Cold Spring Artist Khost Interview is up
1. Industrial Doom is a favorite of mine. What brought you to this style of aural alchemy?
DB: We both have respective entry points that have evolved over time... for me it's signposts in life and culture, various things going into the blender, such as seeing Eraserhead in the cinema, old TV shows, hearing Type O Negative's set intro live which sounded like a garbage truck reversing; Steve Reich, listening to SWANS/Skin, EN, Xmal Deutschland, DAF, postpunk electronic music, listening to recent violent stuff like Kollaps and loads of hardcore bands too which have a stone cold approach.
Trouble, Warning, Converge and so on… you’re right, it is an alchemy. How it all fuses together over time.
Even if I find myself listening to country music or ‘old’ torch song-style vocalists I sometimes filter it and start to re-imagine the music and soon it becomes something else. We both tend to do that... work things over in the mind incessantly, sleeplessly: I think that is why Khost can be a very unpredictable beast.
AS: I grew up listening to Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Cabs, SPK so the experimental side has always been there for me. I wanted to hear huge slabs of sound, like concrete blocks in both ears and aurally this seemed to just evolve with khost. However, like Damian hinted, we don't have a great deal of control over the khost sound. It's very unpredictable and seems to have its own DNA.
2. I hear elements of Godflesh, Pitch shifter,Swans, Head of David, Author & Punisher and Phobos on Buried steel. What was the end result you were looking for from the album?
DB: Following on from the last question, our music organically evolved. I will find myself hunched over the guitar at 4am if I have something in mind and speaking ideas into the Dictaphone. Godflesh are a phenomenal band and we all go back, and we all have a similar take on life and environment and locations... possibly the more toxic end of the latter.
The same goes for the other really great bands you mentioned, but I have to say have no idea what Pitch Shifter is like.
AS: Same here, can't say I've ever heard Pitch Shifter. We've both known Justin and Benny for years and we definitely have similar tastes in music and influences. TG again being massive to both me and Justin back in the day. We're both really good friends with Stephen Burroughs too who was the lead singer in Head of David and I go way back with Dave Cochrane (HoD bass player) so it's all very much a case of cross pollination. We've played a couple of shows with Author & Punisher and Tristan is definitely coming from a similar angle.
3. You have worked with Cold Spring for a few releases now. How did this come about and are you happy with end results?
DB: We all hang out together, laughing, smiling and swapping stories; it is a bit sickening actually.
AS: Yes, we generally meet up and discuss how many copies of 'Travelogue' Justin Cold Spring has.
4. How are the songs composed is the music or vocal ideas what start an album to begin?
DB: For me it is 100% a vision of something like 'what is the act that plays this song? What does it look like'. What I mean is, if I cannot at that moment transport myself to witness Robert Rental providing the backing music to ‘Burning World’ era Jarboe then I have to imagine what it would sound like and try to create it somehow.
I also like to sit in front of the amp/recorder with some beat on a loop and create layers of riffs. In fact, ‘Intravener’ evolved as a simple beat and a synth loop mistake during which I realised I should press record and record it. Andy then caught something from it and his parts evolved alongside it... while the centrifuge was spinning.
AS: For me it could start with a basic riff, a sample idea or something recorded on a dictaphone. I've just finished a track for 23_12 that is composed entirely of found sounds, spliced up via analogue tape. The vocals can be something I've pre-prepared or quite often stream of conciousness improvisations.
5. Is there a theme to Buried Steel or just a collection of dark industrial hymns?
DB: There is. Have you never seen junk buried in our amazing, irreplaceable, unsleeping planet? Like corroded metal, nuts, bolts, supermarket waste, packaging, concrete... ? The previous generations thought we were living in a real-life Disney cartoon due to the good set design that surrounded them: blue sky, green grass, picket fences and they didn't take it seriously. As are notoriously self-centric, in a sort of trance watching the film playing in their own psyche.
Remnants of skyscrapers, old industrial revolution charnel pits, mills, the general unnecessary suburban sprawl are being slowly and inexorably forced back into the earth over time, a gravitational downthrust... I for one am happy to help write the music that describes this slow-motion shitstorm. This related back to the title of Needles Buried into the Ground too.
6. How does KHOST differ live to recording?
DB: The band has evolved over the relatively few years we have existed; first was two guitars, then bass and guitar and as many laptops as we can stuff in the car/van or whatever mode of transport we have. The laptops may have various faults and parts missing but if they can play shitty AVI files then that is why they’re there.
AS: Live khost has not only evolved as Damian describes but is also completely unpredictable from show to show. We have experienced all sorts of inexplicable events from laptops not booting up, amps cutting out randomly mid show, effects pedals switching on and off. There's been a number of shows where we have both heard something that neither of us were playing. Initially it was quite disconcerting but we both embrace it now as it adds to the tension and unease.
7. If you could tour with anyone who would it be and why?
DB: Personally, would be with Siouxsie and The Banshees. But it would be the real version as I know first-hand what a phenomenal and fucking hardcore rock band the four-piece was. Not one with synths or cellos or any of that latter burlesque shit.
AS: Throbbing Gristle. Mainly because I wouldn't be doing khost if it wasn't for TG.
8. How do the 4 albums you've created differ and how do you think they are similar?
DB: Each album is similar in that we had unexpected circumstances contribute to their outcome; during Governance I found myself in an emergency ward one night during recording as had reacted badly to some medicine, and from that came the track ‘Cloudbank Mausoleum’, based on something I started to visualise during the worst of it. During recording of Corrosive Shroud I swore I heard footsteps in an old house I lived in which lead to ‘Bystander’. ‘Drain’, from the first album came from an unwanted discussion with a scammer at the time that seemed to last an eternity…. And during Buried Steel we had an electrical fire which saw the destruction not only of our reel to reel player but of some work in progress… some of the remnants we clawed back becoming the basis of tracks like ‘Yellow Light’, featuring Stephen Mallinder.
That reel to reel freaked me out so much I ethically disposed of both it and the tape that was playing on it at the time the fuck away.
There are also spoken word interludes which we worked (obsessively, as we get really lost in these) on with Eugene Robinson on the albums, as well as from our sometime live collaborator Sy An, running through our work… as well as tracks that came from nowhere, like ‘VMIH’ from the second album.
And much of our work has the percussion from our friend Daniel Buess… such as ‘Coven’ which we have played relentlessly live.
We are also dead proud of the remixes which the album tracks have had, such as the Mothboy remix of ‘Intravener’ and the Hostage remix of Avici. I haven’t even touched on the Godflesh treatments from Needles Into the Ground…. The title of which also connects to the themes of ruination mentioned here, for Buried Steel.
AS - The first two khost tracks, 'Amoral Apathy Suppression' and 'Hypocrisy Banality Possession' were meant purely as a couple of experimental tracks. An attempt at creating a process almost. However, once these two tracks were completed there seemed to be an extra driving force pushing for more. Almost like an unseen hand edging you towards a cliff or that feeling you have on the underground that someone is going to push you under an approaching tube. Unstoppable almost.
Each album that followed all seemed to have this same unseen driving force sending the recordings contained within into totally unforseen territories.
9. How has the underground changed from when you started to know and do you feel its thriving more then or now?
DB: It was no fun if you had skinheads turn up to your shows intent on killing you in an era of post punk. But I have been to shows in recent years which are dodgy too. On positive side I have been to hardcore shows which are loads and loads more inclusive and intense than ones years ago. I also love what you hear in small back rooms if you are in to beats.
Having said that, seeing Birthday Party, or seeing Diamanda Galas, Dead Kennedys, Severed Heads live early on was fucking amazing.
AS: The whole scene back then was more about tape swapping and letter writing. If you wanted a tape you had to send a letter, make an effort to receive it. It made the end product more valuable. Shows back then seemed to be more feral as well. I remember playing with Final and we'd just turn up with amps, tape recorders and a synth, turning everything literally up to 10 and playing - no soundcheck, no pa, no sound technician - and it sounded amazing. I saw SPK back then as well and they came on stage with a flamethrower and set some guys hair on fire in the front row,
10. If someone was about to hear Buried steel for the very 1st time what 4 words would best describe the sound to start that journey?
DB: I am leaving you.
AS: At your own risk
11. Aesthetics and visual must be important especially live how do you like to present the music in live setting?
DB: Zero lights except from monitors and whatever visuals we create, projected.
AS: Yes, all house lights switched off. It adds to the unease. Random laptops scattered on stage playing visuals, projectors and subliminal sounds playing via Dictaphones.
12. What bands or artists are impressing the members of KHOST currently?
DB: People such as Mary Ocher, Deafheaven as always, Nummo Twin, Converge as ever, Portrayal of Guilt, Love as always as I revisit them obsessively over the decades, Touché Amoré, Neil Young, Kings X as ever, Portraits of Past, Dyl (for example Sonder), the mighty Ampere, Ungraven, Gulch, Calibre’s work over the past two decades including the very, very blue Planet Hearth, Power Trip, Will Haven as always, Jandek, Orchid, Temple Ov Saturn, Puce Mary, Sinoia Caves, Justin Broadrick's work and I listen to Disintegration Loops incessantly.
AS: Tunnels of Ah, Collosloth, Steckdose, Primitive Knot, Hawthonn.
13. Are you fans of digital media age Podcasts, blogs , twitter and or bandcamp?
DB: They exist, I guess. So does an old grey telephone on a desk.
AS: They're all unwanted but necessary tools in today’s world. I do listen to a lot of true crime podcasts though - a guilty pleasure
14. Thank you for the time any closing thoughts here.
DB: We did a book for the album, which we added to over the course of 2019 and this year, called Steel Veil. We also have an ongoing collection of tracks happening, one each month towards an album, here
AS: Thanks for your interest. We'll hopefully be playing a lot more shows later in the year and apologies to anybody who had planned to see us in these recent months.
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