Chessie by Aaron Johnston
Chessie’s debut for Drop Beat Records, Signal Series, offers a bouquet of organic melody clasped firmly at the stem by percolating drum-n-bass prances. It is an accessible sound compared to other deviant breakbeat music, but that doesn’t deem it "obvious." It’s an elusive new aesthetic for a dying genre. You can hum along to Chessie, dance or relax. Whatever reaction you choose, it will be your choice and not one force fed by cliché or electronica’s limiting disco obsessions. Groove to lulling bass lines or convulse to mechanical beats. Sleep to the eerie ambience of guitars choked by low frequencies or boogie to the big drums. Chessie offers all and is truly unique, but how many times have you heard that before? Not nearly enough, perhaps.
Stephen Gardner is Chessie and here’s his tale. Indie rockers can fight drum-n-bass kids for the right to tell their friends about his music first.
You come from a rock background, correct?
I started a band called Lorelei in 1990 who were signed to Slumberland. We released a few records but broke up in late '96 and I haven't played with anyone else since. I would like to play with other people again, but so far I haven't found the right ones yet. I am still interested in good pop/rock music, though there are remarkably few records which fit into that category.
When did you begin working on Signal Series?
Signal Series comprises selected works from 1993-1997. I started recording on my own after getting my first guitar in '93 which I was not allowed to play in Lorelei because we were each responsible for our own instrument and did not "infringe" on anyone else's sonic territory (I am really a bassist). So, Chessie was an outlet for ideas that couldn't be assimilated into Lorelei. It wasn't until '96 that Chessie became anything more than a private side-project and Mike at Dropbeat/Slumberland convinced me to release something.
Your use of guitars and bass with drum-n-bass rhythms is interesting. How did you arrive at this junction?
I started using samples simply because I wanted beats on my work but I don’t play drums. Since I am a guitarist and bassist, I had plenty of guitars around to make noise with, so that I combined guitars with loops was really the only possibility for me. Also, I am a big fan of Go-Go (a local DC music derived from funk which is primarily about beats) and hip-hop and always had ideas about mixing those beats into Lorelei but never could. Chessie became where that interest manifested itself. The other impetus was that Chessie is about exploring my fascinations with trains and my desire to reference my experiences with trains in sound. Railroads are an amazing juxtaposition of the organic and inorganic, so I tried to mimic that by using a mix of "natural" and "unnatural" sounds. The repetitiveness of loops interacting with the "liveness" of uncontrolled guitars and other acoustic sources helped me achieve this.
Do you identify with the drum-n-bass scene?
No, I don’t really identify with any scene. I am as likely to be listening to Bola Sete as I am to Spring Heel Jack. I also live out in the mountains of North-Western Massachusetts, so there really isn't any scene to be a part of. I guess if I am part of any scene, it would be around trains more than music.
Are you influenced by experimental guitar acts such as Labradford or Flying Saucer Attack?
I’ve heard some of the Flying Saucer Attack and Labradford records (Lorelei played with them a couple of times), but I wouldn’t call them influences.
What sort of electronic equipment do you employ? Are you opposed to computer sequencing?
I use samplers, but I don’t use sequencers. This again comes from my desire to put things out of my control in certain areas. However, I am in no way opposed to sequencing. In terms of getting the complexity of rhythm and shifting beats that define drum-n-bass, I have been able to do that by overlying loops and "live" playing of samples on top of loops. All in all, it is a very time-consuming and uncertain process which only sometimes works. Also, coming from a band situation where composition was in real time, I have little patience for dealing with software. I like the tangibility of analog equipment and instruments.
I understand that you "study" music. How so?
My concentration at College was in the Physics of Music. I used physics as a way to approach composition by trying to understand sound at its most basic level. Certainly, this work influenced Chessie as did my studying of the production methods of people like Henry, Schaeffer, Cage, Xenakis, and Subotnick. As for composition techniques, I start with an idea which is usually referencing a particular experience or phenomenon on or with a train. This idea can be as abstract as exploring shifting inertial frames or as referential as trying to mimic the sound of a train at a street crossing (At Grade). I then overlay sampled loops onto a 4-track and mix them down to create a single drum track or I make tape loops on 4-track reel-to-reels from sampled loops and then mix them down to revox 1/2 track. I continue this process back and forth, adding live guitar, bass, prepared piano. This process basically came out of my discovery that by letting these loops interact with each other without my interference, they produced unique and interesting results.
So you’re not much of a control freak…
I realized it was more interesting for me to take an idea and set it free in a process partially out of my control which would yield an unexpected result. Basically, I got to a point where if I could conceive of it, I could realize it, and that became uninteresting. So, I started to take my ideas and design processes that added randomness to them, so that I would get something that I couldn't of expected or conceived of. Really, it is a very Cage approach, but not quite. There is a tremendous amount of post-production. And naturally, not all of these experiments work, so I do a fair amount of editing.
What’s next?
I have about 3/4 of the next record done and hope to be finished by this fall. I am also looking to release an EP soon. I would like to play with other people, as I said before, but the chance has not appeared yet. I would be into to playing live, but it would take a lot of people, equipment, and dough, none of which I have.