Originally written by Ian Chainey
I first read the name Will Killingsworth researching Ampere‘s brain-blower All Our Tomorrows End Today. “Ex-Orchid, you know,” my buddy told me. Ooo, Orchid! I thought. The Amherst, MA outfit was MySpace-list shorthand for “this person knows their shit,” so anytime I felt the name dropped on my toes, I picked it up. I wasn’t alone. Orchid, at this point, was a scene touchstone, one of those agreed upon genre landmarks where likeminded listeners could congregate and exchange goods or ideas. Every style has ’em. It’s a learned behavior, a part of a complex, ever-shifting language music obsessives use to communicate. You don’t say, “Galloping metal with dueling guitar leads that mixes the speed and sonic density of the deepest purples and punks,” you say, “Iron Maiden-esque.” Likewise, “Short, chaotic, yet artfully-considered blasts of distortion with sensitive, introspective players holding the reins,” becomes, “Orchid-like.” And then, once a new generation starts taking cues from those who came before, the touchstones solidify into statues. This transforms the on-the-fringe-in-their-own-time outfits into legends. Rightfully so. The problem, though? Sometimes you forget the members carved in marble are fellow humans. They become fantasy life conduits. They become concepts and bullet points on syllabi. They become trivia.
They become a link on the liner-note network. Another word for deity.
“Will Killingsworth, guitar.” Orchid to Ampere. It was a match. It also opened the floodgates.
Bucket Full of Teeth, member. The Cancer Kids, artist. Cut the Shit, engineer. Off Minor, label head.
Ooo, I thought. This star knows his shit.
This hero is everywhere.
Music is better set up than most things to have its share of Gumps, Zeligs, and Bacons. Even if you go in with DIY intentions, at some juncture, you’re probably shaking hands with other folks who similarly didn’t expect to press flesh for their craft. Reason? Well, there’s not enough time in the day to learn how to cross the Rubicon of every new flight of fancy. You have to specialize, maximizing your effort in the areas where you can excel. To save your sanity and your day job, you end up delegating. Can’t get it going on GarageBand? You get in touch with a pro and your circle suddenly has grown to include a producer, mixer, engineer, and/or masterer. Then, say, all of your design work looks like something Koko would slap together after getting brained with a brick. Crud, guess you’ve got to add an artist under the Your Album umbrella. Finally, you check your pockets and discover you don’t have the means to disseminate your disc. After a few letters, if you’re lucky, you’re making space on the back cover for the logo of your, at best, benefactor, at worst, owner. In the space of a breakdown, you’re tens of associates deep.
Unless you’re Will Killingsworth. He only needs to look in the mirror.
The joke around the OOSD is Will’s fingerprints are on every album. Not just his albums. Every album. He’s the reason busy is only four letters. The sun never sets on him because he won’t let it. Sleep? The sheep will be fine, he’s got work to do. And, man, the work he has done: His Dead Air Studios has housed more bands than most makes of vans. Clean Plate Records is responsible for mountains of vinyl love notes addressed to the sounds we adore. A forest of lucky telephone poles have worn his flyers. And, you can hear his multi-instrument dexterity at play in plenty of bands. Remember when we gushed over No Faith and Vaccine? Well, you’ve encountered Will.
Except, I realized I hadn’t encountered him. Not really. Sure, Will Killingsworth has been a near-constant influence on my listening habits for a decade. I’ve gorged myself on the fruits of his labor. I’ve read his thoughts. I’ve felt his amp transmissions vibrate me to another plane of consciousness, all because he poured his every essence into modified power chords. But, I’ve never talked to him. Never met him. Never tried.
Why? Because I treated him like a legend.
Crisis: I should at least try and say thanks, right?
So, I decided to e-mail him. He e-mailed back. I told him he was living my dream. He told me he was just a regular guy trying to keep doing the thing he loved.
Will Killingsworth, pleasant interviewee. Great person. It’s a match.
Here’s our convo:
Will, thank you so much for your time. Speaking of, we don’t know how you do it. Bands, art, the studio, the label: How do you scrounge up any hours to sleep? Seriously though, if you don’t mind me asking, have you found your career path to be self-actualizing? Financially sustainable? On the surface, you’re living our dreams, but do you make conscious sacrifices to keep this rolling? Are you able to have a good work/life balance or have both sides of the ratio eaten the tail of the other and it’s just “on to the next thing” now?
Well, I guess I’m lucky in that I seem to do ok on an average of six hours of sleep a night, so that’s not too much of an issue for me to contend with. I do find myself sometimes wondering whether I’m living some sort of version of ‘the dream,’ or just a guy who hangs out with teenagers in his basement. It’s a little bit of both, depending on the day honestly. I do work part-time so that not all of my income is strictly dependent on whether or not the punks of the world email me that month. Sometimes this certainly leads to being overly busy, but others I’m thankful for having a bit of a safety net. Regardless I’m constantly prioritizing the things I’m working on both with my own music and recording work, etc, etc. I know that for myself and I think for many other people who dedicate some portion of their existence to creative works, there are moments of extreme gratification, but also of self-doubt and uncertainty. I don’t know at what level of success or accomplishment the uncertainty might go away, but I haven’t reached it yet. I do know though that I wouldn’t be fulfilled by strictly working a 9-5 and not having artistic outlets. So, I guess I haven’t quite figured out the answer to your question, but I don’t really know what else I’d want to do.
Did you know all along this is what you wanted to do with your life or is it just something you’ve fallen into? Have you had any doubts or any come-to-an-accounting-job moments when putting on a suit seemed inevitable? If so, how did you push through?
I’ve known for a long time that I don’t particularly enjoy working for other people or a traditional job. Recording is perhaps the one thing that I’ve been interested in that I enjoy creatively, is sometimes fun, and could actually pay some bills. That said, initially just being the guy who knew a few things about recording definitely had me falling into helping with a friend’s demo, or practice recording or what have you, and I’m sure that all factored into how I ended up doing all of this.
Your rates for recording/mastering at Dead Air Studios are quite affordable, enabling bands on a budget the opportunity to obtain decent sound quality. Was this borne out of any particular experience seeing groups getting price gouged? Or, is it just morally right and you’re one of the few altruistic lighthouses out there in the scene?
Actually it’s neither of those things. I think for the most part that the bands and music that I enjoy working with can’t afford to pay more than I ask for. I think that if I raised my price by much that I would effectively price myself out of the work that I want to be doing. I mean if i was getting paid $50 an hour to record a funk band then I’m no longer really doing what I want for a job, and trust me, I’ve recorded a couple of funk bands and it was miserable. My mastering rates are low for a somewhat different reason, which is that I don’t have much experience at it, and so it’s kind of like an introductory pricing, or something. I mean, I always want to be affordable, but the mastering rates are a bit ridiculously low compared to what most change. For the time being I think it makes sense though based on my level of experience, mastering gear, etc.
Has operating the studio changed the way you listen to music? Are you able to turn off your critical ear or do you always find yourself pulling back the curtain? Are there any en vogue cliches you find maddening that bands should avoid?
It’s definitely changed the way I hear music, mainly when I first hear something and I’m taking in the recording production, and music, etc. But with records that I like I quickly move past thoughts like “what an unusual kick drum sound” or “cool guitar tone” or such and am just into the music. It’s not really a transition that I’m conscious of when it happens, but it definitely occurs. I don’t know if this counts as an en vogue cliche, but it always drives me nuts when I hear some bands demo and all of the drum sounds have been painfully replaced with sampled drums. It’s surprisingly common in a lot of hardcore, and to me just sounds dumb. I realize that a lot of their favorite bands might have a really polished or pro drum sound, but when you have sloppy playing and really obviously pseudo-drum-machine sounding drums, it doesn’t sound ‘hard’ or ‘aggressive’ or anything it just sounds fucking weird. I’d rather hear a demo where the drums were recorded into a built-in laptop mic than that any day of the week.
On top of the bands and the studio, you’ve also managed to carve out time to head Clean Plate Records. For nearly two decades, you’ve given back to underground music with some classic releases. So, given your experience, what were some of the unforeseen challenges you faced getting albums prepped for release? To piggyback on that, what could prospective label honchos do to best prepare themselves for the financial/time burden so it doesn’t end up becoming a money pit?
Wait, there’s a way for it not to be a money pit? Seriously though, I’ve never made any money off of Clean Plate, and most releases are more or less aiming to break even. For the past 5-10 years the label has been extremely low-key and is more or less a vehicle to release the music of my friends when it makes sense for all parties involved. Luckily I’m friends with some really talented folks, and I feel that running the label this way has actually made its output much better than it was prior to this approach. My advice to anyone thinking of starting a label is to do it first and foremost because you love the music and if following that path presents you with any financial rewards then that’s great. I wouldn’t expect much, but maybe they have better taste than me!
What’s coming up for you on the horizon as far as releases go? Any great, undiscovered bands passing through the studio we’re going to salivate over? Is there any genre of music you’re itching to tackle outside of your current scope?
I don’t really have much lined up for Clean Plate releases honestly, but I’m sure something will be happening sooner or later. In terms of music that I play, hopefully in the next 6 or so months there will be the FAILURES 2nd LP, AMPERE split with RAEIN, VACCINE/NO FAITH split, and maybe we’ll put the PINS AND NEEDLES material on tape or vinyl, I’m not sure. Not to mention a new band, DEMON BROTHER, with an LP in the works, as well as a LONGINGS 12″ that we’re still writing for. Somehow I’m probably forgetting one thing or another as well. There’s always more music that I want to play and create, I think I have ideas and concepts for at least 5 other bands, there’s just never enough time for it all.
Some cool stuff has definitely been passing through the studio… I think THE REPOS have already had four records pass through my hands this year and I’m honored that those guys trust me with their material. HOAX just recorded an LP that should be out soon. I mastered some stuff for COUSINS and PSYCHIC BLOOD that I dug. Also there’s a new DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD LP that’s in the mixing stage. If you haven’t checked out their first album I would recommend it, I believe it’s up on Bandcamp. Things are always passing through, and its cool having different levels of interacting with it, whether it be recording the band and seeing it through to the end, or just mixing or mastering a record.
Homepage: http://willkillingsworth.com/
Clean Plate Records: http://www.cleanplate.com/
Dead Air Studios: http://www.deadairstudios.com/
Wow, special thanks to Will for being the best.
Oh, but we’re not done. Mike and I have been stocking up on punk pennies to make knock-out fist packs. Links and our two cents sent straight to your nose. BAM. Guess Floyd Patterson was right. Feels great. Clean yourself up, we’ve got tunes by the bundle to share.
CRIMINAL DAMAGE – CALL OF DEATH
This band seems to have been mostly inexplicably overlooked thus far, despite sharing a member with the more well-known (and totally different) Tragedy. Their two previous releases, both full-lengths done on an admirable shoestring budget, are incredibly competent slabs of Blitz worship, but with smarter lyrics. This, too, is solidly planted in the UK82-worship camp – power chords, oi leads, and fist-pumping moments are all over this record – and its odd familiarity doesn’t detract from it one iota. “Laid To Waste” is infectious enough to be hummable days after you’ve heard it, and the following track, “Locked On Repeat,” isn’t exactly a misnomer. Practically every song here has a passage you want to sing along to at the top of your lungs – the soaring “Wait Of Silence” is the best example of this – and a moment that seems inevitably destined to start a riotous pit at a house show. Ironically, it’s hard to tell if doomy, Cold War-era musings on total destruction are tribute to a past era or directly prescient – maybe both. A furiously, desperately hopeful soundtrack to living in a crumbling empire, painstakingly cranked out over the last four years.
EU O DECLARO MEU INIMIGO – MÚSICA PODE SER PERIGOSA
The album art for this one is such a blatant Raymond Pettibon bite that I picked it up hoping for Brazilian Black Flag covers. Instead, the band hits the ground running at Charles Bronson speed, the default fastcore pace for the album. Unfortunately, I speak no Portuguese, so I can’t attest to the lyrical quality here, but the vocals are youthfully enraged and skew towards a yelped Gauze delivery. There are artifacts of early 2000s hardcore when gang vocals jump into the mix, but the vast majority of the twelve songs here, none of which breach two minutes, could probably slide onto an SST compilation from the Eighties, especially the last track, “Faça Você.” A treble-laden midtempo banger for most of its fifty seconds, it manages to be a perfect distillation of the back-to-basics speed runs blended with the expanding experimentalism that American hardcore began to drift into towards the latter half of its first full decade of existence. This record reveals itself to be the product of some kids who have definitely done their homework and turned in exceptional work – even if this ends up being a one-off anomaly, it’s a great one that should be heard.
IMPALERS – IMPALERS (2013)
At first, this band seemed like the for-shits-and-giggles side project of an already busy Chris Ulsh (Hatred Surge, Mammoth Grinder). The demo was a spectacularly appealing mix of early Venom and furious d-beat hardcore falling somewhere in between Discharge and World Burns To Death, but the simplistic songwriting that made it so easy to immediately nod your head also limited its replay value. Sort of surprising, then, that this is a very different beast – the early-metal-meets-80s-European-punk framework is still there, but there’s so much more detail in the songs. Bass is unprecedentedly audible, and guitars come through clearly as well, sounding like War All The Time-era Poison Idea playing Motörhead-tinged songs. There’s a touch of very early Hellhammer happening when the drums snap into an occasional midtempo crawl, often preceding a blistering solo, and the vocals are finally distinct from Ulsh’s other bands, having lost the echo effect to slide seamlessly into Swedish-style delivery. I don’t know how they haven’t run out of fantastic riffs yet. This record doesn’t even have any phoned-in ho-hum moments that make you wish for the next song. Yet another unfairly fantastic and original release out of Austin in 2013.
FLESH POLICE – DEMO 2013
I’m an absolute sucker for this kind of stuff. Flesh Police hail from Perth, the powerviolence headquarters and home of fellow blasters Extortion, and keep it as short as one might expect from a band that denotes itself ‘grindviolence.’ Fourteen tracks fly by in ten minutes, all of them tilting toward the crustier end of the grind/pv spectrum. Influences are worn on the sleeve throughout these tracks, but it doesn’t ever ape any single band outright, thankfully. The middle of the demo hits a three-song sludge patch peppered with brief glimpses of speed that reek of Crossed Out or No Faith‘s angriest full-bore grind moments, but those three are bookended with eleven disgusted and angry-sounding tracks that do their best to sandblast your ears, like a SQRM record played at 45 rpm. This band knows what they’re doing, though – there’s no bullshit alpha male posturing or flippant, are-they-or-aren’t-they Youth Attack irony to be found here, just stark, nasty, self-aware music that never feels showy or ‘tough guy.’ Hopefully this band appears stateside soon – they’ll probably be much bigger before too long.
HOAX – HOAX (2013)
Refreshingly difficult to cheaply summarize, Hoax have been described as ‘raw punk,’ ‘mysterious guy hardcore,’ ‘garage punk,’ and any other number of other things that bloggers say. It sounds to me like ex-members of SQRM and Aerosols playing vaguely Total Abuse-style hardcore, but much more confrontationally, perhaps owing to their Boston heritage. Each of their three EPs has improved in subtle ways on the one preceding, but this is a rare example of an album exceeding even the (admittedly inflated) expectations of the current hardcore scene. It’s easy to imagine their live sound – the recording quality is airy and crystal-clear. The apoplectic, often youthful snarl of the vocals have been sanded down into a dull, frustrated, slightly blown-out roar, the better to complement the piercing Sheer Terror-esque riffs that are front and center. The entire album just sounds powerful – the drums are forceful, the guitar tone is absolutely flattening, and the record is knuckle-draggingly malevolent, from the Pharmakon-penned intro to the included posters laden with images of eviscerations and other abuses. No excuse to pass this one up since the download is free – turn it up and put some holes in your walls before the summer ends.
Know what? We haven’t gone fringe in awhile. (Oh Walter, I miss you). Let’s explore punk’s prettier side. First, though, let’s give you a ring. No, we’re not getting hitched, it’s made of tinnitus, silly. Wait, what? WHAT?
ZYANOSE – WHY THERE GRIEVE?
Been a bit since I blew out your ears. Remember D-Clone? Didja wince? If you didn’t, it’s because nearly everything sounds like a dog whistle now. Zyanose is a similar shower on/shower off screech, forgoing the d-beat for Confuse‘s spiky crust. If you live to grind, you gotta get into Grieve. Not only is the squall impressive, but it’s oppressive. Bumping this in your vehicle will lead to a permanent residency of Snap, Crackle, and Pop in your 6x9s. Go get a set of crap buds and plug in. Now, hit play. Right? It’s like the spirit of Scum invading all of the core it can ala Fallen. Scum times Fuck on the Beach. Scum plus Bloody Phoenix. Scum squared with pints of G.I.S.M. Then, there’s shit like “Chipping Song of Bird” that’s snottier than the Angry Samoans with the flu. Just, you know, playing under the amplified strident scrapes of ten thousand diners trying to tear through a tough steak on cheap china. Heck of a way to get a disability.
MARYLIN-RAMBO – IZIZOLOAP
Sometimes, I think my heart beats in math rock meters. If the thought of Loincloth uplinked to Big Blue is torturous, scroll on. For the rest of you, prepare for anthemic calculator-driven bliss. No, you read that right. Really, it’s anthemic. Honest. Closed fist on a raised arm. Drive Like Jehu recording for Mario Kart. The Fucking Champs feeding Pelican antacid. That kinda stuff. Izizoloap dollops on the “YES!”s more than an X-rolling In-N-Out employee pumps dressing on animal style fries. It just jams. And, most importantly, it gets the hell out of the way. The longest song? The comparatively epic “Zoulou” clocking in at nearly four minutes. Sarcasm: Wow, what a wax waster. While it takes a few more turns than its twins, it sill kills the M-R M.O., playing around with riff repetition while pulling out the rug when it can. It’s kind of Reichian in that sense, cycling through microscopic fluctuations of the Mick Barr variety and then ripping off your blinders as soon as you think you’re in a tunnel. It’s an album full of riffs you can’t wiggle out of during a jam session, except Izizoloap unties every single one. Hey, there’s an angle: A band full of Dantzigs? Nah, you’re thinking too hard. It’s only dudes who like to write fun songs. Once the cheekily bouncy “Manic Depression” cover releases its endorphins, you get it.
THE NEW FLESH – REALITY
These next two are peas in a pod. Let’s bring up the bigger brother first. The New Flesh doesn’t look so inspiring on paper; college radio alt. rock and new wave renewed for this decade. However, consider their moniker in this light: Maybe it was slapped on a band specifically sewn together to score Videodrome. Now, I don’t mean this is particularly harrowing, screaming like Suicide over shorted-out synths. Nah, if you remember Sunken Seas‘ rockier waves from the last time I sidestepped my OOSD obligations then you’re in the right library stack if not on the same page. The reason for the separation or the soundtrack tap? The New Flesh is just, well, brutish, doing curls and benchpress reps with puny death rock pip-squeaks. Reality is reminiscent of Killing Joke making the post-punk jump to pop, adding grit to a genre that sorely needed it. Or, heck, how about Hot Water Music? Songs such as the title track and the Amebix-esque “Age of Reason” hit all of the right dance steps, but move with a sneering menace. It takes something normally feather light and deforms it into something dangerous, stomach-knottingly so. Just like Deborah Harry begging for pain. There it is. All hail.
INFINITE VOID – INFINITE VOID (2012)
Always known as a pig-fuck paradise, power punk heaven, and a blacked-out boudoir for nasty, noisy goth, Australia’s captivating modern scene somehow avoided my gaze until I got Burning Sensations. Appropriate. Their American in a Strange Aussie Land Speed Record laid a fine foundation for future exploration of the downstrums down under. Infinite Void followed and is one of the brightest gleeming gems out of the buckets I hauled up from below. As soon as I saw their location was Melbourne, I swooped in on this sucker faster than the gyrocopter from The Road Warrior. Did it blind. That’s how much I believe in my baggy green brothers and sisters. What did I find? Even though they must dig city life, IV needles authority like a nervy Pretty Girls Make Graves doing battle with the doldrums of a boring town. Shit, unlike a bedroom community’s bars, the guitars never quit, weaving more than a third world child laborer. The insistent new-wave-y thump of the back beat is wonderfully accented with skillful fill flourishes. And then the vocals, oozing a special kind of DGAF, signify she’s above it all and over it. Yet, the infectious rhythms can’t stop her hand from tapping her thigh with an air tambourine. She’s the big fish getting ready to swim as soon as her enforced itty-bitty-hamlet prison sentence is up. Back a decade, Infinite Void would’ve been tagged as danceable during the era of Gang of Four on the Floor phonies. Now? I’m sure we’ll say it’s in the crew of brand new summer romantics. Me? A riotous Penetration backed by Hot Cross, perhaps? Look, grrrl, categorization isn’t a priority when you’ve got a cut like “What’s Left.” A killer chorus with a kinda fuck-U2 after-the-debut hook makes you shake your head from side to side like Axl Rose watching tennis, slapping your steering wheel like the ’05 Vikings at a yacht party. I could write you a book about this thing. Amore.
CLOAKROOM – INFINITY
Speaking of albums I could go Proust about [Ed. We’ve yet to find an album Ian can’t go Proust about, but oh well.], Infinity is a fitting title since it sums up how many times I’ve spun this sadcore meets Shiner meets True Widow‘s spurgazing twang. We’ve seen a lot of re-emo (remo?) this year, so what makes this different besides the whole “if Mineral could sing” angle? Well, Cloakroom exudes a sense of hope. Yeah, there’s the perpetual melancholy, the downtrodden harmonies of a bar-patron-no-longer duder walking back to his pad alone. Yeah, any of the anthropomorphic parts of your anatomy will be tugged or rent with the ol’ woe is me. Yeah. But, beneath the big amp ear clobbering, it infers things will be okay. You’ll go to sleep. Your melon will produce whatever chemicals drive perspective. Things will be dandy tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar. So, that’s probably why this has been the OST to my sunset excursions around my neighborhood. It’s the old cliche ’bout the blues: it just makes you feel good. Of course, the attention paid to the construction of this EP year-ender plays a part. While the (I’m assuming) live recording gives it a rough, ramshackle feel – like sound guys set up for Comets on Fire, American Football showed up, and everyone just said fuck it – the band has such tight control over their songwriting. The way “Sedimentary”‘s dirge gives way to the considerably more buoyant “E” is one of my music moments of the year, making both ditties richer with such a smart dynamic shift. The final product is, shit, “Pillars” good if we’re measuring favorable reactions based on the number of spine-chills generated. I can’t endorse this highly enough. If you think you’ve left emo behind and all of the sadcore stalwarts are weeped out, you’re wrong. It just grew up and moved out. Cloakroom, spin around like Mary Tyler Moore. You’re in the city now. Find Infinite Void and love life.
Alright, that’s it for us. If you know some punks deserving some shine, drop us a line at @flahfbl or @themichaelscott.
Catch you next month.
