audiodrome interview by Fabrizio Garau (Italy - April 2008)

You are part of Meatjack (and you are also in Trephine), so I can suppose that you have a "rock" background, but how did you start to play your guitars in a "non-rock" way, so to speak?

My background isn't entirely rock. I've studied classical guitar as well. I've always loved all kinds of music, not just rock. I've been making experimental sort of music as long as I've been recording, which I started doing in the mid 80's. When I first started a lot of it was primarily for my own amusement and maybe some friends.

And when did you realize that it was the time for a solo project? Is your first album's title, ecdysis, related to this decision?

I released my first solo project, SUCKPiG, in 1998. I had these pieces of music that I'd been accumulating for quite awhile that didn't fit in with Meatjack, my main band at that time, and I wanted to put them out. They were more soundscapey, or like soundtrack music. Darsombra eventually developed out of that. The title for ecdysis referred more to this change, and change in general.

Listening to your three releases, I had the perception that you're becoming more and more focused and coherent, maybe because some tracks on Eternal Jewel are like "part 1" and "part 2" of the same thing. Is this just an impression of mine? And, in general, do you have a particular idea of what Darsombra should be or do you have no "plans"?

You're right, the tracks on Eternal Jewel are like "part 1" and "part 2," etc. I toyed with naming them like that but didn't end up doing it for some reason. Eternal Jewel is really only two pieces but broken up and sequenced, and in one case remixed, to be five.

I can't say that I have no plans. I definitely have a vision but I don't have a strict idea of what darsombra should be or do either. I leave my options open and let the music take me where it will. I never know where it's going to go next and it's always exciting.

In Ecdysis and Deliriums & Death we find vocals and vocal samples. In Eternal Jewel there's only sound. Why?

I'm not sure why. It definitely wasn't a conscious decision. It's just where the music went on this particular project. The newest stuff I've been working on has been almost exclusively vocals. I've been working on some dense vocal collages lately.

Darsombra was featured at the Doom or Be Doomed Festival (Baltimore, MD, 2007) and some parts of your music are often associated to this musical genre. Does it make sense for you?

Maybe I'm wrong, but a man can only know through comparisons... are you familiar with the work of Steve Reich? When I listen to tracks like "Drops Of Sorrow" and "Incarnadine" (from Eternal Jewel), his minimalism comes to my mind.

I've heard his name quite a bit but I'm actually not that familiar with his music.

In an interview with Mike Gallagher, Isis guitarist, I asked him this, because we were talking about his project MGR: "Ambient music and guitar, a not so obvious link in the past. Now we have Earth, Sunn o))), James Plotkin, Justin Broadrick, Oren Ambarchi, Nadja/Aidan Baker, Christian Fennesz and - why not? - the Italian project My Cat Is An Alien. Are you part of a movement?". This question now is for you.

I really don't know. I don't consider myself part of any movement. I don't like "movements" or "genres" because a lot of the time there are rules that one has to obey to fit and I'm not a big fan of rules. I'm just making music that I enjoy. Robert Fripp and a bunch of other people were doing ambient guitar stuff back in the 70's so it's not really something new.

You collaborate with a great visual artist: Stephen Kasner. Imagine that you meet a person who doesn't know him: how would you describe his works?

It's such a hard thing to convey visual art to someone with words, especially art that's not entirely representational. Mostly what you end up describing is what you personally are getting out of it. I find in Stephen's works the great beauty and sadness that is life. There's a very dark side to it but it's also very beautiful and contains joyous elements in it as well. That's the best I can do for now and it still doesn't say much of anything about the visual content or emotional impact of his art.

Eternal Jewel is out on Public Guilt. What can you tell me about this label? In his roster we can find some projects related to the metal genre, but it seems that there are no genre limitations...

Public Guilt is a label run by JR Fritsch. JR is and old friend of mine and was also a member of Meatjack at one time. He has a pretty open mind musically and is always interested in new, exciting and often challenging music that's off the beaten path. I am excited to be part of the roster because it has such a rich diversity of artists that I respect and enjoy.

Public Guilt is based in Baltimore, as you are. I don't know anything about this city, except for its role in the American Revolution. Does a specific musical scene exist there? Does non-mainstream music have its space?

Baltimore has always had a fairly decent music scene as long as I can remember and thankfully there always seems to be a place for non-mainstream music of all kinds.

You have two MySpace pages. One is called "Darsombra Research & Development". Why did you decide to put your experiments on line?

I enjoy some of my weirder improvisations and experiments and I felt that some other people might enjoy them too. Also, sometimes I'll put upcoming stuff or works in progress on that page. Early versions of parts of Eternal Jewel were on that page well before it was released. It's just an excuse to get more of my music out there and it's something I do for fun.

And, as I can see from your MySpace page, you joined live Destructo Swarmbots. What is the role of improvisation when you play live?

When I toured with Destructo Swarmbots last year we built in a part of the show where we would improvise together at the end. I enjoy improvising, collaboratively and otherwise. With darsombra, even though at times it may have sounded differently, there didn't used to be much improvisation. I've been recently working it in more and more as I become more comfortable as a solo artist. About 75% of Eternal Jewel is improvisation.

The last words are for your future plans...

Later this year there's a remix album coming out. I have a piece called "nymphaea" that I recorded for Public Guilt's 3 CD compilation "untitled" that came out last year. The raw individual tracks for it were made available to some great artists from all over the world to remix, mangle, add to, whatever. The results that we've gotten back have all been really cool and very surprising. Even though it's basically going to be a whole album of one song over and over it doesn't feel that way since we have such a variety of artists applying their own style to it. But then on the other hand there's this feeling of unity to it because of it all being from one song.

Other than that the plan is to just continue to grow as an artist. More albums, more tours.