Well, some bands are started with clear intentions in mind, and some
evolve naturally out of the experiences and styles of the people involved.
Gravitar has been a combination of the two. Harold Richardson, our first
guitar player, had the stated goal of Gravitar being "as psychedelic as
possible". Though vauge, this has actual been a fairly good starting
point, as it's allowed us to continue explore our sound and approach,
while still staying consistent to our earlier work. In a practical sense,
our intention was to combine noise and rock, and we continue to do so.
Who are the members in gravitar,
what rolls do you play?
Currently, Gravitar is:
Mike Walker -- Guitar
Geoff Walker -- Vocals, Guitar, horns
Eric Cook -- Drums
As far as roles, Mike is the "rock", Geoff is the "noise" and the
wildcard, and I glue everything together, and try to get it moving.
How come you started to play this noisy industrial music with mostly
conventional instruments?
The word industrial seems to have all sorts of specific genre implications
that I don't think fit with us. That aside, it was the instrumentation
that all of us were familiar with. This was the kind of music we wanted
to make, so... There wasn't much concious thought given to that issue.
It just seemed natural.
In any case, though the instrumentation you choose will cause you to
approach your music in certain ways, I don't think it's all that
important, compared to the end results.
How did you get in to that kind of music in
the first place?
I think it's mainly an extension of all of the music that we liked,
listened to, and were influenced by. We all grew up as rock kids, so
that's in the mix, but you can hear strong experimental, jazz, and
improvisational influences as well. As in the prior question, it just
seemed like the natural thing to do, given our individual tastes.
You have realeased three albums now, how have your music growned and
changed?
I think we have a much clearer idea of the methods we want to use to
create our music, and to get it across to the listener. As the years have
gone by, we've been able to become considerably looser, as well as
simultaneously play off of one another with a much greater proficiency.
Personally, I've become much more interested in the powers of editing the
recording product after the fact, and encorporating that additional level
of control into the process -- this can be seen most clearly in our 3rd
CD, Now the road of Knives, as many of the songs are actually collage/edit
pieces either done by Warren DeFever or myself of "live" material.
Why did you choose charnel music to release our albums on?
We enjoyed many of the records they put out, Mason Jones (the owner of
Charnel) is a very easy guy to work with, and, perhaps most importantly,
they said "yes" when we asked them.
Whats the reason behind the album names chinga su
corazon, gravitaativaravitar and Now he road of the knives?
Chinga su Corazon (or "Fuck your heart") was chosen by Geoff, as a
statement of defiance in some fashion. I like the sound of it, but am not
sure if I still feel very strongly about the sentiment..
Gravitaativaravitar could be explained in a couple of ways: a)electronic
delay effects have always been important in our music. This spelling of
the name is sort of an alphabetic version of that. b)It could be a
post-modern comment on self-reflexivity. In reality, it's c)a joke. We
couldn't decide on a name, were going to have it be self-titled, and then
Harold came up with the logo/warping of the name that appears on the
cover. If you spell out that warping, this is what you get.
Now the road of knives is a little more serious. We parted ways with
Harold before making this record, and had some other interal and personal
difficulties along the way. So the split with Harold is one "cut", the
other problems we encountered along the way were "knives" in our road. In
addition, we really started exploring editing more fiercely on this
record, and the knives can be read as a reference to that as well.
There's other, more personal meanings as well.
Tell me about your sideprojects
Right now, I'm the only one with an organized side project, that being
"Bantam Rooster", sort of a blues-rock duo that I also play drums with.
But all of us play with other musicians in the area, from Geoff doing more
theatrical-oriented things with the panhandle band, to Mike's plans of
starting a country band. I also work on solo material, under my own name,
and have several cassette releases of that work.
Whats the reason you started
playing music and what influences you?
More than anything, it's the excitement that we all get from music that
started us each in playing. I can only speak for myself, but I'm much
more influenced by musicians that I can get to know on a personal level,
see repeatedly, and get a chance to find out what's going on inside their
heads than anyone on record. So most of the big influences are people
that I knew while growing up, and not necessarily anyone you have heard
of.
Will you play any lives in the close future, any outside the us?
We play in the Detroit/Michigan area with a good deal of regularity, but
finances prevent us from getting too far afield from there right now.
We'd like to tour, and love to tour outside the us, but it's just not
feasible right now.
What will happen next
for gravitar
Starting work on CD #4, as a matter of fact. Perhaps a 2 CD set?... In
any case, there should be some more surprises on this one, but that's all
I can say right now.
