Feeling antsy are we? Eager for the tip top countdown of the finest music making of this past year as we saw it? Well tough baps as you'll have to wait some more, BUT to tide you over, I have cobbled together this lovely piece with Ms. Tickley Feather (aka Annie Sachs). Few things to note, my questions may have been terrible at time of conception so they shall have been edited to help make more sense upon reading, and there was a piss poor excuse for a DJ playing in the background when I was recording. SO, it mightn't all quite make sense owin to me havin' to edit here and there. Anyhow, enjoy.
Ms. Tickley, how'd you get into the whole making of music thing?
I started making music with handheld tape recorders, with the little tapes and doing like noise music with that. Then one of my friends told me to get a four track and so my mom got me one, a TASCAM four track. So that's what I started using.
What's your drive to keep making music? What inspires you now?
I guess my friends, I have a lot of nice friends that make really interesting music that I love a lot. So I'm inspired by them.
Who are your favorite artists at the minute?
I'm really fond of the two guys I'm travelling with (Serpents of W.I.S.D.O.M. and Akasha Blade). Mostly my favourites are my close friends, like people who make music in their basement and make a tape of it.
Your signed with Paw Tracks, are you buddies with Ariel Pink and the fellas from Animal Collective?
Yes, yes, I love Haunted Graffiti, they're very dear friends, they're like my brother guys. I met them cause of Paw Tracks but um, yea, I love them so much. I've met Animal Collective and they asked me to do the record and I've gotten to know them since then.
Some o' yer tunes are a bit out there. For example the first track on your debut album, "I Have Magic Inside My Bones Somewhere"
Yea, I didn't come up with it, my little boy just said it one night and I had my recording stuff out because I spent a lot of nights in recording because I was a single mother then. He was just having a dream about Captain Hook or something, I dunno, but he was really young like about two maybe three years old. He just came out and started telling me about this weird dream and I had my microphone on anyway with these strange effects on, cause I'd been singing and I just held it out to him and he told me all about this weird stuff. His pupils looked really dilated , it was really weird, then he said all that stuff. There's big long chunks of the crazy ass stuff he said to me, he's a really really short weird little guy.
Do you hope that he's gonna grow up to be a musician like you?
I hope he does something artistic, of course I should say that I'll be happy if he does something that makes him happy but I'd like him to do something artistic.
Have you ever considered taking him out of school like Captain Beefheart's parents did and just let him hang around at home and sculpt all day?
Would I ever consider taking him out of school? Well he's just started public school this year for the first time and he does weird stuff all day long. He draws really awesome demons that's what he's into right now and they look like this.
*At this point Tickley draws me an example of one of her sons demons. They have multiple heads growing out of other heads and pitchfork style hands. As Tickley says, "They just keep coming up with more heads and more heads" She proceeds to describe how her son doesn't say demons, he says DEMONDs. Like DEMON but with a D on the end.*
He draws them obsessively right now. So he does that stuff anyway.
*Returning now to somewhat regular interview practice, I say that as I phrased my next question so fabulously eloquently, "What's new on your new album?"*
What have you done differently on the new album? What defines it separately to your last album?
I made the first record without any knowledge of people ever listening to the music, the songs, so the newer record I knew people were gonna listen to it so I guess that's what made it different... maybe.
What do you think of Pitchfork's rating of your recent album (3.3/10)?
I think Pitchfork started out as a more respectable place to find cool shit but I think now it's more to do with who they're friends with and they seem to like more things that are sold at Wal-Mart. I think they trashed most of the guys on Paw Tracks like Ariel Pink's. Like I've gotten great reviews from other professional people like The Wire in the UK. I think it just really depends on who it is. It's all about the person. It doesn't bother me at all, I think if they gave me a great review I'd probably be doing some music that, y'know, just wasn't natural.
I hear, you have a unique house. Tell me about that?
I just got an old house in Virginia where I grew up and it was condemned and we're remodelling it currently.
Can we expect a new album or anything new any time soon?
Oh yea, absolutely. Well, it's really hard to do with a little kid but this record (Hors D'oeuvres) I did in two months. I just kinda took two months and did it in a couple days out of each month. I'm eager to do some things with perhaps more production from outside rather than just on my own. I'm also interested in doing some sloppier stuff for some underground tape labels, so I wanna keep doing stuff for Paw Tracks but I also wanna do some more fucked up stuff that doesn't get reviewed. Y'know like some stuff that stays under the radar.
A fella on Last.fm described you as a "MILF with a four track." I'll ask on his behalf, are you single?
Yea, maybe he didn't see, I have two engagement rings. I'm a mormon... no I'm kidding.
*Please note I actually believed her initially, this then devolved into a discussion on Lykke Li and Sweden and the prices of beer therein. Which is how I officially ended the interview...*
*Additional note, alcohol had been consumed prior to this interview...by both parties... humus too...but only by Ms. Sachs.*
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed a little insight into my post show conversation with Ms. Feather. She was really quite charming. You may continue shivering in anticipation of the 'top albums of 2009' countdowns.
No comments:
Post a Comment