Music: Obscured By Clouds Interview

Our Take: Go Here - http://www.cosmosgaming.com/articles.php?id=107&articletype=feature

Obscured By Clouds is a progressive/psychedelic rock band that has been around in various forms since the late 90's.  Their latest release Psycheclectic came out in January and has been receiving acclaim from reviewers and listeners.  I had the chance to speak with vocalist/guitarist William Weikart about the band's history, tour plans, and the album itself.  Mr. Weikart provided Cosmos Gaming with what is easily one of our longest interviews to date, but it is also one of the most interesting we've hosted on our site.

Q: Tell us a little bit about Obscured By Clouds and how the project came to be as it is today?

Hello Chris!

My first solo project was called The Madcap Laughs.  So I have no problem separating and combining my identity from the legacy of homage.  Obscured By Clouds came about soon after.  Originally the band was a three piece with me on acoustic guitar, Ray Woods on synthesizers and oscillators, and Roger Feibel on congas.  The Bleed album and the song Bleed (1997) was an all acoustic presentation of my original song 'Bleed' which we have re-recorded and now perform live at our shows.  This album was something I wanted to do since I was a kid.  It fell into the Cirrus Minor era sound of early Floyd, and maybe something off of King Crimson's song Confusion Shall Be My Epitaph...in our humble way.  We also did early Floyd, Zep, and Doors lesser known and purposefully weirder early obscure covers.  The new material however, is all originals -and that is why it seems there are so many band recombinant amalgams people are coming up with for our sound similarities...

We originally were just trying to reach a microcosmic audience, people just like us who loved obscure 'B' sides of music history -and the less than commercially utilized music that held so much more individuation and meaning in music.  We thought by playing early Floyd which is inherently weird and not an easy listen, that we would meet the very few people just like us who like that sort of thing.  We were not interested in popularity or projecting a narcissistic ego onto people -we sought unity and balance of ego in this effort of a band.  We did not wish to throw a television of our hotel balcony or die of an overdose of pride in the womb of self-same vanity.

Shindig! out of the UK actually compared us to Soundgarden...so by god we'll take that, even though that is quite a huge gap to circumnavigate...

The Obscured By Clouds namesake is a very formless name with an ultimacy of vagueness and mysteriousness.  The mysterious connection of the amorphous unconditioned obscuring clouds is an ouk ontic combination of the vast spectrum from the lightness and darkness.  If you go back to origin with your impression of music and its formlessness in the symbolic world of meaning to you as a listener, there are a number of singularities you may follow in your musical belief system.  Ontic being the really real, the actual, and or the assumed factual existence of being has two major sources.  The reference of the music continuum could be to the "ouk ontic" from the non being of the absolute, or from the "me ontic" the perspective of the non being of the relative or problematic.  The "me ontic" viewpoint of music in my opinion is constantly distorted by humans as listeners and this may be why we do not see the music as a continuum and can let music flourish.  There is a relationship with the past and future of music, and we do not need to negate the past to create the future.  This is the danger of "me ontic" thinking.  Many people understand the role of homage as the legacy of film and music in our edge of the universes' history.  All the history of film displays it's hidden continuity if you know where to look in the form of honor and homage of the human legacy of music and film.  Great music-writers and filmmakers work all intertwines as there is an ultimate singularity with which we all connect, and this undeniably cannot be negated.  After all, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council were the namesakes of our namesake...therefore Pink Floyd understood and respected homage by naming themselves after two musicians.  I am sure their heart is in the right place regarding that, as is our amorphous homage of them.

After going from doing early Floyd, Zeppelin, Barrett, Doors, and Crimson covers, I also was simultaneously writing original material.  I was hoping to have help from the original OBC band in writing music, but it was not producing original music and required a final produced piece instead of steadfastly seeking form out of the universe of the eternal jam.  I decided that I would have to write the music myself so it would get done, and proceeded to write all the new material and brought people in one at a time to fill in their instrument performances as needed.  I would build click tracks, and over lay a rough acoustic guitar, then vocals, then a better performed version of both, then electric guitars, then drums, then synth parts I wrote, then guitar solos as needed.  Then I brought in bass and more synthesizers and sitars.  It was the long hard road of piecemeal recording and writing over a few years.  Recording has only just become affordable for an individual in the last five years, that one could produce a higher quality production from someone's basement.  We used great preamps and 24 bit 48k systems to record which would have cost many thousands to buy, and even more to use these gadgets over the time we required to build the performances and the songs instead of in a pay as you go studio.  The CD is a testament to the modern age of recording, and has been critiqued as being of stadium quality recording style -yet really all of which was accomplished on a teeny-tiny budget of about ~.005% of what Pink Floyd's early fabulous budgets were, respectfully.  We also have people lost in the self-same want to stack us up against Pink Floyd saying that Pink Floyd is an easy listen.  No way, "unconsciously blind person columnist" of self-same origin, early Floyd was most certainly if anything, not an easy listen; and neither is my album.  No easy listening here.  We wanted weird and complex. And the new music is influenced by my entire musical palette, and not just the Floyd alone -so no, we are not trying to emulate Pink Floyd here.  We love 'em, but not here, this is me now.  I would have to rewrite the album to match and mirror Floyd, so I'll save that for when I want to duplicate something that may not really require duplication.  When I play a cover, I want to celebrate the artists and the music in my own form of inculcation to exude their shine through me.  But this is the lock down thinking of the mother archetype in the self-same blame game that does not materialize for me.  Those issues are about the people trapped in that great big dysfunctional mystery about themselves they cannot unwind or truly see.  So they project their neurosis onto you.

In the studio for this newest CD, we took the sessions that were primarily performed in my home living room and in my basement on a hill into ProTools through a few choice vintage preamps and a couple newly advanced preamps.  During the final mixing sessions at Supernatural the studio in Oregon City, Oregon we used; we had more options for mixing the raw tracks.  We took many of the tracks and dropped them onto a vintage two-inch tape machine to get the harmonic saturation that gives you the warmth we know of various genres' sound -and we were going through thick and juicy preamps of a 36 channel API board... We also spun the tape backwards with some tracks manually slowing, stopping, starting the tape to add that extra psyche-delic dimension shift, as is our want.  So the amalgam you are digging here these days is a blend of the old and new, the weird and provocatively sentient, the lyrically non-repetitive and of extended duration; and the depth of intent, form, formlessness, and meaning we require in our commitment.

How can you really negate the past or the future to function to attempt to achieve the retro meets the unconditioned new being of sound?  ...Which is not your question -- but the integration of ideas outside our formality of routine or beyond the corner of our perception are exactly where all the unknown and unspoken dwells -that is where all the great content is if you can get past all of your own limitations to reach it as a musician/creator.  Or perhaps contained within your courage to be in the world, and your ability to convert people who cannot let go as much as you can in this way, to distantly reach the sound you need to drive the vehicle of music as far out into the unknown.  However, the modern iteration of unconscious fear and unconscious rage tend to drive people these days, and egos are out of control -and some of these enraged, fearful, narcissistic souls are running our institutions into the ground including music.  I would suggest instead we ought to stop the ship before we dash it on the rocks -as this is how songs are not written in this vast dysfunction we are all perpetrating upon each other.  People now privilege conflict and competition over compassion in the split of control throughout the world.  This sort of limited thinking is a battle against the self-same and their habitual use of the weapon negation wielded by an unconscious collective.  I wish it were different, but the dysfunction is deeply systemic and is linked to all people and the role of suffering in the world.  We are accepted in our un-acceptance of our music and stranger writing style.  Either way we won't privilege non-being, being over beings, or other forms of meontic limitations.  People may see that our music and lyrics are trying to transcend these limitations together with our audience; that the meaninglessness of negation and the lock step of the commonality of acceptance may reduce musics' potential and azimuth of continuum.  Obscured By Clouds is devout in our intrigue of new sound and new technology; and we will always do our damndest to produce new insight and unique methods of integrating new technology into our music and writing style.  We accept our long road, but do not tolerate much of the unconscious collective anymore, we have individuated out of that realm of limitations after many, many years of suffering through the meontic rule of the herd.  And now we are free enough to let go, and be.  No limitations are of interest to me anymore.

Q: I notice on your Myspace page that you have a couple shows lined up?  Who are you playing with and how do you feel they fit in with your style of music?  Also, are there any plans for any full scale tours?

Obscured By Clouds 2009-2010 Tour Dates:
-    AUG 28 2009 Whisky a Go-Go!!! Los Angeles, CA Friday Night!     
-    JULY 29 2009 Studio Seven Seattle, WA.
-    JULY 3 2009 The Comet Tavern Seattle, WA.  WitchBurn, Valis, and Stone Axe.
-    JULY 1 2009 Dante's Obscured By Clouds w/ Echo Helstrom, Love Grenades & ARZ.
-    JUNE 26 2009 Columbia City Theater Seattle, WA Friday Night! w/ Echo Helstrom & Dream Tiger.
-    JUNE 6, 2009 6:00 PM (EST) RADIO Interview: WSHC 89.7 West Virginia w/ Olivia Maxwell.
-    MAY 3, 2009 Ash Street Saloon Obscured By Clouds w-Valerie Orth/Alexis Harte.
-    MAY 2009 Honda Motors pick two Obscured By Clouds songs to their global music widget to be heard by 120 million estimated listeners worldwide!
-    APRIL 2009 Review in Classic Rock Magazine, London.
-    APRIL 20, 2009 Interview in Progression Magazine.
-    MARCH 2009 Interview in Ink19.
-    JAN 22, 2009 Columbia City Music Theater Seattle, WA.
-    AUG 22, 2008 Friday The Aladdin Theater Portland, OR Obscured By Clouds CD release party.
-    AUG 21, 2008 Music Millennium (East) Free In-Store Performance Portland, OR.
-    AUG 20, 2008 8 PM KNRK 94.7 Radio Portland, OR played our new CD.
-    AUG 10, 2008 10 PM KUFO 101.1 CLASSIC ROCK Radio Portland, Viva-La-Luna Show w/Lisa Wood.
-    More Info: Obscuredbyclouds.net.

People tend to worship phenomenon these days, so you have to appease their impression before booking follows as it seems.  Also, every year seemingly people tend to erase your history, in life, work, and in music.  This dysfunction limits people as strength actually comes from creating, not getting dragged down by people.  You have to prove your viability all over again each and every year.  This meontic weight of this dysfunction is too smothering -it is more an expression of people projecting their unconscious fear than any functional actualize commitment to create a vibrant musical epoch.  It is a very shortsighted herding instinct I feel from an unconscious collective.  Luckily, we have been getting bigger and bigger gigs, and now on Friday and Saturday nights.  We are working with Voyager One, Sky Cries Mary has echoed their interest, and bands like WitchBurn and Echo Helstrom among others.  We have to celebrate more, and let our identities not dwell on the self-same or unconscious anger -it is a better way.  It is not idolatry or elitism either -it is just good thought along the right path to fruition of actualized purpose.  We are straddling quite a few genres at the moment with radio and media interest: Classic Rock, Alternative Rock, Progressive Rock and Psychedelic Rock. Yum.  I'll take that, governor!    We have radio play on Alternative Rock/Pop Radio, Classic Rock Radio, and Progressive Rock Radio.  So we like being a multi-genre straddling music's continuum.  I like all the formlessness and amorphousness that we can obscure a genre or two with the shadow of our floating clouds.  Or perhaps the people standing with the feet rooted on the earth can catch a glimmer of our waning and glowing penumbra.

We have shows now at some of the best places to play on the west coast for a humble band.  We don't need much more than that in our microcosmic tour.  We would rather play to a more intimate and audience and hang out to connect with you, rather then hide behind how important we would mistakenly think we should be comparatively.  The value for musician's can produce today is to be a inclusionary resource and a simultaneous  participant of connectivity with people to stand against this post modern phenomenological adversity of the repression by institutions against individuals and individuation.  People worship phenomenon and the herd too much.  You cannot connect when you project, feel and behave like this.  That is why we seek the radical transcendent personality in music, we wish to overcome these limitations with our listeners and musicians, in that moment where we feel their presence in our music and vice versa -that is the vibe we all seek.  We all want that unspoken actualized transcendence in music.

Q: While we're speaking of concerts, what is the typical live Obscured By Clouds show like?

On June 26th Friday night the director lighting/lasers for Australian Floyd will be hovering three dimensional out of body evoking and formless images over our heads, and he will be bringing thousands of dollars worth of the newest technologically advanced lighting and lasers for our next show at the Columbia City Theater in Seattle, WA where they will film the show with a three camera shoot.  In the beautiful old theater with great vintage wood work and facade.  Chris Cornell, Jimi Hendrix, and Amy Mann played there according to their history.  We may release that recording as a DVD.  This Lase Guru Gentleman tells me he is responsible for the programming most of the Laser Floyd shows around the US at Planetariums and Museums of Science & Industry, and builds the dam lasers too.  He's done lights for Burning Man and all kinds of amazing events.  Who would not want to come and hang out and have a microbrew here I ask you?

The show at The Aladdin Theater in Portland we had a 20' x 30' screen with all manner of lighting and video trickery we could muster being projected in High Definition, in more ways than one.  There were live images and video manipulated on the screen based upon a story board for using motion imagery along with fractals and other AV affects loaded into a high definition computer projection system, and the cinematic images were all manipulated real time during the show.  So, yes we almost always bring along some visual elements to our shows as we can afford on our independent format budget with Psycheclectic Records.

So we are doing everything we can to show you a good time if you want to come hang with us...  Please spread the word that the synesthesia (folding over of sight as audible, and auditory as visual imagery) will be poignantly recreated at almost every show.  Mind your brains please.  All we need is about 200 folks regularly to come and we can do this more consistently, spend even more on lights, and still maintain our microcosm of connectivity.

Q: Your newest record, Psycheclectic has been out since January.  What has the general reception been like?

We have some great interest on radio, an international following with some commercial publishing interest from Honda & Yahoo which is nice.  Also we are playing the Whisky a Go-Go Friday night August 28th, so we are damn excited.  We also have Friday night at The Columbia City Theater June 26th coming up soon I mentioned.  We are now finalizing dates in Portland at the best clubs in town, which we are very pleased to finally achieve.

We have been compared to Mastodon and Type O Negative by the Classic Rock Magazine (UK- April 2009) and we have also been compared to Soundgarden by Shindig! (UK) -- so our UK ilky-kinship that we can never quite pine enough for is in tact for the moment.  We'll take it!   In America's Creem Magazine they wrote a great review too for our historical legacy, and we can write that on our gravestones.  The band of geniuses at Blog Critics have helped greatly too -their reviews ended up in the Seattle Examiner Online.  So you rarely will catch me complaining much, but I am not standing down in my individualist essence. But damn, let's go get a fucking microbrew!  This is good enough for my humble appetite.  I don't need to throw a television off a balcony.

My songs were selected to appear on a Honda Motors music player streaming widget advertising their product with the use of our songs.  Honda is estimating 120 million listeners to hear our music.  So that sounds fabulous to us...it is streaming only of course, not downloading.  Like that would stop anyone anyway... It is great when companies provide benevolent support in sharing a band's music and taking care of the music provider/creator.  We could not reach 120 million listeners on our own with our indie budget no matter how hard I worked. There are some things money can't buy, and for that we go back to the very first currency in the human condition -- 'goodwill' is worth twice the price!

We have five interviews published or soon to be: Progression Magazine, INK19, BlogCritics, Expose, Local Paper stuff, and a few others still developing.  So we are very enthused about that.  Also we have a radio interview in June.

A few rare people do get lost in the self-same blame game of the Floydian (Anderson-Council) namesake and also our critiqued coliseum sound (achieved with .005% of Pink Floyd's worthy budget) or what era of Floyd we momentarily may be slipping into relative to the price of tea in China, and for those that like tea.  In life people tend to deny their role in distorting the world.  Many reviewers privilege being over beings, so you are left with absolutes and archetypical projections from a neurotic mind that have nothing to do with the music; and tends to be a match and mirroring session relative to some obstruction in logic.  This is not who we are, we offer vastly more purposeful intent than any form of negation opposing our very hard work.  It often takes many years cumulatively to complete a CD, and a review can be written in minutes.  There seems to be an offset of relative depth of commitment that is often distorted in this sense of music's stewardship or meaningfulness.  People who write a review in fifteen minutes trying to make themselves look better than the band are clueless to all the work any band has done to even get their recording completed, often.  This distortion card is played too often.  What is good in music is what we as listeners need to be focusing upon.  The ability to negate is too easy and often the weapon of people today -what you like and why you like it is all that holds meaning.  Listening to someone complain may feel good in an elitist phenomenological distortion, but it won't produce any results ultimately.  And no, one is not cool because they slam someone.  That is all meaningless projection of the ego, there is no actual content that builds the creative process of music.  Negation is not creative, it is negating the realm of creation.

In short answer form, I am pleased with a far and away majority of support from written media, commercial and non-commercial radio, eventually leading us to play at The Whisky a Go-Go on Friday night August 28th...  We have some commercial publishing from a Honda and Yahoo who liked our music -so publishing is good.  We also have been invited to play at a five star Asian hotel all expenses paid...  So, we are humbly enthused with our music and impact these days.

As a group of guys in a band who work together regularly, by some miracle we are having a great fucking time -so I am pleased with that most of all.  In a way it does not matter what anyone thinks as you may know in life.  We are enjoying ourselves and the music so much, we have a hard time beating ourselves up about anything else outside this experience.  That is the power of a band to know the truth of the experience inside the band verses the distortions outside the band.  What goes on in our microcosm of music holds huge dimensions relative to any minor slighted publicity distortion comparatively to our depth of focus upon the work required for such major disciplines in life like music; and the amount of meaningful connections we experience inside the construct of just five players pushing as far as they can go musically -- it is all a very satisfying way of life apart from all else.  So the limitations of negation are meaningless, truly.  We all do plenty of work with our businesses, other work, travel, and life -but music we make has a pre-formed experience waiting to happen; and that is the dynamic I am pleased to see transform in our music to transcend all the other limitations in life.

The album just had to be written regardless of whether the falling tree in the forest can be heard by post modernists and phenomenologist.  The inherent meaning of whether we recognize the relationship of the listener to the falling tree in some ways does not matter.  I do not need to privilege non-beings over non-being, as negation is meaningless -I do not need to negate the negators to justify myself.  When we were able to connect with people, the vast majority of the reviews are very good in my humble opinion.

Q: How long did Psycheclectic take to write and record, and how does the general writing process work for your band?

Psycheclectic began as a label and an idea that the cinematic quality of music and its somewhat indefinable impact upon our psyche is what is most illusive.  We feel a synesthetic impact when we listen to music, and it is not limited to a pharmakinetic overlay, so the portamento of psychedlic and eclectic with the use of the psyche and eclecticism's psychic impact seems to be the curious amalgam.  There is not much history in the way of a word that is trademark pending "Psycheclectic" I invented for my record company and purpose that describes the unspoken, re-interpreted, and integrated impact music, film, and literature have upon the psyche.

I wrote the song Bleed for the first album never officially released with a UPC symbol, but copyrighted in 1998.  Since then I had been playing with song writing but not able to afford the expensive process of recording music until the total costs of recording fell under the $10,000 range.  So buying and borrowing equipment I was able to force out about eight songs in about a year.  I completely indulged in building on one song and do as much as I could and then going on to the next song, eventually coming back to the other songs as I desired by inspiration, not any formal work week methodology.  I was not like those writers who get up at 6 AM and write every morning.  I believe fully in recording only when inspired.  Then I abandoned most of that and started over again from scratch as I was just better at it by then.  By that time I could lay tracks like breathing.  I recorded about twenty songs then in about a year.  Almost all the songs seem to start on an acoustic, except for just a few.  There is an acoustic guitar part on almost all the songs, even if it is buried.  I then would lay my lyrics down, or if they were not developed yet I would lay down some vocal to add to the strangeness.  Sometimes making mistakes or choosing strange effects or synthesizer sounds can push the meaning out in directions you never expected.  If I did not have the new sounds grow on me, they would be left out of the song.  The whole formlessness of this anarchical writing style induces a whole new format and meaning that you then must requite back into the frame of meaning.   So sometimes I would chase the rabbit down the hole to see where it led.  I then would add strange guitar sounds, guitar effects and other experimentation to add atmospheres of the unconditioned and uncommon sounds of today's standard.

You chose to release Psycheclectic through your own label, Psycheclectic Records.  What advantages does this offer you, and what distribution methods are you Making use of to ensure that listeners are able to hear your music?

People may not be aware that music, individual rights, and individuals are being limited vs. institutions the new super citizens of the new world order-lessness.  There are not too many label's out there signing new music.  Some labels are even virtually building the groups and writing the songs themselves, big mistake.  The deals are often in the form of a loan, and may not be handled functionally by a label, media, or any of other limitations people invent for themselves.  Often the passive aggression of an unconscious staff may sink your new album by default, or some passive aggressive punishment for asking the wrong question of someone waiting to entropic-ly sit on you in a self-same blame game.  I cover more costs than your standard small indie label, and I keep all my rights as do the other musicians on the label.  There is only a fixed time period I have some small percentage of rights, and then those few rights revert back to the writer soon enough.  So unless I can see a budget that is functional, a team I trust, and an unparalleled enthusiasm as my own -I am very confident I will not drop the ball.  And I can hire experts to do the various required aspects of releasing music on a label, just like a label does.  Relationships last about six months in music today unfortunately because people are always moving, leaving, or being smothered by people who care more about themselves than the people with which they work.  So you have to find the man/woman of the day to keep current.  Post Moderns and Phenomenologists are destroying the meaning of history and legacy through the worship of what they call true difference...so there are not many historical relationships any more as a result.  This modern thought is trickling down hill, and you know what else flows down hill?

A major social website had a deal recently where the music you submitted or that was selected will be irrevocably available for their use -so we need to watch out for institutions who live in imperpetuity.  They have seemingly outsourced their ethics to vague treaties in distant lands far away from your personal island of goodwill.  But you are supposed to worship the institutions?  Careful, there is really no one person standing behind that curtain watching out for you.  They are watching out for their stockholders or constituents, unfortunately -the emperor wears no clothes.

The advantage to building your own scene and distribution channels are that people see you as a door instead of a wall.  You can integrate better with the powers that be and the systems that limit.  Our commitment at Psycheclectic is inclusion and belief in a world of abundance where the sun is rising not setting.  We have built our distribution channels, a list of tastemakers who want to hear our music first, and a growing knowledge base of the business world of music.  I have personal home phone numbers, names and addresses to send music to for major radio, labels, and other tastemakers that are still here.  I can get music heard right away.

Distribution is easy these days for everyone, the problem is being supported by the distributor after you sign up.  Middlemen can create more limitations than they are worth sometimes.  So it is important that the distributor not negate you against their top line music sales.  Maybe a distributor sells 70% of their product from 10% of their musicians -- and they all too readily treat the 30% of their revenue from 90% of their back catalog musicians as the vessel to contain their unconscious rage and blame game target.  So even though collectively you as an individual may represent 30% of their income as a category in their catalog, they may split off your identity as meaningless.  Why?  Because their pride, success, and identity are connected to the 10% of the musicians who sold 70% of their revenue/income, and not the 90% of musicians that only sold 30% of his/her revenue/income.  Yeah, people notoriously privilege being over beings.  This is why there is suffering in the world.  We are all dumb like that.  It does not really make us cool to negate people.

The problem is many of your standard distribution companies negate their lesser musicians only by volume of sales (which they may) in that 90% of their catalog they chase away, minimize, and unconscionably negate most of the people in their catalog; they are being terrible stewards of humans and their music.  They are privileging their own self importance over 90% of their catalog.  Why piss off 90% of your catalog?  Don't they think that the 90% who create only 30% of their revenue do not speak to anyone?  Sometimes they do not.  So it is quintessentially important you find a distributor who is supportive of you as a condition of their promise to you, not a distributor who entices you to join and then never supports you after they have you.   Avoid the attrition and entropy marketers who playing you against a numbers game with a stacked deck.

Q: Are there any plans to turn Psycheclectic Records into a traditional label With other signed acts, or will it primarily be used for Obscured By Clouds?

Uh, there are other signed acts.  *sigh*  The tree that falls in the wilderness, has no history of falling either.  James Angell's Private Player (Way back in yesteryear 2002) was the first official release for the label.  We had great success with performance/interviews on KCRW with Chris Douridas and WNYC with John Schafer.  John Taylor from Power Station/Duran Duran joined the band!!!  What else do you want for a first release on a new label?  How many indie labels can say that?   I released James Angell's first CD on my record label Psycheclectic Records in 2002 and his album received 4 1/2 Stars from All Music Guide and they called it the underground classic of 2002.  There were great reviews of praise from The New Yorker Magazine, Magnet, Alt Press, all culminating in a sold out show at the release -you can see this on Psycheclectic.com.   I booked several radio live performance/interviews with WYNC Manhattan / KCRW LA / XM Satellite D.C. and gigs in Los Angeles.  There were many shows in and New York City at The Knitting Factory, and The Fez on Time Square and our A&R friend from Elektra brought along John Taylor (Power Station/Duran Duran) who joined James Angell signed to my humble label.  Also there were shows in Los Angeles right after the airing of the KCRW interview/live performances.   I also created the opportunity for James to open for Chris Isaak at a large amphitheater in Oregon in front of thousands of people.  So for a debut label, debut release I think I did good work, not bad when no major label would pick up the record, without much insight to the vast beauty and transcendent musicianship the album contains.  We personally met with and spoke with at least five or six A&R/VP and some Presidents of the largest record companies and publishers in the world...the music was just too bloody good and weird for 2002.  Maybe 2012 they will be ready for it, if not then by 2112.

The next band I signed to my label Garmonbozia was recently signed to SubPop under another name -so my taste is good, and I like the musical uniqueness from the bands I select.  I prefer more challenging creative music that requires an above average attention span to absorb.  I am unlike almost all other small indie labels in the industry, and do more than many, and pay more into support of marketing than many small indie labels do.

I've heard that you are influenced by older progressive rock acts such as Pink Floyd, are you influenced by some of the newer ones as well?  I can definitely hear a Porcupine Tree/IQ influence at times.
Progression Magazine is one of the quintessential progressive rock magazines of this microcosm in the US if not the world, we just were interviewed there thankfully.  We also have an interview coming out soon in Expose which is the only other major progressive magazine in the US.  So we love being in several genres.  They have been talking about an interview thankfully since our first release Bleed and finally now came through.

I have heard Porcupine Tree and Spock's Beard -they do great work and there is a great chasm of discovery there.  I have to admit that though I respect their work I have not been influenced by them, yet -and I very much would love to work with them, collaborate, or tour with them in future.  So put in a good word for us...let 'em know we want to hang out and celebrate.  But it must be third party Floydism tracing back to the Floydium Singularity to which we all have a Psycheclectic reference.  That may be the place you are hearing our similar echoes from, underneath the waves in the labyrinths of coral caves.

Q: Our website covers video games in addition to music?  Do you play any video games, and if so what do you like to play?

I have played some marathon sessions of various games and the next thing I knew the sun was coming up.  So yeah, I like them.  I may not play as often, but it is a great escape, it is very much like actualized cinema from a personal perspective.

I think Halo 3 is brilliant, and I was playing Left 4 Dead with my nephews recently. I bought my nephews the Xbox360 year's subscription online, so I will have to cope with my introduction to that version of Halo and it's impact on their life.  They will undoubtedly blame me for all the years of their life they will trade for a virtual existence in the virtual world -Ha Haaaa!  But it is fun as hell, and in some ways it bridges the gap of the typical limitations of humans interacting by supercharging the human condition into survival mode -in some ways it makes us more human than human.  People seek this connection through the violence to find meaning in themselves and their survival.  It can be redeeming too, and bloody.  I like it.

Our drummer Jeff Norton is really into gaming and has his favorites. Madden, and all other sports and racing games.

I do like Wii, PS3, and Xbox360 along with computer based games.  I have only briefly played PS3.

Kevin Cozad our keyboardist plays PS3 & Wii, and likes Madden Football, Soccer, and SciFi.

I think the other manufactures will eventually translate to a more physical virtual experience by drawing on human physical interaction like Wii has piloted.  If only Wii were high definition and had more games like Halo 3 or other shooting/survival style games.  For Wii I like Need for Speed, designing mutant Wii's, Ninja Reflex, Metroid, Red Steel...and the Wii board too. Rockband is great especially with the biofeedback loop of pitch, rhythm and timing -it actually helped me improve my singing a little I would say.

Relative to Wii's rock band; some sound engineers and audiences seemingly do not understand that monitors on stage that only the musicians hear are quieter than the PA, and often the on stage monitors are not mixed correctly so you cannot have the biofeedback loop of hearing all the band playing and the vocals in the onstage monitors, especially if you are having problems with the engineer, the equipment, or both.  Musicians stand behind the PA, therefore they can only here the 1 second delay bounce of the music off the back wall of the venue.  Some engineers seem to think that musicians are like bats and do not need to hear the music to fly...wrong.  That is why Rock band is so functional -it helps people visualize the impact of their effect relative to the music they hear.  This is why hearing yourself and the other instruments are absolutely necessary for a great show to take place.  Still, many sound engineers do not care about this, but when you find one that does -they are genius and invaluable!

I have to confess I try not to get too deep into playing video games too much, but I still play -- as recording music is almost exactly like playing a video game -except respectfully you do have a little more to show for it when the sun comes up the next morning.  You do cross that blood-brain barrier of the virtual world in the computer driven recording sessions, just like that video game buzz you get.  But sitting there recording with your friends on the computer is the ultimate video game in some ways.  Playing has its own rewards, but combining play and work with the creative process is the ultimate gaming result.

Q: If you were able to put Obscured By Clouds' music into a video game, movie, or television show which would you choose and what particular genre/theme of video game, movie, or TV show would you feel would fit the best?

I think our music is phatasmagorphic and anthropomorphic so it readily translates to the otherworldly.  For example, my piece that is vaguely cinematic called "The Drip Feed" is fairly scary to the average listener and could be a very thick cinematic undertow for back ground music in film, gaming, or television.  The piece builds in an easily endless repeating segue for almost any fantasy/future or robotic android virtual beings.  Our music could be appropriate for racing, spying, dismembering, warring or haunting.  I think for racing (Honda) and flying games we have all the adrenaline necessary to keep you amped up and blood thirsty.  Even in the realm of the "E-velle" zombie/undead and penultimate demonic themes, and the use of choice weaponry and armory that dispatches beings into the netherworld along with the quick and the dead in a brutish and painful demise.  Buckets of blood, decapitation, severed limbs, pulverized organs and brain splattering carnage does not frighten us, much.  It is the unseen unturned zombie that always worries me, you know the sickness of the mind unseen, or the preconditioned robotic drone who wants to send my genetic map into the matrix for breeding purposes...poor little Billy.

We would love to write music specifically made for a specific game and/or a specific film -it would be incredibly inspiring to have a rough format to visualize and write directly to the effect and affect the storyboard and sequences necessarily to push the game over the edge into the unimaginably transcendent or descendant -music can make a game or film ten times better than it is with the efficacious emotional, musical, and soundtrack impact.  I would envision creating sounds and music no one had ever heard before.  I would pull in fabulous distortions of sound from all sources possible and use heavily manipulated sounds to freak people out as to the bizarre origin of such sonic imagery.  

When I wrote Psychecelctic I already created a storyboard -so in a way it is written as an audible film.  I love Stanley Kubrick & Terry Gilliam, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, and M. Night Shyamalan to name just a few directors; so film has always been in my realm of interest and music for film, like the film Baraka, one of my favorites.  The storyboard I made for the CD "Psycheclectic" was about forty frames long and contained lyrics, symbolic archetypical images, and thematic congruencies among the songs as to how they were connected.  And then the segues also had murmured dialogue almost subconsciously quiet relating to the songs.  So there are many degrees, atmospheres and layers to that new album.  If you listen there is a woman whispering throughout many of the songs and segues buried almost in the subconscious.  The Drip Feed piece actually had dialogue between a computer and a human, my PC Computer's voice was saying lines I programmed in discussion with my drummer Thee Slayer Hippy.  This dialogue was removed for its potentially offensive nature, but you can still find that version on our website hidden.

There is room to go both directions with this music.  But it would be easier to know the intent of the film and write the music to it than to overlay songs unless the parallels were obvious.  Both could be done -but I would love to write music to film and games; the songs would be unearthly, I promise.  If Honda or Yahoo or other organizations want to utilize our music; we would be very interested, which they already have utilized our music.

For more information on Obscured By Clouds visit their website at http://www.obscuredbyclouds.net

Chris Dahlberg
July 29, 2009