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Dreaming Away a Storm: A Q&A with Julian Koster of The Music Tapes

by Alexander Dimitropoulos
08/09/2008

The Merge Records biography section for The Music Tapes says that the act’s founder, Julian Koster, has been “inventing new band members” over the past few years. Koster plays instruments, has instruments that appear to play themselves and others still, his singing saws, which he has said make their own music just to entertain themselves. His concerts have featured a giant metronome, which roams about in the “Minister of Longitude” video, huge clapping hands and an onstage television named “Static the Television.”

He often discusses magic with publications, and the first album from The Music Tapes, 1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad, is its own ghostly, seasick world. Pitchfork Media’s reviewer of the album wrote that that world is too exclusive or remote for the listener, while Stereogum’s staff members consider themselves “big fans.” One thing that no can deny, however, is that 1st Imaginary Symphony and the upcoming Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes are full of life. The musique concrète creations include sounds from babies, what is probably a heartbeat and bouncing ping pong balls, with childlike sounds often paired with sinister or off-putting ones. Koster even typed up a sound as part of a response to Athens Exchange’s first question for him.

Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes is the first album in nine years from the band, a stretch for almost any group, but The Music Tapes operate on a different clock entirely. 1st Imaginary Symphony was recorded on an 1895 Edison wax cylinder recorder and 1940s wire recorder, among more traditional recording tools, and “compressed and E.Q.’d using the original EMI desk and limiter at Abbey Road studios in London,” according to The Elephant Six Recording Company web site. The album was designed to free the ghost of George Reeves, who played Superman in the 1950s show Adventures of Superman and died in 1959 from what is thought to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes opens back in the clouds, still with a focus on freedom.

The Music Tapes, who are part of the original Elephant 6 Collective, will play Aug. 15 at the 40 Watt Club as part of Athens Popfest 2008. Tickets are $12 for that night’s 40 Watt performance, $15 for a full-day pass and $60 for an all-access pass to the music festival. Tickets are available at Athens PopFest web site, Wuxtry Records and Schoolkids Records.

AE: How does it feel to have another full-length The Music Tapes album coming out for the first time in nine years?

JK: It's like every things spinning with an extraordinary momentum and all my friends are with me. It's like an amusement park ride one travels upon.

(two long sustained bubbling noises.)

AE: At the end of the first The Music Tapes album, 1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad, the news of Superman’s death comes through clear and polished, unlike the ramshackle musical collage in the preceding 16 tracks. The announcement is appropriately abrupt, but why did you place it at the end of the album?

JK: The record begins with his birth, and ends either with his, or the listener's death. The album is a simple functional contraption designed to free his ghost. You heard that announcement at the end because he saved you. Otherwise you wouldn't have heard the announcement at the end at all. For one who wishes to enjoy the album as pure make believe, it's best enjoyed as a simple story with a beginning and an end ....I know it's highly unusual for a record to be a story in every aspect, let alone a contraption for the freeing of ghosts, but that's why the big poster that Brian Dewan made is so nice, I think it can help one understand that they are about to listen to another sort of record album.

AE: Why was George Reeves’s death so devastating to you as a child?

JK: It had been explained to me that he had died because he could not escape being superman. This fascinated me. It was the first I had ever heard of suicide. I came to view his him as a ghost trapped inside my television, sort of like a pet who aught really to be free, but there he was, immortal still...death could not save him. He would be Superman forever.

AE: You said in an interview with Cleveland’s Scene that 1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad was “about trying to recreate George Reeves’s ghost and to free up his experiences and life, and reconcile some things about the world up to that point.” In Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes, you have songs titled “Freeing Song For Reindeer,” “Freeing Song By Reindeer” and “Tornado Longing For Freedom.” Could you explain the focus on freedom in the new album?

JK: Freeing songs can be useful things!

AE: Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes opens up in the clouds, in specific clouds that you name, and you also mention the sun, natural phenomena and markings on the globe, either in song titles or in the songs themselves. You’ve also talked about magic in interviews. How did you fit magic into the album, and is it more about discovering it in the natural world than creating it?

JK: Oh magic just happens. It's much much bigger than me. I cant "fit" it anywhere, it fits me in whenever it can when it's kind enough to visit. If it visits something I have made or lived, it does so of it's own accord, all I can do is be grateful and be glad it came and hope and know that it can and will come again and again.

AE: It also sounds like an easier album to recreate live. Did you consider that while recording the album, or do you approach performance and recording separately?

JK: I don't consider much when making something up, made up things tend to become whatever they are meant to be. Clouds and Tornadoes is a collection of songs rather than an Imaginary Symphony, and many of it's songs are good to sing for audiences. But everything that comes from the imaginary is going to be it's own self completely, as would the children of any parent. Even twins.

AE: How did the recording of this album differ from that of the first The Music Tapes album?

JK: Each song was it's own world. I lived by the sea a great deal, and wandered around daydreaming a good deal more. Time slowed down and sometimes I ended up far away for long periods. Athens didn't seem to exist for me in the way that you can touch it. Except when I visited it.

AE: Why does Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes have a more prominent use of the singing saw?

JK: Oh, I love Saws.

AE: Do you approach playing the singing saw more through musical training or feeling? It’s a very emotive instrument, like a theremin with a constant vibrato.

JK: Human beings do not play Saws. They sing all by themselves.

AE: Who guests on the album, and what instruments are they playing?

JK: I'm sorry but I hope Merge should be able to make this available for you. I don't have the list here...there are a lot of us.....

AE: Which people and contraptions will you perform with August 16 at the 40 Watt?

JK: Oh, wouldn't it be nicer if it were a surprise?

AE: What is the Orbiting Human Circus Tapdancing Machine?

JK: A programmable rhythm machine. Two legs suspended from the knee joint down from machine works that tapdance on a wooden base. You can change the rhythm and tempo. It awaits construction.

AE: John Fernandes said in a recent interview with www.synthesis.net that Circulatory System might tour with The Music Tapes, and that the tour would be “kind of like an Elephant 6 variety show.” Do you think the tour will happen this fall, and what would the show entail?

JK: the Major Organ Movie, alls sorts of things, it won't be a Music Tapes or Circulatory band tour, but a bigger thing that will present music and members of those, and Gerbils, Olivia , Elf Power, well, all sorts of things...It's to be in October.

AE: Do your performances draw from any avant-garde artists, movements or works in particular?

JK: No....I don't really understand all of that sort of stuff.

AE: In what stage are 2nd Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking and the children’s film you’re making with John Cameron Mitchell?

JK: Merge is arranging for a true official release for it in 2009, which is tremendously exciting. Mac has seemed to have some really lovely ideas of ways we could do it...

As for the film with John, I don't know, the budget is enormous. It's very confusing. It may never come to be, but yet it could also at any time, I guess. I think with film one must make things that can be home made. That's what seems nicest to me.

Or maybe how they used to make movies a long long time ago.

AE: What do you hope for in the next nine years?

JK: It would take me nine years to answer that question.

AE: Thanks so much for the interview.

JK: Thanks!

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