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Cruelty Campaign Every once in a while, I get this feeling that our musical evolution is destined to stagnate since all really good ideas are being used up in the massive amount of music which is bombarding us these days. Luckily there are people to prove I'm wrong. I've never really been that hooked on the kind of music that is totally made out of sampled sounds. I've often found these projects to be boring and monotonous in general no matter how much I have admired the craftsmanship behind these releases. Cruelty Campaign is different though. After listening to their debut album Distressed Signals, I was left with both a great admiration for these guys' skills in structuring up their music out of various samples from our everyday environment as well as the feeling one gets after having heard something really great, varied and fresh. It is a rewarding experience to listen to an album and afterwards notice that one is starting to pay more attention to the ambience of the world itself which is far wider than one can imagine. It was out of this ecstacy of inspiration that I decided to contact John Griffin and Scott Townsend, the people behind Cruelty Campaign to suggest an interview, an offer that they kindly accepted. Their answers arrived at the Ortus Obscurum office in the end of May 2002. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ECTONAUT: Please start by introducing Cruelty Campaign to the readers of Ortus Obscurum. From where did you rise and when did this occur? What have you achieved so far and what are you up to at the moment? Right now, we are planning shows in Europe for this summer. We have been collecting new sounds over the last year and hope to have some new material soon. ECTONAUT: You released your debut album Distressed Signals in November 2001, a 55 minute journey mainly made out of cleverly arranged samples ranging from interviews to creaking docks and broken refrigerators. What can you tell us about this album and how did it come to be? Are you satisfied with how it turned out? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: We outlined above how the CD was released. As for how we make our tracks, we work almost entirely (95%) from site recordings. We collect sounds on vacations or at home using our minidisc recorders. Most of the material on this album came from our visit to Europe, and other trips we took. We group sounds by theme as a starting point for a piece. For instance, Vaht Guya features only sounds recorded during a side visit to the Czech Republic. Another example would be The Argument which features the sound of a domestic dispute in a Berlin apartment building. All of the sounds in the song were recorded in our friend's apartment (with the exception of the church organ, which was discovered on a walk with that friend). Yes, we were generally very satisfied. There are two pieces from our first CD-R that would have been nice to include on the Tesco CD, but they needed more work. ECTONAUT: Are these tracks going to appear on your next release? JOHN GRIFFIN: If we get them to a point where we are happy with them, then there is definitely a possibility of that happening. There's also a chance that we could work on them some more and then submit them for compilations, or someday we could include them on a Cruelty Campaign "rarities" type CD... At some point they will be available. ECTONAUT: What can you tell us about your deal with Tesco? For how many albums are you signed? JOHN GRIFFIN: There's no contract really. It's on a per-album basis, so nobody is bound in any way. We were very fortunate to have Tesco release our CD, and for sure in the future we will send any new material to them for consideration! Of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea. Soon after the CD was released, we saw it for sale on Ebay... that was a little disappointing until we saw the seller was in Hong Kong! It was nice knowing it had made it to such a distant place. ECTONAUT: You use a lot of sampled sounds from both living organisms as well as dead matter in your music. Are you trying to present a message with your samples or is it more about creating a specific atmosphere? What decides which sounds you add to your music? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: John does not think of the sounds as being "alive" or "dead." Maybe that is because he makes historical TV programs for work - so he is more interested in evidence from the past. If we can use the feelings of nostalgia by using samples that are older, or people talking about the past, then it helps us create a feeling in the listener. There is no message; we are not political. If there is anything we want to do, it is to encourage listeners to be aware of their environment and enjoy the poetry of the sounds around them. For Scott, it is about preserving the sounds or giving them new life. Do we create a specific atmosphere? Sometimes. But usually the samples we focus on create their own atmosphere and we just help realize that. We start with one sound, then explore themes or concepts that involve that sound. Then we see what other sounds work with these concepts. For example, in the live re-working of Distressed Signals, we played with present and past: it was interesting to use samples of John's father (talking about his covert recording work in World War II) matched with samples we made of his family's antique radio picking up sounds on the airwaves today. John also had a collection of his wartime reports, so we made recordings of those papers being shuffled. ECTONAUT: How do you obtain these sounds? Is obtaining the appropriate sounds a time-demanding process? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: No. We take our minidisc recorders on trips the way many people would take cameras. (John has his nearby all the time!) Making the field recordings isn't time consuming as there are seldom specific goals or sounds we intend to capture. What is time consuming is to sift through all the raw material on the minidiscs and properly record these into the computer... and to finally create loops and "instruments" from the sounds. ECTONAUT: How did you come up with the idea of sampling the humming of Karmanik's (Cold Meat Industry/Brighter Death Now) broken refrigerator for the track Colder Death Now? Would you like to tell us how you obtained these samples? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: When we were visiting Sweden, we decided to visit the CMI headquarters to meet Roger - and to buy CD's! We explained to him how we make our music from site recordings, and he suggested we use his broken refrigerator as a source. Afterwards we kidded around about creating a track called Colder Death Now. We had recorded some other sounds in Stockholm and decided to put them all together. It sounded good, but something was missing. It all came together when John remembered an old interview he had done in 1998 with a Swedish journalist, talking about life in Sweden during the winters. ECTONAUT: Yes, he's speaking about the connection between the cold climate and the depressive social atmosphere during the Swedish winter. These things feel quite distant to me if I'm to be truly honest even though I have of course heard of this "depression" phenomena before. Maybe it's due to the fact that I've not been abroad much and thus I haven't got much to compare with but I ask you who came here from another country, did you find the Swedes to be more melancholic and depressive compared to the people of your country when you were here? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: Not at all! To be honest, we didn't observe that either. We can only take as evidence the cold bleak sounds of those Swedes! The actual people we met were very hospitable - people from the Cold Meat e-mail list were very nice about showing us Stockholm and going drinking with us. We have a very nice picture of Magnus of The Protagonist drunk! Peter "raison d' être" Andersson even came to Roger's just to hang out with us when we visited. ECTONAUT: Do you see a link between the melancholy that the journalist was talking about in the interview and the fact that many bands who tend to produce music of a more melancholic and depressive sort have emerged from Sweden? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: Maybe it is possible, but we visited during the summer so maybe we had a "brighter" view of Sweden. It is difficult to imagine the effect of the winter's brief daylight hours and the extensive cold of such a northern country. Maybe people stay inside more often when it is cold, so there is more incentive to escape into music? Sweden seems to have a lot of synth-pop bands, too, so who can say that there is one "dark" or "light" character? ECTONAUT: Both of you are active in the entertainment business: you produce documentaries and Scott produces special FX. Have you ever thought of using your skills in visual art for producing an official Cruelty Campaign video? If you were to produce a video for Cruelty Campaign, how do you think it would look? It might also be interesting to edit together old home movies and "found" images to create nostalgic, fictitious narratives that work with some of our pieces. Another possibility would be to construct the film first and THEN create music for it. ECTONAUT: Since the regular jobs of both of you are located in the entertainment business, is Cruelty Campaign meant to simply entertain the listener or are there more personal reasons for the existence of this project? Are you perhaps trying to do something in contrast to what you're doing in the more commercial entertainment business in Cruelty Campaign? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: Above all, the music is for us. Of course, we do want audiences to be entertained, and we hope that maybe listeners go away thinking more about the sounds around them everyday. Because we both work for other companies, it is nice to make something that can be whatever we want it to be. That so many people enjoy it is a nice validation of our personal vision. In Los Angeles, where so much money is spent on image and packaging, it is rewarding to appreciate the everyday and forgotten sounds in our world. ECTONAUT: John, I wish to ask you about the documentaries you produce in your regular job. Are these documentaries displayed on any major channels and thus also seen abroad? They show a lot of documentaries from other countries through the Swedish cable network, is there any chance that we may see a documentary produced by you? Editor's note: Afterwards I have learned that some of John's documentaries, for example the one of Marlene Dietrich have been shown in Sweden on The History Channel. Check your TV-guide. ECTONAUT: Kris Force of Amber Asylum produced the score to a documentary on Clara Bow that you produced and you're currently working with her on a documentary on Sharon Tate. How did this collaboration come to existence? JOHN GRIFFIN: I have always admired Kris' work. I have been collecting material for my documentary on Clara Bow for several years, and have always had the dream of having Kris make original music for this program. In fact, I used one of her pieces from her first CD for a 5-minute "tease" of the documentary. Her music is a perfect blend of nostalgia, classical instruments, and dark themes -- perfect to help me keep the story of Clara Bow modern yet also evoke the past. As for how I got in touch with her, I simply e-mailed Kris and caught her at a time when she was free to make music. For Clara Bow, I asked Kris to give me music that she felt would be right for the program - I already knew whatever she would do would be good. For Sharon Tate, I described more of the type of feeling I wanted to present and asked Kris to make music that was reminiscent of 60s pop like Burt Bacharach and movie soundtracks of the time, like A Man and a Woman and Valley of the Dolls. ECTONAUT: How have people reacted on the work Kris did for the Clara Bow documentary? Are you planning to continue working with her in the future on some other project? JOHN GRIFFIN: The Clara Bow documentary is finished, but has no set airdate yet, so there has been no response yet! If an appropriate project comes along, I would definitely use her again. ECTONAUT: Is there any chance that we may encounter a documentary with music by Cruelty Campaign in the future? We did do some music that was used in my documentary on Marlene Dietrich, but it was only a small amount. At most of our shows, we like to project vintage slides. For us, it is an extension of our music. We find it nostalgic and different to use slides instead of video projections or films. Also, it lets us use slides our parents & relatives have taken - more of the nostalgic mood of CC! We hope they produce sentimental reflections in audiences and enhance the experience of our music. ECTONAUT: How are things developing considering the European tour that you earlier displayed a wish to embark upon this summer? Any chance that you will return to Sweden to do a couple of shows? CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: We are talking with people all over Europe about possibilities. So far, there has been some interest in Scotland, England, Belgium, and Germany. We hope to play several shows in various cities, but no plans are set yet. We welcome any offers for us to play in June or early July in those or other areas! ECTONAUT: Even though Cruelty Campaign definitely has one foot in the past judging by your choice of pictures and samples, Distressed Signals also bears witness to the fact that you also have one foot in the future with its originality and fresh use of sounds. How do you personally view the music of the future? Do you think the musical evolution of mankind has already reached its climax or do you think it is yet to be reached? JOHN: I think as new technologies are developed, there will be new ways of making experimental music. But these new ways will incorporate old styles. I like to blend vintage musical styles (whether it is samples of others playing or something we make to sound historic) with new, futuristic sounds. SCOTT: I believe things are constantly evolving. How we see and experience music, as well as how it is composed and performed , will change over time. And as technology advances who knows how things will go? In the cyberpunk vain, we might have augmented hearing that allows us to hear an extended range. Or perhaps composers will be able to control certain functions in the listener, like orchestrated releases of endorphines as part of a piece. Maybe we will be able to mix, match and modulate live-audio feeds from around the world. Or have AI controlled nano-bots with mics harvesting sounds and then processing them based on "user" ("listener") preferences/profiles. An artist's "piece" might be a recipe of such sources along with specifications for how to combine them. Okay... so I'm a sci-fi geek! sue me... ECTONAUT: And what about the future of Cruelty Campaign? Where will the next stop be for you and your vicious samplers? Have you got any plans that you would like the share with us before we terminate this conversation? The word is yours, thanks for your co-operation. CRUELTY CAMPAIGN: Because our music is a product of the samples we gather, it is hard to say exactly how our sound will change. For the moment, we like working the way we have outlined above, but we hope to explore new software possibilities - maybe to incorporate live sampling and looping to our performances. It would be interesting for us to visit another city for a performance, record sounds there during the day, and then use those sounds that night as part of our show. A rhythmic side project may loom in the future... Homepage |
ECTONAUT; Cruelty Campaign plays live, this I know from the information that you sent me along with the promotional copy of your CD. How would you describe a Cruelty Campaign live-show? Do you use projected images and such? If so, what do these images represent?