“At Willie’s Place” (Tourette Records) is a new ambient electronic collaboration between Mark Spybey (Dead Voices on Air, Download) and Gnome (aka Tony D’Oporto). Here is a live video, shot back in March in Denver, Colorado, that provides a good taste of what the duo has come up with.

Gnome & Spybey – Live in Denver, CO / Larimer Lounge – 06 Mar 2010 from dBom on Vimeo.

Over facebook, we did a short interview with Mark to get some more info on the origins and future of the project.

1) How did this collaboration come about?

Tony approached me to act as my booker in the USA, having also worked with cEvin Key. We got along and he sent me music he had been making which I loved. We just started to collaborate and then we toured together for a week in the States and played some of the songs live. We then went back to the record and finished it off. Very naturally. It all came together remarkably easily.

2) What was the creative process/working relationship like?

I think on this project, the lead author of most of the tracks was Tony. I interpreted what he did and had to say to him, “I’m going to make this dirty, is that OK?” It was great music but I felt like I needed to kind of throw it into a dirty puddle, pick it up, dry it out and clean it up again. A lot of electronic music makers just couldn’t tolerate me doing this I think. So when I added real drums to a track, Tony said something like, “it’s great but some of the beats aren’t exactly hitting the mark,” and I said, “that’s how I like it!” He said, “cool.” Perfection can never be attained but for those who think that they have to try to create something that is as close to perfection as possible, my sense is that this is a stagnant landscape. An empty bottle. Devoid of any possibility. I think this record leaves holes that the listener can explore and as such, it’s deeply evocative to me of the landscape of Texas, especially the Texan night skies. Which is where it was partly gestated. Tony knows when to stop and he knows when NOT to do something. That economy is the mark of a good listener. So, for me, this is as stripped a record as I have made and the process of making it was also tightly restricted by place, by time and by equipment. I think that really helped us. I also enjoyed being the second fiddle a great deal, I feel as though I can listen to this cd, without me feeling uncomfortable. I can rarely, if ever, listen to my own music without feeling a little irritated with myself.

3) Beyond the 400 copes of the limited edition cd, will the album be available for purchase as digital files?

The album is now available via iTunes for download I believe.

4) Do you have any plans for more live performances?

We are all touring again in late September and early October as part of the Subcon Beyond Fest, with Download, Otto von Schirach, DVOA etc. mainly mid-west to east coast. In January of next year we hit the west coast and Tony and I have spoken about doing Gnome and Spybey then. The film maker who made the concert video Allie Lane from Denver is coming on the tour and she did some wonderful work for us. I think Gnome and Spybey is filmic music.

Before being online, I found out about new music mostly by hanging around records stores, and sometimes even buying CDs just because they were on a label I generally liked (especially if they had cool covers!) In The Nursery were one band I discovered that way, expecting their “Counterpoint” album (released on Wax Trax! in the US) to be along the lines of the ‘industrial dance’ music that label was primarily known for.  I ended up being pleasantly surprised by how little it sounded like what I was expecting or had even ever heard before.   While sampling and electronic sounds figured prominently, the music also had a very organic feel. Some tracks, such as “Twins,” had an abrasive, Joy Division-like edge while others,  like “Libertaire,” had a more orchestral, cinematic sound. That soundtrack-like style proved to be the direction In The Nursery headed as their career progressed; the group has actually composed new scores for several silent films and performed them at special screenings.  But now they have gone back to their beginnings to release “Aubade,” a new compilation of recordings from their early years (1983 – 1985.)

In the following email interview, members Klive and Nigel Humberstone explain a bit about the release.

1) Why re-issue the material at this point in time?

NH: We’ve started incorporating a couple of tracks from that period into our live sets (especially during the ‘Alt und Neu’ tour) and really enjoyed going ‘back to basics’, rediscovering the passion and inspiration that helped shape those pieces in the first place.

KH: Recently I have been asked by various publishers and authors to recollect on the musical past. A guy in Poland,  writing a book on Post-Punk attitude contacted me and  i agreed to put down some thoughts. Another publication in Germany, called ‘Sparkling Darkness’, asked me for my personal accounts and memories of early ITN circa 1980’s. Especially playing concerts with Death in June and releasing our records on the NER label. The process got me thinking about the whole era, the difference in the way we communicated – i wanted to make a good job of it – i’m sure fans today, who listen to this genre of music, want to ‘look back’ and learn from the musical past. And to do that, you have to ensure that it is factually correct and stimulating. ‘Aubade’ came about for various reasons. Firstly, necessity – the earlier CDs with these songs on had gone out of print and needed to be collated and released again. Secondly, my research into the early days of ITN had uncovered letters, photographs from the period that would be perfect for the artwork. Thirdly, we had always wanted to somehow include material of our very first concert in 1981, but had never seen the opportunity – it just so happens that ‘Aubade’ was the first song we ever played and has remained unreleased for nearly 30 years. It seemed fitting to place it on this comprehensive collection and title the compilation after it.

2) There seems to be a Joy Division influence in some of that earlier material – would you cite them as an inspiration? Were they other bands at the time, perhaps lesser known now, who were also influential early on?

KH: The music of Joy Division was much more than an inspiration, they were our motivation! Having seen them play in 1978/9 and buying their records, we felt compelled to make music ourselves. To create an emotion with sound was the way we could express our ideas. Unknown Pleasures is easily one of the greatest albums of the post-punk era and for two eighteen year old boys at the time, the experience was a revelatory insight into what music could do to the senses. I like to think that it was an ‘journey’ that both myself and my twin brother, Nigel experienced together. We got into Joy Division after buying “An Ideal for Living” 12″ EP in september 1978, followed by the Factory sampler in January 1979. It was only a matter of time before their debut album became a ‘must have’ item as soon as it was released. All visceral and all imposing, the overall mood in the album is powered by Peter Hook’s driving bass lines and Bernard Sumner’s jagged guitar. Nigel was learning bass at the time and i had a guitar – so we both latched onto the appropriate sounds coming out of the album. Experiencing Punk music first-hand had given us the ‘do it yourself’ ethic, but listening to Joy Division gave us the vision in which to express our ideas.

I think back to many songs from that period that impressed me (Buzzcocks, Magazine) and in time i’ve discovered many of these new wave/punk records were produced or engineered by Martin Hannett. It seemed fitting that this ‘mad-hat’ producer helped shape the Joy Division sound, creating space between the instruments and leaving room for the spectral baritone of Ian Curtis. I’ve never tried too hard to analyze why the voice and lyrics of Ian Curtis impressed me so much – they just did. It’s a visceral experience, sparking off images in the mind – creating another world.

3) Your sound has evolved quite a bit since then; do you feel you’re made a conscious effort to sound unique, or has it just been a natural evolution based on your musical tastes/interests?

KH: Technology and recording techniques have changed dramatically over the last 20 years. It is strange to think our earliest releases were only recorded using guitar, bass, drums and vocals – with perhaps a little bugle and saxophone. But it wasn’t long before we started experimenting with the studio technology – the advent of sampling meant we could conduct our own orchestra, computers allowed us to experiment further without the confines of renting expensive recording studios. The choice of instrumentation has changed with each recording – we like to match the use of instruments and sounds to each individual project. With ‘ERA’ we wanted to write a series of contrasting tracks, ones that contained a lot of heavy orchestral drumming with the signature ITN military percussion, which could be performed in the live arena along with compositions that had a more ‘delicate’ side to them.

4) Listening to these early recordings, what are your thoughts on the studio and musical technology of the time, versus what is available today? Are there perhaps ways that working within limitations shaped the sound in particular ways (that might not have come about if done today)?

KH: It is refreshing to hear the ‘clarity’ in the early recordings. Especially the songs we recorded on the Mini LP ‘When Cherished Dreams Come True’. Listening to them now – brings back all the memories of  recording the night sessions at Revolution Studios in Manchester. They are very simple in their execution. Music can be a great form of memory recall and acts as a link to moments in the past. We had a clear idea of what we wanted to play. Being our first time in a recording studio, we had to re-adjust to playing the songs, individually, instrument by instrument, starting with the percussion. But, because we knew the songs so well, it wasn’t a problem. The instrumentation was kept very sparse i recall – no overdubs except for one or two embellishments  on the bass drum with a LInn Drum machine – which was played by hand along with the track.

5) Since your sound has changed quite a bit over the years, have you ever found inspiration listening to the early music? For example, hearing a particular element and getting an idea of how something similar could work within the context of your current sound?

KH: It all comes back to the first inception of an idea. In the early days – we wrote music using bass and guitars. That has changed over the years, but more recently Nigel has been playing bass a lot more – we have even tried playing many of the earlier songs ‘old school’ style and played these at live shows. It is refreshing and fun to play like this and the simplistic nature of the performances brings back the notion that writing songs and expressing yourself comes from ideas and not the technology we all crave so much for.

For more info in In The Nursery, visit their website at : inthenursery.com

… because that was the month my wife gave birth to our beautiful baby boy. Things have been a bit hectic juggling being a new parent with my regular web development work, leaving little time for personal projects like Chaos Control. But now things have settled down a bit and I’m able to devote time to this site again. Check out the new interview with Amanda Palmer and look for more to be added soon!

Best known for the synth pop classic “Send Me An Angel” as wells as such club hits as “God Tonight,” Australian synth band Real Life is back with new covers CD, “Send Me an Angel: ’80s Synth Essentials.” As the title suggests, the release has the band covering songs for their own era, doing renditions of songs such as “Cars,” “Blue Monday” and “Tainted Love.” We emailed Real Life frontman David Sterry to find out more.

How did “Send Me an Angel: ’80s Synth Essentials” come about?

I got an email from Brian Perera head of Cleopatra records asking about a possible Real Life, Cleopatra project he had in mind. When I called him he outlined a cover’s album, which had never occurred to me. However Brian is such an enthusiastic music fan type person, I couldn’t say no.

In initially deciding whether to take on such a project, what did you see as being the pros/cons?

The pro’s were, there was a good budget (enough to totally upgrade my studio equipment), I could pick any songs I wanted as long as they were 80’s and would be known to most people, nothing too obscure. A great opportunity to force myself to do something all by myself for the first time.

The con’s were, the fact that I’d never been the one who midi programmed or engineered any of our records before. I didn’t have much confidence and thought I’d fail somewhere along the way, but found that there are some fabulous computer music magazines and online tutorials, so I was learning as I recorded. I also got advice from Danny Simcic and George Pappas, who previously provided those skills on Real Life recordings. Time was a factor as well. I was doing a lot of touring at the time and didn’t want Cleopatra to forget their offer. It took me about 3 or 4 months over a year between tours. The whole thing was done using Logic 9 in my home studio, though I did have it mastered at a proper facility.

What factors went into the selection of songs? Where there any that you’d perhaps wanted to do that did not end up working? Any that you were hesitant to do that you feel turned out better than expected?

Firstly they had to be favourites of mine that I could sing with my limited style and vocal range and I wanted to play all the guitar and bass parts ( the album credits are for fictional players) I had several failures including songs by the Cars, Iggy Pop and Alphaville. There were a lot of Australian artist songs that I would have done, but they weren’t hits outside Australia. There’s no way I’d try an INXS song. I’m pretty happy with most of the songs, but I’m really happy with both my voice and the guitar solo on Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime by the Korgi’s. Also really enjoyed playing the guitars and singing the vocal on Primary. Cleopatra wanted fairly faithful reproductions, nothing too different from the original. Covering a song forces you to look at how it was constructed and every song made me aware of just how clever the originals were in performance and arrangement. I was very wary that the original artist might think my version a pile of shite (as I do with 99% of Send Me an Angel covers).

Since cover versions are often used in film and TV soundtracks rather than original recordings, I’m curious as whether that kind of licensing was part of the intention behind the release? (from a business standpoint)

Now that’s something that never occurred to me, but a good observation I guess you’d need to ask Cleopatra if they try to place songs that way. I think it’s more in the writers and publishers interest than the cover artist.

What was the line-up for the making of this album?

The line-up of Real Life these days is just me and who ever is standing behind me playing at a live show. It’s just the way it’s ended up. With the amount of money I’ve had to throw into legal disputes over the years (never with band members) [read more about that in our 1997 interview] I feel it’s my brand, a bit like Underworld. I’m too old to think of changing it now. Danny, George and I still talk of working together on something in the future when the time is right.

Are there any songs that you’d really like to release a cover of, but weren’t able to include on this because they weren’t from the 80’s?

Hmmm… I think I’d rather be able to do something totally different to a song I was covering, not just a copy and it wouldn’t have to be 80’s, more likely 60’s or 00’s. I’d rather be a re-mixer (electronic dance music) and I’m always happier doing my own songs. No more covers from me.

When can we expect new music from Real Life? Any touring plans? Other news?

Let me look into my crystal ball. I have a new sense of inspiration, independence and freedom thanks to the learning process of the cover’s album. I’m writing new stuff at the moment, but I have no idea when or what’s going to come out. And touring these days for me is limited to 80’s type grouped tours. For once I come home with some money in my pocket.

“Repo! The Genetic Opera” co-creator Terrance Zdunich is launching a new comic. Titled “THE MOLTING” the first issue is due out in September, but in the meantime you can check out the cover art at http://www.themoltingcomic.com/. Zdunich is also selling a limited edition signed poster of the cover – visit his website for details. Be sure to check out the interview with did with Terrance last year.

Chris Burke was originally interviewed by Chaos Control way back in 1994, when he and his brother Dan comprised the band Glorified Magnified. Chris is still doing music, notably chiptune under the name Glomag, but he’s also doing a very unique ‘machinima’ series called ‘This Spartan Life.’ It’s a talk show where interviews are conducted within networked Halo games and shot by virtual cameramen. Guests on the show have included filmmaker/video artist Peggy Ahwesh, ‘The Raiders Guys’ (who as kids did a shot-for-shot remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”) and former Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. In an email interview, Chris told us about the show and the process behind it.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INTERVIEW