different time periods that occupied that part of space, time, I guess is the concept.

Hanna Bächer

You once had a spiritual encounter in Camden, is that right? Or is it something you don’t talk about?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, it’s not really something I talk about. I had personal experiences of a supernatural nature, I guess. That’s what spurred on the project, I guess that’s what I’ll say. It’s been a long time completing the project and everyone’s been really patient, for which I’m grateful. I still have the last part of the project to complete, which is the book, which is written. It’s just now I’m figuring out how to get it published and all that kind of stuff. The album and DVD are out and have been delivered. That’s the last part of the project and that will explain more about what inspired the project.

Hanna Bächer

I was going to play a track, Falling With a 1000 Stars. Do you want any specific one?

Dylan Carlson

No, you can choose.

Hanna Bächer

This is “Reynard the Fox.”

(music: Albion – “Reynard The Fox”)

All right, time has come for any of you to ask questions if you like to. There’s going to be a mic that we’re going to try to pass around if the cable allows. Is there anyone who wants to start? You all look at me, you need to look at the mic person.

Audience Member

OK, then I’m just starting. How did this collaboration come about with The Bug and what is the process of working with each other?

Dylan Carlson

Hello? It came about through a mutual friend of ours, the artist Simon Fowler, who’s done covers for Earth, and for The Bug and other bands, as well as lots of other art. He asked me if I wanted to do some guitar for these two 12”s. Basically he sent me the basic tracks and I recorded guitar parts and then sent them back. Then he edited and did whatever he does. Yeah, that’s sort of how it worked.

We have a full-length album coming out this year. That one I guess worked a little different, in that we did a show together in Los Angeles and so since we were there I went into the studio and played guitar tracks and a couple multi-tracks on stuff that he was working on. We were actually in the studio together for that one but then, again, he takes them back and fiddles with them until he likes them, I guess. Then releases them.

Audience Member

OK, thanks. How does it differ for you if you’re working by email, like lots of people do nowadays, or being in the studio with somebody? I always think there’s some magic happening you can’t just come away with this email process.

Dylan Carlson

Yeah. I have yet to master a digital audio recording technology. I’m kind of a dinosaur and have to use a studio and have someone else twiddle the knobs for me. Yeah, I guess that’s the closest I’ve come to that sort of working together. I’d like to learn how to use digital recording stuff, I mean mix it with some analog output gear and stuff like that, just so I can do stuff on my own and not be tied to studios and stuff like that. Just because the costs of studios are increasingly prohibitive. Although, that said, there are also plenty of small studios that are not expensive and they do great work and need support. I certainly hope people will continue to use studios as well as their laptops.

Yeah, it seems weird to me, that kind of long distance sort of collaboration. I guess it probably works well for some people. I think it’s always nice when it’s face-to-face interaction, rather than remote interaction. It’s like playing live. Technically we could all stay home and watch a band on Skype, and maybe that’s the future, I don’t know. There’s something to be said for being all in the same environment and at the same moment interacting with one another that can’t really be replicated.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Audience Member

I wanted to ask if you were ever planning to sing on record again?

Dylan Carlson

I don’t have any plans to. We’ll see what happens. I never discount anything but, yeah, there’s no plans to at the moment. I haven’t practiced in a long, long time and even when I did I was not a vocalist of note. Yeah, we’ll see.

Audience Member

When you’re home and you play guitar on your own, no one’s listening to you, what music do you play?

Dylan Carlson

Right now I’ve been going through a book on R&B guitar and a book on Bill Evans songs for guitar. I guess jazz and R&B.

Hanna Bächer

OK, anyone else?

Dylan Carlson

It’s all about the front row today.

Audience Member

What is your preferred guitar tuning? Do you play standard?

Dylan Carlson

It’s standard drop to half step, E flat, Hendrix tuning.

Audience Member

That’s it?

Dylan Carlson

That’s it.

Audience Member

Someone else?

Audience Member

Are there any plans for a new Earth record?

Dylan Carlson

Yeah, I’ve been writing material. We don’t have a recording date set or any of that kind of stuff. Our contract with Southern Lord ended so I’m not sure yet where it’s going to find a home. Yeah, definitely, hopefully we’ll get recording sometime this year.

Hanna Bächer

If there’s no one else do you want to let people out with some of that jazz or R&B?

Dylan Carlson

[laughs] Uhh, no.

Hanna Bächer

Cool. Before that, thank you. [applause]