"I can't stand trying to describe what I do to other people, especially people who don't know anything about indie rock, or don’t care about indie rock or punk rock or any of that stuff. I was trying to explain it to my grandfather, who really likes a lot of music. He recently got into Earth Wind & Fire, and he's 81. He's like, 'These kids know how to do it.' He's pretty open-minded, so I thought that he would enjoy what I do, but he didn't like it."

Conversations to an end: Mike Magill
Marty B.

Mike Magill deserves legions of fans. If and when those legions start amassing, I only hope they take the time to delve into his back catalog.

Mike, a Freehold, N.J. native living in Sweden, laid waste to New Brunswick basement show audiences as one half of the post-rock band Mark. In 2003, after Mark died, he released "Coming of Age in the Future" – eight shimmering songs slim on vocals and largely played on his acoustic guitar. The easy comparisons to make are John Fahey, Gastr del Sol, maybe a little Copland on track seven, but they only describe some of the territory Mike stakes out.

On the follow-up, "Röhssgatan." Mike's spindly guitar picking is coated in washes of distortion, echo and noise that would make Kevin Shields proud. He added bag pipes and one seriously ominous bell to the mix with "The Confluence of the Geat and the Raritan." The droning, four-part piece sounds like a medieval village of serfs woefully laboring to complete some monumental task (I mean that in the best way possible).

Mike's newest material is a tape for the Blown Cone label. It's wonderful too. Please listen to it for yourself. The following interview was conducted during a car trip to Pittsburgh in March 2007.

How does the music you listen to impact the music you play?

I don't know how much the newer stuff I listen to impacts it, but I feel like I always go back to the first few records I listened to in high school as far as tone goes, like Slint and Tortoise, post-rock, Thrill Jockey.

Is it the particular kind of music those guys played or the fact that you listened to it in high school?

It was so formative. I listened to it and liked it then, but it sort of shaped my opinions on what a good tone or a good mood should be. I don’t really mean to, but I go back to that mood a lot.

What brought you to that stuff? A lot of people listened to real shit in high school.

I listened to plenty of sh-- too. I guess it was school band type stuff – trying to find something that was both sort of orchestral and rocking.

With the two albums you have and the EP, do you try to communicate specific ideas with your songs? A lot of them don't have lyrics, but they have titles that seem really thought through.

I don’t try to convey specific opinions or something like that. I try to convey a specific feeling. But I'm doing that less so now. That 'Confluence' thing was just trying to make a very textural sound that anyone listening to it could draw whatever they wanted from it. But I think it's also so sad. It forces you to think about angry things or sad things.

Once you record the live parts, how important is what you do on the computer later? Has it gotten more important or less important?

It's become more important, but it's also much easier to do. With the computer programs, you can do endless retakes and just get it sounding perfect. I guess I like to have as much control over it as I can so there's not so much superfluous noise. I like the noise I end up making to be very particular. Sometimes I like the tape noise, too. I don't think it’s that well produced, what I make. I think it’s just prepared. I don't have good equipment.

I think your stuff isn't your typical, formatted pop song, but it's still very listenable. Do you think there’s a line you consciously don't cross when it comes to the kind of improvised stuff you do or not really?

I don't like to just improvise and then say I recorded something, because then it's too uncontrolled. I like to improvise and come up with something and know what sort of thing I'm going to play later and improvise my way around that. I don't think it's experimental either. It's sort of sprawling.

Outside of music, have you found anything else especially influential when it comes to you making music?

Some visual things kind of suggest a sonic counterpart. Specifically, when you're at a stoplight and other vehicles are turning left. Their left blinkers are blinking at somewhat different rhythms, then they sort of synch up at the same time and go out apart from each other. Also, when you're driving under an overpass and there are two fences of both sides of the overpass, the light passing through them will be refracted off of both of them and it makes these wavy patterns. Those kinds of things I think about sometime when I’m playing.

If you had the money to release your music on any format you could, which format would you choose?

I've always liked the 10-inch.

What color?

It would have to be a picture disc, but I don't know what the picture it would be because it would depend so much on what was on the record.

Do you make your music with any kind of conscious end goal?

It takes me a while to actually get down to recording. I have a whole bunch of songs in mind, but they don't seem to gel with each another, so usually I have the whole release planned out before I record any of it, and then I try to fit the whole thing together. But it evolves on the way through, like Röhssgatan. Originally, it was something entirely different, but then I saw that wall and I decided to try and shape it around that. The songs were all in place but the visuals that went with it were not the same. I originally intended to have some kind of pseudo patriotic thing. I started to write that soon after 9-11 and all those flags were all over. So I have a whole bunch of pictures of ripped up flags that were on these overpasses, because they looked so tattered and nasty. The well wishes that went up with them were completely gone, so all that you had left was the war in Iraq or what have you. But all that fell apart. I felt it was too heavy handed and I couldn't really convey it as well as I would hope to. So that wall was so much more attractive to me, because it was sadder, just to look at those faces and how distraught they were. But the scope of the songs was already in place.

You've been in Sweden for a while. Did you feel American in any way other than the fact that you were born in America?

Yeah. We have a whole set of moral ideals that are very important to us and very ingrained, and we don't really share them all with the Swedes. We're very quick to express our own opinions and they won't express them as quickly or they'll do it in a more subtle way. It's like at any party, any American party -- at least the ones I've been to, have been a series of people debating and arguing over pop cultural preferences and whether or not you like this and whether it’s a OK to like this or that movie, book, or whatever. There, they (the Swedes) talk about the same things, but they don’t assert whether or not they like it as much, if at all. The Swedish culture is pretty similar to ours, but it's definitely different and I definitely did feel separate. I was an immigrant.

Did you feel more comfortable with one versus the other, in terms of those conversational differences you were talking about?

After awhile, once I realized I wouldn't be subjected to any opinions. I came to savor those conversations. It's not like I'm uncomfortable expressing my own opinion, but I like to be in a situation where there's no pressure to be subjected to or subject someone to my opinion or their opinions. It's not like they're nicer than Americans or vice versa. I think they're more patient. They'll put up with your crap longer before they say they're not friends. It's a tough thing, because I don't like to generalize 'us.' It's not an 'us-versus-them' thing. We're just two separate cultures. They loved to ask me about stereotypical American things, like how religious everybody is or whether or not I voted for Bush.

So your band in college was very good. It was a rock band. Certain people really liked it. But you haven't really released anything like that in several years and I’m curious why and if you think you’ll do something like that again.

I wanted to make a rock band again, but I sort of have a transient existence. I haven't met people who are as interested in that type of aggressive music. Chris and Jake were right there and it was really convenient to make it. I didn’t mean to put out my own stuff forever but since I've been alone, it has been the thing to do. But on the other hand, I don’t know if I'm interested in making succinct hard rock songs.

Would you describe what Mark did as succinct hard rock songs?

Yes.

Because I think you just have a f---ed up idea of what succinct hard rock songs are.

I thought they were pretty taut. They weren't like Sabbath songs, but they were really regimented, and when we would switch. I guess we had some jammy parts, but I don't know.

Maybe if you did what you think you did in Mark, it would sound nothing like Mark. It would be much more expansive.

Probably. I don't know if I could find a drummer who would be willing to sit there for five minutes while I build the mood. That EP I made, the bells go one for minutes and minutes and minutes and there's nothing else going on, and I think that's very important because it sort of sets the foundation, and the tones and textures of the bells are their own thing. I was playing with the EQ, and they were really distorted. I don’t know if a drummer would be willing to just sit there. Would he be tapping on his hi-hat and ruin everything?

What specifically about the newer music you listen to do you find exciting, especially since you are someone who has a good sense of what came before it?

If I'm going to see a band, I only really like it if they're definitely emoting. It helps if they're very angry. I tend to not really like happy music so much. If they can convey to me that they genuinely are angry, like, say, a black metal band. They're all dressed up, they're all dolled up. You can't really take it seriously, but some of them are definitely angry and they choose to dress up to express that anger. If I get that sense from them, then I probably like it. But also I like it if the end product is hypnotizing or enveloping or all consuming. If I get transfixed by it, then that means that I like it.

It seems like John Fahey has been a consistent influence, even though your music has changed a lot over the last five years. Why?

Fahey was like a light switch. It wasn't even just Fahey, because I got into (Leo) Kottke first, but I was really attracted to they way they could play the rhythm and melody at the same time on a guitar. I thought it sounded really nice. You can play the rhythm and the melody on a piano, but it's got a different tone. I really like the tone that Kottke and Fahey had, especially Fahey, because he does it so slowly and he does it with such anger, especially in the sixties and seventies. He was so pissed off; it was just beautiful. I wasn’t trying to emulate him, I was trying to emulate that idea of having a rhythm and a melody at the same time on guitar, so I tried to copy the style they did -- the thumb doing the rhythm, and it took me so long to figure out how they did that on my own that I just ended up always playing like that. I'm trying to break away from that a little bit, but it does still sound very nice to me and it’s gotten to the point where I'm comfortable doing that and I can improvise with it. I can sort of use that style as a basis for other stuff.

How would you describe your music to someone who may not have the same cultural background, someone into Celine Dion?

I can't stand trying to describe what I do to other people, especially people who don't know anything about indie rock, or don’t care about indie rock or punk rock or any of that stuff. I was trying to explain it to my grandfather, who really likes a lot of music. He recently got into Earth Wind & Fire, and he's 81. He's like, 'These kids know how to do it.' He's pretty open-minded, so I thought that he would enjoy what I do, but he didn't like it. I was trying to explain to him not even just my motivation, but all motivation for punk rock, and it was impossible. I couldn't come up with a good…dogma? Dogmology?

Do you think your music is inaccessible to someone who doesn't have that understanding? If they don’t have some clue as to where you're coming from musically?

Some of what I do, I think, is pretty poppy, but I think you have to be ready to wait a long time for the poppy parts or the accessible parts, and I think that those parts are most important because they set the moods. I think those parts are where I put most of my emotions.

More recently, in the past two years or so, I've sort of been interested in making a really beautiful part and then making it sound really awful, like really ugly or disturbing. So you can still hear the beauty, or what I think of as the beauty, but it's also distorted or abrasive or caustic. I don't know if my grandfather, for example, could hear the nice parts or if he only heard the distortion. Distorted guitar is such a crucial part of this subculture, so it has become a sort of cliché of aggression. I don’t think when I use a distorted guitar, it sounds aggressive. It sounds angrier or fuller than if I just did it with an acoustic. It doesn’t sound so spare. I like the sound to be more all consuming than that.

(Intoxicated, much later…rap music in the background) Do you think Paul was ambitious?

Paul McCartney?

Yeah.

Come on. He made Wings. Wings is the shi--iest sh--. That's nothing but ambition.

Do you think ambition is really important?

Ambition is sole. Ambition is bigger than Jesus. No?

Listen to Mike’s music on-line at http://www.virb.com/mags. Contact him at mmagill@gmail.com.

posted [11.01.07]

Past Conversations To An End:
Marty B.a> - musician, newspaper reporter [02.24.07]
Michael Miller - musician, card maker [12.24.04]
Jason Dodd - magazine editor [01.15.04]
The Rev. Into Rock - minister with good taste [1.04.03]
Nate Ruth - musician, music retail [09.07.02]

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