Are you the lone player/singer on 'Decline'? I ask for two reasons (that come to mind): a] there is plenty going on once you focus on the depth, and b] the shared voices on "slave morality"' are so dynamic, it's like you either used a filter labeled "gospel" or had others joining you. Amazing no matter what.

Yeah, this record was sort of a solitary/hermetic thing - there are some friends on the next record I'm assembling. For 'Decline' I felt an obligation to focus my anger and utilize a more blunt lyricism. I re-mixed it a lot lot lot and it became sort of an altered beast along the way. It was recorded over like 3 years, and I was absorbing a lot of old records/influences at a pretty steady rate, so the end product varied stylistically in a somewhat dramatic way I guess. "Slave morality"' is probably the oldest song on there, I discarded tons of stuff. In the early planning stages I imagined huge discordant harmonies all over the record to give the melodies a kind of alien logic,.. but I generally just go with whatever song form is intoxicating me at the time.

and the samples / transmissions on the recordings, were these from radio and television? sounds like late night AM to me and my lord-failing insomnia.

I have big boxes of tapes from different eras of recording that I pull sounds from. In the nineties I often carried a hand-held recorder that was always picking up ridiculous conversations with strangers and a constant assault of peripheral urban trash. Another major source for all HolySons' records is a big collection of audio cassette letters my best friend sends me from time to time. Those are often pretty disturbing; but in a Lomaxian way they are a huge cache of halfway house documentation, board-game revelation, the underground history of Boston and it's bums, footsteps ascending endless flights of stairs, junkie street sound bullshit, possible suicidal whispering, etc.. -- I've had a couple big phases of scanning AM radio and endlessly taping collages of ill-advising advisors and borderline retarded preachers. There is an odd truth to what any of these radio-personalities says. Obviously they are often hellbent on manipulation, power or spreading the seed of their agenda, but there's always a sliver of what they are saying that's strangely correct and transgressing yr common conformists' perspective. Sometimes I'll be up late at night mixing an absurd radio voice loop like "God made the coot's flesh taste like mud so that no man would eat it" over and over again.. and while at first I'm laughing at it and pitying this warped person, eventually I'm kind of staring off in disbelief, like "that's sooo true"!! It's a mind-bending ritual to absorb the implications hidden in the AM band, y'know.

there are two cover songs on the record, (one by Jad Fair and Daniel Johnston/and one by Eric Gaffney). This is a first for HolySons if my notes are in good standing - what inspired the choice?

It was really just a matter of time before some covers made it onto a record. I've done billions that haven't been released - and there are a handful of songs that I have wanted to cover for years, they go around in my head everyday when I'm walking downtown.. nonsensical phrases that will not leave my mind as years go by. If I could record and release a covers album tonight this would be the track listing:

1)Something's gotten hold of my heart (Gene Pitney)
2)Cashing In (Minor Threat)
3)Life has it's little ups and downs (Charlie Rich)
4)Calling Yog Soggoth (Eric Gaffney)
5)Fix Me (Black Flag)
6)Growing up and I'm fine (Bowie)
7)I gotta be free (Christie)
8)Pale Violence Under a Réverbère (Lard Free)
9)Raised on Robbery (Joni Mitchell)
10)the Leper (Dinosaur)

Interesting choices - Black Flag & Minor Threat - no Jandek?  Hell, you were the one who turned me on to the now un-reclusive gentleman!  So the question is - no Jandek?!

Well that was just 1 version of my ever-revolving list of covers-to-do y'see-- Now that you've prompted them, here's today's list:

1)Nightmare (Faith)
2)Renunciation (Ananda Shankar)
3)Preacher (Jandek)
4)Eyeball in a Quart Jar of Snot (Sun City Girls)
5)Doomtown (Wipers)
6)When the Screams Come (Pentagram)
7)US Teens are Spoiled Bums (Half Japanese)
8)After the Concert (Flower Travelin' Band)
9)Apricot Brandy (G. Schickert)
10)Coming Down Again (Stones)

Depth prevails. Back to 'Decline' - "I'm so incredibly old my friend" (a line in "gnostic device") - this can be interpreted many ways, but what does it mean to you? With that, and my attempt to uncover "hidden meanings", does the album title hint at any particular (personal) view on the music that is being created where you are? -or- What does "Decline of the West" mean to you?

"Decline of the West" means mostly one thing, but that thing would take a really thick thesis paper to explain. The basic tone stems from the Nietzschean idea that the silent majority (and the societal framework that houses them) favors and congratulates the weaker traits of human beings and works to suppress the stronger ones. Structuralists who might fault the framework itself for misguiding people are much more optimistic than I am about the situation. I think, maybe like Oswald Spengler did [who wrote the book "Decline of the West"], that the inevitable "Decline of the West" stems from the ultimate limitations of the current ceiling on the evolution of consciousness. There's a sample of Carl Jung in "Evil falls" that expresses the often re-asserted idea that we are entirely and constantly responsible for being the actualizers of Evil - and that our total destruction will most likely be interwoven with the limits of our intelligence. People like Carl Rogers or Peter Kropotkin may have been right in thinking that humans are essentially good, but that doesn't address whether or not the average human is self-maintaining/evolving enough to develop and refine their own conscience or realize any true (non-apocalyptic) values for themselves alone. If people have to be lured towards solutions, how can they be coaxed towards Good over Evil when they don't respond to the difference between the two??

I think, in a more general Nietzschean light, that negative energy is a part of life that serves essential, very specific purposes. And to some extent that's part of why I wanted to veer away from more harmless/pacified styles of music for a little while. A healthy society would ideally be able to examine it's own guts and integrate criticism, thereby making use of the negative energy that its framework is creating daily. It's generally more efficient/beneficial to deal with the negative aspects of life internally because we have more direct access to ourselves. In a Jungian/shadow sense, if you ignore Evil it will only resurface out 'in the world', and it will be that much harder for you to resolve/reconcile its existence.

After the first few listens, I wanted to label this release as radically different from past releases. It was after I allowed the lyrics and structure to sink in that they proved to be not so contrasting. The samples are one major difference, but what's most notable is that these songs aren't so much 'anthems' as they are 'predictions' or 'premonitions', if you follow me ("nothing left", the aforementioned "Evil falls"). Does this album / collection signify any particular ending of Holy Sons or a rebirth of any kind?

Cool - this album was the same for me. At first the combination of styles was totally unwieldy. I couldn't see how it could all go together, but cohesiveness can mean many things. I'd like to subvert all stuffy/sober musicology and bring it back to the original impulses behind structural adventurism - which one could argue are always radical. I tend to think HolySons is doomed to be misunderstood until a lot more of the records are released and a larger perspective can be grasped. One of my least favorite things about music is the immediate boredom I experience when you hear a band and know exactly what they are going to sound like in 5 years from that moment. At times I feel like I'm stuck in the now, making records for the future when people finally get bored of buying Strokes records, but one must wonder if that day ever really comes. Someone in my position sees no light at the end of tunnel and just digs deep into the therapy of music. Being completely on the outside of music commerce can be totally freeing; you are allowed to be massively playful with what might be discovered later, but for the moment it constantly invites misunderstanding.

[a crippled and tired sigh of "amen" to the Strokes comment in general. now can anyone see why I adore Emil?]

As for the 'History' album you speak of - will this be material in the same vein as 'Decline' or other unreleased jams?

The 'History' record is all unreleased lo-fi stuff from the last 15 years called "Dream of a Ridiculous Man" - I think I may release it next. I'll have to break it into 2 separate records because it's over an hour long in it's current form -- the songs begin around '92 and document some of the lesser heard home-recording eras. In ways it's definitely my favorite holysons record.

What's next for Emil/Holy Sons?

I just finished a ton of mixing for 2 new Grails EPs that are coming out very soon. We are starting a series of EPs called 'Black Tar Prophecies' that'll be more psychedelic and freer of traditional structure. I'm just starting to work on a new Dolorean record with those guys. I'm helping finish up a new Pseudosix record.

In terms of HolySons, I'm trying to finish compiling the "history" album, and I'm assembling the next full-length record that was recorded in the same studio as '..Peaceful Life'. Also, for about a year now I've been writing a book of true stories that is proving to be way more work than I thought it would be. It gives me a lot of satisfaction but re-counting stories is ultimately harder to do in writing than in the more fantasy-oriented world of making records.

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