Siltwater
This is an Interview we did with Siltwater. Which is a great experimental band so check them out.
: Who is Siltwater?
A: Siltwater is it’s own entity. It makes it’s unrest in the mind of Doomsayer2001, constantly churning like molten lava that is ready to boil out of the earths crust. Siltwater is a sonic devastator. Siltwater is the wrench in the american music machine. Siltwater is anti-trend deconstructionism.
Q: How would you describe your music?
A: A sonically devastated landscape filled with fire, concrete, blood and bone. Experimental in all aspects. Sounds ranging from harsh noise to ambient landscapes and drones and just a bit of everything else in between! I particularly like long tracks, but not everyone else does, so I make variations in lengths and styles of tracks. I recently released my first all harsh noise release along with my first all ambient release. The past has contained a mix of both sounds onto one release. I also make what I like to call ambient noise. Not particularly harsh noise and not ambient sounds either, but a mix of both that compliment each other.
Q: What got you started doing this kind of music?
A: Back in the mid 80’s, I got involved in extreme forms of metal music. Starting with thrash metal, crossover, punk and hardcore and then moving onto death metal and grindcore. And at some point I picked up a split release vinyl record featuring the artists Nurse With Wound and Whitehouse. It was odd squealing and screaming, I didn’t like it and traded it back for something else. Oddly enough, it has stuck in my mind through out the years. Also, I forget what, which and when, I picked up something that had the Japanese noise artist Merzbow on it. I found it more interesting but later traded it in also. I do think I still have a 7″ around here somewhere of his music. That’s probably my first step into experimental music. From there, in the late 80’s, on the christian music side, I found this artist called Blackhouse at Cornerstone ‘89. It sparked my interest cause it was just weird, it was the release Stairway To Heaven and it contained 6 tracks. The first 3 were forward and the last 3 were the same tracks backwards if I remember correctly. I listened to it over and over again in my car.
I also got into a band called Godflesh. They have a release called Streetcleaner, it was one of the first times I felt threatened by the sounds coming out of the speakers. It sent a chill up my spine and I loved it. Along similar lines, yet on the other side of the spectrum, I got into Mick Harris’s Scorn and Lull projects. Scorn was metal mixed with industrial, dub and drum and bass sounds and Lull was bleak minimalist ambient drones and dark creepy soundscapes. And Bill Laswell made (still) some of my favorite ambient sounds mixed with dub and whatnot.
With all that said, back in ‘91 or ‘92, me and a friend of mine, Dave, really got into John Zorn’s Naked City, thrash/grindcore jazz music and it inspired me greatly. I think I talked him into making some experimental music with me. He had an 8 track to cassette recorder and we spent the next 3 years or so in small overnight sessions and mid day sessions when we were not at work making various sounds on it. We used old beat up records and old, school record players and broken instruments and various microphones and run down sound equipment and a guitar processor to create about 8 tracks or so of experimental music and 3 or 4 actual songs. We started out under the name KRUSH and found it was taken, then we went to Blackwater and found it was also taken. I liked the name Blackwater, but I made a variation out of it and changed it to Siltwater. And it’s been stuck in my head ever since. The current round of music making under the name Siltwater didn’t start up till late 2006.
Q: Some artist claim they don’t listen to the type of music they create so that they are not influenced by what they listen to. Do you listen to this type of music ? If so who?
A: Yeah, I listen to this kind of music all the time. More ambient stuff usually. And still lots of metal. I find sonic inspiration in it. I don’t set out to copy the artists I like and listen to often, but I study for ways I can do it better than them. I actually listen to my stuff quite a bit. I’m my own worst and best critic.
As far as artists go, I still listen to Lull and Bill Laswell quite a bit. And John Zorn. Right now I’m really into a metal band named Kekal. They play some killer prog/avant-garde/unblack metal. Been getting into the doom metal/stoner rock sound quite a bit also. I also download lots of free compilations off the net and listen to them. Just to kinda see what’s floating around out there.
Q: What are some of your influences? Musical and non.
A: Musically, I’ve listed quite a few, Bill Laswell, Lull, John Zorn, Godflesh, Blackhouse, Nurse With Wound, Napalm Death, The Melvins, Carcass, Ministry, Ennio Morricone, Scorn, Merzbow, Terminal Cheesecake, Rapoon, Magnog, Experimental Audio Research, Pete Namlook, Mick Harris, DEVO, Christian Marclay and a few Japanoise compilations that I have had in the past to name a few.
Non-musical influences range from life around me. My faith and my constant struggle in my faith to be who God calls and desires me to be in Jesus Christ. Politics. My dislike for all the crap that is currently injected into most extreme forms of music. My constant irritation with the “music industry” and what most people call mainstream radio friendly music. I despise 99.9% of it cause it’s worthless in every aspect in my opinion.
Q: What would you say was the driving force behind what you are doing?
Q: Does your faith play apart in your music and how much of a part does it play?
A: Driving force… the faith given to me by God the Father. I don’t express it as much because the sounds are instrumental in nature. But I tend to title songs (mostly) as to convey the aspects of fallen man in all his/her sinfulness. Sin and transgressions are an offense to a Holy God. I try to portray the sounds that you hear in such a way that they might convey that darkness that inhabits the human heart. The harshness of our sins and the consequences that are promised to follow, be it temporary or eternal consequences. The “sounds” if you will, of the Holy Spirit working in a persons life to bring one to the Father through Jesus Christ. I also make the sounds are about my personal struggle to live a righteous life before God. I fail miserably to often, and I can “visualize” the sounds in my head.
I also have this (which I took from the band Tortured Conscience’s page):
1. Belief in the Triune God (one “what”, three “whos.” God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit)
2. Jesus is fully God and fully man. He was not a created being but the one who spoke and the world leapt into existence. He condensended Himself to cloak Himself in human flesh and became the sacrifice for our sins.
3. Jesus is the one and only way to the Father. All other religions attempt to win salvation by performing works, thinking that they can earn their way into heaven. Only Christ tells you the truth and says you cannot do it on your own. The righteousness of man are like filthy rags to God.
4. The Bible is the infallible and inerrant word of God. Your opinion and my opinion mean absolutely nothing without an objective source to find out who’s right. That source is the Bible. Whatever idea, thought, position, etc. that goes against the Bible is simply wrong.
I believe this wholeheartedly! There is no other way to God the Father but through Jesus Christ. All other paths lead to hell eternal under the wrath of a holy and just God.
Q: What equipment are you using?
A: My Mac G5 and a lot of free software. I have paid for nothing to make my sounds other than the cost of the computer its self. Software wise, I use a free DJ program I picked up somewhere on the net. I use Audacity and some VST plugins. And I just recently picked up some sound generators. I would like to in the future get myself a digital recorder and record some live sounds to use and manipulate.
Q: Any secrets in recording your like to share?
A: If I told ya… they wouldn’t be secrets, now would they?
Q: Who is Subversive Song Recordings?
A: It’s a net label I started to promote christian electronic and experimental artists. There is a lot of talent out there and I wanted to give some of the friends I had made some more exposure. Oddly enough, the lack of interest has been astonishing to me. People are not motivated for some reason to have their sounds out there any more than what they have on their myspace site’s. I do have a few that have been right up there wanting to get their hands dirty so to speak, but the response has been lackadaisical for the most part. In the future, I would like to have my own hosting and website and all that, but for now money is a constant issue and the kids get fed before daddy plays.
Q: It looks like you stay pretty busy please list the albums you have out at the moment?
A: We’ll go down the list from start to finish:
1. Blood In The Water
2. Pure White Noise
3. Pure Black Noise
4. Deadstutter
5. Deadstutter (Regeneration)
6. Chaos
7. Longsuffering (V.1 Eternity)
8. Longsuffering (V.2 Justice)
9. Longsuffering (V.3 Grace) (One of my personal favorites!)
10. Longsuffering (V.4 Wrath)
11. Insomnia Mind Collapse VS. Siltwater ~ The Deadspeak Of Reality *(split release)
12. Sonic Aural Flux
13. Ruinnation/Franks Bike
14. Siltwater VS. SomberGravity ~ 19Eighty In Shambles EP *(split release)
15. SomberGravity VS. Siltwater ~ Pure White Noise And The Thoughts It Creates *(split release)
16. The Deafening Is Silence
17. Darker Still, The Heart Of Man
18. DEAD SIGNALS (Another personal favorite!)
19. Iniquity
Q: Where can people find them?
A: http://www. archive. org/search. php?query=creator:%22Siltwater%22
Siltwater is also on last. fm @ http://www. last. fm/music/Siltwater
And Siltwater on myspace @ http://www. myspace. com/siltwater
And Subversive Song Recordings @ http://www. myspace. com/subversivesongrecordings
All the releases are free for download always! So download away!
Q: Are you involved with any other projects?
A: Yeah, me and Napalm Dave from SomberGravity and Within The Torn Apart have a project called Consumed By Fire… Drenched In Blood (http://www. myspace. com/consumedbyfiredrenchedinblood). We make tracks and trade them back and forth over the net and create together. We do try and make the sounds made for Consumed By Fire… Drenched In Blood different than our main solo projects. We are getting ready to start another Ep soon as well as a couple of more splits with our main solo projects Siltwater and SomberGravity, so stay tuned!
Q: Any words of wisdom for others thinking about getting involved with this kind of music?
A: Don’t do it cause you think you’ll be cool and all that. Do it cause you love the sounds and you love to create. I know this “music” is not for everybody. I want people around who like it for what it is. It’s crude and crass often and can be quite abrasive. On the other side of the coin, you can drift away into an ambient drone and never want to come back to reality. I used to play Lull or some Bill Laswell project when it was bed time and drift off to sleep.
Please list at least one weird thing about yourself.
If I had any actual musical ability in me, I’d learn to play the banjo and play me some oldtimey bluegrass! I loves me some bluegrass!
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