we found really inspiring. So, during the art school years there were any musical influences. Did you have any affinity with other bands of the area? Maybe The StickMen? We loved King of Siam, Bunnydrums, Executive Slacks, Experimental Products and the StickMen.Mallory and Dale collaborated with Stick Men guitarist Pete Baker in the Flaming Bango Bangos project. Bob Bell, guitarist from King of Siam, used to jam with us. In the early days we shared a rehearsal space with them in the basement of a bookstore on South Street in Philadelphia. When did you start building homemade synths? Did you have any kind ofmodel when doing them? We initially used store bought toy instruments but the more we wrote and recorded with them we wanted them to be more versatile. Dale began altering the toys by adding potentiometers and additional switches.This increased the vocabulary of the instruments, a practice now known as circuit bending. By using the toy keyboard casing as a shell, we started building a home-made synthesizer inside of it. Each home-made synth has a different color housing such as “the orange,” “the blue,” “the grey,” “the white,” and so forth. Each synth has its own personality. Dale, you said that there was a lot of visual inspiration behind your ideas for music. Howwould you explain this? Visual art can be made up of textures and patterns and built up with ‘colors’.There are a lot of similarities creating a piece of art that satisfying to the eye and creating a musical composition that is satisfying to the ears. Patterns and textures are layered can be layered in both disciplines. There is quite a change fromyour first single to the second, the EP, Signals From Pier Thirteen. It’s darker, and more electronic. Was it intended? Was it a consequence of a change of gear? The Signals fromPier Thirteen EP is a natural progression for us from the first record.The Signals record is where our musical personalities came together. Even though the instrumentation remained crude we were using some additional gear. It wasn’t written to be a dance record, it just captured the music we were making at the time. In Brighton where I lived for a few years there are two piers. One with a fair and the second one abandoned after a fire. This is the one that really caught my attention, maybe because it looked like a defeat against Nature. What did you find interesting in the one in Delaware River that named your famous EP? Pier 13 was a place not far from where we rehearsed at the time. It is pictured in photos on the record cover. It was actu- 17 - ally an abandoned coal-loading machine pier along the Delaware River that seems like it was active during the earlier half of the 20th Century. We were inspired driving around in out-of-the-way industrial places.One day we just ended up there.Pier 13 was a big influence. It was an abandoned pier with huge silent machinery, shapes, shadows, ghosts and debris. We went there often. Daybreak was the best time. This EP influenced both techno and industrial music. Did you feel the influence in later years? We’re grateful that the record was embraced the way it was. As an artist the most complimentary thing that can happen is that other people find your work inspiring. How was opening for Phillip Glass? I mean how did the public receive your show? Opening for Philip Glass was an amazing experience, especially at that time in the band. On that particular tour, we were told he wanted to play with punk/ new wave bands. Having our home-made instruments going through his PA was amazing.He appreciated our set and genuinely seemed interested in what we were doing. We were listed on the flyer for the show in very small type, so I believe we were a surprise to the audience. I did see some audience members in the front rows hiding under their coats when we opened with “Crashing Song”.The performance stirred up a bit of controversy with the crowd, but I would say the performance was well received. The homemade instruments were sometimes unpredictable in a live setting. During the show opening for Phillip Glass one of our instruments or effect boxes was picking up the FM radio station nearby and in between songs you could hear Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run”and “Roundabout” by Yes. As we would start to play the radio would be drowned out by our music. It was perceived as a planned part of the show. We grew to embrace the happy accident. Why Near Marineland was not released at the time? The songs on Near Marineland were recorded early on after the songs were written.We performed those songs often at the time and they grew and changed a bit as we performed them live.We went through a management change during this time. There were a couple other studio sessions after the Marineland sessions and thought of combining the material.For one reason or another the album just remained in the vault.When we were approached by Vinyl On Demand to release the box set it was the perfect time to mix and produce the record because we knewwe had an outlet and label for the release. Dale, you said that the bandwrote a lot ofmaterial during these years. Even enough for an album. Any plans of rewww.peek-a-boo-magazine.be
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