by Todd Brooks

Matt: Kevin and I met in 2003 at free103point9 in Brooklyn on a free jazz gig put together by Ras Moshe. I was aware of Kevin’s work in Storm & Stress from a zine called Tuba Frenzy. Kevin and I struck a good tempo immediately on hanging out. I was moving back from school and wanted to start a new band. Kevin seemed like the right dude to jam with, and still is.

Kevin: I had been looking for people who weren't simply surpassing boundaries musically, but for people to whom boundaries weren't even part of the equation -- I was looking for people who had a modality beyond those limitations set into place by imposed beginnings, context and the so-called innate. The deal was sealed from bar 1.

M: I forget about our name as something to focus on. When we started the band we were both rather uninspired by 'band name posture' and the hipness of words to connote iconography or myth. The reality of most of these mythic band dudes is that they are all normal white folks that hang out in their basement that they pay rent on and think they are jamming hard! Good for them, if they are into it, but anyway we wanted a little deception with our name, or perhaps absurdism that would translate as a signifier to other folks out there who were not into the new 'ritualist' state of contemporary music. I don’t know. Also, the name Talibam! had been kicking around my college circle of friends since 2001 and we used to use it as an exclamation point for drunken evenings. On the eve of our first out of town gig where we still didn't have a name I suggested it to Kevin and he thought it was funny. I like to think that 'Talibam!' is the first word of the new language because we have managed to co-opt a word that didn't previously exist before and through new associations reclaim it. Our new joke is that we will change our name to 'the black man' just because we are interested in re-contextualizing language, but at this point I think we will stick with Talibam! The only strange encounter about the name is there is this guy who started buying all of our records really fast in like 2 days off our MySpace page and I googled his email address and it turned out he was a PHD at a Southern University who had a 15 million dollar grant from Homeland Security to study the way the media relates to terrorism; so I don't know, no knocks on the door ---yet.

K: In many ways, Talibam! is the only relevant band name of the decade. Most bands undermine themselves with a blatant acquiescence to flatulent strategy -- cute little catch phrases, poetic epitomes, band names of animals/pets, birth names, etc. Those names flail about in a sea of overpopulated monikers, choking on the plastic bags of their own shameless consumption and proliferation -- they compromise with the naming process too easily. I never ever hear a band name and think to myself, "wow that's a great band name.” But also I don't really care about band names; they aren't going to change my life. I'd rather remember a fart than a band name. I like our band name because it doesn't have anything to do with the humiliating self-loathing that goes along with standing behind any slogan. Our name is flattened out by its political context -- its more of an essay than a word -- its references span our capitalistic globalizated narcissism. Talibam! is not a band name -- it’s the epoch...it’s the times.

K: Yes Talibam! does have a political position. The title of a recent record is ‘Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts’ -- an alternate album title was: ‘It’s a Bird; It’s a Plane; It’s the Incipient Supernaturalist of Democratizing Perpetuity!’ These titles highlight the evil application/dissemination of unprincipled US/supernaturalist hidden agendas and also highlight the corporeal spectacle of it all. Post 9/11's reverse-engineered nationalistic compassion masked the actual en masse psychological/corporeal coup d’état. People are starting to understand their temporary psychical deaths and the simulation of citizenry pride is culpable through history, no matter how you fidget toward a corrupt legalism. The eternal democratizes all of us, leaping over the smog of industry (burning fossil fuels bolster economies despite the environmental/humanitarian consequences) where charismatic false statements coax desired principles out of traumatic division/deconstruction.

M: We want to make music and if music has an opportunity to be political, it is without any slogans or direct confrontational tones. We play for exuberance and passion. That should say something. Talibam! does not deal with politics in a forthright way. We are not an anarchist punk band that uses words and phrases to define their music. Instead our politics come from our own perspectives as citizens of the world. One of the heaviest performances I ever witnessed was in Dec. 2001 at a gig of Cooper-Moore and Dr. Bill Cole. Cooper-Moore started the set by chanting the entire UN Declaration of Human Rights. Hearing that in a musical context brought a new ethic to mind of how to create opportunities for positive artistic action to occur that could also inspire in political realm. For myself, I am not interested in giving speeches or using 'code words’ as such but what I learned was that you should stick to what you believe and inspires you to translate into genuine performance. Personally I am despondent and distraught over the development and destruction of New York City, which is where I was born and grew up; one of the few etc. After 9/11, the city has undergone such a rapid transformation of new condo-Miami-slab-development that I don't recognize the city that I have lived in all my life, and I wouldn't mind if all the new buildings weren't there. Because of this influence, on tour I started singing a new piece that relates to this problem.

M: The many levels we approach a gig at have always existed. At one of our early gigs at ABC No Rio's C.O.M.A. Festival I drew blood for jumping on top of Kevin and off a high landing to another table. We try to have fun when we play and translate that into possibly ridiculous antics. We are both entertainers and I want to see more from performance than dowel faced drones into mixing boards. Before I was playing seriously in Talibam!, my main focus was on individual hat production via 'flangedconfection hat's and I would sit out the street with the hats on the sidewalk and would play keyboard. It was a nice blur of commerce and performance. We try to create such confusion when we play as well.

K: It’s not performance art -- it’s more methodical and based on duty where the empty effects come before any intuitive emotional causality or understanding/knowing. Intuition isn't sacred to us and therefore it isn't whole. In the '90's I performed many permutations of John Cage's Theater Piece -- these pieces were put together by chance using the roll of a dice. Visually the pieces were like Samuel Beckett plays and produced sound only by default according to the laws of physics and auditory perception. I prefer to make music in this way -- to set up games/obstacles and try to overcome them. Performance art, and most music, is something very different than this, something very personal. In Talibam! we would rather eradicate any identity by not being personal and not catering to personal desires. This is because though personality is a necessary distortion for pragmatic living, it is not sacred and through its undoing we open up to ideas broader and in some cases more important/clueing than ourselves and our community. Playing music is like breathing for us, I mean simply it’s a natural feeling -- at the shows I think the audience respects there is no hierarchy between us and them -- it’s refreshing. Most bands have set lists and want to impress you, its like watching the self-surveillance Olympics -- I’d rather watch them mow the lawn, lining up on the outer rim of their previous pass around a yard's perimeter using the tight 18 in. turn radius of a Craftsman 20 hp, 48 in. Deck Deluxe Lawn Tractor. I'd rather think about anything growing above two inches and how it shoots into the canvas receptacle attached to the side as they sit proudly on the shiny padded calmly vibrating seat driving with callused guitar-picking fingers.

M: There is a mix of all three in our performance. Once again I think that 'improv', 'jazz' rock', doom, noise, whatever has gotten so ritualized that people only know how just stand there and take it and be pummeled. We want to create gasps of fresh smells that take the nasty scent out of 'serious' behavior. We are serious in what we do and have a high level of respect for 'improvisers' and other types of musicians, but I want to see something unexpected happen when we play. I love to be able to crack Kevin up with a wisecrack that is completely unexpected and it takes the 'mask' off the performance.

K: Well for our "Ordination" CD, we had a political theme in the titles -- we refer to water rights, how stolen natural resources only perpetuate poverty/insurgency/slavery/drug running. Initially in the CD packaging I wanted to list the corporations who practice these crimes, as well as river names/dams, etc. The album title is ironic; it refers to the Western sanctification of military world police. Another ironic alternate title was "A Connectivity Of Déraciné Empires Cut-Off From Natural Resources -- Something Widely Feared As A Possible Unpleasant Or Dangerous Occurrence.” The cover photo shows a young soldier/enemy looking into the distance, purportedly at the oncoming so-called freedom fighters whose governments are directly responsible for creating his destitute state. I think with our name we have a duty to question those truths we hold to be self-evident not just musically. The cosmic/spiritual themes in the experimental music scene don't mean anything to me, they don't strike me as serious in relation to the practical world -- they are brought about and endured because of too much weed smoking. For example, when I play my drums I don’t think I am entering into any über-source oneness energy plane that directly leads to awareness and healing across the universe. That’s more silly/offensive/delusional than me humping my drum set or bashing iconized disco beats through polka and botox rock beats busting in and out with static like from analogue tuners. Weed trains insouciant warriors of ritual abandonment -- that’s partially why there are drug references in the titles to Ordination...to show drugs in the political context rather than in the eternal return of pseudo-spiritual gateway-joyriding.

K: We have a system, but the system cracks...the essence of harmoniacal is to constantly keep up with the pace of your changing perceptual understanding. This is the violent aspect of maniacal, the constant breaking down and relearning rather than the reinforcing of indoctrinated supports. For example, though our system works seemingly at a fast pace, as you practice executing faster and faster music, time becomes a relative factor of your skill level -- the old fast blossoms into a comfortable medium tempo. Time is a relative construct of physiology and context, there is no Universal pure time. Time is a word, a notion, a stable concept for practicality, a signifier signifying no absolute sign or source, a signifier signifying a simulation of foundation. Without our interpretations based on our physiological make-up and anthropomorphism of ‘nature’ there is no time. Timekeeping, therefore, must have constant checks in place to stabilize its amorphous existence -- for you can't deconstruct a narrative that has never truly been illustrated. But this keeps things surprising as the source you return to turns out to be change...the memory of this cycle operates as a trace of the evident, a celebratory foundation however elusive and plastic.

M: There are many kids out there that grew up with both Ornette and punk at the same time. It's a fun experience to be part of that group. Its not like indie rockers getting hip to BYG. The bands that play in this 'style' have ability to transcend genre and form in a more rapid developmental state than being a 'noise band' or post rock' or 'math' band. I just thought it was a clever new tag line for people to take seriously rather than be called 'spazz and skronk'.

M: We analyze and assess every space we are playing both for what we can achieve with the performance and just what the basic parameters are; whether or not we can jump on the drum kit, etc., but not really too much pre-planned activity. On tour when yr on trains for 8 hours a day avoiding yr brain its fun to point us to the stage late at night and we just make it happen, and it works.

K: Intuition doesn't come naturally when it comes to learning a skill like playing an instrument. You have to practice, you have to train your body and this augments intuition's palate. For example, there are many ways to approach playing time...like phrasing over the bar line, playing ahead of the beat, playing behind the beat, playing in a specific time signature and tempo while never indicating the time, etc. Listen to Roy Haynes play the ride cymbal on the song Matrix from the Chick Corea album Now He Sings Now He Sobs from 1968. Haynes' preparedness to interpret, interact, and listen didn't come naturally encoded at birth. His mastery of coordination opened up a broader intuitive landscape than would be available to someone with less patience to learn a skill. In other words, there is no truly complete reality or intuition. It’s a bit of a tiresome cliché, but education's potentiality opened more doors to what was otherwise inconceivable.

M: We are pragmatic and practical. When our first record was ready to be done we had no money and no budget so cutting up recycled LP sleeves made sense. The idea came from Eugene Chadbourne who sells some of his discs in a similar manner, so perhaps it was a logical homage to him, but it also is part of our belief in dis-representation and avoiding all conflicts in art when someone makes too much package and 'art' out of a piece that doesn't necessarily warrant all the effort of the presentation. Keep it simple and beautiful in some way.

K: Trash is unavoidable. Ideally we'd like to get to a point where we don't release any actual object -- we would like to sell downloadable super hi-quality 24bit audio albums which have 256 times the resolution of 16bit CDs -- but this is not a solution to the trash problem. The computers necessary to download audio become recycling/environmental nightmares exported to dumps in third world countries. Products like computers are nothing more then disguised trash; it’s the planned obsolescence of consumables. The January 2008 National Geographic had an amazing article about this called High-Tech Trash.

M: I’ll run a few names quickly off the top of my head --- Brian Osborne (Heat Retention Records) he rules and shares similar qualities with us. Peeesseye (Evolving Ear). We are going to record with them and do an epic classic rock record -- Zeppelin watch out! Usurper from Scotland-- non musical jokers playing junk on non-instruments. Our friends Igor and Paolo from Faro, Portugal who put on an amazing festival we played this year and then ruled hard with a super strange sax and electronics duo the next night at ZDB Gallery in Lisbon. Lê Quan Ninh, a French percussionist who is mind-blowing. Vialka for having the most informative website that I cribbed lots of tour booking info from, Chops from Leeds for creating a new influence from the post Load scene, Usaisamonster for their work ethic and energy to go their own direction and be satisfied with what the achieve. It is really wonderful with touring and meeting the like-minded folks all throughout the world, there are far too many to name but to all of them I say thank you for yr support!

K: I have to admit I never listen to bands. I don’t want to be dedicated to some meaningless endeavor like replaying virtually the same thing night after night, part after part after part. Perhaps I can equate my taste in music is to gardening -- the potentialities change with the seasons and experience -- you're a part of something that isn’t nostalgic but in flux.

K: It’s a matter of bravado -- most bands are too afraid to have other musicians steal their spotlight, they think they don't have anything to learn and they don't want to cooperate. Talibam! wants to raise high the roof beams and surprise ourselves in the spell of unexpected interaction. These are some of our favorite players and we are excited they joined us -- we hope this gives the listeners a chance to hear these amazing players in an unusual context.

M: Having these guys on our record helped make the album more bad-ass. I am not a guitar player or 'mouth bow' player so I’m not going to fake it like some of these 'tribal thud guys that some folks like.’ I like watching musicians that make my jaw drop at their inventiveness and individuality. These guys all are some of the most phenomenal musicians on a complete level and for them to come in and be professional and hit all the parts we wanted them to play on first takes was a humbling experience. If our music is an outlet for more folks to get clued into the work of these great musicians than that is what it's all about!

M: Before 2006 we toured the east coast and south pretty hard for 2 or 3 years and kept getting stuck digging for quarters for gas money. The response for some shows was great but others was slow and uninspired. Europe has treated us very well, but I want to tour American again, but it has to be with some respect and not just shitty door gigs in dead bars, or house shows where its 4 or 5 people. You can do that for awhile but we are not just playing our music for the social aspect of the hang. We want people to hear it and dig it. Right now the opportunities have been more in Europe, but if more folks get in touch that want us to play the states, we for sure will.

K: At our level it’s more difficult to tour in the states -- longer drives, uglier cities, poorer hospitality, less money, ripe apathy, etc. When we first went to Europe, I called it The Awakening Tour because Matt had only toured the states. Europe is better -- it’s not even so much about respect, it’s a totally different vibe in Europe -- it’s about being a human being. On the road in the States you're a sucker -- its hard to look someone in the eye and say, ‘I am in a band on tour’ -- you feel the same shame and guilt of a pyramid scheme victim.

M: One time in Limerick, Ireland we were sleeping at the kids house who put on the show and it was a pretty brutal arrangement; sleeping on dirty couch cushions and gross blankets from under the couch, very harsh. We had just finished watching this amazing Keanu Reeves movie where he plays a inner city baseball coach who has a gambling problem. It was going to be tough to sleep but both Kevin and I took about 4 Nyquil tablets each and somehow woke up 10 hours later watching 'Hercules in New York' (Schwarzenegger from the 70s!) in a hotel room in Brussels. This past trip was pretty amazing and surreal. Another awesome experience was when we played in Utrecht this past tour and after we ended a tune, a guy announced from the floor that he was so inspired by our music that he would do a traditional New Zealand warrior dance. His dance was amazing and authentic and me and Kevin kind of stood slack jawed. Kevin's response was funny saying that 'it's the fifth time that this has happened to us'. I guess New Zealanders feel at home with our music. Good enough for me.

K: On our way back to NYC from Paris, we spent part of our hour layover in the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport food court. We found a place that had some of our favorite Dutch snacks -- fresh kiwi juice and a cucumber/gouda sandwich with whole wheat bread. The juice bar was unattended -- we had terrible experiences with KLM Dutch Airlines, and felt we were at least entitled to some free juice. An employee came over and berated us about paying for the juice after we each had a few glasses -- I had just pored a new glass I was refusing to pay for because I hadn't drank it yet. She called the manager who told us to pay for all the juice and my uneaten sandwich. I looked inside my sandwich and saw that it wasn't fresh -- I refused to pay for anything. An argument ensued, the manager looked pretty dumbfounded. Finally, he asked us to leave without paying and to never come back!

M: I haven't gotten to read much of what he has written lately but Julien Poirier of Ugly Duckling Presse and New York Nights is one of the few writers that possess humor, political wit and truth with every word he puts to pen.

K: Hollywood Wiretapping by William Wheaton...he's a young writer from NYC -- Itunes has an audio book version. It’s a collection of short fiction stories, each one written about a different contemporary celebrity, politician, criminal, or etc. Each character's warped biography highlights the indifference and indulgence of fame and power. Their waste/absurdity/decadence of human consciousness makes you either want to be a good and honest person or a participant in the apocalyptic crusade back to cockroaches and dust.

M: Robert The is a unique character who never stops to inspire with his attempts at re-contextualizing forms. Kerry Downey who is a dramatic painter from New York (fluxfactory.org) and Eduardo Constantino from Brittany, France who is the father of our recording engineer for our upcoming record --- he makes wonderfully abstract ceramic pottery -- anything in his studio is better than the entire Whitney Biennial.

K: Most hyped work nowadays seems to be driven by aesthetics of context, but not the aesthetics of craft or technique. For example the context of graffiti, psychedelia, OCD, point and shoot cameras, skateboards, comics, porn, screen printing, rich kids, cliques, recycled vintage magazine ad images...I don't know maybe I left something out but I'm falling asleep. To me it’s like one big 6 year-old's birthday party but with lots of drugs and herpes. It’s not too popular to criticize what's hip, but what's hip is what's dominant -- as the general dominant historically never had a positive connotation, I don't have much sympathy. If mere context were more appealing to me, I might be able to list off a few dozen artists -- but as it is there is too many people on the planet. Anyway I have a problem with the hierarchical status of gallery art -- it’s a popularity contest. News Flash: the cool kids skipped the homecoming parade. Art means something completely different in Zen Buddhism...art is more about daily living, the artfulness of doing the dishes etc. Everyone is an artist in this way, not just the fallaciously chosen few.

M: We are working on a number of new records, none of which have homes yet, so if you want to work with us be in touch! The first record is a duo record that may sound like The BeeGees if they were really into Terry Riley and John Cales’ Church Of Anthrax. The other ideas are a quartet or quintet record with Peter Evans and others that will explore our more abstract impulses, and then an ensemble record as well that will have similar formatting to 'Ordination' but with new tunes and excitement. We also are working on a radio play inspired by the lackluster approach of the US to the re-stabilization of Iraq, a photo/film projection show featuring my fathers archive of photography of never before published live shots of the Silver Apples in ‘68, Ornette and Monk's bands in ‘67, Cage doing solo prepared piano in ’72 --- with us in the middle internalizing these influences. That should be fun. We will be in Europe for sure next September and October, but beyond that, not too much.

K: You must not underestimate the imaginal discs on the pupal body of Talibam!

K: VEINS OF THE PLUMBER. His appearance temporarily suspended the smell. The plumber of reparations whose appearance alleviated suffering instigated change with his appearance. Then he sat. ‘You asked me to speak seriously about my feelings but in the tiers of our relationship you were worse than preoccupied you were like contraband. When the song meter went out you were repossessed.’ There was a problem there was a problem: when the song meter went out there sat a disproportionate couple. As they sat: the worms of plumbing the plumbing came to life. It was, ‘extraordinary behavior for PVP.’ He stood to task but his foot caught in the chair leg...freak accident. He tried to stabilize himself by grabbing at the chandelier but gravity pulled him down. His head hit the corner of the coffee table simultaneously to an old woman crashing her Lincoln into a Wendy’s across the street. It was known and heard, but not seen. Townspersons were sated as if a giant pimple had been popped. She was a protanope and his blood looked black.

M: It's fun to 'sum things up' so here goes with one attempt --- eating a meal is nice but its better when it tastes delicious.

---------------------

Out Now from Talibam!:
"The Excusable Earthling" LP on Pendu Sound
"Guns and Butter" CD on Gaffer Records
"Ordination of the Globetrotting Conscripts" CD on Azul Discografica

More about Talibam at: myspace.com/talibam, & myspace.com/kevinshea