Recently, I got the chance to speak with Paul Lemos – musician, composer, visioner. After Paul founded Controlled Bleeding in Boston, at the end of 70’s, the band established itself as highly-experimental collective of musicians. Passing through different stages, lineups, phases with it, staying true to their principles of experimental expressivity – always different. That made Controlled Bleeding authentic after decades of their creativity and dozens of releases.
In the interview for Boston Hassle, Paul Lemos speaks about transition between different tendencies, and recent releases of Controlled Bleeding, about “Knees And Bones” and “Gag”, about love of Mahavishnu Orchestra and the importance of punk-rock phenomenon.
HASSLE:
Commenting on the release of “Larva Lumps and Baby Bumps” you noticed that despite the long pauses you never stop working always trying to find the new inspirations. At the same time, alongside with some new elements the whole atmosphere refers to your early teethcrushing works. Is it re-interpretation of those elements of your creativity or logical continuation of your journey?
PAUL:
I supposed the long periods of inactivity allow me to start anew every time…At the moment I haven’t touched an instrument in more than two years and I don’t intend to any time soon…If one day I get back to it, I’ll have to relearn so much that I have lost, and hopefully, in the process, I’ll find some new inspiration, an approach to music that excites me. The guitar driven tracks on Larva Lumps sort of took us full circle, back to the sound of our first pre Knees and Bones recordings from 1978-1981, when the lineup was guitar, organ and drums…The more extreme pieces, like “Percs” were the results of my collaborations with Chad Bernhard, and really had nothing consciously to do with anything from the past…But maybe the music was imbued with that same spirit that spawned Knees [and Bones] and other similar releases because of my involvement…The music is almost always intuitive, created in the inspiration of the moment.
HASSLE:
It’s fascinating how the meaning of a certain elements of your creativity has been changing over the years. There were some Fripp-ish references on “Wall Of China”. But then you radically changed your focus recording “Death In The Cameroon” and “Knees And Bones”. Was it a completely organic transformation ?
PAUL:
As mentioned, most of the time there is no conscious decision to move in a certain direction…It just happens. I’m sure a lot of the sonic detours were inspired by whatever music I might have been obsessed with at a given time. My approach to playing guitar was certainly influenced by the players that I loved as a kid, Fripp, John McLaughlin, Ron Ashton…probably those influences are still heard loud and clear on more recent albums [Odes to Bubbler, Larva Lumps]. After that old line up that produced the Wall Of China 7-inch, I put the guitar aside and found other less restrictive ways of making the music…I started working with keyboards and electronics, experimenting with tape and amplification of found sound, musique concrete etc…When I heard Neubauten’s “Kollaps”, quite by accident in 1982 or so, I was hit hard. Of course, very early Swans, early Tangerine Dream, White Light/White Heat- era Velvets, Whitehouse were powerful inspirations as well.
HASSLE:
You once described that period of your creativity saying that it was the point, where horror vision met something beautiful. And this is what your music is. Even if each individual defines the borders of “horrible” and “beautiful”. But when you’re working, is it important for you to create a conflict or rather put these elements into one situation, musically ?
PAUL:
At one point I think I consciously combined elements of pastoral serenity with bruising sonic assault…It’s kind of an immature approach, I admit…intended to shock the listener. As I got older I realized how foolish it was to mar some of our strongest works with senseless noise, just for shock value…For example, I so wish I had not tainted “Headcrack” with dumb noise tracks…Ruining the continuity of the music…But this is something I have done repeatedly, and really it makes little sense…
I guess I would liken something like “Knees And Bones” to the aesthetics of a film like Eraserhead, in which the beauty of the piece exists in the raw brutality and harshness of it…If I was a better musician I could integrate my ideas more effectively. Creating music is always kind of a battle, it’s always full of conflict because of my very limited abilities to express the images that are in my head…
HASSLE:
When you only started your career, living in Boston – what feedback did you have from those listeners and how difficult it was for you to re-create that tension in a live-setting ?
PAUL:
The Boston-band never got off the ground, never played a live show…and there were no listeners. Just a few friends. During my junior year in college I was thrown out of my house and had to move to Boston for a semester, during which time, my musician friends and I put a band together. I was the very weak link, since I could not play the guitar at all, and I was not much of a singer or lyricist, but I took on the role of experimentalist… I played a wild sort of glissando guitar through a memory man and attempted to write lyrics and sing…The musicians were all skilled players, funk bassist, jazz drummer, hard rock lead guitarist and me, general fuck up…
The concept behind this short-lived line up was to create a sort of jazz/punk/prog thing incorporating long semi industrial interludes…We worked hard on our set and secured a three-night-run at some Boston club, when the bassist cut his hand, signaling the end of the band…
HASSLE:
During the very first years of Controlled Bleeding, when it was mostly DIY-oriented, within these first cassettes and just being in a punk-rock environment. What attracted you in that scene, in that tendencies you’ve been exploring at that point ?
PAUL:
In 1975-1980 I was very inspired by NYC and UK punk and post punk…I loved going to CBGB and seeing these bands in their beginnings and was imbued with the spirit of the time…But I also loved Mahavishnu [Orchestra], [King] Crimson, Henry Cow and older bands like Velvets, Stooges, MC5, B.O.C. So, our early music was a weird hybrid of influences. Sort of FUSION/PROG punk, which resulted in songs like “WALL OF CHINA” , “No Flies on Frank” and “Happy Veal” from our debut 7” (and the music you hear on the album BEFORE THE QUIET which compiles all of this very early material) When that band imploded, my frustrations and pure f*cking RAGE were better articulated through other means…Which spawned Knees and Bones, Body Samples, Distress Signals…
HASSLE:
Controlled Bleeding weren’t the only ones who dictated such manner of presentation. You had Swans, Sonic Youth, the same Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten – after you got inspired with punk-rock and avant-garde bands of that era, what drove you exploring these tendencies and sound-textures ?
PAUL:
I was very deep into the NYC No-Wave, and later, the music of [Glenn] Branca, then Swans, Sonic Youth, Rat at Rat R in their beginnings….. Then there was the whole Downtown avant-garde scene going on simultaneously, led by guys like [John] Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Christian Marclay, David Moss, Fred Frith, who had just come to New York. Everyone was in New York at the time, even artists I had loved for years like Cale, Eno, Fripp…For me, New York City was the center of the musical world. But I lived on Long Island, so although I knew a lot of the players personally, I was not part of any of this. And that still holds true today. But you can definitely hear Swans’ crushing bass grind on our early albums, Body Samples, Curd, Core…Later, with Skin Chamber we stole our whole MO from early Swans. And of course, all that metal percussion, screaming feedback, power tool mania of the early NOISE was directly inspired by [Einstürzende] Neubauten, a band that really changed the face of music but receives so little credit for doing so. I suppose always being such an avid fan of music, there was no way to separate myself from the music I devoured at the time.
HASSLE:
And how you can characterize these changes ? From wall-of-noise, you’ve been creating something deeper – baroque sounding of some of your works.
PAUL:
The changes just came on their own…As I realized the great depth of talent that Joe and Chris each possessed, I was able to delve into other musical realms that more fully communicated the frustration, joy, angst, sadness, depression, love and hatred we experienced in daily life. I also had to find the right musical environments in which to channel our individual abilities…Through the years, you can hear the refinement of ideas that were mashed together on the early albums [Body Samples, Head Crack, Curd, Between Tides, Core, Songs From Drain] Joe Papa and I naturally gravitated to more progressive, ostentatious pieces, while Chris and I spawned more aggressive, harsher tracks…As the “band” evolved, the resulting albums became much more focused…Joe and I delivered the more baroque works, while Chris and I created Skin Chamber and the Wax Trax/Roadrunner industrial grind. The darker pieces, more experimental material like Poisoner, parts of Headcrack, The Drowning, Can You Smell the Rain, Inanition, were mostly solo recordings.
HASSLE:
One of the most unusual examples of such reformation of your music is “Music For Gilded Chambers” and “Gag”. Two records where you used not just to change your focus, but to explore the nature of feelings on a deeper level. And, if the first one was recorded with massive involvement of Chris, with “Gag” his contribution was minimal – most of the material was written by Joe Papa and you. How can you describe the transformation you’d passed through, as a band, starting with and going through these two records ?
PAUL:
Chris had very little involvement on either of these albums. Gilded Chambers remains one of my personal favorites…Maybe our best, most focused set of songs, and it was developed mostly by Joey and me. I was coming out of a pretty dismal period in my personal life. So this album was like an aural awakening. A return to life after a long period of sadness, or so it seemed at the time. It was the natural follow up to Music from Scourging Ground…“Gag” was really a compilation of early solo-pieces of a more ambient nature and some quieter tracks that Joey and I recorded over a period of three or four years.
HASSLE:
Even though, stylistically they may be referred to one era, I’ve always classified “Gag” as a more minimal record, in comparison with more orchestral “Music For Gilded Chambers”. How do you see the difference between them two ?
PAUL:
There are few similarities between these records. “Gilded Chambers” was a carefully prepared suite of songs…Gag was a compilation. The beauty of “Gag” was its minimalism, as I see in retrospect… Our general tendency was to layer sounds as densely as possible, as you hear on a lot of “Gilded Chambers”, but “Gag” consisted of seemingly unfinished pieces…BYWAYS was a track we were going to embellish, but thankfully, we never got around to it.
HASSLE:
Over the years, you remained the only constant of the Controlled Bleeding. At the same time, with Joe Papa and Chris you always had this very specific relations. When people come and go, how it feels to reconnect with some of them over the years ?
Controlled Bleeding was not really a unified band, but a set of two collaborative units under one band name. People did not really come and go…It was just the trio of Joe, me and Chris for many years. But rarely would the three of us sit in the studio together and work on songs. Generally, it was Joe and me, Chris and me, or me working alone. When we all worked together some of the results were really beautiful, like “Words of the Dying”, “Ring Of Fire” and some of the WaxTrax! songs, but Joe and Chris were often at odds. Both of these guys were drummers so they were constantly fighting when it came to who would lay the percussive tracks…There was also a massive difference in their aesthetics as well. And most of the time neither liked the other’s tastes or performance…Joe possessed one of the best voices I have heard for certain types of music, but if he had his way, he would have been doing an Ian Gillan imitation, screaming, scatting, always just way over the top. It was VERY difficult to get a solid performance out of Joe without him hamming it up or fucking around. But we found common ground in our love for certain prog bands and really technical early fusion – Mahvishnu [Orchestra], Magma, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Henry Cow etc…So, I knew that I could work with Joe if only I could find the right medium for his talents…He was also a fine drummer, deep into the groove…Chris, on the other hand, came from a hardcore background, playing drums to Circle Jerks, Black Flag and Slayer-albums down in his basement. He had almost no exposure to any other music when we first started playing together. But over time he developed real skill as a keyboardist, and he could lay down percussive keyboard patterns that sounded like a sequencer. When exposed to other genres, Chris soaked them up like a sponge. When he first heard Depeche Mode, he became somewhat obsessed. You can hear this influence on “Words Of Dying” and “Crimes of the Body”. He and I found common ground in hardcore and noise, but Chris also contributed some really beautiful keyboards and drums to what we did, and of course, his vocal delivery was essential.
HASSLE:
“Larva Lumps and Baby Bumps” was recorded with Chvad SB and Michael Bazini – two electronic-oriented musicians. What did you feel working with them on the record, and how different was your work, taking into account the differences between sound processing back then and nowadays, with sound editing and Pro-Tools-stuff ?
PAUL:
Chris died suddenly, and Joe passed on within two years, so I was left in a sort of musical limbo for a couple of years. I had pretty much stopped working until my old drummer, Tony Meola and I began jamming. I picked up the guitar again after many years, and soon enough we returned to the aesthetics of the early pre-Knees and Bones band, playing fast and furiously, accompanied by various BASS loops… After a few months, we started sounding really good, so we brought Bazini in on keyboards. The sound really started to gel with the same energy as the band that played CBGB’s three decades earlier – this music is documented on Odes to Bubbler and the second disc on LARVA LUMPS.
It was a really humbling experience playing shows in NYC, Boston, Providence, Philly, because no one gave a sh*t about what we were doing. We were deeply into it, but there was NO audience for this line up that I foolishly called Controlled Bleeding…Just as there was NO audience for the original band back in the 70’s-early 80’s. It was great fun for me as a guitar player, but totally self-indulgent.
Ironically, I’m not a fan of instrumental guitar-based music, so why would I think that anyone beyond the band members would enjoy what we were playing ? After a while that line up faded away and a new line up began with Chad and Bazini… Again, this trio consisted of two distinct collaborative units, me and chad, and me and Baz…And the resulting music was tremendous, some of the very best work I have ever put to tape. Chad and I tapped into some exciting, spontaneous and very brutal sonic experimentation in “The Percs of Being a Perv”, which he assembled with so much time and care.
And we developed some beautiful guitar pieces like “Driving Through Darkness” and “As Evening Fades”, but much richer in texture and dynamics…Again, Chad’s production and textural enhancements made these pieces work so well. Baz and I worked on “TROD” and “Carving Song”, returning to a more industrial aesthetic…And again the results were really great because of Baz’s production and all of the subtle sonic layers he developed, along with some really great drum programming.
For me, this was the most exciting music we had made in decades, but sadly we became terribly distracted, developing a live show, which led to the final breakup of the band. I really loved the power of Pro-Tools, the ability to edit and refine the music with such ease, but for the first time, I was forced to surrender the music to other hands. It was strange not being able to produce my own work because of my total lack of knowledge of digital recording.
HASSLE:
When you’re in the process of creation, what meaning does the terms “identity” and “concept” have for you, going through different phases of the process itself ?
PAUL:
These terms don’t come into play at all. I never think about anything beyond the sounds I want to hear as the piece evolves from nothing. The song or album takes on a personality of its own and exists apart from any categorization.
HASSLE:
There are many of Controlled Bleeding songs mostly recorded by you. “Byways” for example. Having bits and pieces of ideas, what helps you to understand how to approach the recording, whom you should have, or at the end, if you should do it by your own ?
PAUL:
I never think about the process of recording until I’m doing it…Oftentimes, I created music alone b/c it was easier and I could build the tracks without any outside interference. When Joe and I did Byways, we intended it to be a more complex piece, layered with other sounds, but nothing we did made it better, so it was left for another day. Going back to it weeks later, it was clear that nothing else was needed. A lot of times that is the way it works…After a long session, feeling a song is complete, it’s important to put it away for a while. Because when I hear it again, I can more fully understand what is missing or what needs to be eliminated.
The most frustrating thing is regretting the mix of something that has already gone into production…realizing that something is wrong when it is too late. I suppose that is why I and so many people I know, don’t listen to the records much when they are done…It can be too frustrating to bear.
Photo credit: Heather Bondra
LINKS:
controlledbleeding.bandcamp.com
controlledbleeding.com
www.facebook.com/ControlledBleeding
