Feature
Not Quite 20 Questions with Adam Forkner
HL: The other day I was listening to Soundcheck on WNYC and Peter Bebergal mentioned you as a member of the new psychedelia. First off, congrats! Second, do you see your music as psychedelic or as a continuation of the psych music of the 60s?
Adam Forkner (AF): That's cool that they mentioned me on the radio! That's so crazy!! So much of the time I feel like such a minuscule part of the music world. I went back and listened to that podcast... sorta weird for me. It's cool to think about the difference between "in the style of 'psychedelic'" vs. sounds in time that literally alter your state of consciousness in some way.
I think there is a lot of music made in the "style" of psychedelia... I've never been interested in that, whatsoever. I'm interested in sounds themselves. My influences are very wide.
Anyway, yeah, I guess White Rainbow can be seen as a "neo-psychedelic band" or whatever, but I would hope that people would be able to see that there's more to what I do than that label or really any label. My 2009 record 'New Clouds' was--for me--the culmination of all of that sort of loop-based psychedelia that I was exploring for a few years. I recorded most of it in 2007 and 2008 and it came out in 2009, so at this point its pretty far in the past for me. I don't quite know if I have any more to add in that particular direction. For the last couple of years, (and even before that, but less publicly) I've been concentrating a lot more on beats and rhythms and non-ambient drone based music.
Anyway, I fucking hate genre tag labels and its perhaps because I feel like I have been branded as some sort of spaced out long haired slightly ethnic drone hippy that I have taken a very long break from making that sort of psychedelic drone music. I've been motivated to push beyond and beside those tropes.
Besides, it seems like everybody and their mother has a bunch of delay pedals and looping devices these days, so really, in 2011 people can make their own psychedelic tape loop drone. and take it from me - its much more powerful to make your own than listen to someone else's loop pedal drone jam anyway.... Today's world of fetishistic micro-genre slavery is really disheartening to me. It's natural in the glut of music we are all constantly presented to want to filter it down and categorize it all, but that is so much less important to me than opening my ears to all that's out there. The great thing about music today is that we can completely switch off the mass-media shit the major labels try to shove at us, but we can also switch off the mass-media shit the indie labels and mega-blogs try to shove at us and just go get whatever the fuck we want. Find some crazy shit! It's out there!
Because of the mass appeal of indie music and DIY music culture there is this gold-rush sense that bands can just "play the game" and get ahead. and I think that a lot of the time the music suffers from all of the posing, all of the games that are played to "make it". There's a million kids out there with samplers, loop pedals, mixers, a hoodie, a synth head bobbing and putting their shit up on soundcloud and bandcamp. It gets nauseating. Its like the shitty glam scene on Sunset Blvd circa 1987 transported onto the internet and its all bullshit indie bands of all stripes, making a quick splash, getting buzz for 4 months then being completely forgotten about and its all the antithesis of anything I find sacred in music as an art form and a way of life.
Back in 1991 nirvana came out and kicked all that shit to the curb. or G&R did from within. Either way, it was a shitty gold-rush like we have now and I'm just waiting for something or someone to just blow the whole tired thing up. Think of all the upset indie kids! They'll be this generation's version of that guy that pines for the "golden era" of crappy LA hair bands. A dumb sit-com joke in 15 years.
It just feels like people would rather fit in to a certain school or passing trend rather than listen wide and create freely, and to me, those are the main tenants of true independent music culture!
But yeah. For serious - Lamonte Young, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp...all that has had a big impact on me creatively. Also Javanese gamalan, Indian classical music, so many different electronic musics, Miles Davis, electro boogie/synthesizer funk, "the german groups" (Cluster, TG, Ash Ra Tempel, Kraftwerk, Can), but also Sly and the Family Stone, Hendrix, P-Funk, punk, classic hip hop (sampling, chopping up breaks, sonic collage hank shocklee and prince paul and all of that), afro-spiritual jazz, and on and on.
In my own puny little way, I'm trying to push the boundaries of music as much as I can, blend odd colors together and hear what happens.Even now that I'm creating a lot more really weird rhythmic, drum machine and synthesizer funk musics as opposed to the more pastoral ambient stuff I am perhaps known more for, its a feelings of transcendence from a normal state of consciousness that I'm always seeking.
Free your mind and your mind will follow your ass and your ass will follow your mind... or something.
HL: How did you get started playing music? Have you been playing since childhood? Was it music itself or technology that led you to it?
AF: I was born into music. My father is a dedicated jazz musician and turned me on to a lot of progressive rock, fusion, early electronic and jazz records from an early age. I've been listening to Wendy Carlos' Sonic Seasonings and Jon Hassell's 'Possible Musics' and Mahavishnu Orchestra and Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis and all sorts of wild stuff from a very early age. I played jazz trumpet throughout my youth, then picked up the bass and guitar and synths and recording and effects and everything else. Growing up, our house was filled with synthesizers and guitars and a 4 track, drum machines, FX pedals, everything I still surround myself with to this day. I'm a lifer.
I guess I was learning the 4 track and recording at the same time as learning guitar and bass and how to program drums and mess with effects and all of that all together from around the age of 14 or 15. Middle school and high school is when I started recording and making up silly stuff on my own. also started being in punk/grunge bands around then, too. Deep Primus influence. Ween. Butthole Surfers. Mr Bungle and shit like that was cool back then!! Haha. maybe it wasn't actually cool... uhhhh sonic youth!! yeah...
As for technology, lots of different tools have inspired me through the years. I love getting into new instruments and gear. I fell in love with Ableton Live early on, probably around version 2. It's inspired me a lot over the years. Its such an amazing program and it's grown so much over time. i feel like i'm using it as much as any other instrument these days. there's so little difference between instrument and "recording program". I'm pretty hooked.
HL: What's your instrument makeup/setup nowadays? Do you have a favorite piece of equipment; one that you just couldn't live without?
AF: Right now I'm working on a lot of weird cut-up funk, very synthesized, un-natural tonally, and i barely use any guitars. I'm sorta over guitar pedals right now. after a decade or so, shit starts to get stale, no matter how many crazy pedals you have. So I've Been getting deep into the synth work of George Duke and Herbie Hancock. Also lots of sampling and breaks and stuff, sort of fusing my work with my R&B duo Purple & Green and the more fucked up experiments of Rob Walmart and bringing that into my solo work. I still have the old school loop based set up with synth and mic and a bunch of rad iPad shit going through a mixer and a bunch of pedals and a looper and a sampler... but on top of that I've added a whole new layer of gear that's making beats and other crazy sounds. Its confusing, even to me. I like it confusing.
HL: You say in an interview with Fader that music is like meditation for you. Can you elaborate a bit on that? Do you find it a sort of religious experience to play music? Is it composition or playing (or both?) that you are talking about?
AF: Music is my religion. and when I play it, I am in the present in a way that's like meditation or maybe like a sportsperson playing sport. When it's good, I'm just totally in the moment and all the mental clutter evaporates. improvising is the most like meditation. total focus on the moment of instant creation. You become the sound because you are making the sound in real time. Composition is less transportive for me, but I compose in hope that the listener is transported later.
HL: What has been your favorite show (not just White Rainbow, but any of the bands/collaborations you've been a part of) and why?
AF: The weird, fucked up shows with crappy P.A.s in funny situations seem to stick in my mind more, even though the ones in nice venues with amazing P.A.s and monitors tend to satisfy me more in the moment.
* In 2008 I played a show with White Fang and Rob Walmart out on this weird internal industrial bay in San Francisco a few years ago. Footage of the Rob Walmart set is here. I was filming. later I played while parked as the sun set. That was a pretty fun night.
* I played a show with YACHT in Busan, South Korea in this bar that used to be a strip club that some older New Jersey ex-pat had turned into a "hipster bar". He kept calling the stripper pole in the middle of the room a "dancing pole". They had a piece of shit P.A., but a bunch of lazers that Jona from YACHT or someone kept flipping on and off during my set. It was mostly young, white, English teachers at the show. Later a bunch of them ended up dancing on the "dancing pole".
what else...
* A few years ago, maybe 2006, I played in front of the Portland Art Museum for some big biennial art show opening thing. It was one of the few times I played inside of my dome parachute tent before I abandoned the concept. There was a lot of wind, which almost blew the dome down and no one could see me play and really no one knew if I was playing anyway or if the DJ was just still playing music. I secretly ate a 4 pack of Reese's Cups in there during my set like fuck it.
* On tour in Jackie-O-Motherfucker around 2004 we played in Bristol, England, I think with the band Sunburned Hand of the Man and I took this egregious beer-balls enduced fuzz wah guitar solo for about half the set with the Sunburned Hand dudes yelling and hooting and hollering at me to keep going from the side of the stage. That was a good moment.
* Purple & Green recently played at this festival in Spokane, Washington, as the "headline" act of the night and about 20 girls got up on stage and were dancing throughout most of the set. Also some guys in monkey masks I barely remember. It was bonkers. They didn't want us to stop so we did like 3 extra songs and by the end there was a totally gnarly girl-fight on stage. One girl landed a bunch of punches to the other girl's face before I could pull them apart. Needless to say, the show was over.
I used to have a saying "white rainbow: playing ambient music in bars since 199-floor," which pretty much sums it up.
HL: When you're playing a live show as White Rainbow, do you rely on songs or is it mostly improvisation? Does that change with the show or is that pretty much every time?
AF: Its pretty different every time I play. Recently I have been using the computer and there's a lot more pre-planning involved. Doing tracks from my 'From Now on Let's' and a bunch of other beats that I've yet to release. I keep making beat based stuff and then I can manipulate it live and add more stuff on top, improvised.
HL: Any projects coming down the pike that you'd like to discuss?
AF: Working hard on Purple & Green shit and in a couple of weeks I'm going to Monterrey, Mexico, to collaborate with a bunch of regional traditional Mexican musicians as part of this cool micro-residency/festival which is going to be RAD! Check the website. It's all in Spanish so I don't know exact details, but the line up of musicians looks pretty awesome. I'm super excited to have been invited.
Beyond that I am always working on new White Rainbow stuff and helping friends out in Portland with their stuff. I've got so much solo material to sort through it is sort of insane. I'm deep in hard drive confusion mode at the moment. The music world is weird these days. [insert death of the recording industry/paradigm shift chatter here.] Anyway, I really want to travel and play out of town more than I have recently & I've never played White Rainbow shows in Europe so hopefully I can do that some day.
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