Sydney’s Severed Heads have been in existence for some four years in various forms, releasing a series of cassettes of their experimental electronics on founder member Tom Ellard’s Terse Tapes label, and performing live infrequently. English independent labels Ink and Red Flame, they now have an album ‘Since the Accident’ and single from it ‘Dead Eyes Opened’ released there to the enthusiastic critical acclaim that has eluded them so far in Australia. Stiletto spoke with present members Tom Ellard. Paul Paul and Garry Bradbury.
FUNCTION/EQUIPMENTFUN
T: It’s silly to identify parts of the band because the equipment’s in a pool. P: It would be a better description as such to get the equipment to identify itself. T: The equipment changes its character depending on who’s using it – things like sequencers and microcomposers play themselves really, we just give them guidelines. All of us can use a drum machine for instance, but we all have a different style of using it. G: But we don’t really use drum machines now, we generate most percussive sounds on synthesisers then key them in with the microcomposer. T: Or hijack from other people’s records – like I stole the Linn drum intro to the Human League’s Hard Times!. G: Saves buying a Linn drum.
ISTORYHISTORYHISTORYH
G: me and Tom worked together from 81 to early 83 then I joined the Moonies. I rejoined about two months ago. P: I joined in mid 83. T: First LP was in 79 with myself and Richard Fielding. Second in 81 was just myself really. Third, the C90 cassette was Garry and myself. ‘Since the Accident’ recorded mid 82 to early 83 was Garry and myself. The one we’re working on now is mainly Paul and myself.
NCETHEACCIDENTSINCET
How does Since the Accident compare to the newer material? Do you play much of the album on stage? G: Yes but only out of the pressure of selling it. T: We do old songs not because of fondness for them but because it’s wise to incorporate them. The ideal thing would be a completely new set each time we played but it’s getting progressively harder for us to do that. P: It used to be mainly tape loop tracks plus a few electronic pop songs, but now it takes a lot more setting up. Although that would be a fair description of the album? G: Perhaps, but the tapes are more integrated with the electronics now T: It’s now less obvious which is which: each technique is driving towards a particular point and they’re approaching each other more and more.
PROCESSTHEPROCESSTHE
T: Everybody has a tangential way of thinking in the studio, it’s like a whirlwind set-up. And the equipment is incredibly important. The moment we first got an 8-track tape recorder we bunged a piece of loop tape on it, and there are a certain number of things you can do with it – in that sense the band is experimental. G: We don’t write songs, we come up with a technical idea and build on it. T: It’s a feedback system between the people and the equipment. Say somebody has a particular idea of a noise or a sound on tape, it gets sent to the equipment to decide on maybe it can do that or suggest something back – so it bounces back and forth between us and the studio. G: Being refined and whittled down – it can end up sounding totally different to the original idea. P: The accident. T: It’s like those mathematical formulae that approach but never actually touch a number
asymptotic. The number of feed-back loops it goes through starts to define the sound. ‘Since the Accident’ is that sort of formula run through only a certain number of generations, and with each album we’re able to run it a bit further: eventually we’ll reach the sound that we’re really looking for.
FECTTHEEFFECTTHEEFEE
G: It’s the effect rather than the intention that counts. T: If we wanted to communicate an intention we’d write a book. If you want to put something like that into music you have to encode it, and the person listening has to apply a reverse process to get anything out of it. So unless you’re very obvious people don’t get what you’re putting into it, they only get what they’re putting into it. – What would you like people to get out of what you’re doing? G: Perhaps we can broaden people’s outlook on noise in general. T: When people hear a sound they immediately try to see how it fits in with what they’ve experienced. Everybody’s experienced something completely different so they’ll get something different out of it. G: Our music is experimental in the sense that it’s the audience that’s experimenting. We do all our experimentation in the studio then just unleash the product on them.
T: The problem on stage is that the moment the visuals come on think people get ‘Art Art’ calling in the back of their heads and it just turns into appreciation. It’s that ridiculous concept of people feeling the need to adopt a ‘proper art viewing stance’. P: Audiences are really blasé and detached these days. They sit back and demand entertainment without interaction.
Do you see yourselves as trying to break the conventions of band/audience interaction? T: Not at all – if we do, fine, if we don’t fine we’re just playing, not trying to subvert anything. If that happens it’s just a side effect. Somebody said to me recently I liked the way you infringed upon that phantom line between audience and band’ and I said What?’ and he said ‘The way you drew the music out of the realms of the stage into the audience bound by a length of magnetic tape. I mean Garry just pulled the tape into the audience – we just do it. Our live shows are 90% panic and 10% daft ideas like that – it’s strange how people interpret it. Maybe you should interview our audience and ask them what they think – it’s out of our control. If anyone asked for more at our last performance we had a big bag of magnetic tape we were going to throw at them
RMANCEPERFORMANCEPE
T: If we do go to England we’ll do it quietly, as a holiday, and maybe perform a bit. As for here, we’re playing the Ozone Club (11th and 25th of May) which will be a more controllable environment than we’re used to. P: although they’ll still be the potential for accidents, which contributes to the performance – Video and slides seem to be the main visual focus of your shows. G: Who wants to watch three dorks standing by a stack of equipment? You’ve got to have something to make up for it. T: l’d like to do performances where we had a video clip for each song and use a backing video tape instead of just audio.
NFASHIONFASHIONFASHI
T: If you want to be a pineapple head that’s your problem – the hair grows inwards as well as outwards. G: And it sucks your orgones P: Outrageous haircuts and dress are so acceptable now that it has no rebellion value any more. T: It worries me that so many people should get embroiled in
such a dull and trivial concern. It’s just a diversion really. But is Severed Heads anything more than a diversion? T: Yes
RTANCETHEIMPORTANCET
T: Music is more complex and involved than fashion and is a better stimulus. You know from time to time everyone has an experience or does something through a combination of events, that has a big marked meaning just to themselves? For me, being in Severed Heads increases the number of times this happens and the quality of them, and this is how we could be important, admittedly to a small number of people: something we’ve done, maybe just one thing, could be really important and meaningful to them. That’s what sets so-called experimental bands like us apart from the mainstream, that there’s a far greater chance of people encountering something of that nature. With some people maybe hair colour does that, but I fail to see how that could provide as powerful a stimulus as more complex things like music and audio-visuals.
Despite some of their opinions being highly questionable, Severed Heads quasi-symbiotic relationship with their equipment has produced one of the finest recorded works to come out of Australia for some time. With the album selling 2500 first two weeks of release in England, it seems the band is at last receiving the attention it has deserved for some time, albeit overseas. In a time of homogenised and safe rock and roll and dance music, real ideas are scarce: we desperately need bands of innovation and challenge, bands like Severed Heads.
TONY BRIGGS