Stephen O'Malley is currently the guitarist of Khanate and artist to the drone and metal godz (among others), but he's just as well-known for his past moves in Thorr's Hammer, Burning Witch, Sunn O))), and other bands, along with a long and varied career in the graphic arts. Khanate came together in NYC during the fall of 2000 after a chance meeting between O'Malley and James Plotkin (bassist, formerly of Regurgitation, Scorn, Old, and Atomsmasher). Plotkin brought in his pal Alan Dubin, former Old vocalist, and at some point Tim Wyskida, the current drummer for Blind Idiot God, starting hanging around and keeping the beat. Seeing as how Khanate makes our skulls shake (but oh so slowly), it seemed like a good plan to ask him some penetrating questions about... about... well, keep reading....

DEAD ANGEL BLABS ABOUT KHANATE AND BUSTED AMPS AND STUFF WITH STEPHEN O'MALLEY:

A WEE NOTE: Due to gruesome technical issues with the recording of our conversation, some moments of the transcription weren't totally decipherable; if you see [a phrase in brackets], you're looking at one of those moments. Sorry about that....

DA: I'm curious about how the band came together, because the four of you are all coming from really different directions, and I think that's a lot of what makes the band's sound interesting.

SOMA: How did we get together? I met James, actually, in New York, at a [concert] through mutual friends he was working with. It's pretty simple -- I wasn't working with any band at the time in New York... [unintelligible] something I'd worked on before. [much is drowned out by the hum of death] It was kind of funny to have a friend say, "Oh, my friend here is a Burning Witch fan, he wants to meet you" -- and then being introduced: "Oh yeah, this is James Plotkin." Like, "What?!?" [laughs] That's how the group got together, and it's been going since. It took a while to get the chemistry going, but it's worked out pretty good, I think.

DA: It takes an immense amount of concentration to play so little so slowly and still be consistent. Did Khanate evolve out of a natural affinity for slowness, or was it a deliberate choice to slow the tempo to a crawl?

SOMA: I think I brought that element to the group. It's something I've been working with for a while.... I think time and accents are an illusionary [outgrowth] of tempo and rhythm, but it's not really about slowing it down, it's more about creating a more complicated time structure without having to have extreme technical chops, I guess. But you're right, it does take a lot of concentration to pull that off, and Khanate does have a [...] definition as far as the structure of the music goes. I think we're more interested in creating [new constructs] than "slow music" music.

DA: How difficult is it to come up with the arrangements? How do you go about putting the songs together, for that matter?

SOMA: In a pretty normal way. Bringing pieces to the table, then working on them as a group... then [possible rearrangements during] production dates after recording.... it's not really unusual. I bring a lot of music to the table, but James contributes a lot of music too, and we certainly work on stuff together before finalizing it.

DA: All the interviews and articles I've seen about Khanate fixate on the metal and doom end of things. I'm more interested in how you see Khanate in the tradition of drone and grindcore and power electronics -- bands like Maeror Tri, Skullflower, CON-DOM, Whitehouse, and Corrupted.

SOMA: Those are all very different bands, and all bands I've listened to and owned records by, that I appreciate to one degree or another. I don't really, personally, find Khanate to be in a "doom / metal" area, but that's the associative power of being on the label. I think labeling like that doesn't have much to do with music, because it's just a journalistic tendency to put labels on music. But in general musicians aren't too concerned with putting labels on the music they make themselves. Khanate does have, technically, a lot in common with electronic music because of our computer [programming] and vocal processing. But it also has a lot in common with traditional rock music, because it's bass guitar, drums, and a guitar with very, very clean sound, as far as [having] not very many effects. I tend to think of Khanate as more like a post-rock band, in the tradition of Shellac or something like that... but taking the timing thing a little but further, and [garbled] the whole sound aspect of things.

DA: The band's members are all coming -- to me, at least -- from really different directions. I like the result, but how problematic does that make things for you in the songwriting and recording process?

SOMA: The people in Khanate have been playing music for years; each person in the band has been working with music at least ten years, and has done quite a few things with a vide variety of people before coming to Khanate, so the necessary communication skills are there. I've personally worked in a band that was basically a traditional doom / black metal group, where the bass player came from a small town, and what he was bringing to the table was stuff I never would have thought of myself. So I learned from that experience.... When you start any band, you have to build up the chemistry and identify how the players work to bring a band up to speed. At this point, we think more about it as the unit of sound that comes out of our collective playing, rather than [garbled] -- to kind of learn that they're coming from their lineage in a direct line, and really be able to play off that. In Khanate, we've created something that is a combination of the chemistry that is [garbled]... so we're talking about evolving the music a certain way, we can start there and figure out how to do it based on that.

DA: Do you still alienate engineers and rehearsal spaces, or have the people around you gotten used to it?

SOMA: Yeah, we had a problem with that at one of our places, but we haven't had much trouble since... nothing unusual, really. Everything we've recorded up to this point and released we've recorded ourselves, so we really haven't had to deal with engineers having problems. The only time we've really run into direct conflict is at some venues we've performed at where there's a law or policy at the venue of a decibel limit, or the sound guy isn't used to dealing with loud music and can't really comprehend how to work with it. [laughs] It's not that our band is that loud, but that we're being as annoying as the bad hip-hop and metal bands.

DA: Do you actually have a formal background in design? I ask mainly because of the use of type on the Khanate covers in particular, where it looks like there's a heavy Mondrian or Fibonnaci influence going on.

SOMA: I don't have an art school degree; I did take some design courses in the university, but primarily my experience in design is independent... being educated as a designer or working at a design firm; although I did work at a design firm for an ad agency, I'm pretty much self-taught. I was doing covers for about eight, ten years now, and I've done quite a bit outside of Southern Lord.

DA: What are you mostly doing now?

SOMA: I do covers, and I do advertising, basically. That's the income, really -- the covers did not heavily sustain... at least not the groups I've worked with, but the advertising usually does.

DA: I notice you're about to go on tour in Europe, and part of the time you'll be playing with Troum. Have you ever played with them before?

SOMA: I have, but then it's been a few shows with other groups with them. Sunn had them open up at a show in Belgium, Troum came over the U.S. in... what, 2000 I guess?

DA: Yeah. I saw them on that tour.

SOMA: Yeah, we did a show with them in a group I play in called The Lotus Eaters, with James and [???].

DA: So you're looking forward to the European tour?

SOMA: Yeah, definitely! It's pretty great to be able to go on tour with the group. [laughs] It's pretty fun. It's pretty fucking hard to pull off financially, but if you're smart about it, it gets easier as you do it, and you know things are going to work out, you know, and have confidence in your decisions and who you're working with. In general, Europe is kinder to touring bands, it's safe -- it's a matter of the imposition of two thousand dollars for plane tickets. Renting gear and a vehicle is the most daunting thing. But you work with the right booking agents to make sure all those basic costs get covered. It's pretty fun. I also have a great time traveling, especially in Scandanavia. There's some great bands up there.

DA: I saw the itinerary, it looked like you had some interesting shows lined up.

SOMA: Yeah. We're trying to pick opportunities to see some groups that we like, by means of [adding] them to the bill.

DA: So has James managed to replace the laptop he rather severely abused at the Tonic show?

SOMA: [laughs] Uh, I don't know if that one's still around.

DA: I actually saw him auctioning that off on Ebay.

SOMA: That's a different laptop. I've seen him -- there was one involved with Khanate that doesn't exist anymore, and that was a different one as well. At Tonic... I don't think he did anything to the laptop at that show.

DA: Has he gotten his bass amp fixed?

SOMA: When you're pushing amplifiers at their maximum, at least ninety percent for an hour straight....

DA: They tend to go out, don't they?

SOMA: Yeah, they go down.

DA: I play through a Sunn Beta Bass amp, and since I've owned it I've had it repaired like four times, because I play so loud that the amp shakes itself apart.

SOMA: I actually collect Sunns. I have quite a few Beta Lead and Bass amps, I've had problems.... Right now I play through a Beta preamp and a four-channel power amp, but I've had problems with -- it's all rack stuff there, and I've had problems with that thing. [garbled] Sunn playing live, having huge cabinets on stage shaking the amp so much that loose solder joints go, or the fuse, and then having to open that up, troubleshoot.... It's nice to know how to repair it..... [remainder of the interview deteriorates into arcane tales of busted amp-fu]