Livewire,
Industrial , Synth, EBM
Friday, November 3rd 2006
W/Dj Flipps & Dj Shok

Friday, November 3rd was the third LiveWire event @ Toronto’s Savage Garden Nightclub, featuring a performance by Toronto’s own experimental legend Prospero with live drums by Effexor.


Prior to the show, LiveWire’s DJ Shok had the opportunity to interview the band.

Shok: First question, and I always ask this, but I always find the answers fascinating… How did you get into making music?

WA: That’s funny, I stumbled into it accidentally. I started DJing many many years ago, and a friend of mine, Displacer started making music, and he showed me how easy it was. So I bought some of my own equipment. I actually started doing some sound editing on the computer before that, but I needed someone to show me how to use Cubase, and then it just went from there.

LK: I started playing drums when I was pretty young. My brother played guitar. I started taking piano lessons first, got bored and switched over to drums.

Shok: I was going to get to this later, but you beat me to it. You mentioned before how easy it was making music. What’s your take on the whole idea of electronic music, where anyone can download Cubase, distort the hell out of their vocals and make music?

WA: It’s just as easy to do anything now with the help of computers: from photography, graphic design, word processing… computers make it easy, but they don’t make people more talented. So I see a lot of bands coming up, making tracks but a lot of it ever goes anywhere, you’ve gotta have a big motivation behind it, and that driving force. Like Ben from Terrorfakt, he is the king of self-promotion, he’s always out there doing something and getting things done. I really admire what he did with Terrorfakt.

Shok: Yeah, I’m a big fan.

WA: It’s just the way he’s always out there doing stuff. And that’s what I did with my first album. I tried to get as many people involved as I could. Every artist I ran into, made contacts, I asked to do a remix, to work with me. So by the time I finished the album it ended up being a double disk. The digital music thing is great, it makes things more affordable. I probably would’ve still gotten into doing it, but it would’ve cost more. I have a lot of equipment, but I can’t imagine doing it without the help of a computer. I don’t know how Skinny Puppy did it back in the day…

Shok: So I guess you’d say it’s a good thing that this sort of simple media is available to people. I get the counter argument a lot, that all these no talent guys start up bands and they all end up sounding like watered down Suicide Commando.

WA: There are a lot of bands out there. But you can tell right away who’s got it and who doesn’t right from song structure. You hear it in a lot of the start-up bands, they sound like Suicide Commando, but don’t sound like Suicide Commando. Suicide Commando’s got it down, first chorus, first bridge, chorus, chorus, structured the way things should be set up. A lot of people are doing stuff and you don’t know when the song’s gonna change in tempo or pitch or when the chorus is gonna come, or when the bridge is gonna come, because they just haven’t studied the structure. That doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have musical talent, they just need to get back to their roots and recognize that they know the software, but they have to go back and figure out how to put a song together. Take something apart and put it back together.

LK: It is all about the structure, like Wade said. You can make all the noise you want with all the equipment you want but the bottom line is if you can’t put it together, you will sound like someone else.

WA: And Humans can detect when something doesn’t sound right. The human ear can detect one sixty-fourths of a second off-beat. Especially in structure, when you listen to a song you haven’t heard before, you know when it’s going to change. You know when the chorus is gonna come in, when the bridge is gonna come in, you know how it’s going to break down, and when it doesn’t, people get confused. Like “I’m expecting a key here”.

Shok: Alright. Now I’ve got to ask. What’s in the name Prospero. You seem to have all these Shakespearean influences in your music. Are you a big Shakespeare fan or is there something else to it?

WA: I love Shakespeare, that’s where the name Prospero came from. Originally I was going to use a lot of Shakespearean samples in my music, some of my older stuff has it, that never got released. I’ve always loved Shakespeare, it’s almost like music, it has rhythm and tempo, that’s what I like about it.

Shok: And Louis, I have to ask you, what’s in the name Effexor? DJ Flipps and I were having a discussion earlier whether it’s an anti-depressant or whether it just sounds like one.

(All laugh)

LK: Well it originates from the anti-depressant, Effexor is a drug. A friend of mine, really close friend that I lost touch with because he’s on it and he’s had some mental issues. So, it’s not really an homage to him or anything like that. But I think it sounded cool because it has this industrial sound to it and it’s an anti-depressant. A lot of industrial music is so drab and fucking depressing. I decided to use an anti-depressant as a name for it.

WA: Louis came up with that a while ago and we thought it was really cool and there’s a funny story. When we first started talking about doing the side project Effexor, which we just use for Louis’ drums now… One of the major industrial bands, who I’m not going to name was staying at my house for the weekend, one of the guys goes, “Effexor, I got some of that right here” and whips it out, because he was actually on it at the time.

(Laughter)

Shok: So I guess I owe Flipps a beer, he was right, it really is an anti-depressant. So, how do you guys find industrial music has changed over the last ten years, other than just the electronic thing… Like ten years ago there was no noise, no powernoise…

WA: Industrial used to be more together. It was more organized, the whole scene was organized. If you were in the industrial scene you liked industrial music. It wasn’t fragmented into EBM and Synthpop and Noise. And all this “I only like glitch-pop-breakcore-noise”, and I don’t know… I like it all. Like the Spreading the Infection disk has influences from everyone. I sort of had the idea that I wanted to unify all the themes back together when I was doing that disk. So Industrial has changed, it fragmented then unified us again with EBM and now it’s fallen apart again. No-one knows where to go or what the next sound is going to be, so I’m kindof waiting too. I was hoping noise was going to take off…

Shok: Well it’s taken off in Montreal, not so much Toronto. I mean Montreal has COMA, and we don’t…

WA: That’s true. I guess it’s just one of those things…

LK: I guess it goes back to what Wade said before, it’s all too segmented. Like Montreal has it and Toronto doesn’t even though it’s only four hours away and it’s supposed to be the same scene.

WA: I would say ego has something to do with it I think some people are too easy to try to define themselves. Like, you know what, we’re all already complete freaks in the underground scene, let’s just leave it at that and carry on.

Shok: Do you think a lot of people want to create new genera for themselves and make themselves seem original like that?

WA: I don’t know what people are trying to do with that. I don’t like to be categorized. People should stop making subgenera and just call it Industrial.

LK: We must unify!

WA: And there was another thing, you would go to a club in Toronto in ‘95, ‘96 and you’d hear –everything- you’d be dancing to Beastie Boys and you’d be dancing to Skinny Puppy and Ministry. I’d like to see more nights like that now, like Paul’s Saturday.

Shok: Well we have Sunday nights like that too now.

WA: Oh yeah, I talked to Osaze about that. That should be good.

Shok: So where do you think Industrial music is going to go next? Do you think it’ll reunite?

WA: If I had to guess… there’s always underground music in any culture, and we’re getting destroyed by punk right now. Punk is back, and it’s kicking our asses… I can see industrial getting back into heavy guitars. It’s going to draw on pop-culture or alternative pop-culture, which is punk, and I could see a lot more guitar bands. I’ve actually got a little more guitar on the new disk.

LK: I don’t know if that’s where I really see it going or where I want it to go.

WA: I see it going there and I want it to. I miss it. I grew up on it with like KMFDM, NIN, Ministry…

Shok: Yeah I’d have to agree with you, I think music needs a heavy component like guitars, or some loud grinding noise… So what’s next for Prospero?

WA: I’m well into the new album, Follie a Deux, French for the madness of two. We’re recording some of the drums for it next week. Demos should be going out at the end of next month and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Shok: Are you going to have a big remix album like with the last one?

WA: This one I’m hoping will be just a single CD, it’s going to have some remixes on there for sure. I’ve already got Terrorfakt on there and Virtigo’s done something for it as well, I’m working with Displacer to do a track, will be working with Effexor for three or four at least, I’m doing a cover of Malhavoc’s Discipline, I’ve got some interesting secrets for that track. There’s a lot of guitar in it too. It’s definitely going to be different from the last disc.

Shok: Awesome! Well it’s time for me to get my ass to the DJ booth. Thanks for the interview and for playing the Savage Garden!