Hello, Tim, how are you doing these days? I know you’ve been busy creating some new material, right?
I’m currently trying to relocate from Portland, Oregon to Denver, Colorado so looking for jobs and apartments has been my main focus, but that’s no fun. To keep sane I’ve been recording lots of new material under various projects.
Can you shortly introduce yourself and your label to our readers? When did you start operating a label?
Last year in March I co-founded KV&GR/RECS and the noise duo Danshoku Dino. After 15 months and over 450 releases I decided it was time to start over and move forward on my own. Imploding Sounds was born the last Friday of June and 6 weeks later we’re (in the royal sense) at release #60. I’m a fan of all things noisey, harsh noise, HNW, noisecore, gorenoise, drone, dark ambient, free jazz/improvisation, etc. Submissions of any kind are always welcome.
Wow…considering my way of discovering the noise scene, how was your journey into the genre? how did you start exploring and discovering the extreme music and its various subgenres?
I started listening to death metal in high school, which was the early 90s, Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, etc. That wasn’t extreme or weird enough though so I then got into stuff like Anal Cunt, Merzbow, Boredoms, early Ween and Butthole Surfers. After high school I got really into powerviolence and grindcore, back when Spazz, Charles Bronson, Man is the Bastard, Discordance Axis, and Melt-Banana were all releasing new split 7″s every other week it seemed and I was collecting them all!
Oh, man…what a nice collection of bands! Haven’t seen the grouping of Anal Cunt, Merzbow and Butthole Surfers before…quite a different musical tastes in extreme musick…so, what’s made you to think about doing your own stuff?
In high school through my early 20s I was in a punk/noise rock band with bizarro fiction author Carlton Mellick III and our friend Anthony Germinaro called That One Band, our biggest claim to fame was a split CD with the legendary idiot punk band Sockeye. All that garbage is available at the Throne of Bael Bandcamp. After that I was in a grind band, Schlitzkrieg, our one album is on Bandcamp as well. Then I moved to Oregon from Arizona. Schlitzkrieg had an improvised black metal side project, Gargotheron, that released one album on 20mg Records. That got a good review from aQuarius records in San Francisco back in the mid 00s when shitty homemade outsider black metal cdrs were all the rage. So I decided to go solo as Cloak of Displacement and sold all my releases exclusively through their store/mailorder. After a few years life got in the way and I took a 7 year break from “music”. I’d always wanted to do harsh noise so that started last year with old label and duo. It all grew exponentially and now I don’t even know how many projects I have.
Well, there’s a loads of stuff to explore straight away! How “That One Band” came to existence? Can you share some memories with our readers? How difficult/easy was to be in a punk band back then?
We were 16-17 year olds in high school, we’d get drunk, make up songs, practice a little and record.
Oh yeah, I wish I would do that. I mean, be in a band, not drinking (I did that in abundance, lol) …any funny memory from those times? How did you end up in the split with Sockeye?
Too many to tell, best one was there was a show with cardboard cutouts and a tape played over the PA. As for Sockeye, I mailed them a demo tape after getting their LP and I didn’t use a padded envelope. I got a letter from their singer Dave saying it arrived crushed but he put the tape in a new shell and liked it and wanted to do the split.
Wow! What a response from them! No punk rock primadonnas, I’d say… Why has the band split up?
We grew up and moved and stuff.
Yeah, I hear you. let’s move to the other band you have mention, Schlitzkrieg…how has it formed?
The guitar player, Jx Brown and I used to get drunk at a lot of the same concerts and started talking one time when he needed a place to live and I needed a roommate. He moved in and we started writing songs in our living room.
How long did the band exist? What success, if we can use that term within the grindcore genre, did the band have?
4 or 5 years and no. I meant none, haha.
Lol, I got you!
We played lots of fun local shows and drank a lot
Sounds like my kind of band a few years ago. What was not that common, I guess, back than was for a grindcore band to have a black metal side-project, right? Did you feel the need to be creative in different genres?
Our drummer loved playing black metal blast beats so we made one song and played it practice and then once live. We were all roommates by then and after coming home on Thanksgiving we got drunk and made an album.
Man, you make it sounds like such an easy effort! What more information can you give us about Cloak of Displacement?
It was all recorded in my garage by me with a microphone hanging from the ceiling on a 4 track cassette recorder.
I love such DIY cheats, tricks and adjustments!!! But you also mentions a break from music…7 years is a really long time for someone so involved in music….can you share some info about that? Why such a decision?
It just happened, so is life.
And then…you went into the noise “full time”, right?
Oh yeah head first into the pool!
What fascinates you about noise?
How unmusical it is but yet at the same time can be if you look deep enough. Wanker answer.
It’s loud. Dude bro answer.
Well, good stuff…how would you describe your noise beginnings..? Did you do some research or just purely experimenting?
Minimal research maximum experimentation.
Speaking about noise, what project of yours, what material, do you consider your best so far?
The Takeshita stuff this week is my favorite stuff I’ve come up with so far. The last Pizza Burrito with Polwach Beokhaimook on drums was a dream come true. And there’s 160some TAB IN/TAB OUT HNW albums, so that’s something.
Yeah, Pizza Burrito! How did you manage to get Polwach on drums for this release? Actually, I think the HNW with blastbeats is pretty great combination!
I bugged him on FB until he said yes. He does noise too so it wasn’t difficult
Yeah, I know his Perpetual Abjection label… cool…any response from listeners so far for this CD?
I always just ask Fuckpuddles (Tyler James) what he thinks and he said it was perfect. People are buying it too.
Haha…good point, need to seek his opinion on stuff as well then! What’s the plan for the rest of 2019, if any?
Get signed to Relapse.
Why Relapse?
Merzbow “Venerology” was the first noise cd I ever bought.
Oh yeah, Merzbow…explains a lot, yes. Anyway, coming to the end of this nice conversation, what the final message to our readers would be?
Send me submissions, use the Contact Imploding Sounds link on the Bandcamp page. Thanks for listening.
…and I thank you for your time, Tim! All the best!
