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Crunch Pod powernoise act, Endif, interviewed by Benny Hell
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March 10, 2007, 08:20pm
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Jason Hollis/Endif
Crunch Pod records
Interviewed by Benny_Hell
End/if: A programming command line that closes a block of directional code, beginning with an "if...then" statement. Endif: Jason Hollis, mastermind behind Madison based speaker destroying Glitch/Powernoise act Endif. Jason began, as he puts it, ‘mutilating sound,‘ in 1992 under a variety of names. Past monikers include Winterlong, and Epilogue. In 2000, he chose the name Endif and began creating some of the most crunchy and sonically destructive music out there. Endif released his first album, Meta, in August of 2006 on California based hard-electronic label Crunch Pod. Thirteen primarily instrumental tracks of raw, dirty, Industrial sludge, it was listed in the top five of albums of 2006 by Re:Gen Magazine. Meta is one of the most unique albums I have ever heard. This interview was composed with the intention of offering you a glimpse into the masterful mind of Jason Hollis. I hope you will enjoy reading this interview as much as I did composing it.
-Benny Hell
BH: Generally when someone begins experimenting with electronic music, I find that they do so as a result of a song that really hit them between the eyes. What was the point of inception, or should say infection, for you musically? What led you to begin composing?
Endif: Definitely Skinny Puppy's album Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. First hard experimental album that I heard, still way way ahead of its time. I knew then that I HAD to understand where that came from and how it was done. Snowball started rolling from there with Coil, Aphex twin, Haujobb.. so much good stuff out there. But Puppy was the spark. And I suppose you could say that LSD was the wind from the bellows...
BH: I know not this LSD of which you speak… but I’ve heard of it… Did you begin by playing any other instruments? If so, do you still play them?
Endif: I started playing bass on a cheap piece of junk bought from some friend in high school, but never really got good with it. It was fun, but too limited. So I started buying things to go along with it, effects, then an old drum machine, a reel to reel, a delay pedal.... Then I realized that, hey, I can run the drum machine through the effects! And wait, this can go here! And... Yeah. Eventually I sold the bass. Maybe someday I'll get another. *shrug*
BH: What kind of hardware and software do you use when you create music now? When you choose your musical voices, what do you look for?
Endif: Hoo boy. Where to start. The core of the rig I currently use is a home built Athlon GHz PC running FruityLoops7, CoolEditPro2, and a metric ton of VST instruments and effects.
I also use a Rhodes Chroma Polaris, Moog Taurus2, Synare, Simmons SDSV, Emu E6400 rack-sampler, vs880 HDR, MoFX, SE-50 and -70, M-Audio Oxy8 and Sputnik, Firepod, Korg Kontrol49 and Mono/Poly.. prior to that I've owned countless others, which have been sampled, recorded, etc.
I probably just lost a bunch of you, heh heh heh. "Fruit!? Are you kidding? Toy for amateur douchebags." Seriously though, yeah. Fruit. It's a sequencing environment, and way more powerful than most people give it credit for. I don’t use hardly any of the built in instruments or sounds, maybe a drum or hat here and there. Nor, for that matter, do I use any sample CDs or what have you beyond a few samples nicked from here and there on the internets. Nearly all my sounds are self generated, a vast multi-gigabyte sonic mulch pile accreted slowly by recording experiment and idea alike over the last 15 years or so. Call this part Chaos, if you like.
This is then chopped up, maimed, named, and categorized. Kicks here, glitches there, drones here, percussion there... whatever that is over here. These samples are then used, along with VST instruments such as the Korg Legacy Collection and Vanguard, in the Fruit sequencing environment, to create proto-songs. These are then reprocessed, rendered and re edited, until eventually a song emerges. Order, if you will. Or merely obsessive compulsive tweaking. Whatever.
BH: I know that the crew at your label, Crunch Pod, are pretty tight and work together. Who are some of the musicians that have contributed to your live performances?
Endif: Oh yes. Crunch Pod is like a little family. Brother Karloz, Papa Ben, Sister Matt. lol. We even have 'cousins' in the form of Sistinas (W.A.S.T.E., Alter Der Ruine, Cacophony, etc) and Mechanismz and the others that we interact with on a routine basis. This distributed cloud of talented people from all over.
BH: How do you think your album, Meta, has been received by your fans? Has it gotten good critical responses?
Endif: Yeah, I feel like it's been well received in the independent press. Re:Gen, ChainDLK, Grave Concerns all gave out some great reviews. As with anything that doesn’t fit their marketing template though, the majors are conspicuously silent. Go figure. I know Crunch Pod sent them promo. =/ And radio/stream DJs seem to enjoy Meta, I see tracks on play lists often on that format. Not so many club DJ's though. Not straight forward enough, apparently. *shrug*
BH: Do you have a new album in the works? If so, when can we expect to hear it?
Endif: I DO! Heh. I don't quite know what I'll be calling it, but the next CD is very close to completion already. Lots of tracks that, while they're still solidly Endif, are very club-compatible - Churl, Last Tribe, Naked Bloody and Hungry, Between Two Worlds.. yeah.. lots of DJ friendly stuff on this one, along with some more experimental pieces to balance them out, such as The Answer.
BH: You have worked pretty closely with Matt Fanale from Caustic in the past. What has that been like for you? Is he really ’bacony’?
Endif: SO bacony! And, yeah, that Caustic stuff is OK too, heh. Seriously though, Matt is the proverbial bomb. Does all this shit, promotional genius, funny as hell, humble like a parson. Working with him has been fun as all get-out.
BH: On the subject of Caustic, I’ve read a few different versions of the event, but I would rather hear it from the source and set the record straight once and for all. What happened on the KMFDM/CombiChrist/Caustic tour?
Endif: *wince* Ok.
Combichrist got Caustic 5 opening dates for the Combi/KMFDM tour in '06. Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, a couple others. I was supposed to help with those three, playing electronic drums and keys. We only wound up playing one, Chicago at House of Blues.
Drive down, load in, hang out, everyone's super nice. Never see KMFDM except for the sound check, but whatever, busy. Eventually we get to set up, and finish just as they're opening the doors. Place fills up in seconds, I don’t even want to know how long the line was outside.
We play our 40 minute set, goes super well. Matt took all that crowd energy and just exploded with it. Had kids that never even heard of Caustic chanting 'Emmanuel Lewis... HAND JOB!'. Someone tossed up some tighty whiteys. I broke my grinder wheel, no idea where the fragment went to. Good fucking times.
At the end of the set I toss out some Endif t-shirts and Third Wave stickers.
Apparently this is a no -no, but no one mentions it. So already they have me as 'that bald guy that tosses stuff around'.
Next weekend was the Indoctrination Festival put on by Kinetic crew. Two days, twenty amazing bands (Terrorfakt, C/A/T, me, Edgey, ProBurn, Caustic, etc etc). Some of them brought in flyers and left them everywhere around the venue. No staff are removing the flyers or those putting them out. Ok, must be fine.
Well, I got drunker as the night went on and started tossing the flyers from the pit into the rest of the crowd, and at one point dropped a few off the balcony. That's when security had a problem. Total drunken asshat move on my part, but they could've said something anywhere along the line.
Ultimately, apparently either one of mine managed to find its way onstage during KMFDM or someone told them about it or something but long story short Sascha said 'not on my watch' . Called Matt the next day and told him we were off the tour. Matt tells me. I collapse on the floor in shame. Somehow he seems to have forgiven me, as we still work together and are friends. Call it a learning experience.
I only hope that Combichrist didn’t suffer at all as a result, as Andy has always been fantastic to all of us 'little cousins'.
BH: That is a pretty fucked up series of events, but that is the way the music industry works at times. At least you were able to learn something from it, collectively, right? So in addition to creating extremely diverse music, you also founded the Third Wave Collective. When did you begin assembling it?
Endif: I was only one of the original 6 or so, but I kept on with it and put in the most effort over the years and eventually was the only remaining, so I guess that’s close enough. Third wave started off as a cluster of industrial bands in Chicago that started cooperating in order to put on shows and advance their projects, much in the way that once upon a time single celled organisms started working together for survival. More and more bands joined in from all over the country, we built a website and made a plan, and started in on sort of terra-forming the environment around us to make it more to our liking via street teams all over the place performing guerilla promotion. I spearheaded the first two compilation CDs, got stickers made, etc. Eventually though I realized that it was too much energy and had to stop, and the whole thing sort of went fallow for a few years as a result.
BH: Is the name ’Third Wave Collective’ a reference to Alvin Toffler’s work, and what is the mission behind TWC?
Endif: Yep, Toffler. Next phase metaphor. TWC's mission was and is to help propagate hard electronic music and culture via guerilla marketing.
BH: Was/is it open to the general public?
Endif: Sort of. Anyone that fit the criteria could join - you had to be a hard electronic project and willing to not only pimp your own stuff but that of the other bands of the collective and of course the collective itself. Pimp one, pimp them all. This eventually included a yearly ten dollar contribution to the shared promo fund for things like flyers and stickers. And you didn’t even have to 'join' per se, you could still use the forums, read the news, add to the links, read the events listings and FAQ's, etc etc.
BH: Where do you see it going in the future?
Endif: We're-awakening the beast, and reconfiguring it to be more effective. Not so much street teaming, more about radical online content aggregation and distribution with bleed over into real world events. Go see. http://www.thirdwavecollective.com
BH: This is a question I have begun hitting everyone with, Jason. What are your top ten favorite Industrial songs of all time?
Endif: Shit. Ok.
Top tens and me, not so good.
I like these, at any rate:
Skinny Puppy - Draining Faces
Pressure Penetration - Himmel Brennt
Haujobb - Subsonic
Assemblage23 - Disappoint
Converter - Domination
Manufactura - sleeping pills and 151
Peoples Republic of Europe - Lubrication
Coil - Anal Staircase
Foetus - Private War
Alter Der Ruine - Hep C
Ministry - Over the Shoulder
Mono No Aware - strategisch wertvoll
Thank you for interviewing with me Jason. It was a good time.
Contact and explore Endif!
Virtuality:
http://www.endif.org
http://www.myspace.com/endif
http://www.vampirefreaks.com/u/endif
http://www.last.fm/music/Endif
http://www.crunchpod.com
http://squidb0i.livejournal.com
Check out ENDIF on Vampirefreaks
posted by
Benny_Hell
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djseraphim
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You know, if I wasn't already a fan of Endif, I would be one after reading this interview. Once again you have brought out the human element between the artist and their artistry, which is ever so important in this digital age. Keep up the good work and gracing us with such insightful interviews! I look forward to more.
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djseraphim
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You know, if I wasn't already a fan of Endif, I would be one after reading this interview. Once again you have brought out the human element between the artist and their artistry, which is ever so important in this digital age. Keep up the good work and gracing us with such insightful interviews! I look forward to more.
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ENDIF
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And Jet... wait a damn second.. OMG BENNY AND THE JETS!!
XD
~!J!
Endif HQ
Myspace
Crunch Pod
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ENDIF
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And Jet... wait a damn second.. OMG BENNY AND THE JETS!!
XD
~!J!
Endif HQ
Myspace
Crunch Pod
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jet
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lol. yeah i used to get that all the time cuz my brother's name is benny
00tz
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Benny_Hell
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Yikes, Endif.. that is one of the most horrible correlations anyone has ever made between me and anything on the face of the planet! Why don't you just stab me?
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ENDIF
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You no likey the Elton?
I pretty much just like
'Rocketmaaaaaaan'
~!J!
Endif HQ
Myspace
Crunch Pod
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Benny_Hell
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I don't know what this Elton John fetish is all about, but I would bet you like Michael Bolton too. Sick.
I am begining to think that in addition to Crackpipe being a great track the VF world deserves to hear, it's also a deciding factor in the choice of recreational music you seek out. Where is the damned song, yo? GRRRRR and shit.
Ch1x0r.
Man-rocket.
Squids are ok sometimes, but never with Sir Elton. Freak.
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any8898
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Great! I really like!
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