MySpace is full of stay-at-home guitarists trying to get people to listen to their music. Most of them are nothing to write home about, but every now and then you come across somebody with chops who is also willing to take risks. The latter scenario is what introduced me to Pete Peterson, a skilled musician who takes a metal-fused-with-everything-else approach to songwriting a la pre-sobriety Devin Townsend. He’s also a pretty damn intelligent fellow (see the more esoteric posts on his blog: mooktank). Check out his tunes if you’re starving for something new amidst today’s veritable sea of metal conformity.

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1. I think the first thing I noticed about your music, and what most people will notice as well, is that it defies categorization. You have that quirky, Devin Townsend breed of pseudo-metal delivery that is so hard to come by and equally difficult to tap into. Where do you get your inspiration?

I like to mix rhythms, melodies, and timbres of certain styles of music. I’m inspired by boring music. I’m inspired by exciting music. I’m inspired by idiotic people. I’m inspired by brilliant people. I always feel the urge to create something. What’s the point of being alive if you’re not going to try to create good things?

2. How do you go about composing songs chock full of surprises? Do you write them first then record? Write and record at the same time? Do you ever write “normal” songs, or is that just not your style?

My latest songs have been sort of written in my head and played and tweaked for a while before being recorded then tweaked even more during the recording process. It’s pretty fluid and I try not to be formulaic about it.

My songs are all plenty normal. Haha. I don’t know. If I’m going to make a song it needs to be different in some way or another or it’s just like treading water.

3. You, like many other metal musicians as of late, have a DIY attitude that kind of sprang up out of the creation of Drumkit From Hell (probably Meshuggah’s greatest and most influential contribution to metal even though the whole band wasn’t involved). Even those who don’t have DFH are busting their asses to make the drum samples they do have sound as realistic as possible, making homegrown metal more accessible than ever before. Right now you don’t have a band. Where do you think you would be without these tools that allow you to record songs for multiple musicians?

If I didn’t have DFH I would not be able to make my ideas come to life as quickly or maybe I wouldn’t feel like recording them at all. Working with humans is a pain because no matter how well you explain yourself, their performance will never be exactly the way you imagine. Programming allows you to make changes much more easily and makes the process that much more intuitive.

4. Building off the last question, you’ve said you might hold auditions for a live band in 2011 (if you’re still alive). Why wait so long when we all know the world’s going to end in 2012?

I haven’t seen convincing evidence that the world will end in 2012. That is unless our species doesn’t smarten up and get rid of nuclear weapons, ignore irrational metaphysical superstition, stabilize the population, and find a way to consume energy at the rate it’s replenished. 2011 is also when I plan on getting out of grad school and hopefully by that time I’ll have enough material written to fill a decent set.

5. You have a blog at mooktank.com with posts on a wide range of topics, some of which are pretty deep while others are goofy as all hell. I particularly enjoyed the “Music is Three Dimensional” post, in which you graphed out the way you interpret music on x-, y-, and z-axes. If you could plot yourself at a point on that graph, where would we find your musical coordinates? What about some other bands that you love/hate; where do you think they fall?

I try to go as far as possible in each dimension but I couldn’t comment on the results since I’m a little biased.

For me Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, Devin Townsend rate equally in all dimensions most of the time; a good balance of technicality, originality, and personality. I’d put Meshuggah in the originality/technicality plane somewhere mainly because their lyrics really aren’t very conversational. I’d put Paul Gilbert on the personality/technicality plane. Most of the music on TV/radio is strictly on the personality axis.

6. I know you don’t have a band, but do you ever perform live? Moreover, since we all know you probably aren’t writing music to make a bunch of money, what do you do in your spare time? Who is the real Pete Peterson?

I have played live in the past but I haven’t done it for a couple years. I love playing live and hope to get back into it as soon as possible. There are even more opportunities to get creative, have fun, and confuse people.

I record my music in my spare time along with a million other interests including making videos, BMX biking, and building machines. In my non-spare time I work as a mechanical engineer designing oceanographic equipment. I’m going back to school again soon as well.

I’m not too sure who the real Pete Peterson is. I’m working on it though.

7. How do you feel about the music industry right now? You clearly aren’t interested in a contract with a major label.

Right now I think the music industry is pretty bad but it’s slowly improving. The inevitable death of record labels is a good thing. We can thank the internet for that. Maybe someday they won’t call it an ‘industry’ any more. That would be nice. Maybe we could call it the music community or something.

8. As far as I know, there are only 4 of your tracks available on the internet – the 3 on your MySpace and a quick mix test of the intro to Meshuggah’s “Soul Burn” on SoundClick. Have you thought about putting together a full length album of material yet? Have you written enough songs to fill one if you indeed wanted to? I think once people listen to what’s already floating around they want to find out what else you’ve got up your sleeve. I know I want to.

Right now I enjoy being able to focus on one song at a time and I’ll probably continue like this unless I come up with stuff that would really be conducive to a full album format. I have around 14 more songs that are half written so there’s plenty still up my sleeve.

9. Metal (the way the mainstream thinks of it) is currently enjoying a resurgence in pop culture, but unfortunately, the music is so terrible that real metal fans don’t want anything to do with it. For example, you recently made a blog post about Attack Attack!’s video for “Stick Stickly”, which I think we can both agree on as being laughably awful. Your music, though not totally metal, is a welcome punch to the face of whatever the hell the kids are listening to these days. Where do you see metal going in the future? Are our ears headed for more rough times?

I couldn’t care less where ‘metal’ goes in the future. I think most ‘metal’ or ‘core’ type bands take it too seriously and play generic boring crap just like any other genre of music. It would be nice if the general public became better at detecting bullshit. I don’t think that will happen. However, there’s no shortage of talented honest artists out there working hard to keep our ears happy.

10. The final question is one I ask everybody: if you could go on tour with any band from another country, who would it be and why?

I’d like to tour with the Spice Girls because they look like they know how to party. If they weren’t available I’d choose Guthrie Govan because I could just watch that guy play guitar all day.

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