BRUCE RUSSELL of The DEAD C: Underground Improvisation Of Sound
An interview by Sarah Kidd.
Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth is one of their biggest fans and yet many New Zealanders have never heard of The Dead C, a three-piece music/art trio who hail from Dunedin and have as many albums as they have years of performing to their name.
Specialising in rock and free improvisation and everything in between, this historical band have yet to disappoint with their unique live performances which are few and far between either here or overseas. Appearing on the Laneways line-up was something that neither the band nor probably their fans ever expected to see happen; their appearance finally giving many the opportunity to witness live first-hand what thousands of others across the world have raved about for years.
I recently caught up with founding member and guitarist Bruce Russell for a frank and open chat about everything from label relationships to band relationships and just what else Russell currently has on the go…
Almost thirty-one years and almost as many albums down the track how is life looking right now?
“For the Dead C? Yeah, we’re pretty happy with where we are to be honest, we’re able to do kinda pretty much what we want, we’ve got a lot of opportunities if you like and playing at Laneway was one we frankly never were looking for or imagined would come our way and yet here we are having this conversation
We did a tour of Scandinavia back in June, which happened because a Finnish Festival wanted us [Sideways Festival, Helsinki] and we could make that work. So yeah, we’re really happy; we’ve got a new album out, albums for us are relatively…I mean we’ve been doing that for a long time but the international touring really didn’t kick in til about 2002. So, it’s been what I would call a recent development for us, only the last sixteen years.”
The Dead C have been with record label Ba Da Bing Records for quite a while now is this because they work for your particular aesthetic? Or is there a relationship there that is obviously mutual to the both of you?
“Yeah, absolutely. It’s really the fact that we bring something to the label in that we don’t really cost any money. Ba Da Bing don’t need to front up money for us to do anything and yet they can guarantee that when we make a record, they all make money – not a lot of money – but they all make money. So, you know, we’re on the black side of the ledger. And the best thing is that we generate media interest, everything we do gets well reviewed; put it this way, it doesn’t get reviewed everywhere but there are some media outlets that will review every record we make. And that I am assured by Ben at Ba Da Bing in his world is unusual, in that he can release lots of good records from people that might appear to have a credible profile but not all of them will get reviewed all of the time, sometimes it’s a real struggle to cut through the clutter, our records do that.”
Yeah, The Dead C are like this secret underground club in some ways, you’ve got such a renowned persona – I suppose you could put it – across the world and yet there are many in New Zealand who may have never actually heard of you. And I love that, I think that’s quite special.
“We’ve argued for years that we’re de facto, you know that we’re actually an American band because in America – not to overstate it, it’s a niche thing, it’s underground – but in America you are much more likely to find people that are interested in alternative music who will know exactly who we are and where we come from, whereas in New Zealand it is very much not the case. There are plenty of people [in New Zealand] interested in alternative music of some sort or another, [but] it’s only really been in the last five years that we’ve really developed any kind of a profile here I would argue. And it’s still a work in progress, but I am sure the Laneway thing, one way or another will help, I mean people may detest us, they may be contemptuous, they may be outraged, but they will know we were there.”
[laughs] Well it’s funny too, you were saying only in the last five years have you built a profile in New Zealand, yet you guys are still a little avoidant of the social media side of life…
“Social Media?? [laughs] Sorry?”
[laughs] Yeah, you know that thing that the kids hang out on all the time..?
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of it… Well from my point of view I literally, I’m the only member of the band who doesn’t even have a personal Facebook page, but we decided early on in the internet era that we wouldn’t develop our own space, that we would just remain mysterious.
We don’t mind – there is a great but difficult to find fan site devoted to us in the states which has huge amounts of information about us and it is there, I can point people to it if they’re interested, it’s not that easy to find but it does exist – but it’s nothing to do with us. But we have never participated in our own fandom stuff, it just happens and I’m happy with that because part of our thing is the mystique, so – although it’s a paradox, as I will always talk to the media, when the media come to me – we don’t go to the media, that’s a subtle difference. We’re available, but don’t want to talk to us, couldn’t give a shit.”
[laughs] I love that actually, because in some ways – especially in this day and age – it’s a rare thing. With the digital age anyone can put their music and their profiles out there and everyone is clamouring for attention. Then here you have The Dead C – ‘We’ve got an entire fan site dedicated to us that we do jack shit for and it’s great’!
“And literally there’s a lot of good quality information about us, you wanna know about us you just go and find it, that’s absolutely fine, but yeah we’ve got other things to do really than worry about that stuff. We’re much more focused on doing what we have to do and that’s what – for me – that’s what keeps the quality of the experience, because if it isn’t a quality experience for us then there’s really no point to it.”
I read an interview with you a few years ago and I loved it – you referred to The Dead C albums being available on cassette because it’s and I quote “an unkillable format”. Now this was five or six years ago, but I have to say you totally called it as more and more bands – especially local ones – are releasing their music on cassette…
“Yes, I’ve been quite struck by that recently.”
So will all The Dead C albums be released on cassette going forward?
“Ba Da Bings policy on cassette is that they do make cassette releases but they’re unique releases, they’re not in other formats, they’re only on cassette. So, I’ve re-issued a couple of non Dead C things on cassette through Ba Da Bing, but Ba Da Bing have never done a Dead C cassette.
Actually… [laughs] funny you should ask that – there is going to be a double cassette coming on Ba Da Bing, it’s basically a number of out of print live projects that had previously been released.
The three projects are Golden Repent and there was a pair of tracks on a split album called LA Blues and LA Confidential, so the package is called Golden LA Repent and it’s three previously available things on cassette for the first time.”
I like the idea of a double cassette, that’s cool because you get double vinyl issues all the time…
“Yeah, it’s a great format!”
Impressively The Dead C still features the original line-up of yourself, Michael Morley and Robbie Yeats…
“There is no way to change that. It’s hardwired. Without the three of us it’s not happening.
The only time that it has not been all three of us was our American tour of a couple of years back when due to visa difficulties Robbie could not get into America because essentially Uncle Sam was gonna not let him in, or rather not let him in on time – he got a visa, but he got his visa eighteen months after the tour so that wasn’t a lot of help.
So we basically loaded a lot of drum parts by Robbie into a sampler and then we took the sampler and basically put it on the stage and we just triggered random bursts of Robbie. And that suited our modus operandi because we kinda don’t play together anyway, so just having Robbie blurting for ten or fifteen minutes through this wall worked perfectly well, but it’s not optimal. It’s much better when it’s all three of us and certainly nobody can sub in, it’s not like we’d do it with another drummer, that’s just not an option. It has to be all three of us. And to be honest the reason that it’s all three of us still after thirty-one years, it’s a very, very fundamental reason and it’s because all the money is split three ways, all the time.
Nobody gets more money because they wrote some fricken song; in the past we have had what you might call repertoire, but even when we got royalty payments and mechanical royalties and whatnot we would split that money three ways and even when Robbie didn’t do that tour he still got a share of the proceeds because he was participating he just wasn’t actually on the stage. And that’s what makes a band stay together, nothing else works in my opinion.”
That’s very sensible, and maybe – I could be wrong here – bit more of a New Zealand thing, because we are quite different people inherently…
“Try telling that to Martin Phillipps! I mean Martin – bless him, lovely guy – but he does bang on about the curse of The Chills, it’s like ‘Martin, if everybody gets paid equally it’s a lot easier to keep the band together!’”
This is true, this is true…
“It’s the economy stupid!”
[laughs] But your relationship on a personal level between the three of you; would you class yourselves as almost family after this length of time?
“Yes. It’s very much like being family because we can’t get away from each other, but it doesn’t mean that we get on all the time…”
[laughs] Yeah, that sounds like my family…
“So yeah, we drive each other nuts pretty much on an ongoing basis, but the thing that keeps us together is there is stuff we can do when all three of us are together that we simply cannot do otherwise. I can’t magic up a major festival in Helsinki for myself, or for one of my other projects, but we will get pestered for a couple of years on end by an outfit like that because it’s The Dead C and eventually we will go ‘Yeah, we can do it this year’.
We generally don’t go yes the first time, you know we like to play hard to get and we like to make sure they are quite serious before we go to all the trouble of freeing up our schedules to go to the other side of the world. [laughs] A good festival is a great thing but there is nothing worse than going to the other side of the world and actually finding yourself bored by what goes on and that can happen.
But we have been very lucky, we have been to some amazing festivals, we have had experiences at festivals that I am still excited about – you know the 2002 All Tomorrow’s Parties [curated by Sonic Youth] and that was in 2002! That was sixteen years ago and it’s still a memorable experience; but they’re not all like that.”
I think part of the reason that The Dead C are so sought after overseas is because live music wise no two shows can ever be replicated, which has always been a huge part of your appeal.
“And we have never failed. We have never gone to the other side of the world and played a gig, and everyone’s gone ‘Oh man, that was pretty dull’. Sure, there is always going to be a couple of people who will go ‘That wasn’t quite what I was expecting’ or whatever but I think the people who run festivals – and I’m presuming the people who run Laneway have garnered this information – know that we are one hundred percent reliable. We will be there on the day and we will kill it on the day, every time. We can’t fail because our sound is beyond failing. After thirty years doing what we do there’s no way that we can’t – it’s almost like a thing that comes over us and has a life of its own – I couldn’t play a bad Dead C show if I tried.”
Well live it is like the music takes on a life of its own…
“I’ve likened it in the past – slightly poetically – to the mother-ship taking off; you get to a certain point in the performance – like in the first twenty minutes it’s like ‘Man there’s nothing fucking happening’ – and then suddenly it takes off and it goes somewhere no one has ever been and you know when that happens and it’s a real feeling.
I’ve listened to live recordings and gone ‘How the hell we do that’, like one from 2004 I think it was, we went to Stirling in Scotland and played a festival and there’s an audience recording of that where the band appears to suddenly reverse direction and play backwards and then we reverse again and we start to go forward and the whole band sounds like it’s coming through some alternate reality … I don’t know what happened, I’ve got no idea, but it’s freakin awesome!”
With your latest album Rave Ravers now out [released 18th January] what other projects will you be throwing your weight behind, because you have also now completed your PHD in Fine Arts correct?
“Yes, I have. So, I did that in the Sound Programme in the School of Fine Arts at RMIT in Melbourne. My thesis was around improvisation of sound and what is the value for society of this form of practice, so yeah [laughs] I’ve got a doctorate in that.
The theory of improvisation; it’s surprising how little has been written about it, excluding jazz improvisation which should be called something else in my opinion, but improvisation with sound, completely free improvisation, there is a small number of people that have theorised it and it was exciting to kind of realise when I was doing it that there just isn’t the literature about that.
And that’s what you want for a doctorate, you want an area where it’s like ‘Yes! This is virgin territory, I am heading off into the unknown with this one!’. And that’s what they are expected to do but usually it’s about you know behaviour of mice in a maze and who cares about what the mice do.”
[laughs] They’re just being mice…
“Yeah, let the mice be mice, don’t get a doctorate out of it. But that’s a little unfair to people who study mice, I am sure there is some value to it…
But what else is on the cards, I mean The Dead C, we’ve got Laneways, that’s it, there are no other particular plans at this point. But for myself I’ve got a whole bunch of projects, I’ve got a double album retrospective of A Handful of Dust which is my duo with Alastair Galbraith. We played together three years before The Dead C started so we have a longer kind of history together even than The Dead C; I’m really pleased that there is a retrospective double LP of that which is going to be immaculate and that is mainly unreleased stuff.
I’ve got a collaborative album with Noel Meek from Wellington; that’s a duo electronics album, it’s called Classical Music – I think the title says it all really – it makes The Dead C sound fairly easy listening [mutual laughter] it’s an extremely abrasive record, it was difficult to play let alone listen to.
I’ve also got…ah…hmmm…at this point I always go ‘Yeah, there’s something else I just can’t put my finger on what it is’. I’m sure there’s something else underway…”
Oh, I don’t doubt it with you… [laughs]
“Yeah sorry, I’ve gone blank, I’ve gone blank. Yeah there definitely is something else but I just can’t put my finger on it. Oh no, its really bugging me now. Yeah, the Noel Meek record is the one I usually forget…nah bugger it!”
I do like the fact that you describe your duo album with Noel Meek as “abrasive”.
“Yeah, I’m sorry [laughs] the other thing about me is unfortunately everything sounds loud at any volume, I can’t…I don’t know, it’s just a skill, what can I say…”
[laughs]
“Oh! I’ve remembered it! It’s my rockabilly album with Delaney Davidson…”
Wow! Rockabilly!?
“Yeah, yeah, we’ve made a rockabilly record!”
Ha, I just love that you go from abrasive to rockabilly…
“Oh no, it’s very abrasive rockabilly.”
[mutual laughter]
“It’s a tribute to Charlie Feathers who’s a relatively obscure Southern recording artist who was present at the dawn of rock n roll but never really got his due, and Delaney said we should do a Charlie Feathers tribute album. So it’s being released by Ilam Press Records which is the School of Fine Art at the University of Canterbury they have a record label run by Luke Wood who is a musician and designer – he is one of the people who teaches out there – so we recorded the album as one side is a four track recording that we did in the Ilam Press Studio and then the other side is live at the Christchurch Art Gallery, we did a show there in December 2017, and so the two sides of the record together form this weird kind of rockabilly tribute.
Certainly, the live side is more abrasive but even the rockabilly side is pretty wild, it’s fucked up and rockabilly is about getting fucked up, so we brought the fucked up. It’s a great record, I’m really pleased with it.
Oh! And – there you go I just remembered the other one – Luke [Wood] and I, the Ilam Press guy – we made a record a year ago, a limited addition lathe cut; it’s being reissued by VHS which is a record label based in Washington DC, that one is called Visceral Realists, that should be out early this year.”
Visceral Realists – such a great title! I must admit, working with Delaney would be amazing, so talented and yet very unique.
“Yeah, I mean he’s an interesting guy, he’s very open, he’s a good collaborator and he himself admitted that it stretched his boundaries; he described it as ‘the most musical record I’ve ever made and the least musical I’ve ever made’ and that’s probably more or less true.”
Stretching boundaries is always important in any art form as it is easy to get trapped within one’s own safety zone.
Sure, absolutely and it’s always a concern. So, I was pleased to accept the challenge when he kind of threw it down, and I’m really happy with the result and I think [laughs] people will be quite amused by it.
The Dead C will be appearing at 4:35pm on the Dr. Martens Stage during tomorrow’s St. Jeromes Laneway Festival. There are limited tickets still available, so if you want to catch the unique magnificence of The Dead C make sure you get in quick!
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