Beyond The Limits: Third Eye Foundation
“I’ll start a track, and sometimes I just won’t sleep or eat until it’s finished. I guess a track probably takes
me nearer 48 hours to make, but that could be like three or four days.”
We’re scared of the ultimate session, cause it’s the one we won’t come back from.
Do you believe in ghosts? If you concentrate hard enough, can you transmit thoughts to someone in the middle of
the night? Is there anyone other than yourself to blame after a night of delerious dreams? If a house is haunted
and you steal something from it, can that be haunted, too? What the hell is that eye doing on the US dollar bill?
Are there other such things deep in the white of the new money? Do angels live in the library? Do they live in
my record collection? How long does a rose continue to grow before it realizes it’s dead? How many tears would
it take to fill an ocean? (That’s how it gets its salt.) Is it possible to go to bed at night, and wake up as someone
else? If you record a song in sleep, does anyone hear it?
“You sort of go to sleep halfway through, just cause you cannot stay up, and then you dream that you finish it
in real time. I do that all the time [I do that all the time ... I do that all the time ... the time... the time.],
and then I wake up, and I haven’t finished it. And I can’t be bothered to finish it [can’t be bothered], because
I’ve already [ready ready ready] sort of done it really. That just winds me up.”
Where is that beat? Looking for the one that got away. I’m the one that ets them get away. Sometimes, I leave a
place, and I’m thinking about something entirely different, where I’m going not where I’ve come from, and then
suddenly I’m interupted mid-thought by some transmission -- I’ve forgotten something. Sometimes, I go back, and
the object of desire is still there, and sometimes it isn’t. But all the same, as I write, I have no umbrella.
“I do know exactly what you mean. Sometimes, it does sort of drive you a bit mad. That might have something to
do with it. It might just be because you don’t sleep properly or eat properly. Well, I don’t anyway. But it does
tend to drive you mad. It’s a good mad though. I kind of miss it when I’m not recording, cause I get so bored.
When I’m recording, I just love the intensity about it and everything.”
It’s funny how the inspiration comes. The other day I was trying to make a beat, and I knew just the right sound,
but I couldn’t remember exactly where or when I heard it. Searching here, there, and everywhere. And then that
day passed. And another day followed. Eventually, I was recording again. And again, I desired the sound I could
not find. And I looked around the room, to search for inspiration, and suddenly I remembered I had this cassette
alarm clock seldom used. And I leaped towards it, and that’s where the tape was, a tape I’d only listened to once,
just to wake me up. And suddenly, my whole song, my whole life is built around that song. Beats me what it’s called.
A name, a name ... it sounds sweeter since ...
I love that, too, but there’s something I hate about it. Like, do you ever go to bed at like 4 in the morning,
and you’re hungry as hell, and you haven’t got any food around, and you’re brain’s just going, and you can’t sleep.
It’s pretty shitty. Do you know what I mean?
“I do know exactly what you mean. You must work in exactly the same way as I do, cause it is exactly like that.
You’re just going, ‘Oh God, where is that beat? Where is that beat,’ and you know you’ve heard it, and you’ve made
a mental note to do it. And then in looking for it, you remember something else, and you go, ‘I’ll try that,’ and
it might not even be a rhythm or anything. It might just be some weird noise.”
“I do think about that quite a lot. Where the fuck does it all come from? Cause sometimes things are just mad coincidences.
Like you’ll sample two things, and by mad coincidence, it’ll sound so beautiful together, and you just go, ‘my
God, where did that come from?’”
(TAPE SIDE ENDS)
I believe in ghosts. They come mainly in the night, cause everyone is sleeping, so the ghosts in the larger area
have to search hard for something to do, so they hassle those that are awake. I have not been visited by ghosts
at all lately. It’s unfortunate. I do quite miss it at times.
(WRONG TAPE - LET’S START AGAIN)
It was a long time ago now. Things may have changed since. In January 1998, I woke up early one morning, and talked
to Matt Elliot, the main force behind the Bristol-based Third Eye Foundation, on the phone. Disoriented was I fresh
from sleep, and he also fresh from weed. I caught him at a good time -- between equipment purchases. 3EF’s Sound
of Violence EP had just come out, and he wasn’t happy about the end product at all. It represents the last pieces
of music recorded before switching equipment set-ups, and it sounds like he’s trying to burn all bridges behind
him. This equipment must not be used again! Recorded in cacaphonic sound, somewhere around the three minute mark
of the title track, an easy listening loop, sharp whistles, screams, the same easy listening loop in reverse, high
speed beats, and screeching tire sounds all seem to play at once. In spite of a creator’s contempt, it succeeds
in making it clear that the sounds of violence and the sounds of ecstacy are married cousins.
Recording is intense. Very intense.
The Third Eye Foundation came to prominence with the Semtex LP in 1996. Written about in the context of Flying
Saucer Attack, who Matt has spent time with, the LP was said to be a startling collision of My Bloody Valentine
guitar violence and drum’n’bass. I did not start taking note, however, until the 1997 Ghost LP, which is about
as haunting as music gets. The song titles pretty much tell it all -- “What To Do But Cry?,” “I’ve Seen The Light
and It’s Dark,” “The Star’s Gone Out,” amongst others. The cover art looks like there’s 8 moons hovering over a
lake, and could you just imagine the madness of a planet that might be ruled by 8 full moons at once?! (“It’s just
such a nice picture. Like if you just stare at that while listening to the tunes having a bit of a session late
at night or something, then that would look nice.”) The sounds instantly hypnotize.
This is not music for the background, for listening to with other people (unless it’s a late-late night session,
catch the drift?). If you’re driving, pull that car over (and for all I know as I write this, you might be driving,
reading this on your laptop, and talking on the cel phone to Shanghai all at the same time -- oh me, oh my, fuck
me, it’s a wonderful world), cause this is going to take you right over, over. (And you know the only thing I remember
about Poltergeist is someone being trapped inside a television. Funny how those images you see in childhood’s movies
never leave you.)(Never leave me.) In the press kit, Matt says you can’t dance to it, but believe me you can bob
your head to it if you try. This’ll make you twitch, then it’ll make you itch.
What’s going on in his sampler unit? The sounds have such an urgency (after all, they’ve travelled along way to
get here). It’s as if at some point in the distant past they’ve been compacted, and once opened again they’ve never
been able to quite gain their former shape. Everything sounds the equivalent of muffled brass. I remember one particularly
strange cel phone conversation I had during a storm, where the wind seemed to be inside the conversation. I’m reminded
of this, because it sounds like the wind has blown its way into Third Eye Foundation’s equipment. How does that
windblown look sound?
In the liner notes to Ghost, Matt thanks ‘all my dead friends.’ So, is he actually referring to dead friends, or
is he referring to the fact that most of the people playing on this record via samples are probably six feet deep
or worse?
“Well, kind of both. Cause obviously a lot of the samples are from the 20s, and a lot of the people that I do sample
from are dead. But it’s not so much that. While I was making Ghost, I wasn’t really making it for humans. It seemed
to me that there was like lots of people just hanging around. The whole experience was really strange.”
I like all the voices in the mix. It just sounds like people lost in the wilderness.
“I don’t know if that’s something I intend to do, but I do end up doing that quite a lot.”
Now when the voices get in there, like there’s some pretty strange voices in there. On the first track, “What To
Do But Cry,” have you ever heard Chinese opera or those Eastern sounds? It sounds really Eastern like that.
“Actually, it was a traditional Turkish folk song. And the actual line -- it was a short poem -- about the last
line of it is ‘what to do but cry.’ I actually sampled the bit that I used without having realized that that had
anything to do with it. And also, the actual words that I sampled in Turkish are ‘so much suffering.’ That’s the
translation, which is really weird, cause I didn’t realize that that was it at all. I just thought it was nice,
and sampled it. I thought that was quite mad.”
Mmm, I’ve heard of something like this before. I don’t know if he knew what he was sampling, cause I’ve never had
the chance to ask him, but I was playing this A Guy Called Gerald record, “Voodoo Rage,” a few years ago at a very
emotional time in my life. I couldn’t stop playing it, and one day I was with a girl who happened to speak Cantonese
(as well as very good English, I might add) -- and so there’s this vocal snippet of a lady singing, and it sounded
like ‘ma-hah, ma-hah,’ and the girl I was with said that’s how they say ‘don’t cry’ in Cantonese. I thought that
was pretty cool. I thought the song was talking to me, cause you know I was going through a rough time. Walking
wounded, as they say.
“Well, ‘Voodoo Ray’ has apparently got a curse on it. Have you heard that? That’s just what A Guy Called Gerald
says. He’s never seen a penny of royalties on it, and that was like his biggest song. He’s just convinced that
there’s a curse on it. A Guy Called Gerald is one of the more interesting people, I think, in the jungle scene.
I’ve never met him, but I’ve read a fair few interviews with him, and he’s got a lot more to say than someone like
Goldie for instance.”
What we’re talking about is Black Secret Technology. It’s a pretty intense record. Should be a classic, I reckon.
“Yeah, I was definitely quite weirdly attracted to that one. It just turned up in the shop, and I thought I’d play
it. And I don’t know if you ever get this, but you’ll play the record over and over again, and you don’t even necessarily
really like it, but you’re quite fascinated by it.”
Yeah, you can’t stop yourself ...
(Tape Side ends again)
Let me reiterate -- if there’s an award for song titles of the year, let’s give it to Third Eye Foundation. The
new 3EF LP comes with a cracked, ancient looking painting of Jesus, with what must be the most profound caption
ever written (in very shaky handwriting), ‘you guys kill me.’ Title sampling here includes “A Galaxy of Scars,”
“There’s A Fight At The End of the Tunnel,” “Lions Writing The Bible,” “No Dove No Covenant,” “In Bristol With
A Pistol,” amongst others.
“In Bristol With Pistol” could come originate from no other place than Bristol. It’s got that loopy, foggy, high
drama sound that owes equal parts to dub, seventies soul beat-symphonies (a la Isaac Hayes), hip-hop abstractions,
and especially drum’n’bass.
You can hear the influence of drum’n’bass’ complex programming in the beats, where drum rolls seem to leak out
at any moment, and beats switch back and forth between reverse and forward. A typical Third Eye Foundation track
moves at a snail’s pace compared to your typical d’n’b track. But when d’n’b started to really bang against walls
in 1996 and 1997, on a track like Dom & Rob’s “Distorted Dreams” (part of a three single series to commemorate
Moving Shadow’s 100th single), that’s when you begin to find yourself in the world of Third Eye Foundation. This
blunted music comes from and creates an atmosphere of looming dread, paranoia, and other fancies of an island,
where everyone knows the dream is dead. Acid rain falls on cobblestones that cover up too many bones.
Sure, you might not be able to dance to “No Dove No Covenant,” but it doesn’t sound remotely like the creator of
this track has anything remotely like a club scene in mind. It sounds more to me like moaning of an antique organ,
the sound of an instrument dying, while emanating from deep in its bowels is a pirate radio broadcast. Third Eye
Foundation seem to lock into that spooky place, where the living meet the dead. This is the way I’m struck also
by Nearly God, Tricky’s 1996 side project (85% neglected, while the other 15% consider it his best material period).
This is music that makes you forget alchemy and astrology have been discarded sciences for centuries. This is music
for the Everyday’s discarded. This is music where creation is a mystical or magical enterprise. “Basically, I think
that all humans know that there is something else that we know absolutely nothing about,” says Matt. “I do think
about that quite a lot. Where the fuck does it all come from? Cause sometimes things are just mad coincidences.
Like you’ll sample two things, and by mad coincidence, it’ll sound so beautiful together, and you just go, ‘my
God, where did that come from?’”
I don’t know how I’d make it through this world without spending time in these outer worlds. I need to dream to
keep from screaming.
Outro
3EF - Well, you’ve still got to have some soul in it. After all, that’s what music is. It’s an emotional
transfer. You can actually tell what someone is going on about when you hear a certain song. I can anyway. I’m
sure of it. It might just be my version, but I’m sure it’s not, I’m sure it’s the actual truth. And that’s the
emotional content. That’s what people love about music, and unfortunately well I could go on about the commercialization
of music all night. It is actually quite a sin, as is advertising.
SAB - Yeah, I think about that a lot, too. I think it is some sort of crime to do something fake. I think
it’s fair enough to make music for money, but there’s got to be something more to it.
3EF - I don’t think it’s necessarily right to do music for the sake of making money. I just don’t think
your intentions are pure. The fact that I get paid for it -- well, I just think I’m very lucky that people put
my stuff out. But having said that, I probably would do an Aphex Twin if someone gave me a 100 grand just to knock
together a tune in an evening’s work. But I wouldn’t tell anyone. It’s something that I really wrestle myself with.
It’s never been a realistic thing, but at some stage in the future I’m sure I will be approached by someone, and
what do I say? Cause I do hate adverts. I think they’re one of the worst things of the 20th Century. They literally
are numbing people’s brains. It’s just distracting them to the point that people don’t care about anything else.
I think television in general, and the way that it has been manipulated is one of the reasons that we live in such
a shit society basically. And that’s the world society really, cause things are pretty fucked up in my opinion.
SAB - Oh yeah, they are. I don’t want to give you my big horror story about things, but if you look into
some things going on in the world, it really is fairly fucked. Like I don’t believe the Millenium’s going to do
it, but by like 2010 some shit’s going to start going really weird.
3EF - I think most people I know think that. Maybe I just know people that are paranoid. There’s only so
many resources that you can expend, and it’s already at the point where only half the planet can even eat, so you
know what future is there?
SAB - And there’s like nuclear waste things leaking as we speak. And the half-life of plutonium is like
23,000 years, and the shit’s just going to leak out and leak out. And when they launch those nuclear powered sattellites
into space, and if anything goes wrong, or an explosion comes as it takes off, all of Florida is gone. At the same
time, I don’t worry about it that much.
3EF - Yeah, there’s no point worrying about it, cause come a time -- it just can’t go on like this forever.
You could literally cover the earth in it, before you run out of plutonium. And basically we are just going to
run out of space, and like you said 23,000 years.
SAB - Then again, sometimes you look around, and the world’s so corrupt anyway. Like every single thing
that happens in society happens for money.
3EF - Exactly. Money is God. It doesn’t even exist basically. You see what I mean? It’s a false invention.
It’s basically just a means of things spiralling downwards. It’s just money going round. It is a spiral. Everyone
even knows this. It’s not even anything new. Everyone knows that the corporations are ruling everything, and it
is a tragedy. It just is, but there’s literally nothing you can do about it, and that’s what so depressing.
|
|
|
From the Pulp Vaults:
(Previously unavailable online)
Bird People In China
The perfect time to take a nap is where the blue of the night meets the gold of the day, within the fleeting magic hour surrounding sunset...
The Institutionalization of Violence
It's the perfect setting. Somehow, as a city, L.A. is so now...
Broken Boulevards Still Dream of Havana
"We were going to outstrip Monte Carlo... the idea was to turn Havana into the world's biggest gambling paradise...
Listen Without Prejudice With Open Ears Volume 1
It's a sunny afternoon, and I'm on way from the Düsseldorf Hauptbahnof to St. Martins Studio...
How Deep Is The Ocean?
The Sinking of the Titanic, and the Burden of Recording
An interview with Christopher Doyle
Christopher Doyle, an Australian expatriate and one-time sailor, has done the cinematography for all but the first of Wong Kar-Wai’s movies...
What used to be paper, is now just skin
An open book with blank white paper makes the same shadow in the middle as two thighs pressed together.
Playing Once Upon A Time With Mercury Rev
Deserters songs, that’s what someone called the results of the basement sessions between the Band and Bob Dylan.
Sound without vision: Do soundtrack albums need movies?
In the last few years, one sentiment I've noticed often come from the mouths of musicians...
Chances Are: Bill Laswell’s Trip into the Vaults of Bob Marley and Miles Davis
It's impossible to write an introduction for Bill Laswell. He's been involved in over three hundred records since the early '70s, so I'm not going to even try.
Designers in the Attic
From the beginning I was convinced that an article about Attik wouldn't be entirely out of place in a magazine like SAB.
|
The Often Beautiful Music of Richard Ashcroft
Former lead singer of the Verve, Richard Ashcroft, thinks out loud about his debut solo album, Alone With Everybody.
A Million Tiny Decisions Made By Alex Garland That Affect You and Me
"It surprises how much you can keep in your head while you're writing a book..."
Tezka Macoto's Hakuchi: Parallel Universes of the Mind
"I am powerless in the face of this pitiful reality," goes the voiceover of the main character Izawa, halfway through Hakuchi: the Innocent.
Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps
The swaying of Maggie Cheung's hips becomes something like a musical refrain in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love.
After Life Directed By Kore-Eda Hirokazu -- To Die And Then Have Time
an edited version of a conversation from October 1998 with Japanese film director, Kore-eda Hirokazu, in which he talks about his 1998 film, After Life
Little Steven on Bruce Springsteen, Sun City, The Sopranos, and his friends in Bali
Jason Anderson's interview with Little Steven, a.k.a Steven Van Zandt
Palahniuk Has Entered The Produce Section … he's eating grapes
Jason Anderson talks to Chuck Palahniuk - the author of the Fight Club. His new novel, Choke, is being released in the Spring of 2001.
Scenes : One Particular Scene From The Limey directed by Stephen Soderbergh +++ some jumbled narrative techniques
Miike Takashi -- The City of Lost Souls
a Yakuza eats a blue Popsicle in the harbour, while bodies are packed into oil barrels.
The Angel : In The Realms of the Groove
It's more than likely that you haven't heard of her, but you have heard her. I could almost guarantee it.
Techno Animal Foam At The Mouth
An excerpt from an interview with Kevin Martin and Justin Broadrick - musical collaborators in the groups Techno Animal, Sidewinder, Ice, and various other side projects - all of which makes it a full-time job to keep track of them.
Older articles can be found in The Archives
|
|
