NEIL KEENER: Hello.
JP: Um, thank you for going out of your way to, you know, take some time to do this, I really appreciate it.
NK: Yeah, sure. (noises in background.) How’s it going?
JP: It’s, it’s going well... how are you?
NK: I’m doing okay.
JP: Yeah, so I... I came to your music primarily through Bull of Heaven, is what I’m familiar with, so that’s what I’m going to have a few inquiries about, I guess.
NK: Sure.
JP: Yeah, so I’m just curious about, for one thing, like, the revival of the project, what inspired that?
NK: Um... well, doing this, making this music, is something that I’ve, you know, done compulsively for years, when Clayton and I started the project in 2008, (clears throat) yeah, we just had a similar idea of what we kind of wanted to do, and... did a whole shit ton of work together. After he passed away, I kind of had to take a break.
JP: Right.
NK: Clayton was the one who took care of releasing all of the music, producing all the music, I, you know, I created a lot of sounds, I would, you know, I’d play in other bands, I did a lot of touring.
JP: Yeah.
NK: So when I was home, I would, you know, make sounds and just dump a bunch of raw tracks on Clayton and he would, you know, turn all that stuff into records. He was... a fuckin’ genius when it came to producing shit.
JP: Yeah.
NK: ...Making things, and so I started to figure all that stuff out myself. And I quickly realized how good he was at all that shit, man. So yeah, it took me a little while to like, to want to do it again, and, yeah. Kind of figure out how to do it on my own.
JP: Right.
NK: But, I still feel like if the roles were reversed and Clayton was the one that was left, then he would continue to do the project as well. It was something that we both cared a lot about.
JP: Yeah.
NK: You know. Yeah. To answer that question.
JP: I remember- one thing I’m curious about, were you producing any of the things up until that point? Because there are some pieces like Weed Problem II-V and like, Lorne Greene’s Belgian Woodchuck Orgy, that I feel like sound a lot like what you’re doing now.
NK: Yeah, you know, the first- we did a lot of those albums together, obviously there’s like 300+ releases that came out from like, 2008 until 2016.
JP: Mm hmm.
NK: Initially we worked on all that shit together, we used to live in a warehouse in Denver with a bunch of people and... we made all those tracks together, you know, back in 2008 we were using a cassette four-track, and other, you know, whatever, tools we had available, somewhere around 2010 or ‘11, we both started producing... records individually and together.
JP: Right. I think, yeah.
NK: To kind of increase our output. But yeah. We did still work on a lot of shit together. And, you know, up until the end. Up until 2016 we did, you know, we did a lot of that shit together. The Weed Problem stuff, funny you mention that, yeah, the Weed Problem stuff was stuff that I kind of started on my own.
JP: Right.
NK: The one that you referred to, II through VII or whatever it is, those were tracks that I had made that I gave to Clayton and he was upset that they weren’t Bull of Heaven tracks, so...
JP: Yeah. (laughs)
NK: ...They ended up Bull of Heaven tracks. Yeah. (laughs) So yeah.
JP: That is one of...
NK: I had to be careful about what material I played for him, because he would... he wanted to use everything I made, but I’m in other bands also, so...
JP: Yeah. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. That was, Weed Problem II-V in particular, that’s one of my favorite of that era, I think. It just so brilliantly encapsulates like, the more guitar-oriented sound of Bull of Heaven for me personally.
NK: Thank you.
JP: Was there any, for like the ones you did yourself, were they mostly the ones along those lines, or were there any of the really noisy or experimental ones that you also kind of did by yourself?
NK: You know, I would have to take it case by case.
JP: Fair enough.
NK: There is a lot of noisy shit that I did, but yeah, like the stuff that’s... borderline unlistenable, that’s mostly Clayton’s influence. (laughs)
JP: Right.
NK: But, yeah, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it occurs to me when people talk about Bull of Heaven, there’s so much music, and I have like, usually no idea what is the stuff that they are responding to.
JP: Right.
NK: And the newer stuff that I’ve been putting out is a lot more “song”-oriented, and... you know.
JP: Yeah.
NK: Kind of shortform.
JP: Right.
NK: More digestible shit, recently. But there are people who love the stuff that’s super longform or glitchy and weird, so it’s interesting that there’s so much...
JP: Yeah, did you really... I was curious because I’ve listened to pretty much every piece from 2008 to 2016 and that includes the... hello?
NK: Mm hmm, yeah.
JP: That includes 118: The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space, which is like two months long, I listened to that, the whole thing pretty much, and I know a couple people who have listened to Blurred With Tears and Suffering Beyond Hope which is even longer, I was curious, was that ever something you expected people to do? Because I feel like they’re structured in a way that really... like, there’s an actual structure to those albums.
NK: Yeah, you know, they’re super longform, and they’re, you know, a test of people’s patience and attention span, but there was a lot of thought put into making those pieces. The whole idea of the long pieces was something that was super interesting to Clayton and I... in terms of like, continuing a tradition of experimental music, you know, trying to like, push the boundaries of what’s capable...
JP: Right.
NK: What we can do with an mp3, things like that.
JP: Yeah.
NK: And, yeah, it’s hard to listen to those pieces, and I’ll admit that I haven’t sat there and listened to two months’ worth of that track, but, you know, part of the whole Bull of Heaven thing too was to be part band and part, you know, conceptual art project.
JP: Yeah, I think, yeah...
NK: So...
JP: There’s definitely a lot of that that I really appreciate about those longer pieces, and the ones that you can’t even listen to.
NK: Yeah, and the same with some of those releases that are just, like, puzzles, you know, there’s no track there, or there might be a track there, I don’t know. Clayton was also a fuckin’ computer genius.
JP: Mm hmm.
NK: Way fuckin’ ahead of his time in terms of his behavior online, and his presence and all that, and what he was, what he knew how to do, I don’t- you know, people get ahold of me and try to ask me how to retrieve some of those-
JP: Right.
NK: -Those tracks, and I have no idea. I don’t... those secrets are gone.
JP: Do people ever ask you about the passwords?
NK: Yeah. Yeah.
JP: Do you know them?
NK: I don’t. (laughs) I don’t know...
JP: Interesting.
NK: I don’t even know who to contact who was hosting our website. I’ve tried to reach out to people [...] I happen to like not having them, to be honest.
JP: Sort of on that note, I don’t really expect you to necessarily know the answer to this- with some of those pieces, do you remember, like, what the music in them was? For example, there’s one called We Shall Draw from the Heart of Suffering that’s 267, and still no one that I know of has ever listened to that one, it’s the one that was split into a bunch of parts and then mangled beyond recognition, but one of the tracks from that has the same name as the Bull of Heaven appearance on Arvo Zylo’s 333REDUX compilation, is that the same music, do you know?
NK: I don’t know offhand, it’s possible that it is. Um, that was, yeah, that was a compilation of locked grooves, if I’m not mistaken, and so, yeah, Clayton might’ve used that piece we made for the locked groove comp, it’s possible.
JP: Right.
NK: Again, I’d have to listen to it to (remember?) the stuff-
JP: Yeah.
NK: I’d have to sit there and like, look it up and listen to it.
JP: I’m sorry, I have a lot of burning, like, really hyper-specific questions. (laughs)
NK: (laughs) Yeah, I mean... yeah, go ahead.
JP: Yeah, that was pretty much all I had to say on that specific one.
NK: Yeah, I don’t know.
JP: And the same goes for 231 and 232, which had music in them and then those were deleted, and changed? Because Clayton said they were like, unfinished or something. But they’ve never surfaced, as far as I can tell? Do you know what- have those ever appeared- reappeared?
NK: I don’t, I don’t know.
JP: Right. (laughs) Alright, anyway, on a different note, I’m curious about, because the, when you first started releasing stuff again, in like 2018 and 2019?
NK: Mm hmm.
JP: The aesthetic of the releases was very similar to the earlier Bull of Heaven projects, the titles and the cover logo and stuff. And now it’s pretty much become its entirely own thing, I’m curious about how that happened. What inspired that.
NK: The change in the font, and the presentation and whatever?
JP: Yeah.
NK: Is that what you mean? Yeah, I just kinda wanted to make it kind of distinct, distinctly different than the releases I did with Clayton. Other than the ones that I posted where like, the last few Bull of Heaven releases that I produced. Before I posted those there. I think in 2018 when I started posting those.
JP: Right. So were those earlier pieces that were then released kind of posthumously or?
NK: Yeah, those earlier ones, yeah. They were kind of in the same... yeah, they were recorded, or the music was recorded around the same time. There’s the one, Fight Night for the Ghosts of Heaven, was one that I recorded after Clayton passed away. And yeah, that was like the first one I did.
JP: Right.
NK: After Clayton passed. Yeah.
JP: I was listening to the most recent couple of albums earlier today. There is one- one thing, this is another really silly question, there’s one part, one track on the most recent album from a few days ago, there was a specific drone in that track that sounded very much like one of the drones from The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space?
NK: Mm hmm.
JP: Is that possible that it’s the same thing?
NK: No.
JP: No?
NK: (laughs) No. No, everything I’ve been recording I’ve been recording from scratch. I haven’t used any...
JP: Interesting.
NK: ...samples from earlier things, no.
JP: Yeah, I didn’t know if you had like a library of stuff you kind of use as the baseline for some of them.
NK: No, no, I usually record everything as a-, especially these newer tracks, you know, I’m doing everything from scratch, so... I know there are a lot of, like, similar-sounding things, I just think that that’s the kind of sound I make.
JP: Right, yeah. That makes sense. They were definitely quite different... tracks, I just thought there was this one specific sound that kind of sparked my memory.
NK: No. It’s cool though.
JP: (laughs) And I noticed you mentioned one of the more recent albums has contributions from your bandmate in Planes Mistaken for Stars...
NK: Mm hmm.
JP: Right? Have any of the other ones been, like, collective efforts? Or are they purely solo works?
NK: Say that again, I’m sorry, I missed the beginning of that.
JP: Have any of these recent Bull of Heaven albums been collaborative efforts other than that one, or are they solo?
NK: They’re mostly solo; the last one I did was solo. Yeah, I... I moved into... moved to Peoria recently, I moved there, I went there in 2020 to record some songs with Gared, the singer of Planes, and got stuck there for the pandemic and just kind of set up the studio in his house, and then he got diagnosed with cancer and passed away in November. So a lot of these last, I’m gonna say four... fi- everything I’ve released this year, is stuff that I was recording in his house kind of to entertain him when he was downstairs on the couch.
JP: I see.
NK: Ill. And occasionally, yeah, people would come over he’d brought upstairs and want to play on something, or, you know, our drummer Mike would be visiting and put some percussion on some things. So... you know, we had some people visit, other friends visit... the vocals on whatever I ended up calling that album, recent one, was a friend of mine from Denver who came out and (???) for me, we did some kind of like (???) cut-up kind of thing to get him, some words out of him, and...
JP: Nice.
NK: For me personally, I prefer to collaborate with somebody. I can do this stuff myself, but... I always appreciate it more, like it more when there’s another voice in there somewhere. When there’s somebody else maybe.
JP: Right.
NK: So whenever anybody’s around who can assist me or I can... get some music or some words out of, I’ll use it, usually.
JP: Nice. That makes sense, I think, with the way I’ve kind of understood Bull of Heaven to operate through the years.
NK: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve always been open to collaborating or, you know, I love it when people just send me recordings, I like to mangle them and use them. It’s really hard to get people to send me shit. Harder than you think. [...]
JP: And... so, you do all the cover art for the recent Bull of Heaven albums and a lot of the earlier ones, I understand. Is that correct?
NK: Yeah, that’s true.
JP: Have you been... which have you been into, visual art or music, for longer? Or have they both just always been part of your life?
NK: Kind of about the same amount of time. Yeah, I got into visual art in my early teens, and that’s when I got into punk rock as well. So yeah. Around the same amount of time. I do art shows occasionally and have sold quite a bit of art, usually for very little money. I used to bring art and sell it on the merch table when I was touring a lot with Planes and...
JP: Oh, cool.
NK: Wovenhand... Git Some.
JP: And are you still performing with Wovenhand and Planes Mistaken for Stars?
NK: Oh, Planes is done. Gared, our singer passed away.
JP: Right, sorry.
NK: No, that’s okay. And I don’t- I play on the last Wovenhand record, but I don’t know if I’m doing any shows with them or anything. He’s kind of doing solo stuff right now.
JP: Gotcha. ... And the, like, Roman Numerals covers, you did those, right?
NK: Yep.
JP: It’s a kind of very distinct style to some of that stuff, that and the, like...
NK: Yeah, those are the ink ones, right?
JP: Yeah.
NK: Yeah, I do a lot of that work, I’ve been doing that stuff since the mid-’90s.
JP: Oh, wow.
NK: Yeah. I show that stuff occasionally.
JP: Would you say - was there a time you were, do you think you spend more time recording or touring? At least before COVID and everything.
NK: I don’t know. I mean, which I would prefer doing, or which I did actually do?
JP: Either, I mean, because you seem just so prolific with both.
NK: Yeah, I mean I, like I said earlier, it’s kind of a compulsive thing for me, like I feel the need to make sounds happen and record things and having Bull of Heaven is just a way of releasing that, I think there are a lot of people who do that. A lot of people who, you know, like to make noise and probably just make noise to entertain themselves, and that’s what this started out as when Clayton and I started it.
JP: Right.
NK: But I realized that, you know, people like to listen to this stuff and if I keep releasing it, people will keep listening to it, and if they don’t, they don’t, that’s fine. But it’s kind of like, you know, (???) need to do this, and also I don’t really take a lot of personal ownership for it, I make it, but it’s like, I guess my philosophy behind it is that it just kind of wants to happen. Wants to be there, you know? I don’t really sit down and try to write things, I kind of create an opportunity for... for a song to happen.
JP: Right.
NK: By creating a situation where it’s possible for that to happen. The same thing with art, also. I’m not trying to paint something, I’m trying to create a painting or drawing or whatever. It wants to be there.
JP: Yeah.
NK: Just... letting that happen.
JP: I’m curious because you mentioned earlier that you haven’t... that you wouldn’t listen to any of the incredibly long pieces, but in an interview with Clayton a long time ago he mentioned that you do sometimes listen to the music, I’m curious, like, have you ever listened to any of the kind of moderately long ones, or...?
NK: Yes. Yeah, and I have listened to like, huge chunks of the, the longer ones. Yes. I have. I did try to listen to the eight septillion year long piece...
JP: Oh!
NK: ...as long as I could, I lasted a couple weeks before it started driving me crazy.
JP: Is that the- that’s the one with all the Flash loops?
NK: Yeah.
JP: Right. That was one of the first things I heard by Bull of Heaven.
NK: Yeah. Yeah, Clayton was really excited about that, when he learned how to put that thing together mathematically, and you know, logistically. Yeah, that was kind of like his eureka moment in trying to figure out how to make the longest possible pieces of music. But yeah, I’ve listened to a lot of the long ones. A lot of the stuff is very hard to listen to for me, I get really affected by it, and so... yeah.
JP: Right.
NK: So I have to walk away from it sometimes.
JP: (laughs)
NK: I’m impressed with people’s ability to sit and pay attention to a lot of that stuff, because yeah, it’s sort of an endurance test.
JP: It definitely takes some getting used to at first, I remember when I first started listening to Bull of Heaven, like the three-hour pieces I thought were really long.
NK: Mm hmm.
JP: And at this point I don’t really feel that way at all, just because I’ve been so acclimated to the week long ones and stuff.
NK: Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, yeah. Three hours is really not that much.
JP: Did you ever choose which ones to make really long? Like, over a day long?
NK: You mean which sounds to use and all that stuff?
JP: Yeah.
NK: Usually, yeah. We would talk about it, I would give him sounds and we would figure out what we wanted to do with them. I mean, again, the first couple of years we made all of those together.
JP: Right.
NK: And so, you know, within that first couple years we did make like, the 24-hour piece and... that stuff was, I was trying to put together stuff to sleep to, because I really enjoy sleeping to, you know that Earth 2 album?
JP: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
NK: Yeah, I love that album. And I would put it on and go to sleep, and I wanted a longer version of that- I wanted something that would play for eight hours or twelve hours or whatever. That’s kind of what sparked the- the drive to make longer pieces.
JP: Nice.
NK: But back then we were using, like I was using a cassette four-track, and I was just like filling cassette tapes. And then dumping those tapes into the computer. And from there, you know, the possibilities are endless. Clayton was able to manipulate all of that, you know, those forty-minute-long loops or whatever into longer pieces.
JP: Do you think you’ll ever do anything on a larger scale like that again?
NK: Um... I don’t know. Maybe. It’s possible. Yeah, it’s totally possible. But... you know, I think we kind of achieved, Clayton and I achieved what we were trying to pretty early in it.
JP: Right.
NK: In terms of creating long pieces or whatever. That was really his passion. But you know, I’ve often found that... it’s way more difficult to find places to post that kind of stuff and people to listen to that kind of stuff. So...
JP: Right.
NK: It’s possible though. It’s possible.
JP: Other than Earth, were you generally into drone music and stuff prior to making it yourself?
NK: Yeah, a little bit. Yes. I mean, I didn’t know of much other drone music in 2008, but yeah. I don’t really listen to a lot of those drone... stuff.
JP: Right.
NK: I mean, I don’t know. I listen to a lot of Indian music and music that has drone elements to it, but... yeah, I can’t think of anything, anybody specifically that I was listening to back then.
JP: Is there any music you especially like to listen to now?
NK: Um...
JP: Just any kind, I mean.
NK: Yeah, I mean, I listen to a lot of new wave stuff. (laughs) You know. I listen to a lot of ‘80s music. I listen to...
JP: Did you say new wave or new age?
NK: What’s that?
JP: Did you say new wave or new age?
NK: New wave.
JP: Gotcha.
NK: Yeah, I don’t know, I listen to a lot of different shit. I listen to a lot of metal, I listen to just kind of everything. I grew up in the punk scene, so I listen to a lot of punk music and... yeah.
JP: Yeah.
NK: I have a hard time, like, getting tired of things I listen to. I can never listen to too much of The Cure. (laughs) You know, shit like that. Classic stuff. But... yeah.
JP: Yeah. That’s great, yeah, The Cure’s great.
NK: Yeah.
JP: I’m trying to think if I have anything else- really burning questions...
NK: Mm hmm.
JP: Well, I guess one thing, like the jam band kind of stuff, that kind of rock-jazz stuff that was happening especially in like 2013, ‘14.
NK: All the, the Latin titles and all that shit.
JP: Yeah.
NK: Yeah, yeah.
JP: Were those all made with Bull of Heaven in mind or did they kind of just end up there?
NK: So, I was working at a coffee shop in Denver at the time, and I had a couple of regulars who were musicians, there was a drummer and a keyboard player and a guitar player. And, we would just, you know, they asked me to jam with them, and so the drummer lived like a couple doors down in an apartment above the shops there.
JP: Right.
NK: And we just set up a stereo recorder and record and then I would just give those recordings to Clayton. And he edited all of those, you know, like hours and hours of jams from different days and different sessions.
JP: Right.
NK: And put those pieces together, you know, like a fuckin’ Miles Davis record from the seventies. And I was amazed because they were just like, shitty stereo, ster- you know, like one of those little TASCAM handheld recorder- recordings.
JP: Right.
NK: The sounds he was able to get from those, and how he was able to edit all that shit together from stereo recordings was fucking amazing.
JP: Yeah, I agree.
NK: So I just kept feeding him more jams, because he was doing such a great job of putting those pieces together.
JP: So... he just kind of, he was the producer for those and you performed on them, he doesn’t perform on them?
NK: No, he didn’t perform on those.
JP: Gotcha. What about 299? ... Self-Traitor, I Do Bring the Spider Love. Is that the same deal? I feel like that one kind of feels different.
NK: Yeah, um... those were, I think there was a different guitar player who came out on those, but yeah, the same concept, same kinda thing. There might be sections in there that he did play on, because I know that on that one there was some supplemental shit we did, we did some overdubs on that.
JP: Right.
NK: So he might have done, he might have put some extra shit on that one.
JP: Was that one recorded in a different environment? Because it seems a lot more... kind of high-fidelity than the other ones.
NK: No. We might have been using a different recording device. But I’m not sure, he might have just... figured out a new, different way to do it that sounded better. I don’t know.
JP: Well, yeah, it worked great.
NK: Yeah.
JP: Does the... yeah.
NK: Yeah, he would always get a little sensitive about the stuff that he didn’t play on, which I always thought was strange because, I mean I guess, you know, whatever. But he really... I don’t think understood or like, I mean I guess a lot of people don’t understand what goes into actually like producing a piece like that. You know? And like how his ability to edit that stuff and make it sound the way he did is, you know, more important than the content itself. You know what I mean? So I would get into it with him about that stuff. Because you know, he was a fuckin’ genius, and then just he was worried people would think he didn’t play on the stuff, and I was like “ah, it doesn’t fucking matter”.
JP: Mm. Yeah.
NK: “What you’re doing for it is even more important than who’s fucking playing on it.”
JP: That was all, yeah, it’s definitely a project that I’ve understood to be about sound and about exploring the different aspects of sound, and I think the performances on that album are really fantastic, but yeah, it especially helps that it sounds really crisp.
NK: Yeah. Plus, like honestly, there was a lot of bullshit in those sessions, you know? And he was able to like, pick out the things that worked and stitch them together in a way that makes sense and sounds like that’s what we played.
JP: Nice.
NK: Which is, you know, as a musician, like, I’m very grateful.
JP: Right.
NK: That he was able to do that, because it’s hard, you know, to play with a... to do improvisations like that, and be able to keep the stuff that works and get rid of the stuff that doesn’t.
JP: Mm hmm. Do you have any background in like, jazz or any of that stuff?
NK: No. Not at all.
JP: That’s interesting. ‘Cause it...
NK: I have an interest in it, and I appreciate it... I love, you know, Ornette Coleman, I love John Coltrane, I love fuckin’ Don Cherry... you know?
JP: Yeah.
NK: I’ve been into all that stuff since I was a teenager. My father was a classical musician, I was raised on classical music and...
JP: What instrument?
NK: He was a trombone player.
JP: Oh!
NK: And then a piano tuner.
JP: I see.
NK: So I grew up around music. Yeah. But you know, my... education, I’m pretty much self-taught. I mean, I started out playing the cello and I had to take cello lessons when I was you know, eight years old I started playing the cello.
JP: Oh.
NK: I haven’t retained the knowledge of reading music or any of that. When I got into punk rock in high school it was like, well, fuck all that.
JP: Right.
NK: I wanted to be in Black Flag, so...
JP: (laughs)
NK: It’s just what kind of took over and, how I, you know, taught myself to play, and then being a bass player too, I wanted to be able to play different types of music and play in anybody’s band and kind of just jumped around, playing in any kind of band I could be in.
JP: Yeah.
NK: So, you know, I joined like, country bands, and I joined you know, different types of rock bands and shit just to learn how to play anything.
JP: Yeah. When you played shows with bands, like since starting Bull of Heaven, have there ever been people who will be at your shows but then also know your work in Bull of Heaven?
NK: Occasionally people know about Bull of Heaven. Yeah, occasionally.
JP: Yeah.
NK: But not very often. You were just asking if people, when I’m on tour, if people know about that shit, is that right? Am I understanding the question correctly?
JP: Yeah.
NK: Yeah. Yeah, it happens occasionally. But not very often. Usually my friends would have told about it. But...
JP: Mm hmm. ‘Cause, your work in different bands seems to extend to a lot of different, um, I guess demographics that don’t necessarily overlap very much?
NK: Yeah. That’s true. (laughs) But you know, there’s an occasional Planes fan who has heard it and gotten into it. But yeah.
JP: With the punk kind of aspect of your musical interests, I’m curious about the one called “Slippery Buttons, Live in the Upper World”, was that a band you were in?
NK: So, yeah, that... that was recorded in I want to say 2003?
JP: Yeah.
NK: And Clayton and I were both living in Chicago and... I grew up going to this venue in Chicago called the Fireside Bowl which was an all ages venue in the ‘90s, and I was leaving Chicago to move to Denver and I wanted to play at the Fireside Bowl one more time, so I put that band together, Slippery Buttons, to play at the Fireside one more time.
JP: Gotcha.
NK: And so, yeah, it was just me and a bunch of friends. Clayton did perform at that show.
JP: Okay.
NK: And, yeah. So I think that the album is bits of the show and bits of a practice session that we did the day before. But yeah. We cleared the room.
JP: (laughs)
NK: Nobody stayed at the show. (laughs) It was a great- I was really happy about it.
JP: Did the two of you-
NK: And the dude who like, lent us amps, left.
JP: Oh, no.
NK: Yeah, it was great. Like, okay, good, at least everyone completely hated it, so...
JP: (laughs) It’s cool that there’s a recording from back then with the two of you on it. Are there any other recordings from really early on that had both of you on it? Like, prior to the existence of Bull of Heaven?
NK: What’s that?
JP: Well, because, you know, prior to the existence of Bull of Heaven something like that...
NK: Oh, yeah.
JP: Are there any other examples of the two of you recording from early, early on?
NK: Yeah, that like... what’s it, “A Lovely Pear”? One of the early pieces?
JP: Yeah.
NK: I recorded that stuff on a four-track in like, ‘97.
JP: Oh, no way.
NK: So... but when we started the project, along with the early albums, there were bits of older things that... Elsa, Are You in There? album, was an answering machine tape that our friend Chuck found in the garbage in Chicago.
JP: Yeah.
NK: And gave us. And we built that track out of that. That was really interesting.
JP: Yeah.
NK: I think he found that tape in the late ‘90s, in an alley in Chicago. Um, so yeah, a lot of that early stuff has a lot of older material
JP: Right. Did the two of you perform together at all in, like, in Chicago other than that show?
NK: Oh. Yeah. Clayton was the second singer of my band Git Some, we just played a couple shows with him. He didn’t do any recordings with us.
JP: Right.
NK: And that was in like 2002, that was I think the first thing I did with Clayton.
JP: Gotcha.
NK: Yeah. So, yeah. We played a couple shows in Chicago and a show in Peoria with him.
JP: I see, yeah. On the subject of the really early pieces like “A Lovely Pear” and “Elsa, Are You in There?”, are- do you remember “Reasoning in State Hospital”, do you remember that one?
NK: Mm hmm. Yup.
JP: There’s something my friends and I have been wondering about for a while, which is the instrument on that song and some of the others around that period: “A Wall Between Two Gardens” I think uses it, as does “Hypnosis, Drugs and Mind Control”.
NK: Mm hm.
JP: They all kind of have the same instrument- apparently, I don’t know for sure. Do you know what instrument that is?
NK: You’re talking about the- the Indian drum machine?
JP: Is that what it is?? It’s a drum machine?
NK: It’s the... yeah, I think what you’re talking about is, yeah. I have this, it’s an Indian drum machine, is it the rhythm sound, right? That kind of has that, like...
JP: The kind of- yeah, like, melodic but rhythmic... percussion thing.
NK: Yes. Yeah, it’s a tabla emulator. This little box that looks like a McDonalds cash register...
JP: That’s fascinating. (laughs)
NK: It’s got a bunch of little buttons on it. (laughs) I have to like, listen to... and... two lights, right, so it’ll tell you, it’ll show you the tempo and it’ll show you where the “1” is, and I had to listen to it and count it out and write down on the buttons, like, what the cycles are, you know, because there’s like cycle (???), it could be, there’s cycles of seven, or cycles of like thirteen beats, it’s like, you know, it’s Indian rhythmic cycles. Super interesting machine. I got it in Chicago in 2002, maybe... yeah. I think that’s what you’re talking about.
JP: That’s amazing, I never would have...
NK: I used it a bunch on the early stuff. It’s got a little speaker on it, too, so what I used to do is lay an acoustic guitar on it, or an electric guitar, and then mic that, mic the guitar, right, so I’m getting like the sympathetic string vibrations.
JP: Right.
NK: So it’s not always just like the machine.
JP: That’s really...
NK: Through a guitar, somehow.
JP: I never would’ve guessed in a million years that’s what it was. I was banking on it being-
NK: What were the theories?
JP: I thought it was maybe a thumb piano, I think people were thinking it was possibly like a bell or a piano or something.
NK: Okay.
JP: Definitely did not think it was a tabla emulator. That’s really interesting.
NK: Yeah. That’s cool. Those machines are great, they also have drone machines, I don’t know if you’re familiar with Daniel Higgs, he was in a band called Lungfish, D.C. band from the late ‘80s and ‘90s. I think there’s a lot of really interesting music and I saw him- (???) I already owned the drum machine, but I saw him and he had like the drone box that’s the same company, so they’re like practice instruments for like, you know, learning sitar or whatever. Things to play along to. They’re really cool little machines.
JP: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. There’s definitely a kind of, a lot of unusual instruments that show up on Bull of Heaven albums, either unrecognizable ones, or just non-traditional instrumentation.
NK: Yeah. For sure.
JP: There’s like, on Weed Problem II-V for example, I remember there’s like a tambura on that? Is that sampled, or is that you playing it or something?
NK: Yeah, so, what is it? The last few pieces of that are built out of audio from YouTube videos.
JP: Gotcha.
NK: So, yeah, so like the tambura sample, the flute.
JP: Yeah.
NK: All the whatever, and the people fighting at the gas station.
JP: (laughs)
NK: That’s obvious that that’s what it is. Yeah, I was just mining YouTube and taking audio from different sources and just making collage pieces out of that stuff.
JP: Yeah.
NK: I do play on some of that, like the beginning of that album... “Stand Against God, Kevin”.
JP: Yeah.
NK: I recorded a lot of those sounds. But yeah, a lot of the exotic instrumentation wasn’t- it was just stuff I found.
JP: Gotcha. It is interesting, kind of the usage of those found sounds from the internet in some of those works, it’s... I think both part of what you were saying about being, Bull of Heaven being kind of ahead of its time as far as internet presence goes, but also just the contrast between that and some of the very, in a way, very analogue and naturalistic sounds of a lot of your work also.
NK: Thank you.
JP: Yeah, I don’t know if that was like a question or anything. Just an observation, I guess. (laughs)
NK: (laughs)
(Fireworks in background.)
JP: Another kind of random question, since the piece “Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws”, since that was never uploaded, I’m curious, I remember reading like it was stored on a broken hard drive or something?
NK: ...I don’t know the details of that.
JP: You don’t?
NK: I thought that was uploaded at some point.
JP: It was, to a degree. It’s supposed to be five and a half years long, and there’s about one year uploaded.
NK: Oh. Yeah. Yeah, that’s the one that got us thrown off of our... our server.
JP: (laughs) Yeah.
NK: Um, and so yeah, Clayton was having a lot of trouble at that point, trying to figure out what to do with everything and trying to move everything to archive.org.
JP: Right.
NK: And, yeah, that might’ve got lost in the shuffle. I don’t know if that exists still or not. I don’t have Clayton’s hard drives; his family took his computers and all of his stuff so I haven’t tried to get any of that stuff back. We had a lot of projects we were working on that were incomplete that I’d like to get to at some point, but I haven’t gotten there yet.
JP: Yeah, I would love, just personally, I think it would be fascinating if any of that unfinished material ever came to light, because there’s a lot I remember reading on the Bull of Heaven Facebook page and whatnot.
NK: Yeah.
JP: Another kind of, this is probably my last inquiry as far as lost media goes, I remember on Clayton’s blog a long time ago, there was a post he made where he mentioned several like, solo releases of his from the mid-2000’s, and the post was pretty quickly deleted or removed or whatever, and I’m just curious, do you know if any of those were real at all? One of them was called Aishiteiru Daikaraida... and, I’m just curious because I’ve never heard of them, I can’t find anything about them and I’m curious if they’re just another kind of hoax.
NK: (laughs) It’s possible.
JP: Do you remember?
NK: Yeah, he was kind of notorious for that. Um... I don’t know. I know he did have a couple albums that he made pre-Bull of Heaven, he might have done another one after we started? I’m not sure. I haven’t heard the album that you’re talking about, I’ve never heard that title before, so...
JP: Interesting. Yeah, it’s very peculiar, there’s... the post only existed for a very brief window of time as far as I can tell and there was an mp3 included on it, which also was deleted apparently. There’s no... I mean, I found all this stuff on the Internet Archive and it didn’t save that much, I guess.
NK: Hmm. Was there an image associated with it?
JP: I don’t know, I feel like it might have been right around the same time he faked his death? I think it might have been related to that.
NK: It’s possible.
JP: Yeah, so it very likely could just be made up.
NK: Yeah.
JP: That might be all I really had I was planning on asking about, is there anything else you want to mention?
(More fireworks.)
JP: ... Hello?
NK: Yeah, what’s that?
JP: Um, I was just saying I think I might have gotten to everything I was planning to get to. Did you have anything else you want to mention?
NK: No. (laughs) Not really. Thanks for your interest in the project, I mean, it’s always awesome to talk to people who are into that.
JP: Thank you so much for going along with this (laughs), I was so shocked by how quickly you responded and whatever, I really appreciate it.
NK: Yeah, it’s not often people really ask me about it to be honest.
JP: Oh, really?
NK: Yeah, and I’m usually pretty uncomfortable talking about it, but this was pleasant, so thank you.
JP: Oh, wow. That’s amazing to hear, I... thank you so much, if this may have been kind of outside your comfort zone, I really... it means so much to me.
NK: Yeah. I appreciate that you’re into it for sure. Yeah.
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