PGR Interview
Originally printed in Spinal Jaundice #11 – 1990
A wide spectrum of noise can be yours with ownership of any PGR (formerly Poison
Gas Research) release. And for that matter, on any of the lovely releases on
Silent Records. There’s ample calamity, haunting ambience and the integration of
silence from time to time on their various compilation appearances and more. Kim
Cascone has run the gamut of styles and has provided them on his home-based
label, Silent Records. An idiosyncrasy that we here have admired is the
playfulness of sounds (bells, chimes, rollicking voices) that also create a
sense of ‘distance’. Not to say everything by PGR is skittish in nature, but
each provides an environment. Whether their releases tailor to your activities
or subvert them is up to which product you’ve got, and ultimately the frame of
mind of Kim Cascone.
MJ: The apparent genre for PGR’s music seems to be experimental, though with
a definite aesthetic value. Could you shed some light on your own process?
KC: If you listen to each release by PGR you will recognize certain sounds
that I tend to use over and over…I have a vocabulary that I have developed over
the years and I am still in the process of building…I don’t consciously think,
“Okay, now I want to use this sound because it was on the last LP.” I just move
from what my interests are and since they all originate from me there is some
sort of thread throughout my releases. Since PGR was one of the innovators of
the Ambient Industrial sound I’d have to say that my sounds fall into one of two
classifications: Ornaments or Beds. I have developed various techniques of
obtaining these sounds through manipulations such as extraction, and accidental
imbrication but I hear everything in my head before it goes onto tape…I am
constantly memorizing sounds and ambiences I hear…my compositions always
integrate these sounds.
MJ: Who are the active participants in PGR?
KC: It has been just me for the past four years…I do ask friends to come
into the studio to make certain sounds according to my specifications…it’s a
similar situation to how Steve Stapleton of Nurse With Wound used to work…the
last two CDs I have recorded, “A Hole Of Unknown Depth” on Noctovision/Japan,
and “Fetish” on Silent Records, have been my contributions entirely…I give
friends parts to play or ask them to contribute sounds they have but ultimately
it is my work. I have a very strong sense of curiosity and working with other
people has to bring out that quality in me or it just doesn’t work.
MJ: How did you land the musical chores for the “Twin Peaks” TV program? What
was it like working with David Lynch?
KC: I started out being an assistant sound effects editor on “Twin Peaks” and
worked in that position until the music editor came on the crew. He had less
than two weeks to cut all the music for the pilot and needed an assistant…so I
was chosen since I have a musical education and could do things like “group a
bunch of ‘stings’ in ascending pitch while putting all the octaves in a
different group.” So I became the assistant music editor by default. I got the
job because I had been working on a feature called “Blood Of The Heros” and I
was asked to work on the Lynch film because I had an unorthodox aesthetic. David
Lynch is one of the nicest people you would want to meet…he is very aware of
sound and knows exactly what sound goes where in his films. I got the chance to
work with him a bit closer on “Wild At Heart,” and I watched him work very
closely in the mix. I learned a lot by watching him work. It’s funny but a lot
of what I picked up from him has been showing up in my work lately.
MJ: What has been your favorite of Lynch’s varied works?
KC: My favorite of all his work will always be “Eraserhead.” That film laid bare
a new language for artists working with sound…the other filmmaker that has
influenced me greatly has been Tarkovsky. I have a cassette dupe of the
soundtrack to “Solaris.” It’s absolutely brilliant. I am sure Lynch was
influenced by him.
MJ: Could you provide some insight on your own creative process when setting
out to record?
KC: I have an artistic process much like a painter…I do a great deal of artistic
research into various areas that interest me and then I set out to express my
ideas in an intuitive manner. I love to read theory and criticism but my work is
much more poetic and not very scientific…I just follow my artistic sense and it
leads me through this process of discovery. I read a great deal so most of my
work is influenced by reading…I am currently reading a book called “The Tuning
Of The World” by R. Murray Schaefer which is a fascinating view on how society’s
aural landscape has changed and how it has effected people and culture. Very
interesting reading for people working in experimental music…people very often
get locked into thinking of music as ‘having melody.’ This is as absurd as
thinking that all painting has to be realistic or representational. Music is
whatever talks to someone in a non-verbal way.
MJ: You manage the Silent Records label. What are/were the aims for founding the
label and distributing other people’s projects?
KC: I founded Silent Records because I love sound and I wanted Silent to reflect
my aesthetic in sound. There are a few artists that I run across that I think
need to be heard…I have very specific tastes but I know when something has ‘that
quality’. In the beginning I didn’t want Silent to be a vanity label so I made
it a point to release records by other artists and to release my own work
overseas. This was fine until I started to want more control over my work and it
came time to stop putting out other projects before mine…so I try to keep it
50/50. Silent has built a good reputation for itself because of the choices I
make as to what we release. I want Silent to be known for releasing exceptional
work.
MJ: Do you have certain ‘set’ recording equipment?
KC: No, I don’t have any set gear that I use all the time. I do use certain
types of processing in order to achieve my sound but I use whatever I have to in
order to get the sounds I hear onto tape. I have been using my EPS sampler a lot
lately…half the PGR pieces on “Fetish” (split CD with Arcane Device on Silent
Records) were done primarily on the EPS. I sampled all the sounds and then have
them shaped in the sequencer. I found this to be a very interesting way to free
myself from having to use an expensive recording studio but I still have to
interface with one in order to mix and produce my work.
MJ: I think American ‘industrialists’ often view San Francisco as a good area
to launch musical ventures. Do you view it as such and does PGR do live playing?
KC: I moved here from New York City in 1983 where I had been involved in a court
case with my landlord. We lived in a loft on West 19th St. and a
situation was taking place throughout NYC similar to what had happened in SoHo.
So we decided that we had to move once we settled our legal dispute and figure
it was either Hoboken or San Francisco…the choice was obvious. I knew nothing
about industrial music and learned about it by chance through Reyvision
(ex-member of PGR). I did find San Francisco a lot easier to launch projects
in…NYC is too damn expensive and competitive to do anything unless you have a
lot of money…in the space of two years after moving to San Francisco I recorded
three cassettes, and LP and was starting to perform with PGR and Thessalonians.
San Francisco had the reputations as being a renaissance city…it’s strange, but
right after I moved here all of that died. I think it had a lot to do with the
onslaught of AIDS. All that great stuff that we kept hearing about San Francisco
in NYC and then saw a bit of when we visited here in 1982 had vanished right
after we moved here. The city became very conservative for a while, and I found
it difficult to work in this atmosphere. Luckily things have been loosening up
in the past few years. There are places to play and interesting bands forming
again but for a while there it was horrible. PGR does perform on occasion but
doesn’t make it a point to since performing certain pieces live is sometimes
problematic…plus people don’t want to sit and watch minimalist music being
performed, this is something they would rather put on and listen to in their
home.
MJ: Do you consider avant-garde music to be within a finite realm of
possibilities?
KC: That’s a difficult question to answer…human existence is finite so our realm
of perception must also be finite at this point in time. Avant-garde music is
just a small section of the entire spectrum of human creativity…but I think your
question addresses the issue of ‘originality’. I think postmodernism has dealt
with that issue very realistically…and I always find it humorous when people
hold on to try to be ‘original’. This is an outmoded concept…it’s mythology.
MJ: Could you talk about your affinity with Musique Concrete?
KC: I have always enjoyed music and been stimulated by the sounds around me. I
became interested in Musique Concrete while I was still in music school but
hadn’t started composing in the medium until I moved to San Francisco. Before
then I was mostly composing with instruments and electronic sounds…I was more
into synthetic sounds and building my own synthesizers and creating patches on
my analog synth. I have released two pieces from that period but most of what I
was doing at that time I considered to be student work…I struggled long and hard
to push my work into more sophisticated areas…so from Musique Concrete I moved
into minimalism because I wanted to reduce the amount of information in my
music…but I wanted to retain the use of concrete sounds…so I combined my
interests in film sound with minimalism and that’s what I’m doing today.