Coming up at 11! The shameful practice of tape manipulation ... Does it pose danger to America's youth? In October, we sent out correspondent K!z!K to harass potential perpetrators by the name of The Evolution Control Committee in the residential bastion of college football fandom, Columbus, Ohio. The truth may shock you!
K!z!K: I guess I'll start off with a very basic question -- and I apologize. But I thought people would want to know what the Evolution Control Committee is and how it all got started.
Mark: Well, of course, when life was simpler and protozoic, evolution was a pretty simple matter -- process of natural selection and all. Before long it became a whole lot more complex. So, of course, there is a need for committees to get involved. So the Evolution Control Committee formed as a committee to suggest good directions for opposable thumbs, and who should walk upright and who shouldn't. And, well, things have developed kind of nicely, I think. Eventually, they developed a musical, or audio, extension of their main services, and that's where we come into play.
K!z!K: OK, I will admit that the only thing I've ever heard from the Evolution Control Committee is this tape released in 1994 called Gunderphonics. From what I heard, its filled with lots of sampling goodies. You have Chuck D and Herb Alpert together again. You have nice educational audio pieces just totally rearranged and taken out of context. It's a very well- rounded release. It has, of course, George Bush on it.
Mark: Of course! He's even telling the truth! We thought that was one of the more notable achievements. We figured anyone that could make George Bush tell the truth, well, must have something going on.
K!z!K: Actually that piece got a lot of circulation around three years ago. Mark: You remember! Wonderful, yes. It was right after the January 15th, 1991 telecast that George Bush declared that we were all going to save the planet. And he gave a small address on television which was promptly, of course, recorded here at the Committee and manipulated to be a little bit more truthful. We sent it out two days after the speech to about four dozen stations here and there who'd actually play a cassette. It actually did pretty well. If I remember, I think KALX out there (in Berkeley) gave it a lot of airplay.
K!z!K: Speaking of pieces where you, more or less, take the original piece and splice words here and there ... How do you approach that? Do you simply lay it out? Or do you go through and transcribe it word for word, then repiece the words on paper, and then go to the audio piece and repiece it? Or do you do it on the fly?
Mark: In some cases, it is more meticulous, like what you just described there. There's a piece on Gunderphonics which is a mega-manipulation of Led Zeppelin. We literally got the box set from the library, and a few other things, and just scoured the whole thing listening to every bit of it and writing out notes on where the good pieces were. I remember my girlfriend at the time was pretty stunned at just how meticulous it was. Not everything is that way. I think in the case of "Hurdy Gurdy Men," it was just one of those things where you're playing your Donovan; then you're playing your Butthole Surfers; and you pick out the chocolate with the peanut butter. It's like "Well, what's it like if you put the two together?" And so, that's what happened ... a big audio Reece's Cup that became "The Hurdy Gurdy Men."
K!z!K: So that whole tape was done on just one reel-to-reel machine and ....
Mark: No, no. No reel-to-reel. We have never spliced a tape.
K!z!K: Really?
Mark: Ever. That was mostly done on a dual-deck cassette machine. The overlaying was done on just a simple 4-track. The only sampling, or otherwise digital manipulation, that came into play was the "Stairway to Heaven" section of the Led Zeppelin thing. Otherwise, everything was just on cassette. And it's important to get a deck that's all mechanical. Those new solenoid soft-touch things ... they're from the Devil. But if you're lucky enough to find an old cheap mechanical one, that will work. It's noted in the Gunderphonics liner notes the details behind the deck used. It's a TEAC W450-R deck, or something like that. We wanted to bring special mention to the equipment used not because we wanted to show off, but we wanted to say, "Look, you don't have to have a digital editor, or even necessarily a reel-to-reel. You might already have a deck at home that can do this stuff." So we wanted to hopefully give some people some inspiration that even if they only have a small amount of money to spend on something, it's not hopeless. There may be something you can do.
K!z!K: Yeah. And everyone has access to a TV, and there's enough stuff on TV to inspire these types of works for 10 years, on a typical recording of one day.
Mark: I'm still feeling the loss of cable. When I moved, I didn't keep my cable, and I really lack a lot of source that I had before. I really do.
K!z!K: What cable stations did you rely on?
Mark: The religious ones, especially ... cable access, and public access to some degree, which I trust you have out there.
K!z!K: We actually have a very prominent religious station based here in Orange County, of course.
Mark: Oh, how wonderful for you!
K!z!K: Oh yes.
Mark: Let's see, you've only heard the Gunderphonics cassette, so you really haven't heard the musical side of the Committee.
K!z!K: No, I haven't, unfortunately.
Mark: There is a pretty strong song-oriented aspect as well. We're working very hard on a CD, and it's going to be pretty much split between tape manipulations and cut-ups and song-oriented pieces. Some of the songs coming on the CD range anywhere from this total techno song to this very sparse "experimental" piece with one woman reading a bit of poetry that she wrote, artificially manipulated to lengthen her voice without changing the pitch. So, she's ... ssssshhhheeeeee'sss rrrreeeeaaaalllllyyyyy ddddrrrraaaawwwnnn oooouuuttt wwwwiiiiittthhhhh wwwhhaatt sshhee says. I found it a very moving piece. It's really hard to categorize the CD.
K!z!K: Are there any such things as Evolution Control Committee live shows?
Mark: Oh yeah, the Committee has performed live quite a few times. In a live performance, we have a number of slide shows which are set up to go with the songs. And the slides show are pretty extensive. They are done with two machines, and they're synchronized to the music. So they're basically like a poor man's video. In fact, we're just releasing a video tape of those slide shows, so those who haven't been lucky enough to live in the wilderness of Columbus, Ohio can actually get a sense of what these live performances are all about. We try to keep it from being a static performance. We try to bring in some new elements and some interesting props and tricks. We definitely don't want to keep it a boring prerecorded show, which it could easily become.
K!z!K: Have you ever toured before?
Mark: We've gone to a number of other cities. Let's see - - Chicago, Bloomington, Cincinnati, Cleveland. We don't play live a whole lot. Honest to say, we don't need the distraction. We got plenty to do on our own. We put a lot of effort into them, but they're obviously not our strength. I say that simply because we've really wrestled with the concept for many years. And I think any electronic band, or people who have seen electronic bands, can recognize some of the fundamental problems behind putting what we do in a live context. I think Negativland has also seen the same thing. There's a lot of audiences, progressive though they may be, that still have a difficult time dealing with things that don't move. And I mean that by, in a live context, your instruments do not physically move to make the sound. Even if it's keyboards, it's still difficult for people to understand just where the sound is truly coming from. Maybe it's just Columbus audiences, I don't know ....
K!z!K: No, not really. I mean, ever the since the whole Milli Vanilli thing, there's been this precedent that "you're not a real live band unless you have your guitar, you have your drums. Everything must be completely organic," except of course the equipment that's transmitting the live sound.
Mark: Yes, I think audiences have difficulty trusting a musician put in that role. It's easy to understand, with examples like Milli Vanilli to prove that mistrust. But I think things are very slowly working towards a point where that kind of performance will be accepted. I just saw the Thrill Kill Kult and whatever-the-hell band that was with them -- they do lots of pop-techno stuff, I can't remember -- anyway, both bands were flagrantly using backing tracks behind them. My favorite part was when there was a drum solo, and the drummer was visibly waving both drumsticks up in the air, as if it's kind of this joke or whatever. But I think people are becoming more accepting of that, or maybe just less concerned. Or they just don't care anymore.
K!z!K: Or they just want to dance.
Mark: Or that. Unfortunately, Evolution Control Committee shows aren't quite that reckless -- yet. Maybe we just need to be making pop-techno music, too.
K!z!K: Just put out your big top 40 hit, and back it with an album of fully subversive stuff. That's the way you'll get in.
Mark: And we'll retire. Great!
K!z!K: Any last words?
Mark: Recycle your media. It's going to foist itself upon you whether you like it or not. You may as well put it to good use.
By now, the latest Evolution Control Committee CD Double The Phat And Still Tasteless should be available. For more info on E.C.C., write toP.O. Box 10391, Columbus, OH 43201.
You might catch K!z!K on the air at KUCI on any number of random occasions.