David Williams
Open Labs Exclusive Artist Interview
- by Carson Barker, Open Labs Staff Writer
I was set to meet David Williams at a gray, slab of a bar on the East Side of Austin called Rio Rita's. It’s after work, office hours at least, and I pull upside the place around 7:30 pm, we were supposed to meet around 7:00. Most people might call this place a hole in the wall, I tend to think of it as a hipster's casualty caught in between downtown Sixth Street and the lower income East Side. The boozers that lounge in this watering hole are a reserved, Bohemian type: just looking for a semi-secluded pad not far from downtown traffic where they can spin their ideas. It was Williams' choice to meet here, and after the interview, I rationalized that he could fit comfortably inside this crowd, relatively camouflaged.
I walk inside Rio Rita's and David's not there, so I head to the bar for a drink. The waitress looked like a brunette version of the Raisin Maid all colored up in tattoos.
"I'll take a Firemans Number 4" I said.
"We don't have Number 4 in a bottle, but I hear it tastes better on tap."
"It all tastes the same to me," I said. "I'll take a Corona then."
"We don't have Corona."
"Dos Equis?"
"We have Dos Equis. Do you want a lime?"
"Por Favor."
Awaiting Williams' presence, I head out to the back patio and start reviewing my research. He has a colorful and extensive past, that starting with a leg in the 1970's punk band the Vomit Pigs, subsequently followed with 1980's era Decadent Dub Team, hip-hop crew the Jungle Brothers in the 1990s, and now his latest gig, the indie/experimental band, Beautiful Supermachines. The Supermachines have a song on their Myspace page titled "Conical Ash," which struck me as David Bowie crossed with Sonic Youth. David rolls in the back entrance as I'm checking the batteries on my digital recorder, and we agree to go inside for the interview due to the noisy patio crowd.
We find a corner inside the bar, the thing about Rio Rita's is that it has a lot of corners for one big room. The interior is segregated into little cubicle-like structures, each one blocked by a chunk of vintage furniture, some obscure tapestry, or a red or blue light fixture. It looks like a set stolen from the "Laugh-In" TV series crossed with an old opium den in Chinatown. The lights are dim, and everyone looks very stoned. We sit cater-corner to each other, I ask and David speaks.
"When I was a kid, I saw one of the 'Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts' that aired on CBS, and I saw Bob Moog with a gigantic modular synthesizer on stage," says Williams. "I also always wanted to be an astronaut, so between that with the idea of synthesis, and lots of dials and gauges, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a synth."
Williams' thought process is arranged in geometric shapes, patterns and images. Song ideas, rhythms and melodies transpose themselves as colors and textures inside his head, and philosophical terminology melds with software language and musical comprehension in the mind and words of the multi-genre musician. His brain is a blender, and any information that is absorbed gets chopped down into tiny pieces, mixed in with the sauce and poured out into a musical dish. This avant-garde thought configuration is evident in all of his music projects, from the spoken word/spacey hip-hop sounds of his Decadent Dub Team (with whom Williams landed a gold record, and a remixed song by Dr. Dre), to the cerebral soundscapes of the Supermachines. Throughout the time line of music creation in Williams' life, he’s always been beyond the technological edge, where guitar strings, keyboards, and drum machines all drip into each other, creating a sculpted, sonic landscape.
"I want the entire palette of sonic possibilities available to me," says Williams. "If I have an idea, I want to be able to implement it. Central to phenomenology is the idea of intentionality of consciousness: when you pick up a hammer, you are driving a nail. You're thinking through the hammer. That’s how Open Labs stuff works, you aren’t thinking about the hammer. That's what I want to do - strike the nail."
Back in 1993, Williams' connection to the keyboards and synthesizers garnered him enough reputation to shake hands with The Jungle Brothers, and produce beats on their 1993 album J Beez Got the Remedies. Williams' touch was crucial to the success and unconventional texture of the record. His donation to the album is still fresh in The Jungle Brothers' heads, as Williams states that he is currently working with J.B. member Mike G to once again, blast into the future unknown.
"Mike G from the Jungle Brothers is getting his computer set up so we can both use Reaper, he's in North Carolina now, and needs to be back in the game. The Jungle Brothers album that I did most of the music for was really sonically advanced for then, and I’m keen to push it forward again."
Williams got his first stab at forging euphony with the Vomit Pigs when he was a mere 16 years old. While The Sex Pistols were crafting the foundations of punk music overseas, and the Ramones were honing in on three-chord punk rock in New York, the Vomit Pigs were somewhere in the Bermuda triangle of East Texas, reverberating off the same wavelength that other punk bands around the globe had unearthed. They released their debut E.P, Take One in 1978, which has changed hands for as much as $1,000 among collectors. Williams processed vocals and guitars through his EMS VC3 suitcase synthesizer.
"It was an anarchistic and romantic impulse," says Williams. "They were from the next town over. They [the Vomit Pigs] had formed just like the first punk rock bands in the U.K.; they were listening to Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie, noisy stuff and rubbing up against that horrible corporate rock, you know, classic rock. I used a EMS VC3 briefcase synthesizer, the same thing Brian Eno used to process stuff with Roxy Music, and I plugged them into it. I just had a strong knack, because of my curiosity, for getting into these situations. It turned out to be cool, historically. They may not have ever played more than four shows, I was a part of two of them, and I'm on their E.P."
It's May while we're at Rio Rita's as I'm polishing off my drink, and the air inside and out is as sticky as sidewalk bubblegum. Williams is languidly kicking back in a vintage chair, and a dim, red light barely illuminates his face. As the Q-and-A descends further into Williams' consciousness, the temperature inside rises high enough to kick on the AC, which sounds like a crapped-out jet engine taking flight. This makes me nervous, because I was using one of the cheapest recorders money could buy, and the AC is so loud that I can barely hear David's response. That, and the jukebox that's kicking nostalgic tunes might devour Williams' voice in a sea of static and distortion, but Williams doesn't seem to notice. Static and distortion are welcomed siblings in Williams' universe, and his NeKo is the zenith. Now based in Austin, TX, The music of Williams' Supermachines is a culmination of every genre he has covered in the past, creating a Jackson Pollock-like pallet where thickly distorted guitars, textured keyboard rhythms, nautical blast drums and Bowie-esque vocals lay claim to new music territory. His "style of no style" would be impossible for Williams to create without the help of his NeKo LX.
"The rock music I work on now is maximal minimalism, the songs are sketches that are more into textures and subverting traditional song structures," Williams says. "The songs are turning out to be about the internalization of human fears and the end of civilization, and how that is played out in everyday life."
Being a synth man, Williams' NeKo LX has become more than a tool for creating music, it's become a synthetic appendage. Because of the vast possibilities the NeKo offers, from infinite VSTs to instrument-cloning software, Williams is able to take the sounds in his head and mimic them flawlessly at any time of the day or night without having to leave his bedroom.
"The NeKo is parallel to my bed," says Williams. "I want to be able to pop out of bed and get that idea out. Because it's an open platform, I can plug in and play, or if I plug in my guitar, bass or a mic, there it is. If I can find the VST, then I can do whatever I have in mind. If I want symphonic glass, if I want utterly raw, big, crushing waves, I want that."
Out of all the VSTs, software options, buttons, knobs and touchscreen versatilities, none of them are William's favorite feature of the NeKo LX. His favorite feature is the hammer.
"It's an open platform," says Williams. "If you go back to the analogy of driving the nail and not thinking about the hammer, the NeKo is the hammer. You can't distill it any better than that."
Equipment Used
Purchased NeKo LX (Gen1)
Artist Links
