8BITERROR INTERVIEW: How many 'members' are you at the present? DIESEL: There are currently two active members, myself and Remy. Now that we've moved to Detroit, we're looking for one to two more MCs and/or live musicians to round out our live shows. What other bands are you/have you been - involved with? REMY: We currently have an experimental noise project, Slave Cylinder, and a more beat-oriented ebm one called Shard. Both are motivated by socio-political issues and events, especially anti-corporate ones. I have a solo project called iSv that is kind of glitchy video game music. There's Scrotal Tear, an amalgam of dark ambient/ambient noise and death industrial. DIESEL: We started out doing noise with Slave Cylinder but, as we developed musically, we amassed quite a few songs that didn't fit with the Slave Cylinder performances so we spun them off into side projects and eventually formed a collective called Slave Indvstries in the late 90s. SI is currently about 18 bands strong. How did your two members meet? Upbringing, nationality etc.? REMY: We met in Memphis, Tennessee while going to school. Diesel came from a conservative family in rural New Hampshire-- she's a preacher's daughter. DIESEL: Remy's the son of a former commune-living-goat-owning-Woodstock- attending hippie. REMY: We're both future ex-pats in the making, just as soon as we find the right city and country to relocate to. What records have you released with PUA? What demos/diy-material have you released with PUA? REMY: The Iron Woman album is our first official collection of PUA material, outside of a self-produced EP we sold at shows. We leaked early versions of "Phallus Uber Alles" and "One Round Left" onto self-released compilations via the Slave Indvstries collective, but other than that we developed the PUA tracks in relative seclusion. We shopped a four-song demo around and on the strength of those tracks, FATAL asked us to submit more. The rest is history! DIESEL: We're working on a remix album with a limited edition comic insert to come out in a few months. The date's been pushed back because of the album but it's got awesome remixes of two of our songs from the album. We've also done remixes as PUA for other bands. What records have released with your other projects? DIESEL: We've released two Slave Cylinder CDs through Slave Indvstries and we're currently working on a third. We have one Shard release which is a remix album and we're releasing the debut album next year. REMY: I've released three albums as iSv, and I'm sitting on no less than three more full-lengths' worth of songs to be finished over the next year or so. The full-length Scrotal Tear CD should be ready for release by the end of 2004/start of 2005. Why digital hardcore, what band got you into dhc? DIESEL: Back in the Slave Cylinder days, when we were writing music that reflected all of the different genres that we enjoyed (digital hardcore being one of them), I found that I could really use those dhc songs as an outlet. We drew from a lot of different genres like drum n' bass, gabber, and breakcore. I'm still a really big fan of breakcore and love where it's going. REMY: Yeah, it all came together for us in college. The group of people we were hanging out with, and who would later become our bandmates and roommates, all shared each of their music collections with each other. It was then that we first heard groups like ATR, Ec8or, Bomb 20, Panacea, DJ Tron, Delta 9, etc. etc.... Their sounds excited us right away. To us, digital hardcore is the punk music of the computer age. It has emotion, but it also has a message, at least in its most powerful, vital form. Dhc is cyberpunk, cold technology mixed with raw anger, politics mixed with the gutter. What artists inspire you? DIESEL: I'd have to say that Wendy O Williams is quite an inspiration to me and Diamanda Galas, as well. They were/are such bold and uncompromising women. I love women who can hold their own in the music industry and count all of them in one way or another an inspiration. When I'm getting geared up to write music, I put bands like the Distillers, Mad Capsule Markets, FFF and LFO Demon on heavy rotation because they all, in different ways, act as musical inspiration. REMY: Chu Ishikawa. FM Einheit. Jim Thirlwell. David Thrussell. Uwe Schmidt. Felix Kubin. Mike Fisher. John Sellekaers. Getting the PUA album mastered at Metarc was a bit of a geeky moment for me, because I really enjoy and respect the work John is doing as Xingu Hill, Dead Hollywood Stars, etc.. The Slave Indvstries people are also extremely inspirational... we all feed off of each others' energy and ideas, enthusiasm and support. Scott from Naked Intruder, Mason from Exclipsect, Jeremy from Labtoy, Mark from Exdeath... every one of them is doing exciting and original things. What events inspire you? DIESEL: World events really inspire us; domestic, global and gender politics; sometimes a personal incident will inspire us as in our song "Hey Bill." Man's inhumanity to man in all of its colorful forms is a never-ending source of inspiration. REMY: I think that if concepts such as world peace and gender equality currently existed, we'd have little to talk about. Writing music would be more of a pleasurable hobby to pass the time and entertain friends, rather than the vehicle for voicing our concerns and desires [and designs] for change that it is now. Do you use computers? What software? DIESEL: Religiously. We use 5 machines in varying capacities. Two are dedicated music-machines. As for software, we primarily use Making Waves for sequencing, CoolEdit Pro for wav manipulation. REMY: I have a decent background in MIDI, but I hate using it... I love manipulating .wav files whenever and wherever possible. Making Waves is my favorite piece of software; I like it because of how little it interferes with our sound. We're starting to finally get into VST plugins and effects after some initial DirectX disasters left us wary for a while. I don't buy into the argument that a Mac is better than a PC for music, or an Amiga is the only way to go, or any of that... I have one computer mantra, and that is "USE WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!" Platform snobbery is often just a version of brand snobbery, and at that point one is simply acting as a pawn [and a willing billboard] in the materialism game. What hardware do you use? Feel free to name brands, we are nerds y'know... DIESEL: We have a Kawaii K5000S, a Roland Alpha Juno, a 1970s Gibson SG guitar, a Carvin custom 5 string bass, a small Behringer mixer. Being the bargain hunters and thrift store junkies that we are, we found most of it used. REMY: We have very limited funds for acquiring new gear, and so our hardware is pretty much anything we can get sounds out of. Circuitbent toys, old analog gear, and samples acquired from every source imaginable. How do you play live, do you have any extra backup live? DIESEL: Because we record and write most of the music on the computer, we have a lot of flexibility in terms of our live shows. When it's just the two of us, I can take the mic and Remy can do live sequencing on the laptop. We can play live instruments so, we can supplement with guitar or bass. I'd love to be able to play some of the beats live but I can't play and sing at the same time and, honestly, I'd rather be out front than behind a kit. Explain you personal beliefs/viewpoints DIESEL: That's a tough one to answer in a nutshell. Basically, to boil it down to our beliefs as they pertain to PUA and our other projects, we're anti-corporate, leftist activists. We're feminists to be sure, which is probably apparent from our music. PUA is a great venue for a feminist message because it's supported by the harsh music and because women aren't as visible in many of the underground electronic acts as they are in, say,rock. I remember seeing ATR live and being surrounded by women and girls in the audience so they definitely listen to it. There's a precedent with Hanin Elias in the genre, of the unrelentingly strong female persona, she sort of opened the door for us in more ways than one and I think the message suits the state of underground music today. As far as our other personal beliefs, our politics are really left and grow moreso as we age. I don't want to lose my idealism to wrinkles and grey hair or my spirit to the 9 to 5. The world always needs fighters and our mettle makes us perfect for the task. How do you feel about the current political climate in USA and the world? REMY: The current political situation in the United States is going from bad to worse. Diesel lived in Belorus for six months when she was younger, after the fall of communism, and her freedoms there were equal in many respects to what they're being shaved down to now in the U.S. thanks to items like the Patriot act. For example, she couldn't take photos of bridges or subways while she was there without being questioned or having her camera confiscated, and now that's precisely the case over here. The rights of women in the U.S. are in danger of being increasingly eroded as long as the current administration is in any form of power. The threat is not from exclusively male sources, but rather the collective male and female will of the conservative party, who often cling to a fundamentalist Christian mentality that would sooner see women as servants than equals to men. The question isn't how many people are noticing that our freedoms are being eroded... we experience the effects daily. The real question is more how many people here actually care? DIESEL: I'm angry beyond belief about the election and am utterly disappointed in my fellow citizens. Politics in America right now is really such a complex situation, and a tense one, to boot, not that politics have ever been simple. I had hoped with all of my might that we would overcome our apathy and really turn out and vote--and we did!--and I had hoped that, should General Woundwort get re-elected either legitimately or through fraud, that the half of the country that opposes him would actually fight. Instead, all of the people who had bellies full of fire prior to the election simply hung their heads, many of them cried and apologized to the rest of the world, but ultimately they returned to their jobs, grumbled under their breath, and did nothing. I heard my peers all saying that they wished they could do something about it but few made any move to do so. The power for change is in our hands but we're a long way from any sort of revolution. American citizens have too many luxuries to lose and the problem is greater than simply overthrowing a figurehead. Rarely ever in history has that been a wise solution. Besides, Woundwort is more than just one man, he's thousands of men, he's an institution and toppling an institution of such alarming power and influence takes more than Americans-- regardless of how angry--are willing to give. The thing that really grabs me by the bits is that many of us can see where all of this can lead. We've been witnessing it by drips and dribbles for the last 4 years, being stripped of our civil liberties and, most recently, our reproductive rights. Losing yourself in pieces like that doesn't seem to hurt as much at first as losing an entire limb at a time. I think there's power in the realization that we are a dangerous nation, that we are in the wrong, that there is something wrong with our leaders. There is power in that kind of foresight to be able to say, "if we continue down this course, we will be responsible for the ruin of the world." Some of us felt like Cassandras 4 years ago but not so much now. When we speak about the ramifications of our decisions as a nation, our fellow citizens nod with understanding now which wasn't so before. I think the unbound behemoth that is the United States can be stopped. I believe in Margaret Mead when she said that "a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." How do you feel about copyright, filesharing and mp3s? DIESEL: We're members of MACOS, the Musicians Against Copyrighting of Samples and we feel very strongly that piggy-backing and sharing is at the root of ingenuity. A moustache is all it takes to turn a Mona Lisa into an LHOOQ and make one work from the past a completely viable and unique work of the future. REMY: It feels like the gap between sampling and copyright law is getting wider, at least in the United States. Current copyright legislation is completely out of touch with both the advances of this young 21st century and the tools and techniques of scores of artists who have been sampling for decades. Thanks to broadband internet and mp3s, online labels are actually becoming viable entities, and all sorts of people are starting ones of their own. The problem arises of actually tracking down all these small, independent groups, but communities/forums/lists are helping to network the underground. Filesharing, internet radio, and mp3s are wonderful resources and methods for gathering and distributing information, and the recent actions of the RIAA, FCC, and other groups are technophobic in nature and just simply repugnant. How do you feel about the digital underground? Has DHR sold out? Why/Why not? DIESEL: Selling out inevitably comes up a lot in discussions of underground music. It always seems to in any subculture or underground genre when it appears that a band cashes in their street cred for cold hard cash. I can see both sides of that fence because who doesn't want to quit their day job and be able to pay their bills with money they've earned from their creative pursuits? I think the question is really when does being rewarded for your creativity turn into a compromise? When does enough become too much? The moment an act has to reign in some part of themselves to reach a wider audience or abandon pieces of their passion because someone else is pulling the strings is the moment you become less of an artist. REMY: If the digital underground has a problem, it isn't that it needs to get angry, because it's often extremely angry... it's that it needs to focus its anger. More people need to get political, get information on the issues and SPEAK OUT. It isn't enough to be political simply because one's influences are political. That generic "fight the power" mentality breaks down as soon as it gets questioned on its specifics. Has the power of dhc moved from germany, or is it still there in the form of fatal? DIESEL: As far as where the power of digital hardcore is currently, I'd have to say that I don't hear very many acts with the same spirit and sound of the 90s. There are still so many fans who are hungry for that sound, so many committed people like Schizoid from DTRASH that aren't prepared to let it drop. I can't speak for the other side of the pond but in North America, digital hardcore is still a pertinent genre. REMY: It's this last idea that PUA really takes to heart: that the original "digital hardcore" sound was abandoned far too early on, and can stand to be explored more thoroughly before coming anywhere close to being tapped out. Fatal's strength comes from the fact that, as a small label, they are able to take a very concrete stance. Most large labels act as a transparent distributor-- people don't care if band x was released on Virgin or Sony or Epic or whatever, as those labels usually have no political leanings or tangible face to the world. Fatal is much more personal, and has very specific views about women in the world and in music both. Fatal also draws power from the diversity of their acts. We didn't actually know if we would fit in from a sonic viewpoint, because all of the bands sound so different from each other and from the DHR bands of old. What nerd-stuff do you own? We're talking collectibles, odd movies, computer games, videogame-consoles etc? DIESEL: We're huge zombie movie fans so we have a sizeable video library that includes a lot of strange titles. Remy's much more of a tech nerd than I am, though I do like circuit- bending. REMY: We are thrift store electronics fiends! We snatch up any old game systems and toys we can find. We like buying little Casio toy synths such as the SK-1 to circuitbend and sample for songs, and we're have amassed a fairly decent amound of original Commodore 64 gear. I'm also a sucker for old Waxtrax! releases on vinyl, and then other records like Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, SPK. Stuff like that. As for computer games, emulators are the best thing since sliced bread. What is your favourite oldschool computer/console game? REMY: That's a tough one. It's hard to beat the first Metroid games in terms of music and story, but for true oldschool enjoyment, I'm re-living my childhood through the Midway Arcade Classics collections. Joust! I've been a console and arcade junky since childhood, and in our loft we currently have the following working console systems hooked up and ready to play: Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Dreamcast, GB, GBA, PS1, PS2... That's about it, feel free to say whatever comes to mind DIESEL: Revolution is women's work! REMY: Thanks for interviewing us! END Visit 8biterror.co.uk GO BACK