This is the true story of one of the most unique albums ever released in Australia. It’s a tale of how a former teen heartthrob teamed up with a studio engineer to create one of the most insulting, humorous and plain bizarre albums you could ever hope to hear, sold over 800,000 albums, saved a fledgling record company that also sold steak knives on the side – without ever, until now revealing their true identities.
But wait there’s more!
full interview here
“I’ve always been a fan of music that is left of center. It wasn’t until i started to work with Patton that i realized i had the instinctual ability to play avant-garde style of music. When Patton introduced me to the first Fantomas demo’s I felt very comfortable and connected with the music. When I performed Xu Feng for the first time with John Zorn and his ensemble, I was comfortable and uninhibited. This is the most pure form of musical self expression.”
Full Interview here.
“When I started listening to African music like juju music, I got turned on to King Sunny Ade,” he remembers, “I loved those interweaving guitar parts, and I really got into that guitar playing style. He would sing balls to the wall; with complete unbridled enthusiasm and I knew how amazing and inimitable it was. Some white kid from rural Florida could never make music like that. So it was about finding my own way to represent the music that made me feel the most.”
Full interview here.
“You know when you get your face peeled off it’s kind’ve hard to make it funny,” laughs Kimani Ray Smith, director of gory exploitation schlocker Evil Feed. A crazy over the top amalgam of horror, exploitation, comedy and fight films, with a suitably excessive body count, fine dining cannibalism and moments of unexpected brutality, Evil Feed is in a world of its own. It’s one of those rare low budget, low brow, low expectations films that actually manages to successfully fuse these diverse and at times conflicting genres together in a natural and frequently hilarious way.
“I love sci fi, I like horror films but I’m not too much into the gore, like Saw and stuff like that,” Smith offers. I was more interested in the comedy horror, I like the grindhouse flavour, you don’t take it serious and it’s over the top. It kind’ve comes from when I was a kid; I was a massive kung fu Asian film freak. So over the top acting, over the top fighting, over the top blood and gore, you know the fun stuff. “
Smith approaches Evil Feed with his tongue digging a crater into his cheek. The tale of a group of fighters looking for their kidnapped sensei, they stumble into a restaurant cum fight club in which the loser of the bout is fed to the patrons. But don’t expect scenes of ravenous lunatics greedily shovelling raw entrails into their mouths in some kind of orgiastic frenzy, Evil Feed is a long way from your genre defining cannibal films of the 70’s like Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox. This is a cannibal film for the foodie generation, fine dining entrails, where extra care is taken to get the seasoning just right, and the special of the house the world famous Dickie Roll. Yep, it’s exactly what you think it is.
“I like the multi genre,” begins Smith, “you think its one thing and then its like, whoa this is serious, or whoa this is gross, or I’m laughing now what the hell is going on?”
That said there’s a certain graphic brutality in some of the deaths that can be a little confronting.
“Every one of these kinds of films its always the 101 ways to die,” suggests Smith. “You have to ask yourself how are we going to kill the person, and in this genre, how fun can we make it? Towards the end when the triad dies by having his face pushed into Brian’s crotchless…it was ridiculous, then of course there’s the way that the Dickie Roll is made. That said some of the kills are in your face serious and make you question what the hell am I watching. It keeps you on your toes.”
Evil Feed recently premiered at the Toronto After Dark film festival and some of the patrons didn’t take too kindly to what they viewed as the sexist, racist and gore elements of the film. To Smith this is ridiculous, firstly they’re at a genre film festival and secondly Smith and most of the filmmakers are African American and Smith’s wife is one of the co writers.
“It’s a horror film,” he laughs in mock exasperation, “it’s a gore film, its an exploitation grindhouse film, it’s a comedy. It shouldn’t be taken seriously, c’mon, enjoy, and have a Dickie Roll on me. “
Evil Feed Screens as part of Monster Fest.
In 2008 I interviewed Belgian director Koen Mortier about his incredible and nasty debut film Ex Drummer. I just found the interview again, by typing ‘anal’ into the cyclic defrost search engine. Weird I know, but I promise there was a reason, and incidentally you’d be surprised by the amount of results it brought up. Regardless this interview was one of them, and apart from being a great, candid interview, Ex Drummer is one of those obscure incredible films that you need to see.
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/2008/05/interview-with-koen-mortier-director-of-ex-drummer/
There are bands, and then there are icons – musicians or bands that at a particular time in their lives happened to be doing the right thing at the right time in the right place and changed everything. This particular right place was Italy in 1975, and Giallo director Dario Argento had just fired the composer of his latest film Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) and was unsuccessfully attempting to woo Pink Floyd to complete the job. They declined and instead he turned to a little known Italian progressive rock band Cherry Five. This decision changed film composition forever. Suddenly here was a hysterical, somewhat bombastic, prog rock score that didn’t so much evoke a mood as assault the images and in turn play havoc with the audiences senses. Cherry Red changed their name to Goblin and the soundtrack was so well received that it made it into the Italian charts and continues to sell a ridiculous amount of copies today. More importantly it was the beginning of an extremely fruitful relationship with Argento that included classics like Tenebre and Phenomena. Their most acclaimed work is the gory occult masterpiece Suspiria, where Goblin’s heightened, almost operatic rock music mixes baroque, prog and strange atmospheres, to merge seamlessly with Argento’s bright woozy images, taking on a feverish hallucinogenic quality. Film music had never called attention to itself in this way before, it’s never been this hysterical, this overblown, this terrifying.
I spoke to keyboardist Maurizio Guarini on the eve of their second Australian tour.
Are you aware at the moment there’s a resurgence of interest in Italian horror soundtracks from the 70’s and 80’s?
Yeah. I’m aware. I think that it’s thanks to the Internet. It’s really great that it starts introducing things that were a little bit forgotten.
It must be good to see your own work revalued again. It’s been given a new life.
Yes in some ways.
I saw Goblin Suspiria in Melbourne, I think last year maybe October or November. For me it was amazing. I never thought I’d get to see you do that. Did you think you’d ever do anything like that, perform the score live?
Absolutely not. We never thought about this. But if you go back 38 years ago we could never imagine in any way that after 38 years someone would ask us to play that live. So things just happen that you never imagine before. And we enjoy too because that was the first time that we played live on the movie. It was a lot of preparation because people outside listen to our music played in sync with the movie, but in our headsets we have all the clicks just to start at the right moment in the movie. It was quite an interesting experience for us as well.
I understand you guys composed the music to Suspiria prior to the filming. What did Dario Argento give you? What did he have to say to you to help you out with the moods? What parameters did he give you?
It was a long long long time ago. I just remember going to Dario’s house and he was talking about this movie. From what I remember he told us what he needed, and about the movie. The fact that the soundtrack was composed before the movie footage, that was different from the way he would normally shoot. To tell you the truth I can’t remember exactly what Dario said. Remember it was 38 years ago. For sure he gave us the right message to write the right score for the movie, because after that something magic happened. Because after that the image and the music just worked so well together.
I’m sorry to ask you questions about music that’s 38 years ago. I’m interested that Goblin did quite a few soundtracks with Dario, but not music for quite some time. Did something happen? Or did he just change his interest in who he wanted?
I’m not sure about this. Lets first of all say that the two keyboard players in Goblin are myself and Claudio Simonetti. Most of the Dario soundtracks were done with Claudio Simonetti. I did other soundtracks when Claudio wasn’t there but mostly non Dario movies. Saying that recently Dracula 3D was just Claudio and Dario used Morricone too. I don’t know exactly the reason but it’s definitely not a choice of Goblin not to do a Dario soundtrack. There’s not necessarily a marriage between Dario and Goblin, we’ve done it several times with good results but life is good because its different things change.
What happened with the Patrick Soundtrack? Was it a last minute decision to involve Goblin?
Well going a little bit back on the Goblin history, I stayed with them until while we were recording Suspiria, after that I left for a couple of years and then Claudio and Massimo left again and the band I joined while the other version of Goblin we were working on other soundtracks like Patrick and Buio Omega, Contamination. To tell the truth I can’t remember what happened with Patrick. It was a long time ago and things disappear in our memories.
How do you see this new version of Goblin? Do you see it mostly as a live performance or do you plan on doing recording, or even soundtracks?
This latest version of Goblin has been alive since 2010. On board is Claudio Simonetti, Massimo Morante Titta Tani and Bruno Previtali. Now we just work on live concerts. We did plan to do some studio work, but for some reason, maybe we are busy, we haven’t accomplished anything yet. That might be a future goal to do studio things, but not yet. For now we are a live band and we play all the repertoire from the beginning to the end.
So that’s what we should expect when you come to Melbourne?
For sure. We will do things from 75, Deep Red, and a lot of songs from Roller, and of course the main scores, and something from the last album we did in 2005 Back to the Goblin.
There has been quite a lot of movement of band members in Goblin. Is there any reason for that?
I think talking about internal problems is always true when you’re talking about bands. We’re not the only one. Especially in a band like us, we’re so different musically sometimes. Some are lets say jazzy, or funk or rock or classical, so we have different influences. The reasons, we can start arguing about something musically, that’s the richness of Goblin I would say. So many different people together to make the music, but its risky, but it might happen that it creates problems and that creates a change in line up. Actually we change a lot of time our line-ups.
But different new people coming in must also keep it interesting?
Of course, every person who comes in brings their own experience and tries to push the sound in his direction even without trying; you play in your certain way and the sound of the band changes. So the band is not pretending to have a sound. The sound is just the ensemble, the total sound of all the musicians. It’s always exciting playing with new musicians and exploring new ways. Even a small detail can bring you somewhere else some times. There’s always a positive experience in the exchange of ideas of playing in a band.
Do you find it hard that so many people, myself included are very much focussed on what you were doing 30 years ago? Do you ever want to say listen to what we’re doing now as opposed to what we’ve done?
If it’s my opinion I would say yes. I would like to go very high continuously. Not just say ‘no’ to the past because I think we need to innovate every once in a while. But on the other side I understand that people are so attached to what we did at that time and I have to say that throughout there is some magic that you can’t just sit around the table and say lets create some magic and we are fixed to that thing, we can’t do anything about it. We cannot avoid it. Not that we aren’t happy about this. This is something that keeps us glued to the past in some ways. I don’t like 100% this but on the other side I feel lucky and happy to be part of a band that has this history.
Can I ask the difference for you in working with Goblin compared to working with someone like Fabio Frizzi?
Goblin of course is a band, everyone has influence or composes or playing, it’s more involved than the first person. Frizzi for example was like let’s say composing the melody and such things and we were just creating the sound, and the other notes. The relationship with the director, devising the music it’s a whole process that when you work with someone else you don’t go through. You just take care of the sound. It’s a limited support you give, working for another musician. It’s not just Frizzi, it’s any other composer, you just work on the arranging and creating the sound in a certain way.
Is that part of the reason there have been some of the issues with Goblin in the past? Everyone has had the compositional role and people have butted heads?
Oh yeah, of course, its part of the reason we had issues. And not only us, other people too. When you’re living with other people, you have to go through all the problems including the artistic problems. I like to go more in this side, I like to go more rock, I don’t like this because it’s too metal. It’s always something like that. If its too far from what you like you might decide, alright guys I’m taking my road somewhere else because I want to be creative. Then there’s always time to go back after a few years.
What keeps playing in Goblin innovative and exciting for you? What keeps you going?
Now, the most important thing is just the exchange with the public, with a live audience, the incredible energy we can not only give but receive from the audience, playing live is one of the most beautiful things you can do in your life, because its an exchange of energy. Seeing all the people that like what we do, this keeps us glued, very together in the moment. We want to play live to show all the world what we do. We didn’t have occasion to do it in the last 20 years. We are very happy to be doing it now. It’s very exciting.
Goblin Australian Tour 2013
with special guest Miles Brown (The Night Terrors)
SUNDAY 14th JULY Billboard The Venue, Melbourne
Weng Weng is small. Andrew Leavold is much bigger, but has a small Weng Weng on his arm. Confused? Nothing is straightforward when you enter the world of Filipino exploitation cinema. Weng Weng, the diminutive star of classic z-grade James Bond rip offs For Y’ur Height Only and The Impossible Kid became an obsession for Leavold, and it’s easy to understand why, karate kicking baddies in the kneecaps, jumping out of tall buildings with only a handkerchief for a parachute, whilst fearlessly snaring bad guys and getting the girl, Weng Weng is a man for all seasons. With Leavold launching a kick-starter campaign and holding screenings around the country, Bob Baker Fish took the opportunity to ask the maker of The Search For Weng Weng the most important question. Why?
Read the full interview here:
http://monsterpictures.com.au/features/the-wild-wild-weng-weng/
“I kept hearing about this Nicki Minaj, this is probably 18 months ago, and now she’s very famous and on X-Factor or whatever it is, and I thought I’m going to go check out what this is. So now I’ve made a rule to myself whenever I’m reading on the internet about a hot new rapper or whatever, I made a mental rule to myself not to go on youtube to check it out because it will upset you.”
Read the full interview here:
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/2013/02/interview-with-ollie-teeba-of-the-herbaliser/
Omar Souleyman is a wedding singer from Ras Al Ain, located in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi and Turkish border. He’s playing in Melbourne on Wednesday night and is an excitement machine. Check out my interview with the great man here:
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/2012/12/omar-souleyman-interview/
“One of my favourite analogies for composing and improvising is that it’s very much like trying to keep honey on a knife. The ideas are always falling and you just have to twist the knife a little bit to keep them focused,”
See the rest of my interview with one of Australia’s tireless and provocative new music/ experimental music icons as he discusses his new Box set Collected Works 2002 – 2012, recent dalliances with the film industry and his decision to move to Brussels.
http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/2012/08/anthony-pateras-self-improvment/
Fragmented Frequencies 