Psych legends Silver Apples, the eccentric Dan Deacon, Half Japanese’s Jad Fair, punk musician-turned-experimental composer David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol, Bastro, Squirrel Bait, The Red Krayola), and more are featured on new compilation called I Said No Doctors!. Here are the details:
I Said No Doctors! double-LP is a compilation of the most groundbreaking artists of current and past decades who have redefined sound by creating and destroying musical instruments to fit a specific sonic character and method of music-making.
During this audio journey we hear Silver Apples’ Simeon Coxe combining bench oscillators, sound filters, telegraph keys and radio parts into one of the first electronic instruments. David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol, Bastro, Squirrel Bait, The Red Crayola) plays an alligator-clip prepared guitar. Markus Popp’s composition features his Oval Process software. Indonesian noise band Senyawa plays a modified Javanese farm plough. Dan Deacon generates an atonal barrage of MIDI-triggered pin-point notes from an acoustic grand piano. Jad Fair’s custom guitar, in which the neck attaches to the body using a system of rubber bands, allows dramatic bends. Bismuth, featuring Yuri Landman (who has built guitars for Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth) performs on prepared guitars and other instruments created by his Hypercustom Guitars. Ciat Lonbarde’s Peter B plays the Deerhorn synthesizer.
The compilation is curated by Dymaxion Groove founder Tom Tolleson, who plays a modified Fender Jazzmaster with a ¾ ratio of separate playable strings over two pickups on the album as well.
The album comces out this Friday (1/27) via Dymaxion Groove (pre-order), and we’re premiering a full stream of the album. Listen below, along with the full tracklist and more details on the album via Tom Tolleson:
Tracklist:
01. Silver Apples “The Mist”
02. Dan Deacon “Opal Toad Segment”
03. Tom Tolleson “Kosciuszko”
04. Jason Willett “And I Mean It”
05. Bismuth “Cola Kid”
06. Senyawa “Anak Kijang”
07. David Grubbs “Awkward Silences I Have Known”
08. GOTHgsb “The Interconvertible Three”
09. String Noise “Parallel Noise Construction”
10. Jad Fair “Big Boots”
11. Oval “ISND”
12. Neil Feather “Ride of the Popcorn Valkyries”
13. Slumberland “Hunting Hunting”
14. Peter B “Deer Biphenyl”
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A detailed outline on the compilation’s conception and execution, by Dymaxion Groove label head Tom Tolleson:
I was experimenting with one of my guitars by moving the saddle closer to the neck and and putting a pickup in the tremolo cavity. It changed the tuning of the instrument but not in a way that was predictable or expected. I started looking into moveable bridge guitars to get an idea of what was happening and found this guy Yuri Landman who owns Hypercustom Guitars and makes a lot of instruments for Ichirou Agata, Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo, Micah Levi and other people. He and I talked on Skype about his instruments and I bought a moveable bridge guitar called the Caterpillar Drum Guitar and weird little electric kalimba called a Whopper (which you can hear on my track, Kosciuszko). I like Yuri’s instruments because the tuning can be very exact in some ways but also have pretty open-ended aspects to them. Instead of alternate tuning a traditional instrument, it’s better to just create something that’s out-of-tune or only in tune with itself by the way its made. I mentioned making a compilation record of artists making these kinds of instruments to Yuri and the project kind of started with that conversation.
I’ve been a fan of Silver Apples for years and saw Simeon Coxe play live in the 90s. Watching him play the oscillators of the instrument… how strange the thing sounded… really floored me. He describes it as “a work in progress. A changing array of oscillators and sampled oscillator sounds run through triggers and an ever changing array of effects circuits and pedals.” He adjusts it to each tour based on the material he’s performing. I found out Simeon lives in the same small town as my uncle and I reached out to him to see if he’d join the record. As otherworldly as The Simeon instrument is, its namesake is a really down-to-earth great guy.
I was living in Baltimore at the time the project started so after the Silver Apples track I gathered up some local people like Jason Willett (of Half Japanese), Neil Feather, Peter B (CIat Lonbarde) and Dan Deacon. Jason and I both play a synth called an Ekdahl Polygamist on our tracks. It’s a semi modular weird noise generator made in Baltimore by a guy named Karl. Dan made this flurry of MIDI pitches run through an acoustic grand piano which reminded me a lot of Conlon Nancarrow’s work with player pianos back in the early 20th century. Dan’s track sort of got me thinking more about the process (as loaded as that term can be) and I’d been trying out Markus Popp’s ovalprocess real-time audio authoring environment. He seems to have been refining his process over several albums and has turned that into a work model. Oval’s track on the album is one of my favorites because it combines some of the the ambient aspects of early Oval along with that bright, string/plectrum sound like a Karplus-Strong synthesis you hear on later Oval works.
I live in New York City now so I wanted to include New York artists I’ve been a fan of for years. Violin duo String Noise, David Grubbs (of Gastr del Sol and The Red Krayola) and drummer Michael Evans. David Grubbs did this great piece with a prepared guitar and Michael plays a customized snare drum with his band GOTHgsb which has an amazing free jazz vibe to it.
By the end of the project, I connected with Senyawa, an Indonesian band I can’t really even describe other than to say they make their own guitars out of bamboo and play a modified Javanese farm plough on the record.
I didn’t want to have a theme for the record that was too defined. I didn’t want to police everyone. At the end of it, this double LP has so much variety and so many artists working in their own unique way it just sort took on a life of its own the way the instruments do.
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