Nick: All right Cesar, take it away!

 

Cesar: Yeah, we're now going to go through some of your standout releases and some that we just personally picked too. I really want to start in the exact beginning, Gabe opened the archive description with the statement:

 

“It has been both painful and moving to initiate this archival project at the same time Portland has become a literal ground zero of anti-police and anti-fascist.”

 

I wanted to ask Pete if he shared this sentiment.

 

Pete: I mean that was probably…what…2020?  Yeah, It was definitely a complicated time. I think there's always been this anti-fascist, anti-police presence in Portland. Like anything, there's a lot of it that resonates with me and there's aspects of it that don't. I think the spirit of it is pretty inspiring.  

 

Cesar: Yeah, given the angry sound of these early Yellow Swans releases, I would assume it was seminal for the creation of the project. Would you guys say it was?  

 

Pete: We were active like during the Bush years and like we were mostly operating out of Portland and Oakland. It was a very common thing for both of us to be involved in marches and actions. It wasn't a great time and it's not a great time now. Portland has this long history, as is Oakland, of pushing back a lot harder than a lot of other American cities.  

 

Cesar: Yeah, specifically during the Bush administration. 

 

Gabriel: George Bush, not the one who invaded Iraq, but his father referred to Portland as little Beirut. Portland was understood to be an inhospitable place for conservative politicians. It was definitely part of the appeal of living in Portland. There was an anarchist way of living that was really common, even if it didn't necessarily manifest in looking or sounding like you were an anarchist. Our friend groups overlapped a lot of territories. Pete mentioned, His Hero Is Gone, like those folks moved from the southeast to Portland and they're just dudes at the cafe, right? You know, Tragedy was just a band who had house shows in the basement, we would go to those shows and we were part of the same friend circles. We just didn't look or sound like an anarcho crust band. But that was also because we didn't want to be constrained by a scene artistically, aesthetically, or socially. We were always very interested in deeds being louder than words and so that extended to the music. If we are invested in autonomy and freedom and  cultivating that as a culture, why would we conform the way we dress or the way our band sounds to fit a very narrow definition of what that's supposed to look like or sound like?

 

Pete: Really quick. I want to shout out this podcast that I listened to when I was driving across the country that was this woman that I've worked a bit with on projects for Freedom to Spend.  The podcast is called “It Did Happen Here” and it's a great history of anti-fascist organizing in Portland starting back in the 80s. It's a very impressive work of history, but I think it also can give a lot of context to what happened here in 2020 and what may happen here in the coming years.  

 

Cesar: Okay, I'll try to check that out. 

 

Gabriel: I'll just throw out there like Minneapolis and Portland obviously were two cities that really went off, but also places like Kenosha. There's all these cities that people assume are somehow either really “white,” and I'm putting that in quotes for the reader, or really liberal and or middle of the road that actually have very serious, radical politics historically, but also are facing a lot of the same crises that the rest of America is facing and have like long histories, as Pete alluded to, of resistance. So I think seeing stuff pop off there, it was both inspiring, but it was also painful because it's not exactly, I mean, some people may want to disagree. It's not fun being tear gassed. It's not fun facing down riot cops. It feels good to be with people resisting, it does not feel good to be repressed. My first experience of that in a really serious way was in Portland. I think part of the heartbreak is we're still here. I remember marching with folks in our neighborhood against a police murder of a young black woman in 2002 or 2001. Just to be 20 years later and still seeing the same crap was hard but that also is the nature of what actual resistance looks like. It's not necessarily winning as much as it is holding that line and building communities around the things you care about and want to see in the world.  

 

Cesar: Still, maybe it’s the heavy use of rhythm machines in the earlier releases that compared to the final stages of this project made me feel you guys felt more optimistic when this was getting started. Also because you were younger and -

 

Gabriel: (laughs) Were you optimistic? I was.

 

Pete: Yeah, I think that's true. I think we were much more optimistic. And I think that, to an extent, we were a bit naive but we also wanted to do something new and figure out a new way of music.  

 

Cesar: Did the activism in Portland ever inspire faith in the betterment of your community? Does it still inspire faith?  

 

Gabriel: I can only speak about my local situation which is to say that I think our faith in Portland was based on the sense that we were, not just me and Pete, but collectively, the people around us were creating a real counterculture. That was exciting to be a part of and part of the optimism was that sense that there could still be such a thing as a counterculture that wasn't just a refusal of capitalism or refusal of certain kinds of values that we rejected, but was actually about creating a lived alternative however naive that was. That was the feeling, especially in our 20s. It felt like everyone around us was making a different world collectively. 

 

Pete: We were living in a different world too. You have to understand that Portland around the time when we started the band was still extremely cheap. Neither of us had college degrees when we were doing the band. We didn't really go that route initially when we were supposed to, we definitely did it afterwards. But our rent was really cheap. We worked as little as possible, both of us did. We both read a lot and we had a lot of friends who had recommended books to us and we were able to get them for cheap from Powell's because we always knew people who worked there who could get us like 50 percent off used books. So it'd be like two for a book or we could go to the library or whatever and we would just read a whole bunch and listen to a bunch of records. Mississippi Records was just opening down the street and there were all these other musicians in the community that we were in. There were all these other activists and people doing stuff. For instance, there was this bike shop down the street from us that was run by punks who would basically run classes to fix up old bikes so then they could sell in the shop. They would teach all these young kids from the neighborhood how to be bike mechanics and stuff like that. It was just very utopian and kind of easy living, even though we were pretty poor. And there were a lot of different people on very different trips creatively, but we could go and play music with all of them. Like in the neighborhood, just wander over to one house or the other house and getting some sort of Psych Rock jam or Electric Acoustic Improvisation. It was fairly utopian in a certain way.  

 

Nick: Portlandia you might say. 

 

Gabriel: Well, I mean, Portlandia was sort of one of the causes for the transformation of Portland. But it was partly because as much as it was making fun of that utopia, it still really did capture something that was possible that I think a lot of people living in bigger cities or living in more conservative places didn't feel like they had access to. I left Oakland for Portland because the Dot-com crisis in 2000 was already making it impossible to live. I think the place I lived in before I moved up to Portland was five of us in a two bedroom apartment and there was a wall that we built in the living room to make two of the bedrooms. I lived in one of the sides of the wall and the other side of the wall was this couple and one of them worked the night shift so they would just switch off night and morning. They had breakfast and dinner together and one would sleep during the day and one would sleep at night and we still couldn't afford our rent. Whatever that was, that was the life there. I wanted to go someplace where it feels like I can breathe. I don't want money, I want time. I wanted time to be an artist, time to devote some of my labor and creativity to other things, including my activism. That's just more important to me than being rich or famous or any of those other things that people seem to be aspiring to in New York City or LA at the time. 

 

Pete: So yeah and now everywhere like that, that sort of lifestyle doesn't really exist anymore because it's just too expensive. You can't find 80 a month rent. 

 

Nick: Yeah definitely a fever dream nowadays. Because Pete brought up books, to provide background to this question I have for both of you, there's a book I have here called “Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation” which was written by David Novak and published by Duke University Press. Spoilers for whoever's reading this, since the epilogue was written in 2012, Novak emphasized that the previous Japanese scene sort of handed the torch to America during the 2000s, and they mentioned you guys as one of those artists that essentially led the charge after that two decade period where the Japanese dominated the discussion of noise music. So with that in mind, how come there wasn't collaboration with you guys and people like Merzbow, Masonna, and Incapacitants? Was that something that you guys wanted to make happen during your original run but for whatever reasons just couldn't figure out the logistics of or did you feel like your styles would clash in an unappealing way? 

 

Pete: I mean, it's a very simple answer. Basically, we only would collaborate in person. So we never did mail collaboration, we never would send files. Everything that we recorded was always in the same room. Both Gabe and I have some affinity towards different Japanese Noise artists, but I think out of that whole camp, and I've talked to a lot of musicians from the American scene like, you know, John Wiese, C. Spencer Yeh, and they're all way more aligned with 90s Japanese Noise than I was. I was way more interested in the New Zealand scene which was more like Dead C, Corpus Hermeticum, Xpressway. That whole scene of music was something that really resonated with me and it's very noisy and very strange, but it's not Harsh Noise per se. When I was getting interested in actually being in a Noise project, it was out of this more expansive idea of what noise could be that would include things like, you know, Merzbow, but also Dead C, Michael Morley, Dadamah. I think for Gabe and I, we always had this idea that we were going to make noise, but it was going to be something that was also musical. 

 

Nick: Yeah. Did you ever get any offers from those guys? Were you simply like, “well you have to come here to collaborate with us.”

 

Gabriel: No, this is the other side of it. That book is great and I think David does a really good job of explaining the process of social connection between Japanese noise music and the U.S. and it does have a lot to do with trading, right? With circulating tapes and releases which we were involved in because of course we started Collective Jyrk partly to self-release our own music, but also to put out music by other folks. But we weren't really part of this more narrow scene of Harsh Noise or Industrial Noise or Power Electronics. We were friends with a lot of artists who are part of that and collaborated with artists who were part of that scene, like Burning Star Core, or, you know, we were buddies with Prurient back in the day and we released music by artists who'd made music that fit into that category, but we were always weirdly on the outside of even the American noise scene. I think it was because we were so really invested in not being in a narrow genre, both our own music, but also the people that we toured with, the people we collaborated with. I have to acknowledge, John Wiese was a super important figure for us. Like he released our first seven inch. He was such a huge supporter, he still is. We love John and his music and John was very much of that world, but also went to CalArts and studied typography and had other ideas about art and music. So I guess in a way, I just think we were never really that invested in identifying ourselves as a Noise band. We were a noise band by default in some ways, but we were also part of this other circuit of international weirdo artists that in some ways had more in common with Psychedelic Experimental music, you know, Finnish bands or the bands from New Zealand that were doing weird stuff. 

 

Pete: Like Lightning Bolt. Part of another thing that you have to understand is that what Noise is, got really codified on the tail of the scene that we were involved in. So we were kind of part of this American noise scene, like us and Wolf Eyes. We were bands that played with Noise, but we were also playing songs. So we were sort of in, sort of out. But like the sort of solidification of noise being this very narrow, very particular genre happened while we were sort of doing the thing, you know? Like there was a conception of Noise that was much broader that included even stuff like Sonic Youth, you know? So when you bring up Noise from the perspective of today, I think that there's a broad consensus that we were a Noise band, but I think if you talk to other people who are more Harsh Noise purists, we are not, we're like a Rock band.

 

Gabriel: I do want to say when I was in high school I was trying really hard to play in normal bands. I was probably more on the industrial music side of things, but I was listening to so much other stuff, Sonic Youth and Pop Punk and whatever I could get my hands on that was not above ground music. But also, when I was alone jamming out, I was doing things like playing feedback for an hour straight or putting weird metal objects in my guitar strings and then more and more I started, people were like, “oh, you're making noise music!” I had no idea what that meant. And then I saw this MTV late night special that was called “120 Minutes.” I'm sure you can find this episode on YouTube at this point. Back in the day, you either caught it or you didn't and so I would stay up late to see the alternative show. I think the host was Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth and he had this little clip of footage of Japanese noise bands, including Masonna. I saw that and my mind was just blown. I was like, “this is something you can do?” The thought I had, because I was a teenager and living in a small town, was like, “Oh, I guess when I graduate high school, I have to move to Japan. Because that's the only place where I can make the music I want to make.” Luckily for me, I saw Merzbow and Masonna play in Oakland in like 1998-maybe it was ‘99, but I think it was ‘98 or ‘97. There was a local Oakland band opening up called Noisegate and they were all pretty much across the board, all white dudes that looked like punks or metal guys. It was the first time I'd ever seen an American noise band or even knew that such a thing existed and even though I actually really didn't like them at the time, I was like, “oh, so I can do this. I could just do this here!”  I will say I never really wanted to make the music that Masonna or Merzbow played, but the two takeaways, one was that Merzbow was doing something that was beyond what I understood, but that was now the trajectory. I was like, “I need to figure out what it is that he's doing, not to replicate it, but to understand something about music.” I felt the same way when I heard John Coltrane in high school, I was like, “I don't know what it is he's doing, I just need to figure it out by listening and playing until I get somewhere.” Then when Masonna, I mean, it was five minutes of the most physical music I'd ever seen performed by this dandy, really well dressed man. I was like, “okay, this is what a performance is like. This is the real thing. I need to figure out how to make sure that when I play live, I'm giving as much as this.” So that music was intensely formative for me, but I was never interested in doing the same thing other people were doing. That was not interesting to me…ever. 

 

Cesar: As for “Ded Yellow Swans,” it definitely has a Digi-Grind sound going for it. Were there any artists that inspired you to go for that sound? I’ve read that D-beat was a huge inspiration.

 

Pete: Yeah, we both grew up in hardcore. When we started the band, the conception was that we were going to try and do a band with hardcore energy using Electronic music. That was really the very first proposition of the band and I think even now, we still kind of have that energy. We played this show in Unsound in October and it was really intense and very cathartic. We had all these people crying, everyone came away from it with this feeling of overwhelm, you know? I feel like the best hardcore and punk shows that I've been to, I've had that feeling myself. So yeah, Gabe and I both have a very serious soft spot for hardcore. We were both sort of around 90s like Gravity Records, like Screamo stuff. We were around early Grindcore like Slap a Ham Records, Spazz, Crossed Out, Man Is The Bastard, that whole world of things. We both kind of have a soft spot for Digital Hardcore stuff.  

 

Gabriel: Atari Teenage Riot, EC8OR but yeah, I have to admit, like, I never really loved digi-grind. I'm not a hater, it just was never super appealing for me, but I still have a very intense soft spot for D-beat. I'm looking at the "Detestifi Yellow Swans,” which is one of our CDRs. That was my kind of ironic or not ironic weird tribute to D bands. In my mind, the idea that we were a deep band was something that I've always kept as one of the core elements of what we do. Like I said, it wasn't about wanting to sound like a D-beat  band, but it was more like what Pete described, which I think is what it would feel like to listen to Disclose, incredibly loud, very emotional, very overwhelming. It's not because they're playing a specific style, it's because of the intensity of emotion that they attach to what their band is about and the source of ecstatic pain that comes from a world that's not right. But I would say there's an emotional through line that is probably way more obvious than there is a musical through line.