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by Stephan Flipkens - translated by me
Gonzo spoke (and did the text-analysing-test) with the most productive
Protheus-figure from the Belgian music scene: Rudy Trouvé, poéte
maudite, painter, lo-fi-director and music-maniac (with Kiss My Jazz,
Gore Slut, Dead Man Ray, Horrowitz,…)
December 27th, Kiss My Jazz, the “electronically backed-up
orchestra” of bricoleur et bruiteur Trouvé, exposed itself
again in the AB in Brussels as a furious ten-head strong musical monster
which spit out a nice emulsion of neurotic singing, sonic jazz-spasms
and hypercinetic percussion at its audience.
Or, to put is as in the Kiss My Jazz press biografy; “The electronical
disturbing noise in the form of music” was audiable with the ear.
Rudy: “That description we got from the very poetic police of
Antwerp. It’s a line from a police report which we got sent, after
rehearsing too late for their taste. The report filled an entire page,
no doubt written by Paul Van Ostaijen! (laughs) (famous Belgian
poet from around 1900 - q.) We’ve still got to send that man a thank
you-note. “The electronical disturbing noise in the form of music”.
‘Fantastic!’
(serious) They’re real poets, it must be said.”
Gonzo: Something which can’t be said about some of your pop
colleagues. Let’s consider the poetic level of their writings…
”Now this is just a theory, but if you’re into rock
& roll, you’ve gotta sell your soul.”
Elko Blijweert: That rings a bell. I’ve read that line
somewhere before.
Gonzo: Very good- you read Gonzo!
Rudy: “I don’t like it. It’s too obvious, something like
“The sky is blue and I love you.” That’s just ridiculous
rhyming for the sake of it. So that one has failed the test, by who is
it?
Gonzo: It’s a line from the ‘I am a scientist’-EP by
Guided by Voices, which looks a bit lost as an theoretical
announcement between the otherwise very surreal scribbles by Robert
Pollard.
”If I could settle down”
Rudy:
“(starts singing at a whining tone) That’s a nice sentence, and a
nice song. Personally, I don’t have the urge to start settling down,
but I can understand the man who sings it. A lot of people want to
settle down on one hand, but at the same time they want to escape the
daily routine-based society, not adjusting themselves to it.
”I smoke Elvis Presley’s
toenails when I want to get high”
Rudy:
“Funny, but nothing hilarious.”
Elko: I can’t think of anything to say about that- my
experience in that field is non-existent. (laughs)
Rudy: “So it’s by the Butthole surfers you say? Hmm. I
especially appreciate their early work. I’ve seen them once at
Futurama. I think the maxi singles of that period are very good: ’22
going on 23’, ‘Human cannonball’, en ‘Tornadoes’.
Gonzo: In the early days, Kiss My Jazz also brought more on stage
than just music.
Rudy: Our show was inspired by the New York Dolls; we
dressed up as transvestites, just for the sense of kitsch, for the camp.
Elko: We also used to work with video- and TV-projections back
then, but after a while it got boring.
Rudy: We started having the feeling ‘ugh, again with the
projections’. What’s more important is that you can put your entire
soul into the music you’re playing; people should have fun on stage,
not doing their job. That provoking approach of the Butthole
Surfers with naked dancers, shocking imagery, peeing on the audience
etc, all of that was of course not a new thing, but they could easily
get away with it, because they made good music..
“No more Bullshit, no more
bullshit, no more MTV, no more rock stars, nor more bullshit, nor more
bullshit. Elvis Presley died and no one knows why.”
Rudy:
“That sounds like something of the Dead Kennedy’s. so I
suppose that’s not it. It sounds a little too political to fit into my
taste.”
Gonzo: I think the band which wrote these lyrics, has
artistically a lot in common with Kiss My Jazz, dEUS, Gore Slut etc.,
although the press never brought this to anyone’s attention. The line
is from LP “II & III” of Camper van Beethoven; in other words,
you’ve got to interpret it with the necessary amount of
tongue-in-cheek-humour.
Rudy: I can understand the similarities you’re seeing. Camper
van Beethoven also worked in a similar eclecticism by combining a lot of
different instruments and genres. Their records had a similar ‘messy’
sound; lots of short tracks put after each other. A little bit of
drinking and having fun, I recognise it in myself. Their ‘Take the
skinheads bowling’ is still a very ‘entertaining’ song.
“Sometimes I don’t thrill you
Sometimes I think I kill you
But don’t let me fuck up will you
‘cause when I need a friend it’s still you”
Rudy:
“Fantastic! It’s a shame it isn’t ours, but from Dinosaur Jr.
J. Mascis better had changed the band name when Lou Barlow left and when
he kicked out the drummer. While the Buttholes gradually got
creatively less inspired, J. Mascis still keeps on producing one or two
great tracks each album. It’s a shame that the last Dinosaur Jr.
albums were produced in such a thick FM-rock style.”
“Writing my novel with a stick
in the sand
Waiting for a wave come wash it all away.”
Rudy:
“I think it’s a bit dangerous to make yourself heard with this kind
of sentences. That’s like: “look at this! Now what a great something
I wrote!”. Whose is it? Lou Barlow?! I must say I think this isn’t
very good, although he has written a few really beautiful things. This
sounds initially like a good idea, but it lacks that extra dimension
which some of his other lyrics do contain…like: (sings) ‘There’s
history in this place’; that goes straight to the heart. ‘There
are dragons to be chased…’
Gonzo: By this, my next question concerning pop lyrics that are
continuously stored in your memory, gets obsolete.
Rudy: “There are millions of lyrics that are printed into my
memory; in that field, a lot of magnificent things have been made. Take
these lines from the Gang of Four: ‘Sometimes I really think
I love you but I know it’s only lust’, or ‘You kiss so
sweet, you smell so sour’, work of Palace songs, etc.
It also often happens a song has terrific lyrics, but with absolutely
revolting music.”
Elko: “Mostly the slogan-lyrics by Front 242 have remained in
my head. I know those have often been clumsily constructed in
dictionary-English, but it still can cause chills down your spine, I
think.
The way lyrics are sung is often at least as important as the lyrics
themselves. Take for instance that line of Arto Lindsay: ‘She looks…It’s
only therapy’; he continuously sings in a different way with that
etheric voice of his. His timing is also always different, which gives
an extra dimension to that line. Henry Rollins would do something
completely different with it, obviously. So it’s often the way words
are presented that decides whether they’re catchy or not.
Gonzo: With Kiss my Jazz, Gore Slut etc, it seems you’re
turning it into a game; the number of voice-deformations and
metamorphoses is countless.
Jacki Billet: “That’s because the voice is an explicit
instrument to us. When it is our intention to make the lyrics
understandable, we’ll make sure that happens.”
Rudy: “At least when the song needs it. You don’t have to
wreck a song, just to push something you’re really satisfied with, per
se to the foreground. Besides, that multiplicity of singing styles with
Kiss my Jazz isn’t a calculated move, but simply the consequence of
the many people - in other words voices - we work with. We always do
whatever the song requires, each idea is inferior to the song. Even when
you’ve got a great guitar riff, or is the drum’s fourth - tsjing! -
is really, really, good, it’s important not to make them more
important than the song itself.”
Gonzo: Vocal fuck-ups or none, with that love for unfinished, in cut
and paste style put together pieces of songs, you’ve placed yourself
into the army of lo-fi musicians (Lou Barlow, Guided by Voices,…) at a
time when lo-fi still wasn’t seen as a genre. So you were actually
un-Belgian early with something that was in it’s embryonic phase
elsewhere too.
Rudy: “Still, we’ve often been directly influenced in one way
or the other by these other musicians. You’ve got to know- we’re
real music freaks: we don’t sit and wait for a band to reach us
through the mainstream media, we’re constantly looking for new stuff
ourselves. That’s why we have often got certain records a lot sooner
playing on our stereo’s. Stuff like Guided by Voices was already out
there for a long period. It’s simply a question of finding them.”
“Secondly, there’s also Stef’s theory (Stef Kamil Carlens; Zita
Swoon and Kiss my Jazz, sf): everyone and and everything is nowadays
heavily exposed to the same information. Everybody selects their own ‘thing’
from that big pile of information, so it’s unavoidable that people are
doing the same thing, independent from each other.”
“I would also not put it so negatively as if Belgium would always be
behind on things. In the early eighties, we’ve had a fair deal of
relatively innovating bands. Take La Muerte for instance;
nowadays it sounds a little outdated, but back then, it was a tremendous
noise which people feared. A lot of inspired things have happened back
then. But, that wave of quality from the early eighties has vanished in
the meantime. The first records of The Scabs, De Kreuners, they
were good, but in the following years, those bands started producing
more and more bullshit. Together with that, halfway the eighties, most
record companies simply didn’t dare to invest in trend setting bands,
when commercial success wasn’t guaranteed. Result; a lot of mediocre
bands on the radio. A little later, with the New Beat, Belgium took a
lead role, but that was mostly limited to disco’s. And then you can
see that a new direction within music is either immediately transformed
into a commercial hype, or immediately dives into the underground.
These days, people are more easily tempted to buy a Belgian record,
especially compared to four, five years ago, but I guarantee you that
trend will be over in two years. Apparently, music has to evolve into
little small wave-forms.”
Gonzo:
Not everyone in Kiss My Jazz is equally happy about the omnipresent
electronic (r)evolution in music. Or so can be understood from several
interviews.
Rudy: “I think the ideas of certain people are more interesting
than the actual music they make. But I don’t know a great deal about
it, so I cannot really be a judge about it. It’s not exactly
sensational for me to come up with this example, but the one that
constantly jumps out of the herd for me, is DJ Shadow; he’s one
of the few in the genre with his own sound. I think lots of electronics
suffer from the same syndrome as Death Metal in the old days:
there are a couple of good things out there, and thousands which imitate
those. But I’m not completely rejecting it myself- I’m working on my
own dance-gibberish, on four-track.”
Elko: “Everyone is raving about it too much. By the end of the
eighties, it was a completely wrong thing to listen to techno
music. You couldn’t do it back then, now you have to. And I
think techno from seven years back sounded a lot warmer. There’s also
a difference between the maxi-dj-culture and the people which release
complete cd’s with their own creative work.”
Gonzo: So passionate musicians like yourself aren’t offended by
the phrase: “The musician is dead! Long live the music!”
Rudy: “No, because I think DJ Shadow is also a musician, a
virtuoso even. To young people, there are lots of revolutionary things
in his music, but they surprises me less so, because of the many
references I recognise from music of the past. Usually only a few
rhythm- or accent adjustments are added. The seventies can be heard very
clearly in lots of those things. With Tortoise it’s the same
thing. I already knew Can, Soft Machine; Tortoise hasn’t
invented what they’re doing, while everyone raves so badly about it.
That can bother me sometimes. (in a singing, half ironic voice) Yes, it
bothers me sometimes!”
Gonzo: What apparently also bothers you is the way the so-called ‘Antwerp
scene’ is pictured in the press.
Rudy: “Correct! I’m absolutely not satisfied with that. What
they tell is all more or less true, but everyone pretends it only
happens in Antwerp. Everywhere there’s a scene, everywhere people play
in each other’s bands. Does it matter where a band is from? I hate
that whole scene-thing. In Herentals, musicians also meet in cafés and
whine about music together, and they also play in each others bands!
”The more people write about it, the sooner it will be used against
you. People will say: “Antwerp again!”. That’s how things
work in the press: at first they create a positive vibe, to then
collapse into complete negativity. You didn’t ask for it when it’s
in your advantage, and you didn’t when it’s in your disadvantage.”
Elko: “Something the many bands in Antwerp do have in common,
is their respect for each others ‘products’, and there’s no
feeling of competition. In the press, they often put the same bands in
focus, while there are lots of other bands around which form a scene,
and they get put in the shadow of the bigger bands.”
Gonzo:
So let’s stick to Berckmans’ portrayal of the Barakscity
Antwerp…
(J.M Berckmans is a cult-author from Antwerp with a cynical view on
the world - q.)
Rudy: “I’ve recently seen another performance by him, I think
the man has got something peculiar. (laughs).µ
But anyway…”
Gonzo: Your literature-influences, which get clear in your lyrics,
are mostly from American authors.
Rudy: “I stole the titel ‘Tough guys don’t dance’
from Norman Mailer. I thought that was a fantastic book. I got ‘Tropic
of Cancer’ on the other hand, from Henry Miller.”
Gonzo: So do you also share the anti-western, anti-consumption
society criticism from someone like Miller?
Rudy: “No, in that sense I recognise more of myself in someone
like Andy Warhol. I prefer the consumption society.” “See, those
titles don’t always have to hold a logical relation with the source I
took them from. In many cases, they sound as if they’re taken
from somewhere, or either they really are stolen (laughs). I
thought the atmosphere which the title ‘Tropic of Cancer’
carries, just fitted well with the song. Or take ‘The Stud’,
for instance. The name of a porn movie with our friend Sylvester
Stallone in the leading role. Our song with the same title has in
essence nothing to do with that movie.”
Gonzo: In the additional comment you write next to each song in
every cd-booklet, you often write down a judgement of value. For
instance, with the song ‘Chunk’ (from the magnificent new cd
‘In the Lost Souls convention’): ‘Sort of no wave thing. Most
people will hate this one.’
Rudy: “(Laughs) I was fairly certain of that, because more than
half of the band already didn’t like it.”
Gonzo: Because you’re working with so many musicians, I can
imagine it’s not always as easy to decide when a song should or
shouldn’t be dumped…
Rudy: “Usually that happens in an extremely democratic way,
only with ‘Chunk’ it was just Elko and me who liked it. I
thought the new album was to calm, to cosy, so something un-cosy had to
happen. That’s why we insisted badly the song needed to be on the
record (laughs).”
But when someone says: “if thàt song will be on it, I’ll cut my
wrists and puke myself to death”, that’s very tempting of course (laughs),
but then we will probably ditch it.”
Gonzo: In the side note for the song ‘Chunking Mansions’ ,
you write the Chinese music for the song was recorded on a dictaphone in
a museum in Hong Kong…
Rudy: “I travelled there for a month. Nothing spectacular, but
when I left home, I got a small dictaphone, and I spoke a lot of text
into it and recorded a lot of useable sound fragments with it.”
Gonzo: So they’re objects trouvés?
Rudy: “Yes, gathered objects. I used to pick up things from
the trash bin, but these days I work more with IKEA-products. (laughs)”
Gonzo: Next to making recordings, you’ve also painted in Hong
Kong, or so it seems from the nice cd-cover of ‘In the Lost souls
convention’.
Rudy: “Yes, I can express myself as easily in painting as in
music. I start from the same idea, the same life, the same items. Daily
things and daily troubles like paranoia, depressions… I start out
drawing with a pencil, and then I spray some glue on the canvas before I
start painting: that adds some more structure, good sir. (laughs).”
“Usually I play records when painting; when I hear a song which tears
me apart, I get the urge to make something beautiful myself.”
 Gonzo:
And then you
frame it for instance with quotes from the bible…
Rudy: “Now you’re referring to those blow-ups (to be
admired right now in the entrance of the A.B., sf) from a couple of
small works which were first made the size of a stamp. The fragment
which surrounds those two canvasses, is taken from ‘Apocalyps’; I
thought they fitted well with the images. The white around the other
images, those are dead bugs, and the darker frames are dead flies. Just
a matter of keeping things cosy (laughs).”
Gonzo: You like to mention Pratt, Schiele and Warhol as influences
for your paintings, but I think your work carries the unheimlich
atmosphere of Edward Hopper’s work…
Rudy: “Yes, I’ve been told that before. I suspect that
atmosphere is the consequence of a similar life-style: hanging out in
cafés a lot, loneliness, being contact-disturbed, failed loves,…
I am, just like Hopper I suppose, easily taken by self-pity, and can
find that companionable.”
Gonzo: The people in your paintings also often seem to live next
to each other…
Rudy: “You’re right. I suffer from emotional and contact-
disturbances myself.”
Gonzo: In the Lost Souls convention, zowel de cd als het schilderij,
lijkt me ook een beetje te zinspelen op het zogenaamde lost generation
gevoel, zoals zich dat ook bijvoorbeeld bij The Beat Generation
manifesteerde…
Gonzo: In ‘The Lost Souls convention’, both the album as the
painting, also seems to be a bit of a reference to the so-called lost
generation-feeling, like it was present for instance in The Beat
Generation…
Rudy: “I think each generation, every club of friends can be
called a lost generation. Usually that expresses itself very much
in a cliché matter: we wear black clothing, like to hang out in bars,
smoke, drink coffee and alcohol. Every year again there are people which
can’t get out of that puberty. We’re another bunch like that.
Gonzo: Do you still consider yourself in puberty?
Rudy: “To some, puberty is just a fase which comes once, and
disappears forever afterwards. To others, puberty is something ín that
person, ones character; not being able to adapt to the environment and
such. Look, you’re born to become sexually mature, breed and die, and
if you don’t fit into that pattern, you search for an alternative, you
try to find systems to survive, which you can adapt to.”
Gonzo: Your own alternative is unrestricted creativity…
Rudy: “I try to do as many things as possible. Mind you -
things I’m capable of doing. I’m not capable of doing a normal job;
I’m too drowsy, to incompetent for that. And that isn’t false
modesty! Two days ago, I tried playing table tennis, and that was
extremely illustrating to how hopeless and clumsy I am. I’m not clumsy
or hopeless when I make music, write, paint or film…”
Gonzo: Oh, so you make films as well?
Rudy: “Films is too big a word. It’s more something like
getting up in the morning, and while drinking coffee, getting the idea
to go walk in the park and talk about “clothing in the sixties”, and
then to film that. That’s not really filming, but I think it’s got
something to it (laughs). Can you understand?
The word is now dreadfully passé, but I prefer ‘lo-fi-filming’
because you know you can record on the spot. You have to live with the
fact that both sound- and image quality are horrible, but at least you
don’t need 27 men around you with extra lightening and microphones. So
you can immediately register really stupid things, and when the result
looks good, you can continue and cut and edit very simply afterwards,
and you’ve got yourself a result!
Otherwise you have to first apply for funding from the government, to
finally receive your first penny after five years, to be able to start
filming when you’ve already grown sick of the initial idea.”
”The same applies for records; we record those with very minimal means
and virtually no budget, otherwise you first have to pass by every
record company in the world to get a few cents to start recording an
album. Ridiculous!
You have to work with the means you’ve got, that’s the lo-fi idea we’ve
always applied. It has become a trend which is passé in the meantime
though, tough luck!
But we’re not shy of computers; we can still head in any direction, as
with Dead Man Ray for instance. That’s nothing but looping and
sampling, on four-track track though (laughs)
A bit further away in the future, I’d like to create a theatre play in
collaboration with my dear colleagues.”
Gonzo: Can you, now your artistic productions keep expanding like
this, still remember what your first painting looked like, or what your
first song sounded like?
Rudy: “Definitely. My first painting is on the cover of the
first album of Gore Slut. (‘These days are the quiet kind’, sf),
it’s about ten years old in the meantime.
I can also still vividly remember my first song, but we’re not going
to be talking about that! (looks at Jacki and together they start
laughing)
I made it together with Jacki, but it’s not open for a release. It was
a typical anti-society-in-crap-English-shouted-song. Yep, we’ve
been through that period as well!”
Gonzo: So you didn’t spread it out to the world.
Rudy: “Oh no, we definitely did! We made 37 bloody tapes of it,
and spread them around everywhere, but we won’t tell you the name of
the band.”
Gonzo: Trouvé, is that your real name by the way?
Rudy: “Yes. Even more incredible is my father’s name:
Constant Trouvé.
(literally translated it means ‘Continuously
Found’, q.) (laughs out loud) Hilarious!” |