Industrial Culture

Portal side of Industrial Culture is giving me wonderful opportunities to meet whole range of beautiful world. Dig in deep artistic spaces of different streams and genres. When I received information about profile of American project named Rapid Kangaroo, I started to think what music can hide behind name of so peaceful animal, even when it would be rabid. Main influence of Rabid Kangaroo is the beautiful comedy of everyday life. Musically, based in Palm Springs/San Francisco, California, projects touches experimental music, based on field recording. Like artists is saying, it sounds like everyday life, you just have to listen to hear it. Simultaneously with music, artists is creating video materials to most part of her tracks. It helps a little bit to understand, seize music concept, but also makes a lot of questions and provoke to investigate this project and ask questions. There is short interview in front of you, which is bringing closer Rabid Kangaroo.

You started adventure with music long time ago, in 1981, what you can say about beginnings? How music you played was changing during these years? What happen that you stayed with experimental, concrete music?

This incarnation of Rabid Kangaroo is actually the first musical project that I have stayed with.  Tried coronet in the middle school years and guitar in high school but never stuck with either long enough to gain any skill with them.  In 1981 I started to escape my farming community and started going to San Francisco every weekend to hang in the Punk scene, eventually moved there in ‘82.  Had a couple of fake bands but they were only band names that I would graffiti, Rabid Kangaroo was one of the names I used to graffiti. 

I think it was really important to support the local music scene and it was hard core punk was what was happening  at that time.  I liked some of the early hardcore but it soon became something that I thought was pretty limited.  I supported my friend’s bands but I always liked the artier more experimental stuff. 

My favorite band of that era was Flipper. Flipper was one of those bands who you either loved or you hated.  They were known for loving to annoy the audience.  You never know what to expect at one of their shows.  It could be a wall of noise, or they could play their regular song list. You never know if all the members would show up or who would play what or even if audience members would have to come up and fill in for missing members. 
Flipper put out a 45 with the song “Brainwash” on it.  Brainwash would go into a loop at the end repeating “never mind, forget it.  You wouldn’t understand anyway.”  That would pay continuously until you lifted the needle up.  My rocker friends in Modesto would hate it.  One guy told me he couldn’t be my friend anymore because of that strange stuff I was getting into.  I find it funny that people can get annoyed easily with experimental music and that has definitely been an attraction to it.  “How can you listen to that?”  “That’s not music!”

I can actually trace my interest in experimental music back to my days on the farm.  I grew up in a rural area in the Central Valley of California.  I lived on a farm which my grandparents originally owned.  Our little neighborhood school was a three classroom building serving grades Kindergarten all the way through eighth grade, 50 something students total.  That’s not really the type of place that one might think of as being a hot bed of experimental music exposure.  But one of the teachers showed a film on the future of music.  This educational film showed musicians experimenting with various non traditional instruments and non traditional ways to score the music.  It looked like a lot of fun to my young brain.

At the beginning you started to do video for music you like. What was these works? Did you cooperate with particular artists or just do these videos for fun, for  experience, etc? What happened that you made decision to do video to all your own music?

The first videos that I made were for bands of friends of mine.  I liked the idea of supporting my friends and also supporting relatively lesser known artists; Ghetto Vette, The Afflicted, White Trash Debutantes, The Dicks, The Maggots, Flipper all have a connection to San Francisco and have been a part of my world at one time.  Next came a band, Factrix, which I had never seen and didn’t know anyone in but was also from San Francisco and whose music I liked a lot.  One of the band members, Cole Palme, saw my videos for his band on YouTube.  Just so happened that he was to about to host a video night at a local underground video club and liked my videos a lot and wanted to show them that night.  Due to technical difficulties they were not shown that night but that was my first inkling that people other than my friends liked my work. 

I also made some videos for Christian Death that people seem to appreciate.  The Christian Death videos were a whole lot of fun working with old Cecil B DeMille footage.  I made all of those videos for fun; it was me searching for a creative outlet.  All the work has been on my own except for creative input from my husband who has a keen eye for esthetics and detail.

As far as making videos for my own music, the videos introduced me to making the music.  As I played around with the video, slowing it down, I heard the way the accompanying sounds got warped and I really liked some of the sounds.  I then got the idea in my head that I could record sounds that I found in the everyday world and manipulate them to become some more surreal, love surrealism.  My music is all found sounds that I recorded and manipulated on my computer.  My music is all concrete; it cannot be played live as my musical tools are a digital sound recorder and a laptop.

What is first? Vision in head for video or sound for music track? It is easier for you to do video to music or sounds to moving images?

Most of the time I really don’t know what kind of sounds that I’m going to get until I start listening and manipulating the sounds that I have recorded.  I’ll take a little snippet of sound and start playing around, adding different combinations of effects to see if I can get anything I like from the original raw sound.  I used to name my early works by the original raw sound source.  “Morning Ritual” was my morning routine of shaving and brushing my teeth.  The “Cleanse” series of songs were made from the raw sounds of me washing the dishes.  “Flush” was the sounds of the toilet tank refilling after being flushed.  “Thurston is Afraid of Airplanes” takes the raw sound of a plane flying overhead.  In some of the videos for those songs I recorded me doing the activity that produced the original raw sounds, Cleanse and Morning Ritual.

My creative process is very fluid as to which comes first or which is easier or more fun.  As my craft has evolved the video and audio can come to me connected or separate.  I may have some audio that I think might go really well with certain visual qualities and so I’m try to come up with that video or I may have video that would work well with a certain type of sound.  I play around with this a lot; oftentimes many different audio works will be tried and rejected with different videos until I finally come up with a match that I think works.

Where concept of new videos, music is coming from? I wonder what is the subject of one of your newest works - "Grating on my nerves". What are these balls? What is their symbol?

“Grating on my nerves” is another one of those audio works whose name is a reference to the original raw sound source.  My last apartment had a wall furnace and occasionally I would accidently bump against it.  I noticed some interesting sounds coming from it when I bumped against it.  That led to me playing around with it, me playing music from the wall furnace grate.  I ended up recording the sounds that were produced from my playing with the furnace grate. So the grating in Grating on my Nerves is actually a reference to the furnace grate.  The hanging bowling balls in the video come from the Noah Purifoy art compound up in Joshua Tree, California.  Noah Purifoy was an artist who created sculpture from found objects; he was connected with the Watts Tower project in Los Angeles.  He passed on some years back but you can still go and visit his compound in Joshua Tree that has been left to naturally decay on its own.  There is still a lot of great work there that I hope to work into another video that is being put together right now.  So back to the bowling balls, he has an installation there that seems to me to be a play on the desk top toy of the hanging balls that bang against each other.  There was probably something grating on my nerves too at the same time as I put that audio and visual together but I can’t remember what it was.

Your music is from experimental, drone and concrete music borders. It is not easy to listen but you said that one of inspiration is the beautiful comedy of everyday life and your music sounds like everyday life. How is your life than? Sometimes your music is monochromatic, gloomy (like "Thurston is afraid of airplanes"), a little mechanical like "The in between world" and sometimes like from outerspace, colorful in "Midsummer mesquite murder". Do you enjoy variety of surrounding world? How can we meet your life between your tunes?

Like I mentioned earlier my music all comes from sounds that we hear in our everyday life, which is what my reference to the beautiful comedy of everyday life.  I also think that we need a sense of humor in all parts of our lives.  And even though my music can sound dark and abrasive at times there is a humor underlying it all.  My life is pretty good right now, sure there are things I would like to change about it but basically life is good.  I have a husband who I love that loves me back.  I have a job that I get a nice satisfaction from that gives me the feeling that I am helping in the betterment of my fellow humankind.  Specifically “Thurston” was about a feral cat that we were taking care of.  My husband goes out to feed it one morning and we found it dead.  It was murdered by our neighbor’s mean dog.  We had been worried about those dogs and the feared did happen.  “Mesquite Murder” is about the big mesquite tree in our backyard that we had to have taken down.  We, or at least I, felt like we were murdering the poor tree.    We try to help everything live its life to the fullest.

Along the lines of hard to listen to my favorite is Iannis Xenakis.  I first got exposed to him when I found one of his CDs in the garage at an old apartment building that I used to live in.  The apartment was full of hipsters in a hipster neighborhood.  Guess Iannis Xenakis was too annoying for which ever hipster throw it in the garbage.  It was titled “iannis xenakis 2, la legend d’eer.” It is the very tonal one with the high pitched tones that just sort of droned on.  My roommates used to hate it when I played it.  And of course it sounded better loud.  Gotta love that annoying music.  Something about it just sorts of jives and gives me a sense of peace and calm.  I’ve always been attracted to extremes, extreme beauty to extremes ugliness.  It all has its richness.

What about your releases? Do you plan to release something in CD or DVD format? What do you think about net (free or paid) releases to download?

I currently don’t have any plans to release anything in CD or DVD format.  Of course I have some of my stuff on CD and DVD for my personal use but haven’t done any mass production of it.  I have thought that I might want to sneak some of my work into the big record store here  and leave it in the Noise section and mark it FREE and leave my email on it.  I’m curious to see if anyone will pick it up and will send me a reply.
Net releases seem to be the way to go.  Personally I really like to have a hard copy with the original cover artwork but I realize that I am a dinosaur and those days of CDs and DVDs are quickly going away.  If I was ever to make any money off of my art I suppose I would put it back into the art by buying better software and new tools.  Would love to have a new video camera.

You gained master's degree in counseling psychology. How does it help you in creation, selection of expression media, whole artistic concept?

Probably the only affect my degree in psychology would have on my artistic expression is that now I have names for the weirdness that I see in the world and myself. 
One of my professors in undergrad gave me a recording that was supposed to represent the voices that schizophrenics hear. Something like that though would me much too dark and scary for me to use. 

You wrote on your profile that you miss kangaroo rats. Why? What is so special and unique in these little creatures?

The comment about missing the kangaroo rats is a reference to missing my husband.  Circumstances currently dictate that we have a long distance relationship.  I’m in San Francisco most of the time and he’s in Palm Springs most of the time.  There are kangaroo rats living in our yard down in Palm Springs.  Actually can’t say I’ve ever seen one.

There is quite popular action in UK about donation for spreading clean and fresh water between children in Africa. What do you think about charitable actions like this - you pay 2 GBP a month, don't care what is going next with money, these kids. How we can make situation better on Earth? Do empty donating, without education of society can help? Or just let these kids die not because of dehydration but diseases like AIDS, etc. What do you think? Whar ordinary person can do for better life on Earth?

Okay, this question sounds like a hot button issue… I work in a helping profession, concern about the betterment of the individual and society at large is the core of what I do. I am on the front lines working with adolescents in need and though  I am underpaid for the amount of education that I have but the personal  job satisfaction that I am having a positive effect in so many lives keeps me happy in my job.  I really don’t know anything about the clean water efforts but I would like to encourage people to be kind and generous in their daily interactions, you have the most effect on those who you actually are able to interact with.  Like I said I don’t know anything about the mentioned charities but I do try to be selective about the charities that I do donate to, I want to make sure that the money actually goes to what it is supposed to go.  I do occasionally give money to panhandlers; I like the idea of giving it directly to the person in need rather than going through an organization to do it.

Rabid Kangaroo - Grating On My Nerves
Video of Noah Purifoy's hanging bowling balls up in Joshua Tree put to Rabid Kangaroo's "Grating On My Nerves"


Rabid Kangaroo @ Myspace
Rabid Kangaroo @ Youtube