Conducted October 2007. Originally published in In Cue, the KUOI programming guide, for Fall 2007.
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS: An interview with musician and KUOI alum Paul Dickow.
By Marcus Kellis.
Strategy’s Future Rock, out earlier this year on Kranky Records, was one of my favorite records of the summer. Performed and assembled by Portland’s Paul Dickow, the album was rated at 7.4/10 by Pitchfork and given four stars by the All Music Guide. Coincidence of coincidences, I emailed Paul only to find he was a former KUOI DJ. Bob Dickow, his father, is a professor of music at the Lionel Hampton School of Music; Paul grew up in Moscow before creating a whole series of excellent albums, and he agreed to an interview
Marcus Kellis: What do you think of your time in Idaho? Do you remember Moscow warmly?
Paul Dickow: I remember certain things warmly. I’m close to my family, I had a few nice friends in high school, and my KUOI days I remember particularly warmly because that was a bit of a haven when I really started to grow up. But that was just the thing, I think I felt surrounded by enough ignorance, religious overzealousness, and sometimes outright racism and sexism (and other xenophobia) to feel like I needed a haven. I remember my last years in Moscow the most warmly because, well, I spent the least amount of time exposing myself to those elements, which felt very small-town to me at the time. I split as fast as I could. Now that I’m older I’m friendlier to Moscow and the Palouse. For one thing, the weather is much, much better there than it is in western Oregon. Culturally and politically I’m struck by the fact that Moscow is now simultaneously more diverse and open and liberal than it used to be, and it also has this religious right-wing element that wasn’t as present when I was growing up. People’s ideas are more broadminded, there’s a huge food co-op, there are enterprising and sustainable businesses experimenting there, there are more people from other cultures there who apparently feel welcome. The city seems to have progressed and become less culturally isolated since my young days, but in the process it’s become much more polarized as well. You see those same extremes in Oregon and Washington, too, but instead of within one community, it’s more like Seattle vs. the central part of the state, or Portland vs. the rest of Oregon.
MK: What are some of your memories of KUOI?
PD: In my own club work I’ve done a lot of thematic DJing, which is what our Community Library Club, the inspiration for my label, was about. One summer while away from college, me and my childhood friend Zachary Pall did a KUOI show together where every show was on a certain theme: all music from Japan, songs about crime and punishment, the seasons, etc. That was very challenging, and a blast. I have a lot of fond memories of music directors turning me on to great music. Digging through the library on my off time and recording tapes in the studio B room late at night. I still have a lot of the music I got into then, this is where I formed my ideas about music. Less fond memories–I remember there was a guy who liked what I played and copied my show. He would play the same songs and same bands and stuff. That was weird.
MK: In Future Rock, it’s often hard to tell exactly what instruments are producing the sounds. Words like “textural” and “landscapes” sometimes appear in these contexts. Was this deliberate?
PD: Well, all music is textural, I just bring that element to the forefront and use that as the narrative rather than something else I think. “Landscape” is not as part of it, that’s something associated with atmospheric or meditative music that I think is sort of a cliché. The vastness is not about space in that sense, outdoor space or vistas, or whatever. I’ve done music about places, but this music is about inner space, for lack of a better word, and music space, genre space, it’s music about music in a way. In that regard, instruments are sometimes being used to mimic other instruments, like using a computer to simulate a Japanese flute, or making a keyboard sound like a bass guitar. There’s a lot of that, and use of non-musical sound to simulate musical sound too. That’s an attempt, I think, to say that you can make something out of materials not normally associated with that and end up with a really similar result, at least similar enough to be persuasive. And maybe dissimilar enough to be odd or challenging. Like making ambient pop music out of snippets of found sound, there is a thing that says, well, we’re responding to the product no matter what the process used to create it was.
MK: The length and mood of the tracks suggest Kraftwerk, Can, and the furniture music/ambient ideals of Erik Satie and Brian Eno.
PD: Can and Eno are direct influences on the album. Eno because he would cross avant-garde sound making and abstraction with pop accessibility, and Can because of their sense of modal melody, cycling or looping way of riffing and improvising. Kraftwerk is a huge influence but more on a cultural level, just that they were so willing to wholly exist within a certain style and theme. But they are so much more minimal and electronic, and my music is obviously more maximal and, a little bit less synthetic timbrally. Satie is something I like to listen to, but too old-fashioned to really be a direct reference point. The ambient elements are only one piece of the music. This is actually very beat-heavy music if you turn up the volume.
MK: What have you been listening to this year that you’ve dug on, old or new?
PD: Anything from the UK label Skull Disco. Everything Kranky’s done this year: phenomenal. Portland bands who release on some big labels, bands like Grouper, Yellow Swans. As far as releases this year I’ve been into Vladislav Delay’s album Whistleblower, Mark Templeton’s Standing on a Hummingbird. Some cool old music I’ve been checking out: Smersh, Kirk Nurock, Dickie Landry, early 4AD bands, and Cocteau Twins, who I wasn’t into at the time but I’m just getting into now.
MK: The last two Strategy albums have been released on Kranky, which is also the home of bands like Stars of the Lid, Deerhunter, and Andrew Pekler. How much contact do you have with your labelmates? What’s the nature of your relationship with that Chicago label, considering you have your own label project in Portland, Community Library
PD: There is some contact between all the bands for sure, especially when people are on tour and so forth. I’ve met many of the bands currently on the roster, but my relationship with them is mostly as a fan. The Portland ones like Valet, White Rainbow, etc. are obviously close. Honey from Valet and I are in Nudge together, for example. The UK-based Kranky artist Chris Herbert is a longtime friend of mine. We have been email pen pals, musical collaborators, tape-trading partners, and have visited each other, as well, for over thirteen years now.
I signed to Kranky before I started my own label, so they are still the primary outlet for most of my album-related music. I work with a number of labels releasing the occasional 12″ single of dance/club music, and I remix for a lot of people on a freelance basis. When I do a really big, thematic album collection I forward it to Kranky. My contract with them is officially done but still open to new work on a per-album, handshake basis, so it’s highly likely I will continue to work with them. My own label is a small and touchy entity, and when it comes down to it, I prefer to release with other labels so I am not my own editor. Separation of church and state kind of thing.
MK: Two things most of the reviews seem to mention about the album are a similarity to My Bloody Valentine’s album Loveless, and the appropriateness of the title. Myself, before reading any reviews, I was struck by the title. Not to ask ‘where did the title come from,’ but–with the nod to the original, French title of the film Fantastic Planet in the last track’s subtitle, that sort of thing –I wonder if it’s something that you set out to do, or something that came afterward.
PD: Some of the reviews seem to think the title is inappropriate, but… it’s inappropriate in a way that’s appropriate and funny, maybe? I knew a lot of the reviews would focus on that, it’s an intentionally provocative conundrum sort of title.
I don’t mind talking about the title, though there’s not really one answer that wins out over any other. I’d had a song entitled Future Rock because I liked the dramatic, declarative, sort of cocky aspect to the title, you know, electronic songs are usually titled “Phonxatrum7″ or “Megalopolis” and stuff like that, so I started to gravitate towards actual narratives and themes. The song incorporated live elements and I thought, OK, this is a machine really finally mimicking how I would write music if I had a band that I could direct. It was convincing as a kind of future “rock.” But then I realized that “rock” doesn’t just refer to rock music, but also to other musical styles- like “rockers” style reggae, “body rock” in the hip-hop or house music sensibility of ‘rocking’ as dancing or responding to the beat, etc. So that was important. Ultimately the title just came to refer to the fact that maybe rock music in the future would come to encompass so many other styles of music under the same idea. I don’t really know. In the end it just sounds funny and asks people to ask themselves, what does rock mean to them? What does it mean in the context of the album? Whatever meaning people attribute to the title is just as good as my many meanings!
Strategy’s website is here. You can hear samples from the album at the official Kranky website. Community Library, Paul’s record label, is here.