GIANT BRAIN "Thank you very much for your interest in the Giant Brain. To be honest, it is very flattering, especially considering that we made Plume mostly for our own amusement. The fact that other people like it is really incredible, and makes us all giddy with glee [or something like that]. But in order to describe the making of Plume, I have to talk about how the band came about..." Comprised of Motor City guitarist Phil Dürr [of Big Chief-fame] and local heroes Al and Andy Sutton [Al being a producer / engineer / mixer-to-the-stars and brother Andy being the bassist / electronicist], Giant Brain's sound harkens back to the heyday of Krautrock and fuzzed-out garage rock. Giant Brain create an innovative set of motorik jams that ebb and flow from right speaker to left. Played with hallmark Detroit simplicity mixed with a European flare, the bands's latest album, "Plume" offers a magnificent journey into hypnotic stoner soundscapes, layered with feedback, electronics and lots of guitar rifferama. "Plume" is a record for fans of Can, Neu, Kyuss, Amon Düül II and Blue Cheer, and yet another fine release by Detroit's Small Stone Records.. Words | Phill Giant Brian is the brainchild of one Andy Sutton, who began the as a series of experimental recordings using only his laptop and found sounds. Eventually, as some of these ideas gelled, he played them to us, his brother Al, best known for his production of Big Chief and the Detroit Cobras, as well as several bands on Small Stone’s roster [notably Novadriver, Five Horse Johnson and Halfway to Gone], and to me. The Kraut- and Stoner-rock elements, and the room we saw for improvisation we heard in the music, got us interested, and essentially Al and I forced ourselves on Andy’s project. This was also the basic method for writing the songs: We never 'jammed out' the songs; it was all done in the studio. Andy, the idea man, came up with the song skeletons: rhythm and bass line, as well as found and manufactured sounds. Al dumped Andy’s ideas into Pro Tools, and we made preliminary decisions on arrangements.' I 'reacted' to Andy's ideas and used any and all manner of guitars, effects, and other instruments, and improvised all over the tracks. Al, as the producer, was then left with the unenviable task of making sense of the whole thing in the final arrangement and mix. We brought in other musicians along the way [friends and co-conspirators, all] to add what they are good at: Eric Hoegemeyer is a whiz with sequencers, as well as being one of the best drummers I know; Bob Ebeling is also a great drummer, as well as a very creative engineer; Billy Rivkin of Slot was one of the most unorthodox guitarists any of us had ever heard, a lover of weed, Krautrock and Electronica, and absolutely shit-hot ecstatic to be at the 'Krauter session; and others, too many to mention or remember clearly. For various reasons, mostly to do with time constraints, it took over three years to record Plume. The cover took me almost as long. It was recorded on all manner of recording gear and media, in studios, as well as in basements and offices. Since we weren't always all present at the same time, you might get a different telling from each one of us. The only constant I remember was the presence of drink. There's more improvisation than one might think on Plume... you could say the songs on Plume are about the beauty of the mistake. The German song titles and look of the album came about later, when we realized how 'Kraut' the songs really were. So, please forgive me if my memory is a bit hazy on some details, I'm not getting any younger or smarter... but I promise to try my best. Plume > On to the tracks... Ausgesetzt 'Ausgesetzt' was one of the last songs we recorded, and my personal favorite, partly because it is the perfect example of how Plume came about. It got us all back into it to finish the record. We are all interested in electronic music; it's almost impossible to be from Detroit and not be aware of Techno. Andy is a bit of a connoisseur, so in his basement he went about trying to manufacture some of the sounds he heard in clubs. His most successful venture was what I call the 'I, Robot' section of this song. How he did it is a mystery to me, but he tells me it involved an IBM laptop, Audiomulch, Sound Forge and Acid, an Analog-X Say-It Vocorder program he got off the Internet, a VS-880 hard disk recorder, and a pair of old shoelaces. When he got the piece just right, he added the bass line and brought it in for Al to hear. At Al's studio, RustBelt [that he owns -it often comes in handy), they set up a drum kit and one mic, called Eric Hoegemeyer and he laid down a first drum track, which Al looped. Eric then played another live track [3 mics] on top of it [by the way, GB has one rule: no more than three microphones on the drums. Ever]. Al made a basic arrangement by cutting and pasting, etc. Then the studio was booked out, and we couldn’t use it anymore... We recorded all the guitars with an M-Box into Al's Powerbook in the RustBelt office, and we put the amplifiers [a vintage Vox AC-30 that belonged to the band recording next door -whoever the hell they were, and a Supro from the early 60s] in the toilet. As was often the case, I had never heard the song before, and the rhythm guitar track was basically a first stab. The high melody and that stuff that sounds like electric bagpipes are ad-libbed guitars using what I call 'the Ridiculator' [a Whammy pedal in combo with some other stuff... it's all over the record, but I can’t tell all, now, can I?]. The solos are, to be honest, comped from two or three takes, since every take was different. That's something Al and I have done since back in the Big Chief days. Ausgesetzt is a lot of fun to listen to while driving really fast, Autobahn or I-75... it doesn't matter. 'Ausgesetzt'means 'abandoned', and I honestly don't remember, but maybe the title is a play on words: the song's lack of inhibition and restraint... then again, maybe not. Looper One of the things I like best about GB is that we make obstinate music. Half the time we're looking for someone to say 'stop!' The song doesn't really start for three minutes... When I first heard the master of this song I was driving home to Detroit from Ann Arbor, and I started laughing so hard at some of the parts [oh! the audacity!], I missed two exits. What should have been an easy 40-minute drive turned into a two-hour-long comedy of errors. I got to know the ghettos of Detroit very well that day. Which, in turn, is an apt description of the recording of this song. Of all the songs on Plume, 'Looper' took the longest. We had been kicking around the bass riff for years [in a different band], but it took Andy marrying it to a more Kraut-rock feel before it became anything. Andy assembled the drum pattern on his computer in his basement and wrote the bass line. At some point, he found a broken Farfisa that only made howls, beeps and scratches and he and our friend Shifty recorded those at a different studio in downtown Detroit. Two years later, I added the acoustic and electric rhythm guitars at Rustbelt. The live drums came months later, when Al brought in Kenny Tudrick of the Detroit Cobras. He played one take, then played another right after it, a trick we had learned during the recording of Krauter. The two takes are panned hard left and right, almost like a very quick call and response... the guitar solo we recorded one night [later that year] when Andy and I snuck into a local celebrity's studio while Al was doing maintenance. The title 'Looper' is a reaction to 'Krauter.' At this point in time, we were toying with the idea of having all song titles end with '-er.' Apparently, we decided that wasn't nearly as funny as naming the songs all in German or pseudo-German. It's just that dumb, really. We only did it because we could. Die Festzeit We recorded this song that same night at the aforementioned 'nameless' studio. Actually, we wrote it as we recorded it. Andy thought that the album needed a mellow, acoustic track. I [gingerly] took the closest thing I could see to an acoustic — an old Fender hollow-body guitar off the wall — plugged it into an amp, and started playing the chord progressions. We liked what we heard; Al put up a track and I just made it up as I went along... it has a very unstructured feel. Andy wrote a bass line, and I noticed the drums in the room were miked and there were mallets lying on the floor. To be sure, I'm not a drummer, but I started playing along, and we recorded it. Eureka! My first drum credit! Another nice toy hanging on the wall at the studio was a Coral electric sitar. I had always wanted to play one, so what better time, right? A few weeks later, back at Rustbelt, Al recorded Charles Hughes [of Ebeling Hughes fame] strangling his keyboards to death, and the song was, as one could say, 'Fertig.' Krauter 'Krauter' is the center point of the album. It was the first song we finished, the reason we kept going, and the recording session [really the only time we had a 'session'] is the stuff of legend in our circle of friends. It is also our friend Billy Rivkin's last recording before his death from cancer, so it tugs at our heartstrings, too. The record is dedicated to him and our fathers. But, back to the deal: I think of 'Krauter' as a giant tip of the hat — raising of the glass, spilling of the beer — to Can, Neu, Faust, Kraftwerk, Amon Düül, et al. Andy had a very short bare-bones version of the song, all bleeps and bloops, bass, and electronic beats. We took Andy's laptop creation, looped it to death and back, and extended it to what we thought was a safe time: 20 minutes. We imagined this should be enough time to get everyone's ideas in, and then we would edit it down to maybe 8... We were close: we needed 19. The session turned into an all-out party: booze, beer, and some other stuff, all kinds of people [musician and otherwise] showed up, and it evolved into a creative free-for-all, with all ensuing tracks played live on top of the loop. While Billy and I were doing the guitars, Bob set up a drum kit and started playing along. The room happened to be miked [2 room mics]. 7 and ½ minutes in, we recorded one take. He turned around and played a 'drum war' response to it! ['We should double it']. So now we had two drum tracks, left and right. Billy laid down a Kraut-Rock-cum-Sonic-Youth guitar track, which defined the melodic theme of the thing. I added my first two cents, and on my second track, Eric started tweaking the track as I was playing it; that strange guitar throb is the result. At some point [I don't remember it anymore... I was drunk, we were drunk, some were too high], Andy wanted a Ron Asheton type freak-out. I did what I could under the circumstances. Some other people may or may not have played on it... no one remembers the session the same way. We lost the original recording soon after Al did the mix [poor guy], so nobody knows for sure how many tracks were recorded and used, but let’s just say the number is up there with your average Metallica record, only less banal and anal. Al says that in order to mix it, he had to structure it into movements, rather than parts, because he could only mix it in smaller sections without going crazy. I'm not sure I understand it, but I like the way that sounds: 'movements.' What I do know is that all the sections are just that little bit too long [purposely], which keeps the song tense. The only vocals on the album, 'ich bin krauter als Kraut', made a lot of sense on that night. We got the German to do it: me. I was drunker than drunk. Der Amerikanische Albtraum Andy brought in this bass line that [he says] was parts Devo, parts QOTSA, but for some reason obsessively reminded me of Michael Jackson's 'Keep It In The Closet.' Al and Andy programmed some drums, and later had Eric play live drums over that, and then called me in to finish it on the same day we did the guitars on 'Ausgesetzt', which I suppose is partly the reason that the weird guitar melodies are so similar. But I had a hard time getting over the MJ thing, and then I remembered that on a couple of GB shows, I had decided to play the guitar tuned an octave low for the whole show, with the strings hanging off the fretboard — it made a beautiful racket, really. I had read that Arto Lindsay had tuned a twelve-string electric that way in DNA and in the Lounge Lizards. I didn't tune it strangely, but that put the noise idea in my head, and I played the solos almost like I was trying to beat the thing to death. I have no idea what we did to get that sound, but it is the ugliest, nastiest guitar sound I have ever gotten out of my gear. The rhythm guitar tracks are meant as nods to Killing Joke, MBV and Minutemen. Why them I don't know [besides that I like them], but it made sense at the time. A little bit of Ridiculator here and there [all sounds are guitar-based], and presto! No more nightmares about pederasty! So there you have it, the making of 'Plume.' We've been talking about a next record [and that's a hell of a first step, believe me], and it seems that the basic modus operandii is going to be the same. It's going to be difficult and time-consuming, since the three of us no longer live in the same city, but it's obvious that it will still all start with Andy. He no longer has a basement, so that'll be different, I guess, but it will still be a 'thesis: antithesis: synthesis' concept between Andy, me, and Al [why mess with a good thing?]. Plume > Influencial albums... Speaking about some of the records that influenced the making of Plume, and I can really only list some that have influenced us in general. Plume was a very organic record to make, really, partly because it was done over such a long time, but also because all three of us are music fans, not genre fans. So with that in mind, here are some, but not all, and in no particular order. I think you can hear elements of all of them if you listen to Plume closely [which, by the way, is a really good idea... a bottle of Chianti / beer / whatever, a set of headphones, and a nice smoke. Ear candy galore]: Can - "Tago Mago" [as far as GB goes, this is the ideal. German high-brow, blues-less improv... what's to hate? My best friend's dog is named Damo Suzuki] Kraftwerk - all [craft, concept... this is religion to us. Plus, there wouldn’t be Techno w/o them. Every time they play in Detroit, it's like going to church. AMEN!] Stooges - "Funhouse" [as important and primal a record as has ever been made]. Funkadelic - "Maggot Brain" [ditto, see above... but funkier, way funkier. And Superstupid is heavier than anything on Liquor and Poker, ever]. Kyuss - "Sky Valley" [oh, dear God, can you get any larger? Organic as hell, beautiful as all get-out, as it beats you over the head repeatedly, but lovingly] And these helped, too: Devo - "We Are Not Men" [one of Andy's faves, and a big signpost that rock music doesn't have to follow 'The Rules']. John Coltrane - "A Love Supreme" [‘nuff said. Anything I add will just sound stupid]. Black Sabbath - "Vol.IV" [Sabbath taught all of us that it's OK not to be smart, and on 'Vol.IV', they learned that they can be funky, too... see 'Supernaut', and don’t forget the 'salsa part!)]. My Bloody Valentine - "Loveless" [beautiful noise... still waiting for the follow-up. Are you reading this, Mr.Shields?]. Birthday Party - "The Bad Seed" [one of the most unfriendly bands of all time, and I mean that in the best possible way]. Miles Davis - "Jack Johnson" [hard to pick one, but this era Miles is fantastic. Jazz for rock fans]. Led Zeppelin - "Physical Graffiti" [it's not so much the 'heavy', it's also the 'pretty', it's the sum of the whole, the arrangements, the feel... blah,blah,blah... yeah, big surprise here!]. Verve - "A Storm In Heaven" [is it the Stones on acid, or listening to the Stones while on acid?]. Thin White Rope - "Moonhead" [one of the most underrated bands of all time. Mr.Kyser and I shared a bottle of Whiskey 15 years ago, and it's still one of my proudest moments...]. Sonic Youth - "Confusion is Sex" [school: you can make music out of anything, with anything, ugly is pretty]. Jeff Mills - "Live at the Liquid Room – Tokyo" [great DJ spinning a great set]. To Rococo Rot - "Hotel Morgen" [if you love the sound of beeps and white noise, which we do... German, to boot... or is that Autechre? Faceless, just like we are]. Queens of the Stone Age - "S/T" [fearless motherfunkers, and I love 'em for it].