From The Mick #21- An interview with Isaac

Isaac, you go back to the dim distant days of 1994 in your bio section, when this first happened. What precisely did happen, and where did it come from? How old were you, and why inspired to form a band? Was it indeed under this same name?

Well, I was 22 years old in 1994 and had been playing in different punk bands around Seattle since the late 80's. By the mid 90's I was going mad (for a million reasons I won't get into here) and needed to get out of town. Since I was leaving all the old music behind I needed something new that fit my interests and provided a decent outlet for what I was going through. And though the project started in '94, it didn't really start taking on a life of it's own until I moved it out of town.

In 1996 I finally got the funds together to move myself to Alaska. By the time I came back a year later I had attached the name The Arid Sea to the project and was starting to think of it as something I wanted to play live.

Drum machine, keyboards and acoustic suggests something fairly polite and pasty-faced - was it?

Any apparent pastiness would have been due to a diet of beer and potatoes, other than that, no sir. The keyboard and acoustic guitar came along toward the end of 1995 when a couple friends helped me drag two more songs into being. This was right on the heels of some very dark days that helped to produce two of the grimmest songs I've ever had the displeasure spitting out.

I've never really been aware of what the songs sound like to other people; so crafting them with any sense 'politeness' is still a complete mystery to me. Early on they amounted to emotional venting on a very primal level that didn't involve me screaming my head off. That was all I could really make of it at the time.

By the early 00's you're a bassist in a band when you met Michael and something connects: what specifically? What tastes did you share enough to get this going - apart from basses?

Michael has also been playing in bands since the late 80's and not only has a great feel for musical composition, but he came with a storehouse of beautiful bass lines. There was immediately an 'other-worldly' feel to writing with him. I end up writing things that I would never come up otherwise and that I usually enjoy much more than any of my solo works. It's goddamn weird.

And why did it take a year to then get a drummer? Are you out of the loop with local musicians, or haven't sufficient free time?

'Out of the loop with musicians who could appreciate what we were doing' would be more accurate. Our sound is so entirely out of sync with any 'scenes' in Seattle right now that it's a wonder we ever got it off the ground. Without any predetermined crowd or genre that we could aim the music at, it was difficult to pitch to people. Thankfully, Joey heard something he liked in the demo material and we were able to bring it to a live setting.

You played an Ian Curtis tribute night. What did you do, and what's the excitement about Joy Division?

Joey and I have been long-time fans of Joy Division and he suggested we do a tribute show on the anniversary of Ian Curtis' death. After trying out a few songs in practice, we decided on 5 that we liked and spent a couple weeks practicing them. We'll still play one or two on occasion if people are enthused enough to buy us a round of beer. For the show in question we did Shadow Play, Exercise One, Day of the Lords, Twenty Four Hours and New Dawn Fades.

'Weighed Against A Feather' is steeped in curious lyrical usage, like a post-Pagan fantasy road movie. Why might that be?

Hahahah, well - for a number of years now I've found that using symbolism and aiming at subconscious triggers can be far more worthwhile than just stating something literally. Of course it depends, and there are definitely songs where I'm feeling lazy and it's easier to talk specifically about one experience or another, but those are growing fewer in number as the years go on. Weighed Against a Feather is purely an exercise in relating personal thoughts/experiences in symbolic form. Some of it is even put forth solely in vocal inflection and won't be apparent if you just read the lyrics. I feel that taking this approach allows for depths I'm only partially conscious of and can make the song a more personal experience for anyone who cares to dig in that deep. I've long thought that when a lyric isn't localized to the writer or pinned to a particular moment in time, it can more easily take on a life of its own and possibly offer much more than it would otherwise.

If anyone wants to know what this song means to me personally, they should ask me in person. They can then spread rumours that I'll flagrantly deny until I'm cornered and beaten.

When you hear that song, imagining what it'd be like without a drummer must be weird. Are drum machine's the devil's work?

I've actually got a version with different lyrics and a drum machine thumping away behind it. It sounds nice enough. I'm sure it would sound like ass if we tried it on stage, but if I was still feeling reclusive about music I'd be perfectly content sitting in my own little world, listening to the drum machine version.

'Mercy Killing' is very sad - where did that come from?

Unfortunately, a straightforward answer here would sideline my purpose in writing the song. Though i will admit, there are elements of this song that reflect some passing thoughts from time to time; but only on a very isolated and magnified level. It's hard to explain exactly, but self-loathing teamed with bitter memories and a longing for death is strangely amusing to me.

You're stuck out there in the Indie zone somewhere, with some dark moods that are often similar to what happens around the softer sides of Goth, but what do you see the band as, stylistically?

We actually struggle with this one quite a bit. I think we've finally settled on: IndiePostPunkDeathRockGothFolkGarageBatCave. In a nutshell.

'Ringing' - how much is you, and how much do you feel inclined to admit to in songs?

Well, this one is all me. In fact, Ringing is so entirely literal that I don't mind elaborating a bit:

I was hanging out with an old friend in a bar in downtown Seattle one night in August of 1995. He was having a hard time being around a crowd and asked if I wanted to go grab some beer and sit in an alley. We got our beer but ended up camping out in some bushes next to a building in the lower Queen Anne area. He told me that a month prior he'd admitted himself to a psych-clinic because he was feeling suicidal. He'd romanticized such a thing for as long as I'd known him and in a way, I was used to the sentiment. This was a person who'd turned me on to countless bands, been my roommate for a few months, a good friend for 7 years and got me a job when I desperately needed one. I had a profound amount of respect for him and didn't really feel like I could say anything that he didn't already know. I ended up struggling with words, making paper-thin points about how we'd both felt when a mutual friend did the same thing a few years before; I stared dumbly at the ground, knowing I was failing him and finally, fell asleep. We woke up in the rain a few hours later and caught a cab back to his house. For the two weeks following that night I was out on the road with a band, travelling to Florida and back. Just after returning home, his wife called me to say that he'd hung himself.

I struggled with the dynamics of that situation for a long time. I tried to exorcise it in a few songs about a decade ago, I even moved to Anchorage Alaska for a year to try and shake it all off. I've treated this new album as a culmination of all these years and thoughts and I intended Ringing as a cap on that particular chapter. With great relief I can finally say: I'm done serenading dead people now.

You're not for short, taut songs are you? Is there a reason why you want moods sustained?

I think the majority of our songs would just feel wrong if they were any shorter. We all like songs that create a thoughtful atmosphere, but at the same time, we're acutely aware of when something sounds monotonous and starts to 'fuck it up'. For some reason, considering the parts we come up with, 4 and 5 minutes ends up being just the right amount of time. There will be a song or two that deviate from this on our next release, but for the time being, we've got some longer songs.

Gloom aplenty in 'Hanging' - does it feel weird singing something like that in front of people?

Naw, I'm used to it at this point. Standing there without a guitar would make it considerably more difficult, but as long as I've got that to fiddle around with, I'm just fine. Hanging represents a very difficult time for me, but it's a time that's five years gone. It left me wary, but I'm over it. If I were still in that moment, there would be no way I could sing that on stage. I probably couldn't even sing it to myself if I was still all wrapped up in that headspace.

Are there bands out there playing now who inspire you, who thrill you, or types of bands you wish you could be like? These songs naturally need you to obey them now they exist. You can't get overly powerful at gigs, or can you, can these songs be pushed and pulled apart much?

There are a few bands that we share a common interest in, but by the most part we're all listening to different things… if we're listening to anything at all. I'd name names, but it would end up being a negligent cross-section that we'd have to edit into ridiculousness before everyone was content.

Inspiration is a bastard thing to ponder. I usually feel it coming from everywhere, so any straightforward list of what gets me off wouldn't really provide any real keys to what we're about. From the first time the 3 of us sat in a room together it was apparent that we weren't going to sound like what any of us had envisioned. In the past two years that hasn't changed at all, we're just rolling with whatever comes out.

As far as any pliability in our songs is concerned, that's a work in progress. The older songs don't have a whole lot of wiggle room, but the newer songs are starting to allow for a little of that. There's definitely a sense of greater things to come and I think that a more elastic song structuring will be part of it, but I also like the dynamics we can affect when we know exactly what the other person is about to do. It's a balance to play around with.

'An Image In The Flames' - that nagging guitar, how did you happen upon that?

That was one of those instances where Michael was noodling around with a new bass line; I stared blankly at him for a minute or two and then my hands started doing something on the guitar. It was a little messy at first, but we recorded it and I was able to pick out the good bits and refine them. That's usually how we go about things. It's amazing how much we come up with when we're just screwing around.

On a side note, have you ever heard "Dancing" by the band Zounds? An Image in the Flames used to remind me of that song. Not so much once I nailed the guitar down and it came together otherwise, but in its early stages I was almost hoping we could make it a cover.

After so long to get to this, and having created such a fine album are you ablaze with ideas and determined never to let old habits becalm you?

It's really out of control right now. We've got more songs flying out of us than we know what to do with. Another couple weeks of tidying up and we'll have our entire next album written. By the time we get to recording in January I imagine we'll have enough for a single on top of it all. If we weren't working 40 hour a week jobs along side practicing and playing shows, we could probably spit out an album and several singles a year. It's a good feeling.

Hopefully no old habits will becalm us. As long we keep rhythms from one song from seeping into the next, I think we'll be all right. Unfortunately, this will be a question better answered in hindsight. We'll try to keep an eye on it, but otherwise, all we can do is hope for the best.

And because you're evidently reached a stage where you know you can attain what you want to in terms of creations, when you look around at music generally, what do you see? A rich harvest of likeminded people, a sordid drought?

I think we verge on the 'sordid drought' view of things more often than is healthy, but I imagine that's due to the obscurity of what we're playing. We can hope it catches on and that some like-minded types will someday come around, but we're certainly not banking on it. We came together with the idea that we were going to do something different and original despite the pangs of anonymity. Of course, this doesn't mean we wouldn't prefer it pay the bills, but we'd rather keep on with what we like and what we're good at than anything else.

Now you're thriving creatively do you look back at the past and slap yourself repeatedly on the forehead, wondering why you didn't do this then?

Not at all. I didn't have the insight, melodies or fellow musicians that I do now and it just wouldn't have worked. This has all come together perfectly with the perfect players at the perfect time. The future reigns.