David Chandler, a.k.a. Solenoid, has been making electronic music in Portland for over a decade, beginning at a time when the genre was edgier and often dismissed by the mainstream clubs and music press of what was then a very rock town. The shift—marked by the success of clubs like Holocene and Dunes, and by a solo electronic act, Copy, being named WW’s Best New Band this year—has been toward the dance floor, and toward mainstream interest. Chandler’s new release, Supernature, deftly bridges the gap, anchoring analog acid experiments in the mass-appeal 4/4 beats. Last week, David Chandler gave us an extensive interview covering everything from Missy to Menche, ska-cid to Miami Bass, and whom to ask about the future of Cascadia. What follows is the totally uncut version. For your pleasure.

What was your impetus to move farther into dance-oriented music with Supernature?

I don’t know that Supernature is meant to be more dance-oriented
than my other albums were. The drums now are simpler and more
efficient on this album, and consequently I think I’ve gained
better production skills since the last album, but my rhythms have
always been borrowing from dance-based music– just a lot jazzier
and syncopated in the past. However, the underground dance scene,
before it was in clubs in Portland, embraced dancing to much more
difficult rhythms than people seem to tolerate in clubs now. My
older music uses more electrofunk backbeats, which for some reason
are not always identified right away as “dance music” the way a
disco or 4OTF beat immediately is.

My perspective on dance music culture has changed a little. First
of all, rave culture in the USA is a ghost of its previous self and
I kind of miss the supportive community that it created for itself.
I appreciate more of the clever musicological jokes within old rave
and club music now than before, and the nods and winks that the
music makes to the dj’s who are spinning it are more dense and risky
in the old music. Some of the music was so weird and twisted that
it sounds like experimental music when heard outside of the context
of some moonlight party.

How do I explain… it seems like you are presuming the role of
dj’ing and dance clubs in my music… I am using dance music type
beats and such because it is very familiar and appealing to me to
listen to, but I’m just hanging on them structurally to do other
things. An example: If one were to stereotype rock-n-roll as being
mainly about “sex & drugs”, then does hearing rock beats in the
latest Radiohead album mean the music is fundamentally about “sex &
drugs”?

Have you been playing material off Supernature (or variations on
it) in clubs? how’s the response been? How’s the response been to
the album outside of Portland?

I’ve played most of the material in clubs, but not exactly for
anyone’s response. In fact, most of the time was when no one was
present to hear the music because I was playing the music to hear
how the eq’ing and compression and technical stuff was sounding.

I’d checked most of the music on everything from boomboxes to club
sound systems during the working process. The fact that I’m still
working with old synthesizer hardware and record to DAT means that I
can only work on one track at a time and need feedback and
perspective on that music only during that brief window of
opportunity to fix or change the music. Yes, I’ve sometimes mixed
in-progress versions of some of the music while dj’ing dance sets,
but I tend to listen to the tracks on a club PA before or after
hours, because I want to skip through the music abruptly. Holocene,
1201, Dunes, and Saucebox have been helpful in this way. If I
already was a familiar face, I would sometimes go in early and ask
to play my music on the sound system for about 5 minutes and then
leave.

Holocene is particularly nice because they have a second sound
system that is not always used. It usually takes a few minutes to
check out how my tracks sound on a sound system, but it is amazingly
valuable information. I could have a lot of tools in a home studio
to help you get perspective on your production sounds, but a huge
sound system in a big empty room is not one of them. I’ve probably
mixed more of my non-album tracks while dj’ing dance music than I
did with the Supernature ones. The album is assembled for listening
to as a complete album-side at a time (arranged based on the times
of two sides of vinyl), and to be club-friendly was a matter of
producing the eq and percussion adequately. I probably labored more
over resolving an album-length type of flow than I did over creating
any dance club functionality.

So far as you know, have many djs been playing cuts off this?

It is too early to expect many people to be playing the tracks since
the album is not technically released from Europe until Aug 14th.
I’ve seen it on some playlists online, but I expect an interest in
the album to be gradual or somewhat off the radar if the listenner
is anyone like myself. There are a lot of people who are so into
music that they don’t have time for blogging, playlist writing, etc,
unless music is related to their work. I’d love it if those people
got into the album, but I can also accept the fact that I’d never
know what they thought.

What’s being played in your DJ brokenwindow sets?

My dj sets are probably 95% older records, though what I select
often is informed by new music that is reexploring or reminding me
of old styles. Since I’m still dj’ing with vinyl, and there is a
lot of music that doesn’t come out on vinyl, or it is expensive, I
have to turn to my older records. For instance, after Missy Elliot
sampled Cybotron’s “Clear”, I started dj’ing “Clear” again during dj
sets sometimes doing layering it in a mashup. I never ended up
picking up the Missy track.

I’m slowly starting to use a cdr when mixing, usually records that I
digitize myself so that I don’t have to bring them out.
It took 7 years for cd-player manufacturers to figure out that they
needed to make the platter spin on top of a dj’ing cd player!

iPods need an operating system rewrite or hack that would allow
pitch adjustment to be useful, besides most mp3’s sounding really
bad on a sound system.

newer records in my create: DJ Mash’s “Somebody’s Property”, Richard
Bartz 12″s on Kurbel, Captain Comatose, MUNK on Gomma, Detroit In
Effect, Osunlade/Obafunke, Abe Duque Records, Lindstrom, Zongamin,
Mu, Kings Have Long Arms

Older music: early 90’s breakbeat with MC’s, late ’80s hip house and
acid house with MC’s, ska-cid (a brief genre of acid house and ska
combined), west coast electro (Egyptian Lover, Techno-Hop), italo
disco, Detroit Bass and Miami Bass, Dance Mania label ghetto house,
early 90’s bleep techno from Sheffield, Maximum Joy/ESG/Konk, and a
lot of one-off records. For instance, I might mix “Crazy Train”
(Ozzy) or “Steppin Out” (Joe Jackson) into a ghetto house (they are
the same tempo) relieve the monotony that raw drum machine and dirty
vocals can create. Beatmatching is crucial to my getting away with
some of what I mix. If I had to mix one or two genres all night, I
would get bored and restless and, worse, dj’ing starts to feel like
a job. I can tackle that at Holocene, though, because I feel like I
am giving back (commercially) to a club that supports some very
non-commercial music. Sometimes I’ll bring my electronic drumpad to
play percussion solos into the dj’ing since it makes the dj’ing more
interesting. I get restless while listening to music at home, too,
if I don’t close my eyes while listening.

Who are you digging on locally right now? Nationally?

Locally, I’m a fan of pretty much everything that Josh Blanchard,
Honey Owens, and Adam Forkner do, solo and in the bands they’re
involved with. They are intuitive, non-ironic, and guiding voices
of some kinds of urban music that is unique to Portland artists.
They really represent music grown here and informed by the region’s
past and musical history. Similarly, Smegma and Jackie-O are an
older similar voice.

I think what Mantis and Front Machine do is excellent but off
people’s radar. I’m happy to learn that the noise music scene is
coming back with a wave of solo DIY-electronics performers,
particularly Pulse Emitter. I think Atole is a true innovator in
both performance and music, and I find his performances very
challenging and cathartic and…implicating. I find Nate Carson’s
dj’ing metal to be a refreshing thing, and I like locals YOB and
Growing. Koto Y Soto and Hott Pink reallly understand what it means
to be entertaining and I appreciate performers that give a huge
efforts like that. Fleshtone’s NY Mix cdr made me very hopeful with
a smart combination of ideas. I think that Hank Failing’s Failing
records compilations of local music are really healthy for a local
music scene were everyone perhaps stays in their immediate circle of
musicians and has a hard time making out to strangers’ shows. The
Holocene compilation furthers this idea by really short circuiting
people.

I’m pretty inspired by any quirky or independent thinkers,
especially in the experimental music scene in Portland. It is
important that the noise scene is connected to the past by people
like Dan Menche, Smegma and Potters Field, as that music is very
underground and private.

I like where there are crossovers between theater and dance with the
local music scene, such as improv musicians playing at Linda
Austin’s dance performance space. I’m a fan of “difficult music”
and avant garde music.

I like that the art museum is having dj’s and that PICA’s TBA
festival puts local musicians and artists in a context with
international ones. It is cool and inspiring when artists in
different mediums (theater, music, dance, writing) work for each
other, so things like 2 Gyrls Quarterly, TBA fest, and Plazm get my
attention moreso than local labels.

To many people, instrumental music is neccessarily apolitical. How do you
establish the political/artistic relationship in your music?

What political/artistic relationship? I don’t have an overt one, do
I? Maybe I have an accidently one..?

Oh, you may have the mistaken idea that my album has
Cascadia-seperatist ties. I am interested in the Cascadia idea as a
metaphor for this region starting to gain appreciation of its own
home-grown art and culture. Too often, Portland and Seattle have
looked to east coast and European cities for validation of our
regional artists’ voices as mature and independant at an
international level. This farsightedness leads to many successful
artists leaving Portland, and others just moving here as a
stepping-stone in a career to later advance elsewhere. It is as
though Portland is afraid to give accreditation to its own culture.
Fortunately, some newer politicians such as Sam Adams are interested
in this issue.

However, I don’t express this interest in my Solenoid
recordings… I think that perhaps the ORAC press release in
appropriately mentions Cascadia.

Most of the inspiration for the titling of Supernature is from
speculative fiction about the political and economic future of the
West coast (Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guinn, _Ecotopia_ by
Ernest Callenbach ) and inspiration from developments in
nanotechnology and genetics. After the album was nearly done, I
remembered the old disco track “Supernature” by (70’s disco drummer)
Cerrone on which a diva sings “Once upon a time / science opened up
the door / we would feed the hungry fields / til they couldn’t eat
no more. / But the potions that we’d made / touched the creatures
down below / and they grew up in a way that we’d never seen before.”
That is where I borrowed the title.

Instrumental music is abstractly political, but sometimes its the
only political tool that can slip by a repressive govnerment.
Sometimes overt political speech or language is too direct to engage
people or is actively being repressed by the government. For
instance, the Tropicalia movement in Brazil in the 70’s, or the
presence of instrumental rock bands in anti-western, anti-American
countries in the Middle East. Instrumental techno and house was
highly political in its’ representation of the illegal rave scene in
the UK in the ’90s. Britain’s government passed a law against
repetitive rhythmic music being amplified for large groups of people
because they simply couldn’t police the communities that collected
around outdoor raves.

Also, instrumental music can simply channel a political lyric
without it being sung. Instrumental versions of national anthems,
drums played in a political march, or even acoustic guitar playing
the melody “We Shall Not Be Moved” at a union strike–all could be
very political.

How soon until Cascadia can finally “cut rope?”

Ask the Cascadian Knights, those guys occasionally travel back in
time from the future Cascadia and play shows in the area. They
would know those dates, since it is in the “past” for them.

How are your sets differing right now between Holocene and Ground Kontrol?

The range of records I bring isn’t much different. I mix familiar
and obscure records at most any night I dj. The Ground Kontrol
night involves bringing drum machines, drumpad and/or synthesizers.

Every set I dj is different and selected on the spot. I rarely
bring more than a dozen records in common from one dj event to the
next. Since I don’t play a lot of familiar music or “hits”, I’m not
in a position to let anyone down by not bringing something as
familiar as the previous night. I’ll come back to records that came
out only 4 years ago but have been quickly forgotten; that makes
them “fresh” to play again. The club-going population keeps
recycling (while I am getting older!) and consequently, anyone that
wasn’t dj’ing won’t be likely to know a moderately obscure track
from 4 or 5 years ago. “New” music is a very relative idea. I
think a lot of dj’s do this “recycling” of music, and the music
eventually graduates to a “club staple” status. I imagine a track
like Kano’s “I’m Ready” must have gone through this process. Those
tracks might become familiar to people that go dancing and even get
sampled in newer music. However, they remain fairly anonymous to
everyone bu the dj’s, who have to figure them out in order to track
them down.

I would be more than happy to have one of my records somehow end
up as an anonymous club staple!

Holocene is very supportive of edgey electronic music and a
luxurious place to perform and deal with sound people, etc, esp
compared to rock clubs in Portland in the early 90’s. They are
actually quite DIY and clubs like that don’t tend to last long in
Portland. For that reason, I’m willing to play to the dancefloor
more in hopes that the club makes some money. Then they can have
more psyche rock music nights.

At Ground Kontrol, my Fiasco-Tronix night is trying to foster a
sense of openness about experimenting with what it means to play
live when you are using electronic music instruments. I take the
whole question of “is it live or is it a dj mixing” and throw it out
the window because that is just provincial thinking. I may bring a
drum machine, a drum pad kit, records and effects and move between
using them all. I’m not just playing this way to get myself out of
studio, but I have this grandiose idea of influencing local
producers and dj’s to experiment and push themselves more in how
they perform. Sing over an instrumental record, mix an acapella
vocal over your drum machine, drum out an electronic timbale roll
over the breakdown of a techno track–anything to push the envelope
a little. The selfish motivation is a classic one–it’s what I’d
like to see when I go out to shows. There are so many older dj’s
with unresolved music swimming around in their heads that I’d like
to see try programming rhythms or editing or remixing music because
I know it would be interesting.

The material on Supernature is so seamless it would seem there could
potentially be no difference at all… I could play gallaga to
this as easily as i could dance to it.

Great! That is one kind of flexibility I’m going for with the album.

The competition for people’s listening attention is so hard to get,
so I’m very happy to find out if someone gets entertained from my
music while doing laundry, at their job washing dishes, whatever it
may be. I wanted to make an album-length listening experience as
that is what I cherish about parts of my record collection –long
albums that take you on a little mental journey that you can revisit
over the years. To me, that is what a good album can provide.

Some newer rock and hip-hop albums are focusing more on that
approach to album-length listening orientation, which stands out
right now in sharp contrast to how people shuffle through single
songs on iPods.

You’re doing a residency of sorts at Ground Kontrol, at least in the
curatorial sense (which, unfortunately, i haven’t made it to yet)… Has it
developed a loyal following?

Yes, there is a small pool of people that are mostly musicians or
djs that stop by regularly. It is a unique experience playing for
an audience that you can’t entirely see as they are spread out among
the video games, but are listening. The sound system cuts through
all the video game sounds. I am more interested in connecting with
and influencing this small group of people than proselytizing about
this stuff to people and trying to create a new audience. I’m a fan
of certain kinds of experimental and fringe music that has
historically shown to have a limited audience, and you can knock
yourself out in vein trying to turn people on to that music without
success.

Going to the Fiasco night at Ground Kontrol is meant to be like
walking into an electronic music studio and seeing on-the-fly
music-making in progress. Ground Kontrol is a place that celebrates
a culture of machines, so it feels very natural to perform music
with electronic instruments there.

How is Community Library progressing?

It is going well and I think our common intuition about running the
label is working well, and we are getting growing respect among
int’l record geeks. The eclecticity of the label is inspired by
broad-minded visionary labels –Editions EG, Lovely Music, Les
Disques Du Crepuscule, Soul Jazz, Celluloid, early Rough Trade. The
label is not genre-specific, but curates based on finding
connections in individual artists who crossover experimental with
accessible approaches to music. As a result, they have an unusual,
and often ignored, independant voice that doesn’t fit under just one
genre.

Our goal is more that it should be financially solvent while
catering to a cultural legacy of tasteful eclectic labels that put
out those kind of anomalous classic records that kind of stand
alone. It is refreshing to be involved with this particular label,
as it is operating at an international level from the start and
thinking from that perspective.

Paul [Dickow] and I are both musicians who are developing reputations beyond
Portland and who are letting go of our idealistic thinking about how
or whether we are received well locally. The label is a kind of
curatorial voice for that shared change of perspective looking
outward.

On one hand, the label is bringing some overlooked NW music out to a
European audience. On the other hand, the label’s choices are
asking a lot of questions of the whole music scene regardless of our
NW roots, such as what genres really mean to taste, and what does
music really have in common aside from the techniques, tools, and
compositional tendencies that make up a “genre”. Community Library
artists seem to have the characteristic of being driven by an
idiosyncratic experimental approach yet embraces some traditional or
even highly accessable elements.

The label was planned and realized by Paul after we’d been dj’ing
our Community Library nights for a couple years. These
forward-thinking nights tried to reconcile having a very wide range
of tastes in music by setting some rules about selecting records for
a night. We would mix records based not on the genre of the music,
but by themes in the lyrics and subjects of the music, such as
“songs about fire” or “music on the subject of eyes and seeing”. By
putting records in new contexts with each other, (usually even
beatmatching and layering), this brought into focus a lot of hidden
crossover between otherwise-diverse areas of music. Suddenly people
like Hank Williams Sr, Roxy Music, Nina Simone, and Eazy E could be
on the same page, talking about the same basic experiences, or even
be found covering the same song.

Community Library: www.community-library.net

Solenoid: http://orac.vu/index.php/orac/artist/solenoid/

Holocene: www.holocene.org

Ground Kontrol: www.groundkontrol.com

Solenoid laying beats for a free Cascadia. Photo by (ahem) Joe Mojo