Woo woo, a GUEST INTERVIEW... courtesy o' the shadowy figures behind the Evolution Control Committee. The forceful words you are about to read come straight from the secret tapes compiled from bugging equipment in the stinky dressing room of The Phantasy in Cleveland (the Home of Rock and Roll) on October 27 of this year. As for the mighty Bacillus, the ECC Gamma Folder provides this brief and cryptic information:
Bacillus is a one-man force against melody. His works of noise lie in the same realm of Merzbow or Macronympha, but Bacillus is more than just a gritty face: there's a philosophy that fuels the cacaphonous fire, and Pete spells it out for all us. Forget your fifth-grade science class with happy-faced protozoa -- as Ice-T so eloquently stated, "Shit ain't like that."
ECC: OK, let's get started here: Bacillus. What's the big idea? What are you trying to do with Bacillus? What are you trying to express with it?
PETE: That's quite a multi-faceted question in and of itself. As far as the idea of bacillus, it's a single-celled organism that is parasitic in nature. As a parasite it hopes to invade people's subconsciousness and attack from within: provide a subconscious attack through harsh, vitrolic noise. It hopes to break down the barriers between the mind and the body, between the life within ourselves and the life going on outside of us. The things that go on inside of us appears to mirror what goes on outside -- there are many things that go on inside of us on a microscopic level which seems to suggest a parallel with what's going on outside. Things consuming each other, violence of all sorts; there is a lot of conflict and turmoil even in the most basic level of life. It may suggest that, y'know, it may or may not be the cause of what goes on outside of our lives; whether it's a cause or just a parallel, I don't know...
ECC: ...but either way you see it as sort of a "paramecium parable" of what goes on in real life?
PETE: Exactly. By breaking down barriers between mind, body and so forth, Bacillus hopes people will start seeing what's inside of themselves: All too much, people look to what's on the outside -- to rectify problems on the outside -- without going too much deeper into themselves. Once they know themselves, once they know who they are and figure out their motivations and so on, then they can work out their own problems and go outwards from there.
ECC: Mental health from the cellular level on up.
PETE: Right. Another way to look at it is that Bacillus tends to be parasitic in nature in the sense that it hopes to, well, maybe not annoy everyone, but to annoy enough to just shake people out of their complacency; to wake people up a little bit. There are far too many people going on blindly like robots, not seeing what's going on outside or inside. It hopes to be parasitic on that level that it just attacks and causes your insides to liquify... just enough to get people's attention.
ECC: How does this relate to your music? Or perhaps I should start by asking, do you call what you do "music"?
PETE: That's a debate in and of itself... it depends on what you define "music". What many people define as music is a series of sounds that gathers an emotion. Seeing that some of what I do does gather an emotional response of one sort or another, then by that definition it would be called music. Obviously not music in the conventional sense, not radio-friendly music or anything like that, but it hopes to further push the conventional boundaries of music back to the more abstract, the further reaches, the darker side that people don't normally investigate.
ECC: Let's switch from abstract to concrete for the moment: What do you use to create your sounds?
PETE: All my sounds are very lo-fi. No digital samples, no synthesizers, no keyboards... no high technology used whatsoever. Again this is Bacillus; this is life at its simplest level. The music echoes that sentiment by using very low-key things like tape machines, record players, chewed-up tapes, cut-up tapes, tapes that have been edited, records that have been destroyed, recreations of records through various forms, whether through glue creations or split-montaging of records... it mixes that sound by looping various tape machines together to create massive levels of volume and distortion. Again, this is music, in a sense, at its lowest, rawest level...
ECC: ...going back down to the simplest cellular level.
PETE: Yes, the most basic level of life.
ECC: You do graphic artwork as well -- drawing painting, whatever. It definitely has some parallels to the cellular world; your artwork is very organic and cellular in nature. How does that tie in?
PETE: A lot of the themes that I express in the music also ties in with the graphics. With the graphics, particularly in some of my cartoons, it's a lot more direct. A lot of the dissatisfaction of the present world, wondering why people are the way they are... whereas some of my paintings tend to seek out a single situation, like a microscopic photo, a snapshot of a particular moment. Again, all the themes of pain and victimization are abound in my artwork because I view the world as having a lot of pain and victimization, a lot of control and domination are going on. I'd like to see people taking a look within themselves, seeing what they could do to help the world around them by taking better care of themselves, by knowing themselves better, and seeing that they aren't harming anyone else in the process of living.
ECC: Have you ever tried to directly link a painting and a song, by making one that coincides with the other or whatever?
PETE: Not really, I sort of...
ECC: ...you have "songs", or do you? Do you think of them as individual songs?
PETE: I don't really consider them songs. I usually shy away from using terms like "songs" or "music" because I view it as more abstract than the conventional usage of "songs" or "music". I usually call each individual snippet of what I do "tracks", because it's a bit more abstract term.
ECC: And similarly, you would be an "audio artist" instead of a musician or something?
PETE: Exactly. As far as a particular theme for each song, I don't necessarily think of a theme per se. I let my subconscious take me to where it will, feeding itself between the song... letting how I feel dictate how the sounds will be. It's kind of a give-and-take situation, kind of symbiotic. It's probably the only case where Bacillus is symbiotic rather than parasitic. I tend to think of the themes and song titles afterwards, after I compose the tracks. I compose what I do, listen to them, see how that particular song should be titled, then go from there. Let a mood build within me and go from there.
ECC: Something I can't help but ask: Pete, why do you have such a negative view of the world?
PETE: Um... well... there's just so darned many negative things going on in this world!
ECC: Like what?
PETE: Let's see... what would you like me to start with...!
ECC: Any old negative thing you want! What really pisses you off?
PETE: What really pisses me off is seeing how people are treating each other: badly. There's a lot of racism, prejudism, homophobia... a lot of ism's going on in the world. People are just not treating people with respect, which they should. A lot of people don't realize that there are differences in this world for a reason -- people tend to be closed-minded and shut themselves off to any differences whatsoever. They tend to be isolated and have simple thoughts; thinking of nothing besides what's been given to them. People are wasting their potential. They waste it in terms of their thought processes, in terms of their lives, the way they interact with one another. What bothers me the most is how human beings are basically wasting away.
ECC: What would you like to see people who have realized this hatred through your music... let's say someone's at a show and realizes this at your show... what would be the best reaction they could have?
PETE: Well, hopefully when the show is over they could give a standing ovation! (laughs) But as far as something they could take back with them...
ECC: ...anything they could do for themselves, or anything they could do at the show...outwardly, inwardly, whatever.
PETE: A lot of things they can do inwardly, because what's most important is the person inside. Never mind the front or the attitude they may put on, because that's pretty much expendable -- that changes according to whatever the fashions at the time are; what really matters is the person inside. What I hope to see is that people would realize that there's more to themselves than fad, fashion, or media, and so on -- that there's a living person inside of them and many things going on inside of them that they'd probably never realized. Seeing the inner workings, working on such a precision level. The body's working without them knowing it, fighting off diseases, pumping their blood, breathing in air, transferring oxygen... they might have better respect for themselves, for their body, for each other, in that they might realize that each of us are the same -- physically, mentally. If they might treat themselves better, things might emanate outwards. Once they take care of their inner selves, things would follow in line from there.
ECC: Couple quick surface things to top this off... You're mainly a studio band, but you've started to do some live shows. Do you see yourself becoming more of a live band? Do you hope to?
PETE: It's very different live... a whole different set of rules. There you have an audience that is more or less captive; they're there for the duration, they're there because they want to see you. There is a lot more leeway at a live show, because you can probably get away with more. With tapes and such, people pretty much order tapes without knowing you and they could be shocked or surprised by what's on them and could easily just turn it off. That's why I keep my tracks short, my tapes short -- sort of a hit and run approach. I'm fairly happy with doing things that way, but I do enjoy the challenge of a live show -- different parameters, different rules. There's a lot more pressure in presenting your music, trying to present visuals, present a sense of an aura, that people will hopefully get something out of. I don't know how much I would do live; I haven't done very much, and I don't see myself touring nationwide or anything. As far as doing things in the studio, I'm happy with things that way. That will be my main focus.
ECC: Any last word?
PETE: Hopefully soon another label will be releasing a 7" single; that's Malignant Records, the same people that put out the Audio Drudge cassette compilation/magazine. The 7" will be titled "Microbiological Takeover," and it'll probably be out in Spring of 1996. I just finished the mixdown and we can hopefully get the artwork together soon and get it shipped out to the plant. With that release and many other of my recent release, it deals with the current rise of drug-resistant microbes that have been surfacing. I think that's important to delve into, because there's a lot of ramifications surrounding that -- a lot of causes as to why these drug- resistant microbes are mutating and appearing on the scene. Through the wanton use of pharmaceuticals, drug companies and hospitals are using too many antibiotics and pharmaceuticals of too high a power so that the weaker microbes are killed, leaving the stronger ones behind, leaving them to mutate and develop into a pathogenic microbe killers. Many have become resistant to all but one drug, and even through time they may become resistant to that as well. We may start to see a rise in epidemics of various sorts, whether it's fatal pneumonia, or streptococcus, or whatever. It's a future that looks rather grim the more you look into it. There do seem to be some solutions against it though, but I think people are being too blase' about it. Hundred of thousands of people get infections just from the hospitals alone, just from surgery. Thousands die every year, just from that. And that's one of the things I'm trying to express in my music -- we're all just mortal. Too many think that they have this immortality complex, than nothing can happen to them... they don't have the sense of humility, just arrogance. Some of the diseases coming out now should serve to eliminate that arrogance.