“Isn't everything about seduction these days ?"
the gentlecore trio trilemma have seeped forth from stoke- on- trent in the past couple of years and gently plied their way to our ears via a four-track ep, "crowded wilderness", on the possibly eclectic kitchen records of bolton. a glance at trilemma's website told us that they're not shy of a bit of verbiage, so we thought we'd test the limits by throwing a few open questions at Rob Trilemma and seeing what bounced back. given rob's expansive replies, we decided to set out the exchange out at some length so as to shed as much light as possible on the deep detail behind their deceptively simple murmurings... so if you want to know how Francis Fukuyama, Guy Debord and that stage-school jeremy Robbie Williams fit into Trilemma's worldview, prepare to be sated. trilemma also have many words on our own passion for d.i.y. (music, not bricolage - in love with these times in spite of tthese times towers are a mess of wonky shelving) which will hopefully inspire more and more of you to c-r-e-a-t-e... indeed, parts of this interview are as close as we've ever come to rockschool. except if rockschool was good. anyway, on to our first incisive, original question...
the gentlecore trio trilemma have seeped forth from stoke- on- trent in the past couple of years and gently plied their way to our ears via a four-track ep, "crowded wilderness", on the possibly eclectic kitchen records of bolton. a glance at trilemma's website told us that they're not shy of a bit of verbiage, so we thought we'd test the limits by throwing a few open questions at Rob Trilemma and seeing what bounced back. given rob's expansive replies, we decided to set out the exchange out at some length so as to shed as much light as possible on the deep detail behind their deceptively simple murmurings... so if you want to know how Francis Fukuyama, Guy Debord and that stage-school jeremy Robbie Williams fit into Trilemma's worldview, prepare to be sated. trilemma also have many words on our own passion for d.i.y. (music, not bricolage - in love with these times in spite of tthese times towers are a mess of wonky shelving) which will hopefully inspire more and more of you to c-r-e-a-t-e... indeed, parts of this interview are as close as we've ever come to rockschool. except if rockschool was good. anyway, on to our first incisive, original question...
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who are trilemma ?
At present there're 3 of us - Pete, Rob, Mark. But others are welcome to feed ideas and stuff into the fray.
and when and how did you come together ?
Well, I've sort of lost track. Probably 3 or 4 years ago now. Quite possibly more. I approached Pete with the idea of recording some sounds and music. I knew he had home-recording equipment that was sort of gathering dust, plus I'd known him from the local Stoke scene since 1845. We had dabbled in indie-schmindie, punky row pop projects for years before the Trilemma thing. Mark was a drummer we had both known, also through the intricate, meandering and infinitely complex network of Stoke's underground music scene. But Mark is something of an enigma - and hasn't been seen for months now. Of course, this doesn't stop Trilemma from working. Me and Pete just use old fashioned beat-boxes or biscuit tins if we need a groovy rhythm track to accompany our paeans of urban demise.
your name is a comment on what ? the nature of choice and consumerism ? or is that too simplistic ?
No that's not too simplistic. But it gets a bit complex quite quickly. Our notion of the trilemma relates to the idea of the end of the dialectic. I.e. the impasse that appears to have emerged in relation to the primary source of historical development - namely class struggle. The main antagonism, between the owners of the means of production and those who must live by selling their labour power, seems to have been resolved. As Frank Fukayama would say, it is the end of history. The west has won. But FF would, being an apologist for the US, affirm this situation as inherently positive. It is posited as the victory of western democracy and the 'free' market. As you might expect, Trilemma's position is somewhat opposed to this view. Drawing from Debord's idea of the spectacle, we would probably want to argue that all key forms of resistance have been 'recuperated by the spectacle' - i.e. any means of challenging authority in meaningful and effective ways have now been colonised by the market. From the dialectic resolving itself in some Utopian state, the dialectic seems to have been limping along on its negative side. Whenever the coin of history lands, it is face down. Humanity's face, ground into the dust. Hahaha. Bear with my stentorian tones, I'm warming to this. We are sold Nike trainers and wear them as a badge of gangsterism, a symbol that the dominant liberal values are to be rejected, etc. - whatever - with little or no acknowledgement that thhe process of production involves the exploitation of children, etc. etc. In other words, all means of making a statement against the current arrangements seem to be neutralised at a higher level. This higher level is the Trilemma.
Or another possible example is this; I remember when I was little (must have been about 1979) I was watching Top of the Pops when Lennon's 'Imagine' was at number one. Sitting there watching the video for the song, I was just horrified that something so hideously crap was selling so many copies. I wanted the Buzzcocks or X-Ray Spex, etc. Now, in retrospect if you listen to Imagine, it's actually got some quite radical (though also idealist and Utopian) messages - like the blanket critique of religion, etc. I can't believe that most of the people who bought that record also bought into the message of the lyrics. Rather, because it appeared on their TVs - a nice white room, a man, a woman, a piano etc. - they thought it was safe, polite, 'good'. In other words, the process of presenting the message through mass media somehow served to negate and neutralise any radical content. Something like that anyway.
To be brutally honest though, the meaning of the name Trilemma tends to change every time we think about it. Somedays it gets so abstract that it begins to signify a desire to affirm the ontological value of change, rather than stasis or inertia, but always having to rely upon a stable system (i.e. language) to do that. Other days it starts to evolve as a way to explain the death of the city in which we live. There is a triangular shape marking out 3 locations in our locality at which key events tend to occur. For instance, Stoke has the only recorded case of death by vampire. That's actually what the coroner's report said. But there are other places within the triangle that are sites of other more sick and grisly affairs. The vampire thing sounds a bit Carry On, but the plot sickens quite quickly. So that's another mode of the Trilemma. Gosh - there're so many!!! Heh.
is the concept of home recording something you hold particularly dear, as an anti-"industry" principle, say (the detail on the website seems like an attempt to demystify the whole recording process) or is it more just the fact that recording at home suits you as a group ? given the sound and song quality that you've managed to produce without a "traditional" studio, do you think that more people should be doing the same thing ?
I love the fact that you use the term 'demystify'. That is exactly what I've been trying to get at over the last few years or so. We really do believe that a lot of the recording processes needed to realise and convey ideas in sound and music can be controlled by those who are creating and making them. The traditional divisions of labour that used to define pop music have all but dissolved. Key here is that between band and engineer (or producer). This seems to be largely due to the appearance of digital technology, and its increasing availability to mere mortals. In turn, this has made "obsolete" analog equipment even more affordable. Hence a 4-track to cassette multi-tracker can now be bought new for about £60. It's worth mentioning here that single recorded by White Town called 'Your Woman' - it was recorded on a Tascam 488 I think. Anyway, it went to No.1 in about 20 territories or something insane. So there really is no excuse for not recording your own stuff anymore.
Of course, it can be objected that you need 'expertise'. However, it's easily possible to dabble for a few days until you get the basic hang of it. Pretty soon you can be recording a full band. You really don't need to spend that much on (e.g.) mics at all. An old fashioned PZM (£20 2nd hand) and a Shure SM57 are all that 's needed. Admittedly, it probably won't sound like Buch Vig or Albini have been at the controls - but then, if you went into your local demo studio the same will apply. Most small town pro-sound engineers seem to be Marillion or Genesis freaks, sporting horrendous pony tails or, worse, mullets. And then you wonder why your stuff comes out sounding like utter plop. The only way forward is to get going with a humble 4 track, or even 8 track to cassette, if you can manage to find one. If you want proof that this works, simply listen to Grandaddy's first Lp, or Sparklehorse's 1st, or even Elliott Smith's 'Either/Or' or 'X-O'.
Is there any reason to want more of a sound than this? If you feel like a 4 track recording has not done justice to your songs, it may well be that your songs are crap. Go back, write some more - keep recording until you do good stuff. See, you can't do that if you go down the traditional 'book into a studio for 2 days and pray everything turns out great' route. It's too expensive. Much better to get stuck in on the old home-fi front. I know loads of people reading this will probably say 'we know, we know!!!!' But I'd put good money on the fact that there will be many more who are sceptical and think unless you've got a 1/2" machine or a 2" Studer there's no way you can come up with the goods. This is utter shite, and serves to relieve bands of cash they could otherwise pool and buy some little set-up of their own.
Obviously we wouldn't want to hold up any of our own recordings as the best advert for DIY multi-tracking, though!! There are all sorts of errors (over enthusiastic mastering levels, poor use of compression during tracking, etc. etc.). However, we get close enough for our purposes - and despite the rough edges it seems to us that we've achieved a certain atmosphere in the stuff we've done so far. One way or another I've had a fair bit of experience of recording in professional studios and I honestly think they can very easily detract from the creation of feelings, of meaningful performances (whatever that may mean!!) and of a general sort of ambience that is the band's own personal thang. I liked it when Jason whatsisname from Grandaddy described pro studios as 'hospitals' (in TapeOp magazine) - if he means that they are clinical and slightly morbid then I get that.
But on the subject of why Trilemma do it the DIY-fi way, I'd have to say it's a combination of design and default. The latter in that we are both too mean to shell out on 'proper' recordings, and the former in that we like to lounge around and take our time. Which is difficult when you're paying by the hour, of course. I'd better just qualify this thing of taking our time. We're not painstaking about our recordings - that will be obvious. Most stuff is first or second take. And we don't spend too long over choosing sounds either. If it seems to be in the right sort of area, well that's fine. Let's press record and bloody well waste some ferrous oxide or whatever. We prefer to record far more stuff than we 'need' and then to come back to it at a later date when we can hear it with something like a third party's pair of ears. So what I meant about taking time was more about loafing through ideas - and abandoning them quickly if they aren't working. It's usually apparent pretty soon if something's working or not.
Another point that might be worth mentioning is that DIY-fi suits us because our sound is quite devoutly not RAWK orientated. In other words, we don't make a big racket - this means that we can record our stuff and be as quiet as church mice. We can carry on late at night, despite that Pete's house is an end terrace and his neighbour is a wife-beating psychopath who would rip a person's face clean off at the slightest provocation. This isn't to suggest that the home-fi route isn't for you if you're into creating RAWK sounds - just that to do that genre's sounds justice you'll probably have to record much of it at a local practice studio. Playing big rock drum sounds in your house probably isn't going to pacify the spouse killing lunatic looking for an excuse to bite someone's nose off.
are the four songs on "crowded wilderness" fairly representative of your musical manifesto ? (i don't suppose you have any views on the recent press fad / mantra that "quiet is the new loud" ?)
Basically, yes. However, there're no instrumentals on the 7", and we do like to get into that side of things - where the atmosphere is the key, rather than the melody or tune. Having said that, our main focus tends to fall on straightforward 'songs' - verse/chorus, hummable harmonies etc etc. In some ways, these are the most difficult kinds of things to write and record. We really do want to write a, ahem, 'classic'. We honestly try to create songs that are as good as anything that's commonly regarded as the best songs ever written. We're not embarrassed by this aspiration. And we think we're getting closer to this goal - we have quite a large number of songs waiting to be recorded, some of which promise to be as good as anything that's out there at the moment. In our wilder moments, we sometimes think we can better the best ever - and if you want some idea of what we regard as the best I'll just toss in 'May I' by Kevin Ayers. Yes, yes!!! It's got Mike Oldfield playing bass on it, but even so. If that song doesn't melt you alive then you are beyond help. [umm... ed.]
But what is our 'music manifesto'? Heh, erm. Like I said, we really are primarily concerned with trying to write and record songs that only the most hard-hearted of nay-sayers could possibly turn their nose up at. How do we know when we've achieved this? Ha! Dunno. Our only test, really, is to come back to stuff after a while, and see how it catches us. This is difficult, because obviously you get quite involved with an idea during the process of recording it, but this is partly why we try to work so quickly. The faster you can move from the moment you have the idea, to the point where a final mix is going down, the more likely you are to be able to tell if the thing is any good later. Basically, you don't let the idea become too familiar and you are still in a position where you can begin to hear it as a totally unfamiliar listener might do. This, in turn, links to our wider objective - which is basically to make music that we can enjoy in the same way, and to the same extent, that we enjoy other people's music. Some people I talk to (who're also involved in making music) regard this as a futile goal, or as a mad and strange sort of aim. But what other purpose could there be to making music? I suppose these types would say it's all about communicating or something - that the reall objective should be to convey feelings or meanings to others, not yourself!!! I'd argue that unless you can be convinced that what you've recorded is enjoyable (or 'effective', if you prefer that), then what chance - or what RIGHT - have you got to expect anyone else to regard it in that way? Our aims are really not as narcissistic as they might seem.
But back to the 7" and the question of whether the songs are representative. In some ways, they're just not the whole story. A better picture can be gleaned from the full length cd we've recently done for the paper-based zine Robots and Electronic Brains. We did a 100 run of cds for REBs subscribers. It's a 12 track fiasco and covers more ground than the ep (incidentally it's called 'Push What is Collapsing' - some Nietzsche quote or other, if memory serves). We do get into a kind of punky or new-wavey feel in places, and some pieces are quite influenced by Can too. In other words, we only go so far with this notion of 'Quiet is the new loud.' As I said above, our sound is partly dictated by the environment in which we record - we couldn't do RAWK sounds even if we wanted to. However, we do like to piss about with dynamics, and sometimes loud is necessary. I use the term in a relative sense - we never get absolutely LOUD. But we do use a full drum kit and Mark does lash out occasionally - if we require a bit of drama!! But I think loud is probably the new loud right now. The whole garage punk stylee seemed to nip the quiet thing in the bud.
Speaking personally though, Trilemma are generally more concerned with warping the listener's mind through a process of seduction, rather than aggression. I think aggression is kind of a spent force - certainly for me. But also in a Baudrillardian sense too. Isn't everything about seduction these days? We're no longer kept in line with rifle butts and truncheons! It seems to be more a case of quietly appealing to the senses, to desire and to the flesh. That's how the system is working these days. We're pacified by nice images, by the promise of luxury, by the lush scenery of Utopia. So we want to get into that whole seduction thing, and try and fuck it up somehow. We're not sure if it's possible - but that's where we're heading. Keeping things soft, sweet and incredibly sexy. Haha. As if. But you know what I mean. We want to slip quietly into the listener's consciousness and then plant a seed of dispair. That, hopefully, will grow into a massive tree of behavioural disorder. No, no. I'm fibbing! Well, partly. Trilemma are softly, softly though. And sometimes our intentions are wholesome (we genuinely do want to provide soundtracks for snogging and prolonged frottage sessions), other times we want to unsettle and distress. That's DISTRESS not DE-STRESS, NB.
as you may have gathered, "satellite town" is our favourite song on the ep - i grew up in a satellite town in essex and the song very much pricked many of those memories... we think its atmosphere far better conjures up the real, stilting frustration you feel at times in that situation than a loud, shouty song could ever do... is it very much a song written from personal experience ?
I'm really glad you like Satellite Town - it was my favourite too. It's stupidly ambitious though, and I think an earlier version may have been better. The version on the ep has a bass guitar added, whereas the first recording didn't bother trying to anchor the sound with a big bottom end. We just let the Wurlitzer piano soundalike do that job. But in the second attempt I have a nasty feeling we muddied the sound up. It's a horrible feeling to think that we plumped for the wrong version!
Anyway, shouty songs only get you so far. They do a great job of exploring a certain spectrum of feelings and frustrations, but ultimately, the loud, punky kind of approach only takes you so far. Then you have to get off and walk. Unless, of course, the Trilemma taxi is passing. In which case we will pick you up and take you right into the heart of darkness.
I also think that S-Town's words are the best on the ep, certainly they're the most 'lyrical'. All that shit about 'pylons spitting through the fog' - I like that bit. You see, our home town (which, with well over 1/4 million population, is actually a city) is very much a Town. It's sandwiched between 2 much larger cities - Brum and Manc are both 45 miles away. Noone comes into our town, and noone leaves. It's quite colloquial, inward looking and - let's be honest - backwards. Almost all our songs are about escape, and leaving this place. Sometimes we address this literally as in S-Town, sometimes it's more metaphorical. But what gets confusing is that this idea of escape becomes another kind of metaphor, which ties in with the meaning of the Trilemma. Wasn't there a key Situationist text called 'Leaving the 20th Century'? Guy Debord, again - I think. So leaving the Satellite Town starts to become some sort of metaphor for a much wider idea of moving on - of not being stranded in the old ways of tradition, of conserving, of bolstering what is teetering on the brink of death. Push What is Collapsing! But I think S-Town is in some ways too adventurous for its own good - in terms of its instrumentation, I mean. Haha - you know that Soft Cell song 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'? Well, that's the kind of sound we were toying with. We love our draggy '80s electro-fops, we really do. Despite that we're very unglamorous ourselves. I'm ruining it for you aren't I? I'll move on swiftly!
do you think the main role of music should lie more as art, self-expression or entertainment (we appreciate they're hardly exclusive) ? the impression conjured up by the lyrics to the ep and the writing on the website is almost that you're looking to introduce something else - music as philosophy too, maybe...
Well, I certainly loathe the almost book-burning attitude of certain celeb-thugs. Remember when Noel Gallagher bragged that he'd never read a book? What are we meant to conclude? That reading is stupid? That those of us who sit down in our draughty rooms and plough through Das Capital are reprehensible losers and terminally unfashionable? It's not the admission of ignorance that bothers me - rather, the apparent pride. Another proud fool is Robbie Williams. Stupid wanker - and we're now invited to believe that he has impeccable rock credentials or something. Please. I shouldn't get worked up, I know. On one level I suppose the attitude of these dicks is inevitable. You pass through a shitty state school system that endows reading and study with all the allure of turd counting or naval picking, so its no wonder we reject anything resembling learning and study, etc. But I'm afraid there really is ultimately no excuse. You have to punch through that shit and realise that the system would love to believe it's managed to convince you you're stupid and that all you're fit for is communicating garbage and less than worthless aphorisms. I know that the whole Gallagher / Williams attitude is about saying "Ha - we're not worthless, we're rich and people love us."' Well, people don't love them. People just buy the shit and forget about it. As for the rich thing, are we honestly meant to think that we too can do it ? That all we have to do is have some kind of self-belief and we too can become celeb millionaires? [and this is what eminem seems to be saying at the moment, too... ed] Utter cack. This is just Thatcherism in the context of popular musical culture. It's another take on the very individualism that serves to negate the possibility of any far reaching resistance born of collective struggle.
So it perhaps goes without saying that Trilemma are trying to do something other than entertain. But the rub is that there's something quite appalling in having a message pushed into your face. Politics and music are difficult to put together without the preaching thing doing your head in. So in so far as we try to communicate something we do it in camouflage, and surreptitiously. Oh, I don't know. Basically though, we are very much into mucking around with philosophical ideas and trying to convey this stuff in songs and sound. Yes, we fail. Yes, we try too hard sometimes. Yes, we believe music can be more than entertainment.
does the "internet age" make it easier for you to find / communicate with others (whether bands, labels etc) who share your artistic vision ? are there others around at the moment, whether writers or musicians, who you do see as kindred spirits ?
I was a luddite for years but recently I made the heroic effort to resolve this. Going to college introduced me to PCs and the internet. I'd still be trying to work out how to change the battery in my digital watch were it not for a series of accidents (girlfriends having PCs and lap-tops etc etc, and me drifting back into F/T education after years of casual employment). I still love paper based zines, but it's great to google stuff and find new ezines that would otherwise have remained unknown to you. Where Trilemma lag behind is with regard to up-loading mp3 stuff. We still haven't sussed that really. Which is a bit sad. But, yes, I'm completely convinced by ICT. I wouldn't be without internet access now at all. It's changed everything for me. I've downloaded WAV files and written songs around them - some of which I think are the best thingss I've ever done. I've logged onto message boards and had hideously vicious and protracted arguments with people (typical here is a series of spats on the TapeOp message board - Christ I really went to town on those wankers, with their hatred of lo-fi approaches and such like).
what other musicians, historically, do you respectively like and / or feel influenced by ?
In some ways I think The Smiths were the last great band - because they really did do it independently. Yes, they sold out to EMI in the end but before that they were perfect. I never realised this at the time and used to gently ridicule a close friend who was besotted by them. I also look back on the Velvet Underground as somehow perfect too. But for years I would just say it was punk that influenced me. From buying Buzzcocks and Stranglers records when I was 10 (in '78), right through to the rise of Husker Du in the early mid '80s. Punk was where I was really. But slightly more recently I don't think there're aspects of any genre I don't like and/or respect. Apart from ambient World Music and New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Well, apart from [Iron] Maiden with Dianno. I'm joking!!! I much prefer Bruce Dickinson [ex-olympic fencer and now charter airline pilot - ! - who also happened to spend many years as iron maiden's lead vocalist]...
when can we expect to hear more from the trilemma camp ? are there planned future releases on the way ?
Uhm, well we're working on stuff constantly. I think we managed to get quite a lot done in 2002, but that was a bit of a fluke because for 2 or 3 years before that nothing much happened. I think we'll be ploughing similarly diverse and varied song styles in '03 and trying to release stuff via cdr and fanzine freebies. That suits us - it's good because it works for us and zines. It's just a matter of finding paper based zines that like us enough to include cdrs in their mail outs and such like. Obviously we'd like to do vinyl releases but it's getting harder and harder and we really don't have much truck with the 'record a demo, send it out' mentality.
a trite question, we know, but what are trilemma reading at the moment ?
I just finished Donna Tart's The Secret History. That was ok, silly in places and a bit long but quite compelling I suppose. I also read Clockwork Orange for the Nth time this year. It gets better, believe it or not. Also Notes From Underground (Dostoievsky) - hilarious. Really very funny. Dunno if that was ol' Fire Door's intention, but the main character is a pisser. I love that Russian novel convention of having the distraught and alienated low-ranking civil servant office drone as the main man. I always think of Mark E. Smith for some reason. Also Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life - he's a much more lucid writer than Debord. The chapter called Down Quantity Street was ringing Big Ben-like bells. Also I bought a copy of Bataille's Bule of Noon - you can do it in an afternoon. Or a long bath, providing you have enough hot water.
and we always have to know... trilemma football allegiances (if any, of course) ?
Well, Pete's a Stoke City boy really - even if he becomes gradually more ashamed to admit it. Me, I probably go for Port Vale, even though Pete will sink a Stanley knife into my thigh for even thinking such a thing.
finally, for those who haven't yet heard trilemma, how would you recommend the experience to them ?
Imagine being immersed in a sensory deprivation tank filled not with water but lysergic acid. You have been enclosed in this vessel for 48 hours and urine and fecal matter have contaminated the liquid. The sounds you begin to hear are actually images of darkness twisted into hallucinations via a process of synaesthesia. Luckily for humanity, Trilemma have recorded these psychic artefacts and used them to accompany nice sing-along ditties for the delectation of the listening public. Mmm-mmmm - tasty snacklets for the ears and brain!!!
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i'm sure it was daylight outside when we started reading ?.. anyway, agreed with (big ben-like) bells on, especially about recording studio snobs and the smiths... despite rob's protestations, "satellite town" still shimmers with of all the nervous energy and scary potential of the young hood, distilled into a handful of grooves, and it can be found with three shy but inspired companions on "crowded wilderness", which is available for a two pound coin via Kitchen Records (bother them at [note: no doubt long-out of date address excised]....) and we would like to thank rob and pete trilemma (and in his absence mark trilemma) once more. ILWTTISOTT
who are trilemma ?
At present there're 3 of us - Pete, Rob, Mark. But others are welcome to feed ideas and stuff into the fray.
and when and how did you come together ?
Well, I've sort of lost track. Probably 3 or 4 years ago now. Quite possibly more. I approached Pete with the idea of recording some sounds and music. I knew he had home-recording equipment that was sort of gathering dust, plus I'd known him from the local Stoke scene since 1845. We had dabbled in indie-schmindie, punky row pop projects for years before the Trilemma thing. Mark was a drummer we had both known, also through the intricate, meandering and infinitely complex network of Stoke's underground music scene. But Mark is something of an enigma - and hasn't been seen for months now. Of course, this doesn't stop Trilemma from working. Me and Pete just use old fashioned beat-boxes or biscuit tins if we need a groovy rhythm track to accompany our paeans of urban demise.
your name is a comment on what ? the nature of choice and consumerism ? or is that too simplistic ?
No that's not too simplistic. But it gets a bit complex quite quickly. Our notion of the trilemma relates to the idea of the end of the dialectic. I.e. the impasse that appears to have emerged in relation to the primary source of historical development - namely class struggle. The main antagonism, between the owners of the means of production and those who must live by selling their labour power, seems to have been resolved. As Frank Fukayama would say, it is the end of history. The west has won. But FF would, being an apologist for the US, affirm this situation as inherently positive. It is posited as the victory of western democracy and the 'free' market. As you might expect, Trilemma's position is somewhat opposed to this view. Drawing from Debord's idea of the spectacle, we would probably want to argue that all key forms of resistance have been 'recuperated by the spectacle' - i.e. any means of challenging authority in meaningful and effective ways have now been colonised by the market. From the dialectic resolving itself in some Utopian state, the dialectic seems to have been limping along on its negative side. Whenever the coin of history lands, it is face down. Humanity's face, ground into the dust. Hahaha. Bear with my stentorian tones, I'm warming to this. We are sold Nike trainers and wear them as a badge of gangsterism, a symbol that the dominant liberal values are to be rejected, etc. - whatever - with little or no acknowledgement that thhe process of production involves the exploitation of children, etc. etc. In other words, all means of making a statement against the current arrangements seem to be neutralised at a higher level. This higher level is the Trilemma.
Or another possible example is this; I remember when I was little (must have been about 1979) I was watching Top of the Pops when Lennon's 'Imagine' was at number one. Sitting there watching the video for the song, I was just horrified that something so hideously crap was selling so many copies. I wanted the Buzzcocks or X-Ray Spex, etc. Now, in retrospect if you listen to Imagine, it's actually got some quite radical (though also idealist and Utopian) messages - like the blanket critique of religion, etc. I can't believe that most of the people who bought that record also bought into the message of the lyrics. Rather, because it appeared on their TVs - a nice white room, a man, a woman, a piano etc. - they thought it was safe, polite, 'good'. In other words, the process of presenting the message through mass media somehow served to negate and neutralise any radical content. Something like that anyway.
To be brutally honest though, the meaning of the name Trilemma tends to change every time we think about it. Somedays it gets so abstract that it begins to signify a desire to affirm the ontological value of change, rather than stasis or inertia, but always having to rely upon a stable system (i.e. language) to do that. Other days it starts to evolve as a way to explain the death of the city in which we live. There is a triangular shape marking out 3 locations in our locality at which key events tend to occur. For instance, Stoke has the only recorded case of death by vampire. That's actually what the coroner's report said. But there are other places within the triangle that are sites of other more sick and grisly affairs. The vampire thing sounds a bit Carry On, but the plot sickens quite quickly. So that's another mode of the Trilemma. Gosh - there're so many!!! Heh.
is the concept of home recording something you hold particularly dear, as an anti-"industry" principle, say (the detail on the website seems like an attempt to demystify the whole recording process) or is it more just the fact that recording at home suits you as a group ? given the sound and song quality that you've managed to produce without a "traditional" studio, do you think that more people should be doing the same thing ?
I love the fact that you use the term 'demystify'. That is exactly what I've been trying to get at over the last few years or so. We really do believe that a lot of the recording processes needed to realise and convey ideas in sound and music can be controlled by those who are creating and making them. The traditional divisions of labour that used to define pop music have all but dissolved. Key here is that between band and engineer (or producer). This seems to be largely due to the appearance of digital technology, and its increasing availability to mere mortals. In turn, this has made "obsolete" analog equipment even more affordable. Hence a 4-track to cassette multi-tracker can now be bought new for about £60. It's worth mentioning here that single recorded by White Town called 'Your Woman' - it was recorded on a Tascam 488 I think. Anyway, it went to No.1 in about 20 territories or something insane. So there really is no excuse for not recording your own stuff anymore.
Of course, it can be objected that you need 'expertise'. However, it's easily possible to dabble for a few days until you get the basic hang of it. Pretty soon you can be recording a full band. You really don't need to spend that much on (e.g.) mics at all. An old fashioned PZM (£20 2nd hand) and a Shure SM57 are all that 's needed. Admittedly, it probably won't sound like Buch Vig or Albini have been at the controls - but then, if you went into your local demo studio the same will apply. Most small town pro-sound engineers seem to be Marillion or Genesis freaks, sporting horrendous pony tails or, worse, mullets. And then you wonder why your stuff comes out sounding like utter plop. The only way forward is to get going with a humble 4 track, or even 8 track to cassette, if you can manage to find one. If you want proof that this works, simply listen to Grandaddy's first Lp, or Sparklehorse's 1st, or even Elliott Smith's 'Either/Or' or 'X-O'.
Is there any reason to want more of a sound than this? If you feel like a 4 track recording has not done justice to your songs, it may well be that your songs are crap. Go back, write some more - keep recording until you do good stuff. See, you can't do that if you go down the traditional 'book into a studio for 2 days and pray everything turns out great' route. It's too expensive. Much better to get stuck in on the old home-fi front. I know loads of people reading this will probably say 'we know, we know!!!!' But I'd put good money on the fact that there will be many more who are sceptical and think unless you've got a 1/2" machine or a 2" Studer there's no way you can come up with the goods. This is utter shite, and serves to relieve bands of cash they could otherwise pool and buy some little set-up of their own.
Obviously we wouldn't want to hold up any of our own recordings as the best advert for DIY multi-tracking, though!! There are all sorts of errors (over enthusiastic mastering levels, poor use of compression during tracking, etc. etc.). However, we get close enough for our purposes - and despite the rough edges it seems to us that we've achieved a certain atmosphere in the stuff we've done so far. One way or another I've had a fair bit of experience of recording in professional studios and I honestly think they can very easily detract from the creation of feelings, of meaningful performances (whatever that may mean!!) and of a general sort of ambience that is the band's own personal thang. I liked it when Jason whatsisname from Grandaddy described pro studios as 'hospitals' (in TapeOp magazine) - if he means that they are clinical and slightly morbid then I get that.
But on the subject of why Trilemma do it the DIY-fi way, I'd have to say it's a combination of design and default. The latter in that we are both too mean to shell out on 'proper' recordings, and the former in that we like to lounge around and take our time. Which is difficult when you're paying by the hour, of course. I'd better just qualify this thing of taking our time. We're not painstaking about our recordings - that will be obvious. Most stuff is first or second take. And we don't spend too long over choosing sounds either. If it seems to be in the right sort of area, well that's fine. Let's press record and bloody well waste some ferrous oxide or whatever. We prefer to record far more stuff than we 'need' and then to come back to it at a later date when we can hear it with something like a third party's pair of ears. So what I meant about taking time was more about loafing through ideas - and abandoning them quickly if they aren't working. It's usually apparent pretty soon if something's working or not.
Another point that might be worth mentioning is that DIY-fi suits us because our sound is quite devoutly not RAWK orientated. In other words, we don't make a big racket - this means that we can record our stuff and be as quiet as church mice. We can carry on late at night, despite that Pete's house is an end terrace and his neighbour is a wife-beating psychopath who would rip a person's face clean off at the slightest provocation. This isn't to suggest that the home-fi route isn't for you if you're into creating RAWK sounds - just that to do that genre's sounds justice you'll probably have to record much of it at a local practice studio. Playing big rock drum sounds in your house probably isn't going to pacify the spouse killing lunatic looking for an excuse to bite someone's nose off.
are the four songs on "crowded wilderness" fairly representative of your musical manifesto ? (i don't suppose you have any views on the recent press fad / mantra that "quiet is the new loud" ?)
Basically, yes. However, there're no instrumentals on the 7", and we do like to get into that side of things - where the atmosphere is the key, rather than the melody or tune. Having said that, our main focus tends to fall on straightforward 'songs' - verse/chorus, hummable harmonies etc etc. In some ways, these are the most difficult kinds of things to write and record. We really do want to write a, ahem, 'classic'. We honestly try to create songs that are as good as anything that's commonly regarded as the best songs ever written. We're not embarrassed by this aspiration. And we think we're getting closer to this goal - we have quite a large number of songs waiting to be recorded, some of which promise to be as good as anything that's out there at the moment. In our wilder moments, we sometimes think we can better the best ever - and if you want some idea of what we regard as the best I'll just toss in 'May I' by Kevin Ayers. Yes, yes!!! It's got Mike Oldfield playing bass on it, but even so. If that song doesn't melt you alive then you are beyond help. [umm... ed.]
But what is our 'music manifesto'? Heh, erm. Like I said, we really are primarily concerned with trying to write and record songs that only the most hard-hearted of nay-sayers could possibly turn their nose up at. How do we know when we've achieved this? Ha! Dunno. Our only test, really, is to come back to stuff after a while, and see how it catches us. This is difficult, because obviously you get quite involved with an idea during the process of recording it, but this is partly why we try to work so quickly. The faster you can move from the moment you have the idea, to the point where a final mix is going down, the more likely you are to be able to tell if the thing is any good later. Basically, you don't let the idea become too familiar and you are still in a position where you can begin to hear it as a totally unfamiliar listener might do. This, in turn, links to our wider objective - which is basically to make music that we can enjoy in the same way, and to the same extent, that we enjoy other people's music. Some people I talk to (who're also involved in making music) regard this as a futile goal, or as a mad and strange sort of aim. But what other purpose could there be to making music? I suppose these types would say it's all about communicating or something - that the reall objective should be to convey feelings or meanings to others, not yourself!!! I'd argue that unless you can be convinced that what you've recorded is enjoyable (or 'effective', if you prefer that), then what chance - or what RIGHT - have you got to expect anyone else to regard it in that way? Our aims are really not as narcissistic as they might seem.
But back to the 7" and the question of whether the songs are representative. In some ways, they're just not the whole story. A better picture can be gleaned from the full length cd we've recently done for the paper-based zine Robots and Electronic Brains. We did a 100 run of cds for REBs subscribers. It's a 12 track fiasco and covers more ground than the ep (incidentally it's called 'Push What is Collapsing' - some Nietzsche quote or other, if memory serves). We do get into a kind of punky or new-wavey feel in places, and some pieces are quite influenced by Can too. In other words, we only go so far with this notion of 'Quiet is the new loud.' As I said above, our sound is partly dictated by the environment in which we record - we couldn't do RAWK sounds even if we wanted to. However, we do like to piss about with dynamics, and sometimes loud is necessary. I use the term in a relative sense - we never get absolutely LOUD. But we do use a full drum kit and Mark does lash out occasionally - if we require a bit of drama!! But I think loud is probably the new loud right now. The whole garage punk stylee seemed to nip the quiet thing in the bud.
Speaking personally though, Trilemma are generally more concerned with warping the listener's mind through a process of seduction, rather than aggression. I think aggression is kind of a spent force - certainly for me. But also in a Baudrillardian sense too. Isn't everything about seduction these days? We're no longer kept in line with rifle butts and truncheons! It seems to be more a case of quietly appealing to the senses, to desire and to the flesh. That's how the system is working these days. We're pacified by nice images, by the promise of luxury, by the lush scenery of Utopia. So we want to get into that whole seduction thing, and try and fuck it up somehow. We're not sure if it's possible - but that's where we're heading. Keeping things soft, sweet and incredibly sexy. Haha. As if. But you know what I mean. We want to slip quietly into the listener's consciousness and then plant a seed of dispair. That, hopefully, will grow into a massive tree of behavioural disorder. No, no. I'm fibbing! Well, partly. Trilemma are softly, softly though. And sometimes our intentions are wholesome (we genuinely do want to provide soundtracks for snogging and prolonged frottage sessions), other times we want to unsettle and distress. That's DISTRESS not DE-STRESS, NB.
as you may have gathered, "satellite town" is our favourite song on the ep - i grew up in a satellite town in essex and the song very much pricked many of those memories... we think its atmosphere far better conjures up the real, stilting frustration you feel at times in that situation than a loud, shouty song could ever do... is it very much a song written from personal experience ?
I'm really glad you like Satellite Town - it was my favourite too. It's stupidly ambitious though, and I think an earlier version may have been better. The version on the ep has a bass guitar added, whereas the first recording didn't bother trying to anchor the sound with a big bottom end. We just let the Wurlitzer piano soundalike do that job. But in the second attempt I have a nasty feeling we muddied the sound up. It's a horrible feeling to think that we plumped for the wrong version!
Anyway, shouty songs only get you so far. They do a great job of exploring a certain spectrum of feelings and frustrations, but ultimately, the loud, punky kind of approach only takes you so far. Then you have to get off and walk. Unless, of course, the Trilemma taxi is passing. In which case we will pick you up and take you right into the heart of darkness.
I also think that S-Town's words are the best on the ep, certainly they're the most 'lyrical'. All that shit about 'pylons spitting through the fog' - I like that bit. You see, our home town (which, with well over 1/4 million population, is actually a city) is very much a Town. It's sandwiched between 2 much larger cities - Brum and Manc are both 45 miles away. Noone comes into our town, and noone leaves. It's quite colloquial, inward looking and - let's be honest - backwards. Almost all our songs are about escape, and leaving this place. Sometimes we address this literally as in S-Town, sometimes it's more metaphorical. But what gets confusing is that this idea of escape becomes another kind of metaphor, which ties in with the meaning of the Trilemma. Wasn't there a key Situationist text called 'Leaving the 20th Century'? Guy Debord, again - I think. So leaving the Satellite Town starts to become some sort of metaphor for a much wider idea of moving on - of not being stranded in the old ways of tradition, of conserving, of bolstering what is teetering on the brink of death. Push What is Collapsing! But I think S-Town is in some ways too adventurous for its own good - in terms of its instrumentation, I mean. Haha - you know that Soft Cell song 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye'? Well, that's the kind of sound we were toying with. We love our draggy '80s electro-fops, we really do. Despite that we're very unglamorous ourselves. I'm ruining it for you aren't I? I'll move on swiftly!
do you think the main role of music should lie more as art, self-expression or entertainment (we appreciate they're hardly exclusive) ? the impression conjured up by the lyrics to the ep and the writing on the website is almost that you're looking to introduce something else - music as philosophy too, maybe...
Well, I certainly loathe the almost book-burning attitude of certain celeb-thugs. Remember when Noel Gallagher bragged that he'd never read a book? What are we meant to conclude? That reading is stupid? That those of us who sit down in our draughty rooms and plough through Das Capital are reprehensible losers and terminally unfashionable? It's not the admission of ignorance that bothers me - rather, the apparent pride. Another proud fool is Robbie Williams. Stupid wanker - and we're now invited to believe that he has impeccable rock credentials or something. Please. I shouldn't get worked up, I know. On one level I suppose the attitude of these dicks is inevitable. You pass through a shitty state school system that endows reading and study with all the allure of turd counting or naval picking, so its no wonder we reject anything resembling learning and study, etc. But I'm afraid there really is ultimately no excuse. You have to punch through that shit and realise that the system would love to believe it's managed to convince you you're stupid and that all you're fit for is communicating garbage and less than worthless aphorisms. I know that the whole Gallagher / Williams attitude is about saying "Ha - we're not worthless, we're rich and people love us."' Well, people don't love them. People just buy the shit and forget about it. As for the rich thing, are we honestly meant to think that we too can do it ? That all we have to do is have some kind of self-belief and we too can become celeb millionaires? [and this is what eminem seems to be saying at the moment, too... ed] Utter cack. This is just Thatcherism in the context of popular musical culture. It's another take on the very individualism that serves to negate the possibility of any far reaching resistance born of collective struggle.
So it perhaps goes without saying that Trilemma are trying to do something other than entertain. But the rub is that there's something quite appalling in having a message pushed into your face. Politics and music are difficult to put together without the preaching thing doing your head in. So in so far as we try to communicate something we do it in camouflage, and surreptitiously. Oh, I don't know. Basically though, we are very much into mucking around with philosophical ideas and trying to convey this stuff in songs and sound. Yes, we fail. Yes, we try too hard sometimes. Yes, we believe music can be more than entertainment.
does the "internet age" make it easier for you to find / communicate with others (whether bands, labels etc) who share your artistic vision ? are there others around at the moment, whether writers or musicians, who you do see as kindred spirits ?
I was a luddite for years but recently I made the heroic effort to resolve this. Going to college introduced me to PCs and the internet. I'd still be trying to work out how to change the battery in my digital watch were it not for a series of accidents (girlfriends having PCs and lap-tops etc etc, and me drifting back into F/T education after years of casual employment). I still love paper based zines, but it's great to google stuff and find new ezines that would otherwise have remained unknown to you. Where Trilemma lag behind is with regard to up-loading mp3 stuff. We still haven't sussed that really. Which is a bit sad. But, yes, I'm completely convinced by ICT. I wouldn't be without internet access now at all. It's changed everything for me. I've downloaded WAV files and written songs around them - some of which I think are the best thingss I've ever done. I've logged onto message boards and had hideously vicious and protracted arguments with people (typical here is a series of spats on the TapeOp message board - Christ I really went to town on those wankers, with their hatred of lo-fi approaches and such like).
what other musicians, historically, do you respectively like and / or feel influenced by ?
In some ways I think The Smiths were the last great band - because they really did do it independently. Yes, they sold out to EMI in the end but before that they were perfect. I never realised this at the time and used to gently ridicule a close friend who was besotted by them. I also look back on the Velvet Underground as somehow perfect too. But for years I would just say it was punk that influenced me. From buying Buzzcocks and Stranglers records when I was 10 (in '78), right through to the rise of Husker Du in the early mid '80s. Punk was where I was really. But slightly more recently I don't think there're aspects of any genre I don't like and/or respect. Apart from ambient World Music and New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Well, apart from [Iron] Maiden with Dianno. I'm joking!!! I much prefer Bruce Dickinson [ex-olympic fencer and now charter airline pilot - ! - who also happened to spend many years as iron maiden's lead vocalist]...
when can we expect to hear more from the trilemma camp ? are there planned future releases on the way ?
Uhm, well we're working on stuff constantly. I think we managed to get quite a lot done in 2002, but that was a bit of a fluke because for 2 or 3 years before that nothing much happened. I think we'll be ploughing similarly diverse and varied song styles in '03 and trying to release stuff via cdr and fanzine freebies. That suits us - it's good because it works for us and zines. It's just a matter of finding paper based zines that like us enough to include cdrs in their mail outs and such like. Obviously we'd like to do vinyl releases but it's getting harder and harder and we really don't have much truck with the 'record a demo, send it out' mentality.
a trite question, we know, but what are trilemma reading at the moment ?
I just finished Donna Tart's The Secret History. That was ok, silly in places and a bit long but quite compelling I suppose. I also read Clockwork Orange for the Nth time this year. It gets better, believe it or not. Also Notes From Underground (Dostoievsky) - hilarious. Really very funny. Dunno if that was ol' Fire Door's intention, but the main character is a pisser. I love that Russian novel convention of having the distraught and alienated low-ranking civil servant office drone as the main man. I always think of Mark E. Smith for some reason. Also Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life - he's a much more lucid writer than Debord. The chapter called Down Quantity Street was ringing Big Ben-like bells. Also I bought a copy of Bataille's Bule of Noon - you can do it in an afternoon. Or a long bath, providing you have enough hot water.
and we always have to know... trilemma football allegiances (if any, of course) ?
Well, Pete's a Stoke City boy really - even if he becomes gradually more ashamed to admit it. Me, I probably go for Port Vale, even though Pete will sink a Stanley knife into my thigh for even thinking such a thing.
finally, for those who haven't yet heard trilemma, how would you recommend the experience to them ?
Imagine being immersed in a sensory deprivation tank filled not with water but lysergic acid. You have been enclosed in this vessel for 48 hours and urine and fecal matter have contaminated the liquid. The sounds you begin to hear are actually images of darkness twisted into hallucinations via a process of synaesthesia. Luckily for humanity, Trilemma have recorded these psychic artefacts and used them to accompany nice sing-along ditties for the delectation of the listening public. Mmm-mmmm - tasty snacklets for the ears and brain!!!
* * * * *
i'm sure it was daylight outside when we started reading ?.. anyway, agreed with (big ben-like) bells on, especially about recording studio snobs and the smiths... despite rob's protestations, "satellite town" still shimmers with of all the nervous energy and scary potential of the young hood, distilled into a handful of grooves, and it can be found with three shy but inspired companions on "crowded wilderness", which is available for a two pound coin via Kitchen Records (bother them at [note: no doubt long-out of date address excised]....) and we would like to thank rob and pete trilemma (and in his absence mark trilemma) once more. ILWTTISOTT
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