On the heels of his genre-defying A Love Electric trilogy
and subsequent song project, Man With No Country,
guitarist-composer-poet-lyricist C Todd Clouser joins forces with drummer Jorge
Servin and the potent one-two punch of Abraxas guitarist Eyal Maoz and bassist
Shanir Blumenkranz in forming Magnet Animals. Their slamming and startlingly
unique debut, Butterfly Killer -- full of skronking noise guitars of blast
furnace intensity and stream of conscious raps over righteous riffs and
humungous backbeats -- stands as one of the most strangely compelling outings
in the extensive and wildly eclectic catalog of London-based RareNoiseRecords.
From the opening salvo of "Headphone Girls" to the
jarring punk-funk of "Martha Fever," the eerie Ennio Morricone-styled
spaghetti western vibe of "I Give Up And Love Somebody" and the
sinister title track, Butterfly Killer sidesteps convention at every turn while
boldly stepping to a different kind of muse. Throw in a B-52s-styled '80s dance
party number ("Igual, Pero Peor"), a throbbing jam with a haunting,
an evangelist preacher styled incantation ("Little John The Liar")
and an ode to a late junkie author/hipster ("Bill Burroughs") and you
have one of the most daring, fully self-realized creations of the current year.
Credit Clouser with creating the vehicle for such a powerful
statement to take place. "The Magnet Animals record is very
impulsive," explains the auteur. "With the A Love Electric records,
we write, re-write, edit, produce, cut tunes in half and tour together on 120
dates a year. With Magnet Animals, I wanted to get back to just a creative
impulse, honoring that, expressing, and moving on. I wrote the tunes in one
weekend in a cabin a week before we had the tour planned. We played a week's
worth of shows, recorded on the last day in about an 8-hour session. I took the
sessions to Minneapolis to mix, and that was it. I wanted it to be fast, a
reflection of the personalities of the players and their instincts, and not think
myself out of what I needed to say, and what this group was on its first
impulse, instinctively."
Regarding his role as principal wordsmith and narrator of
the vivid imagery conjured up throughout Butterfly Killer, Clouser says,
"I like lyrics that can survive as poetry -- just on the page. I'm not
sure if I am a poet or a lyricist but words are important to me. If I am going
to use them, I want them to have purpose. Sometimes it's in humor, like on
'Headphone Girls.' I travel a lot and there are all these thousands of
headphones they sell all over airports now -- every color and size and sales
pitch, and its a trip! So I wrote that 'look at me listening' little line when
I was in the Atlanta airport on A Love Electric tour and thought it was fun to sing,
or talk. Other times, like on 'Atayde,' there is this tremendous nostalgia and
some kind of sadness to the words. Atayde is the name of a family circus in
Mexico City and their circus tent was just ripped down, It was giant, big and
blue, with a ball that looked like a clown's shoe on top. It's like a whole
block long and it's located right where all the hookers hangout on paydays, on
Tlalpan. There's so much absurdity there that somehow there is beauty and calm
in it, like complete resignation to our human instincts, failures, all of it.
So that was an easy and kind of emotional song to write. That's really more of
a spoken piece. In the end, I think it's just about observing and trying to
find the humanity, the emotion, in whatever I want to write about."
Clouser details his connection to the three other intrepid
improvisers and skilled musicians who comprise Magnet Animals. "Eyal and I
have talked about playing together for years and when I was on tour with A Love
Electric I visited his apartment a couple times and we just set up and
improvised. He is so fearless and himself. He kind of plays how Mexico City
sounds to me. I played with Shanir Blumenkranz at the John Lurie tribute show
at NYC Town Hall with Billy Martin and John Medeski. We played Marvin Pontiac
songs from that Lurie record (1999's The Legendary marvin Pontiac: Greatest
Hits). Shanir is so scouted when he plays and his feel is so warm. We got along
well and talked about doing something together at some point. I have played now
with a lot of the 'Downtown scene' heroes, including John Zorn, Cyro Baptista,
Medeski Martin & Wood, and always crossed paths with Shanir. It seemed like
it was time to play together."
Though Clouser wrote all of the songs on Butterfly Killer,
he says the recording is very much a product of everyone's contributions.
"With other players, this could be a corny fusion record, the way the
tunes are written. It had to be a crew of guys willing to get into the dirt.
Much of what we did and what we captured on record is about the energy of the
performance, the risk, knowing we are reading tunes but we are free to abandon
them in dramatic ways. Shanir had a big hand in arranging the tunes and working
out feels. He's so good at that. Eyal has such a strong and unique voice, it's
like having an electric piano player, theremin player and jazz guitarist all at
once."
And while modernists may point to the influence of guitar
shredders like Sonny Sharrock or Nels Cline or Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore in
the skronking metallic interplay heard on harsh tunes like "Headphone
Girls," "Martha Fever" and "State of My Face," Clouser
explains that the influence actually goes back much further. "A lot of it,
honestly, is old Delta blues, the voices as much as the guitars. Listening to
Skip James sing, going back to a lot of the Alan Lomax recordings of prison
song, field song, gospel...that raw feel is all there. That being said, I grew
up in the late 90's, so Sonic Youth was an influence as well as a lot of the
NYC downtown stuff I started to listen to. I liked the personality and
personalities of it. People there had something to say that I related to. I
have spent a lot of time with old blues records and psych rock records, some of
the Brazilian psych rock stuff and Os Mutantes, and then, of course,
hip-hop.But I have a background in jazz, knowledge of these harmonies, and
spent time playing Thelonious Monk music, so some of that creeps in as
well."
Clouser also explains that the sparse, lonely, vaguely
Americana feel that comes across on tunes like "Atayde" and "I
Give Up And Love Somebody" comes from his Midwestern upbringing. "I
was born in Kansas City and grew up in Minneapolis. Though I live in Mexico
City now, I can only run so far from driving up and down highway 35 through the
cornfields, Flying J travel centers, and listening to unreasoned preachers and
minor league baseball games on the radio. I did so many van tours up and down
that highway, you have time to write. I would write for hours if I wasn't
driving, just looking around and being romantic about something so many people
are so dismissive of. You find romance, resignation there in the simple. The
Coen Brothers are great at putting that to story and film. I love that kind of
Americana when it sounds in music."
As for the kind of evangelical fervor that he takes on in
his spoken word rants on "Little John the Liar" and the title track,
Clouser explains that it comes from the deepest recesses of his childhood.
"It's just a character, but I do think I am perhaps unhealthily drawn to
talking about religion, Jesus and preaching in my music. My parents, who I love
so much, sent me to Sunday school when I was kid, which I hated so much. It was
horrible. I knew they were lying to me and I was stand-offish. So I think
sometimes I still haven't gotten over that, and gotten over this whole
disillusioned idea of a savior who makes you right even when you are wrong. So
maybe I lash out in music, or in what I write, or how I sing it. Sometimes the
lash is to caricature-ize the 'preacher.' I also think having listened to a lot
of spiritual music, a lot of gospel, early jazz, Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite,
these types of records, I am drawn to this sort of prophetic voice, and emoting
that way."
He further explains that "Bill Burroughs" was an
homage to someone he greatly admired and felt a kinship with. "I never met
him. I didn't share much time on Earth with him but I live about a mile away
from where he did when he was in Mexico City. I love his writing. His story is
tragic and heroic and offensive and teaching. I almost died from being an
addict and I am gay. That's two big ones. From there on, its pretty easy to
relate."
Of his current place of residence, Clouser couldn't be
happier. "In Mexico City I fell into a great thing. I had no plans to live
there but I met two musicians, Hernan Hecht and Aaron Cruz, and that became our
group A Love Electric. This was about three years ago. We all had the same
impetus, to go out and share our music wherever we could but in the most human,
non-pretentious way possible. For example, we just got a grant from he US
Embassy some months ago. We had offers to take it and go to a couple big
festivals for free or a reduced rate. We decided to go to Honduras, Nicaragua
and South Mexico and play in community centers and bars instead. And I would do
that again in a second, and these two guys are the same way.
"There are songs everywhere in this city. I have been
assaulted by way too many ideas since I moved here that I am still trying to
sort through and make records or bands or whatever might be next. There is an
energy here that I am attracted to, a chaos, but at the same time something
very human. Because at some point you have to help each other out or the whole
thing is going to blow up and the city will drown in itself. And now touring a
lot in Mexico, going to places like Oaxaca up in the mountains to work with
traditional wind musicians, or on the Yucatan to a town where Maya is the only
language spoken, these things are fascinating, invigorating, exciting. I am
able to learn by living all day long, and when that is happening there is no
escape from inspiration."
It takes an inspired person to come up with something as
audacious and uncompromising as Butterfly Killer. Clouser and his Magnet Animals
crew deliver goods on this provocative new release on RareNoise Records.
TRACKS
Headphone Girls
Atayde
Martha Fever
Baby Gods
Butterfly Killer
I Give Up And Love Somebody
State Of My Face
Bill Borroughs
Little John The Liar
Igual, Pero Peor
