 Interviews - Buried At Sea
09-29-2004, 11:45 PM
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by Matthew Artman
September 26, 2004, 2004
 Clearly, Buried at Sea in on their own musical agenda – sowing equal parts doom, psyche and drone and reaping the void. The sound of colliding galaxies in slow motion as expressed though voice, percussion, synth and vast amounts of amplified frequency manipulation. Hellride Music’s own Matt Artman talks with Buried At Sea guitarist/vocalist Sanford Parker
Hellride Music: All right, let's get the boring shit out of the way first. Who's in the band, who does what and how did you guys get together?
Sanford Parker: Brian Sowell / bass, tapes, synths & vox
Jason Depew / guitar, tapes & synths
Sanford Parker / guitar, tapes, synths & vox
Bill Daniel / drums & jokes
Brian and I grew up together in Florida, we played in bands together down there, punk bands and shit like that. He moved to Chicago a few years after I did. I met Jason and Bill shortly after I moved to Chicago. Bill was in a band called Wicker Man and they're all friends of mine. Jason and I did several musical things together before Buried at Sea, but nothing amounted to anything. We were doing an all-electronic metal band that was pretty cool. After Wicker Man broke up and Brian moved up here everything just fell into place.[/i]
Hellride Music: I honestly have never heard anything that sounds close to Buried at Sea but what bands would you say have most influenced BatS's sound?
Sanford: It's all across the board, obviously His Hero is Gone,Neurosis and eyehetegod, but we're all huge fans of Skinny Puppy (my favorite), Swans and Whitehouse to Merle Haggard and the almighty Hawkwind. I think by keeping our ideas open and not going after one sound it keeps it fresh and original. We never said let's form a "doom" band, we just wanted to write the heaviest music that we could. We're thinking of doing an all country album (real country not that Nashville pop bullshit). We throw out no ideas, if it sounds good let's do it, none of that, “this is our sound we shouldn't try that.” I love synthesizers, distorted guitars, pianos anything that makes a sound and we'll use it.
Hellride Music: On Migration, not a single track clocks in less than 10 minutes. Why the epic song lengths and what kind of difficulties do you run into when trying to compose a song that long?
Sanford: To be honest with you, I've tried to write short songs, well 6-7 min being short, but they always end up being longer. I write the songs to tell a story, each part is like a chapter and to cut out a chapter it wouldn't make any sense. It does make it hard, not so much to write but structure with the other instruments. I write most of the stuff and it's all written on an acoustic guitar, which causes more problems because what sounds good on acoustic doesn't always sound good with distortion and turned to 11. But then again if you can make something sound heavy on an acoustic it will sound real fuckin heavy on 11. The new shit is even more epic and dynamic in volume and in speed.
Hellride Music: Your desire to experiment with sound is obvious on Migration. The sounds of running water and the creaking of a ship are heard in the background at times. These obviously follow a nautical theme but where did the ideas come from and how did you implement them?
Sanford: Yeah we try to keep it very organic. There are sounds running underneath the entire record, we make it louder in some parts and quieter in others or make it blend with the guitars. There are two parts, one natural and one synthetic. We took sounds from nature films and CDs or recorded them ourselves. Or they were made with electronics using synths, pedals and feedback, shit like that. A lot of it was randomly placed, making it kind of chaotic.
Hellride Music: The vocals tend to fall into the “incoherent” category. In the context of the music I feel it is very suitable but what is the reasoning behind it? You said earlier that you like for the songs to tell a story, what story are you trying to tell on Migration and She Lived for Others…?
Sanford: The vocals are treated as another instrument, not really trying to get a point across. They are kind of placed in parts of songs to add intensity and a chaotic element. We don't want the vocals to be a focal point, just another sound, that's why they’re mixed lower. The story is based on the feeling of the songs, not this happened and then this happened, but more on emotion you know, bring this part down, make this part heavy, make this part real fuckin heavy!
There's not a story to tell, more of an emotional roller coaster. The lyrics have very little to do with that, they're mainly about flowers and puppies.
Hellride Music: I don’t mean to beat a dead horse here but along the lines of the vocals question, why are there no song titles for the songs released thus far? Is this going to be a continuing trend?
Sanford: Well each song is a series of parts so we decided to make the album a series of songs, more like one long song. Song titles are overrated anyway, I once had a Nine Inch Nails live bootleg and you can actually hear people in the crowd shouting, "Play track 5! Play track 5!" I hope this will happen to us.
Hellride Music: You have your own studio, Volume Studios, how does this affect the writing process? Does the ease of access to recording facilities mean you guys have tons of material lying around? I personally wouldn’t mind an album every six months.
Sanford: I wish we had tons of stuff lying around. We write really slow, we have enough stuff for a new record that we will start to record in a couple of weeks. Having a studio has really helped in a way that we can do a lot of pre-production. All of the songs on Migration were recorded 3 different times. That gave us a chance to hear it and improve on it. We'll be releasing at least 4 things next year, a full length and 3 splits. That will average about one every 3 months.
Hellride Music: Awesome! I wasn’t sure how BatS was going to translate live but was well surprised at Emissions from the Monolith, you guys were definitely one of my favorites. Once again, the epic quality of the songs must present some interesting obstacles. What is BatS’s approach to live performances? Do you look to be note-for-note on or are you a little looser live?
Sanford:  That was a weird tour, Bill was out with a hernia so we got Jim from Yakuza to fill in (they're a spastic jazz/metal band on Century Media). It was hard getting him to play slow but he's a real fast learner. He learned everything from the CD. We play those songs a lot slower live so it was strange for everyone, not my favorite performances but they weren’t terrible. Yeah, playing those songs live can be nerve wracking. When playing thru 10 different pedals into amps older than me things will go wrong and they have. We play pretty loose, we'll fuck around with the tempo a little speeding up and slowing down parts, I think it's also about the energy, I like to see a band putting everything into it even if they fuck up a little bit. If I wanted to see a band stand there and play everything note for note I'd rather stay at home and listen to the CD. Volume is very important to me also, bands should be loud I don't care what you play, music should be felt as well as heard. The low end should be punching you in the gut the whole time, make it hurt.
Hellride Music:It's funny you say that about the Emissions show. I had no idea that you had a fill in for drums. I felt it was a very dynamic and definitely got the punched in the gut feeling. How about the unsuspecting listener? How has the response been out on the road from people who aren’t familiar with BatS?
Sanford: The response has been good, a lot of people don't know what to expect and are usually pretty shocked whether it's good or bad.
Hellride Music: The Chicago scene has always been a strong one, but a new crop of bands is popping up like Pelican, Lair of the Minotaur and BatS. How has this helped you guys get going and is Chicago really as great as it seems from an outsider’s perspective?
Sanford: I don't think being from Chicago has given us any more attention, but this city is great. Everyone here are very supportive, there's no competition between bands.You can go to a show and see a doom band, a garage band and an indie band share the same stage and everyone are best friends and everybody there is into all of the bands. People are open to new ideas, this city has a very rock and roll backbone. Other bands worth mentioning from Chicago: Last Vegas, Tummler, Sweet Cobra, Gasoline Fight, American Heritage, Indian, Dark Fog, Velcro Lewis, Behold! the Living Corpse, Bible of the Devil and Yakuza, all of these bands are very different from each other but all are really good.
Hellride Music: You’ve already told us about the upcoming releases in the next year, is there anything else you can fill us in on about what the future holds for BatS?
Sanford: A lot more experimentation with our songs and sound, more touring starting next year, hopefully Europe by summer.
Hellride Music: Sanford, you have been great through all the email difficulties. I need to warn you that this is my virgin interview so I want to thank you for taking my cherry. Is there anything else you’d like to say tot he readers at Hellride?
Sanford: Yeah, fuck song titles!
 Purchase She Lived For Others But Died For Us at the Hellride Music Superstore
Read the Hellride Music review of She Lived For Others But Died For Us
Visit the Buried At Sea website at www.buriedatsea.net
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09-30-2004, 04:56 PM
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#2
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Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Cleveland
Posts: 1,607
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Wicker Man? Really? Wow.
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