Getting Women Take Back the Noise in the mail was an experience very much akin to receiving a new toy. I’m listening to it now, as I type this, and I’m in sort of an indeterminate puddle of space/time that has been created by soundscapes; tonal static environments, collaged field recordings, beats, deep rhythmic hypnotic drones, electronic glitches, loops, chopped up blended, and reformed into a triptych audio sculpture. This 3 disk compilation, one of a limited edition release of a thousand, is a media bouquet, a strangely feminized bit of industrial, electronic, and melodic noise. It was exciting to open, the multimedia array of stickers, cards detailing each performer, and the plastic zipper pouch with the large flower that loudly moaned ‘Mama’ in a sickly distorted and overly digitized screech makes this the coolest music anthology I own. Having the chance to talk with Ninah Pixie, the editor of this anthology, I thought it was important to find out more about why the anthology was made, and just what goes into making a thousand uniquely circuit-bent packages.

Wes Unruh:
Traditionally noise and industrial music seems to be pretty male dominated, but to find this many people to contribute sort of challenges that notion. And I know that you turned down some submissions, didn’t you?

Ninah Pixie:
I did. Yeah.

WU:
Yet it’s still this incredibly comprehensive anthology.

NP:
Yeah, it’s funny how you can throw the word noise out there and this is one of the things that can happen.

It’s really been one of those words, to me anyway, that have been almost full of potential in itself, because people have gotten caught up in these genres of noise. You know, there’s been little pockets of course, as you just mentioned stemming out of the industrial music background, it’s turned into these genres and then been called noise because of what goes on with the forms of music. And I think there’s no answer really for why it’s been mostly men.

People have guessed to say that, you know, well, the types of instruments that are played are more boys toys than something that women would be drawn to… but it’s really a case by case situation because as long as I’ve been involved with bands and music and going to shows and such I’ve always seen women around the scene or in it, but I think actually getting their hands on the equipment or the ingenuity within themselves to actually make an instrument? It has been a typically male attraction for a long time. I don’t know why.

WU:
And I think that if that is true, then it’s important to have something like this out there that breaks that mold..

NP:
Totally, yeah. Exactly. Well I certainly had a great time making.. the whole process was just full of magic in many ways, and the women involved are just such lovely people. Everybody was so genuine you know? And the age variance was amazing. There was a lot of people on this thing and it wasn’t like all from one cross-section. It was many different worlds walking together. (laughs)

WU:
Yeah, that’s what I sensed. You’ve created a point of convergence basically, people can come to this and they can learn about all these different artists, and there’s so many different directions that noise takes in, you’re covering a lot of ground with this. So I’m curious about how long you’ve been doing music, but I’m also curious about the elements of play, because this seems a very playful project..

NP:
Oh yeah.

WU:
When I started listening to the albums some more as set pieces. In my mind these seem to be soundtracks for musing, if you will. You can play that and let it run while you are doing other artistic things because it seems to sort of help me get into a state where things aren’t fully defined and so there’s more malleability just in the atmosphere. So what kind of influence did you hope to achieve and do you see people responding to it?

NP:
Sure, sure. Yeah I understand exactly what you are saying. That was completely intentional on my part, as far as putting these pieces together in these categories, in these three distinct categories, or themes. When you hear sounds and you hear people creating these pieces there were definite similarities between artists, that I could tell they were inspired similarly or their creativity was sort of working in similar ways. So when I looked at all these tracks I kept noticing these things and I thought ‘wow, there’s definitely these patterns going on here’ I’m going to treat these as if they were these different, like what you said, works of art, and put them on a disk and see how many I can fit, and I ended up with three disks worth of tracks like that and so what I did individually for each of the three is I started with the first one, I sort of went in order of the sound dynamic so I worked with the quiet ones first, and it ended up very soundtrack-ish, the way that I sort of wove these common threads from front to back worked my way through each of the three.

And when you listen to them I think that comes through for a lot of people actually, people have written to me about this. Like wow, I gravitate really toward that first one because I can put it on and I can sit down and actually meditate to it. I would have never thought in a million years somebody’s meditating to like deep intense quiet noise.

WU:
Yes, but it works.

NP:
It totally does.

WU:
It sort of like fragments your attention to the point where you’re able to hear more forms. It’s very interesting. How influential is this? It sure seems to be a profoundly interesting and unique genre that doesn’t seem heavily commodified. So what is your impression of the noise genre from where you’re at?

NP:
Oh god it’s immense. It’s worldwide, so it’s a huge scale. If you’re going to break it down culturally, definitely Europe has it over the US as far as the influence goes, that’s in my opinion and experience, because, you know, what’s interesting in that particular genre in America is a very small percentage compared to just the immensity of labels and artists and potential that is over across the pond, there’s just no comparison. But with the project Women Take Back The Noise, it was amazing because when I was actually having people get these through the web site, a ton of Europe sales, and a very small dribble of US, and then it sort of evened out over time as more people have found out about it, but definitely more of the interest factor was in Europe, and the UK.

It is a global phenomena, it is huge. People are just finding out more ways to experiment as more of the technology comes to them, but it definitely has pockets where it’s importance is.. it’s sort of valued more. I don’t see a lot of the culture here in this country sort of grappling with it, here it’s still smallish communities. It’s not like a big wave yet here.

And yet again that’s like my personal experience so.. it’s definitely an interesting phenomenon but you can slice it so many ways. There’s lots of areas with huge experimental music communities like where I’m at in the Bay area in particular. All over the place in this country there’s huge pockets like that. Overall I think there’s still a larger interest for this type of thing in like Italy and Norway and Europe, it’s just bigger.

WU:
So how long have you been playing music, and how important is ‘play’ to what you’re doing?

NP:
Right, well I’ll answer the first part of that first. Music, probably from day one, has always been in my life. Mainly melodic music. Starting with as early as age three we had a piano in the house.. and I was banging on that thing from my earliest memory. Probably people picked me up to play it I’m sure. I always had some form of instrument around me. Piano playing led to other instruments. I of course went the classical route as a young child, and then branched off in my own, when I got to be a teenager of course rock and roll and punk and everything affected my taste and I started getting involved with bands after high school, in college. Mainly sort of ‘New Wave’ I guess is the word.. that’s where my first electronic music fascination was.. sort of post-punk, early new wave bands.

I had gotten hip to keyboards and especially the ones you could modify the patches and the wave forms and things like that. Back in the 80’s I had gotten a set of Korgs that I could midi together and I used to fiddle with that all through college, actually.

And after college I ended up moving to Chicago, where I was actually from. I moved back home and worked in record stores and met some fascinating artists and people that were actually making synthesizers and really doing some amazing work as far as electronics, and that’s where I met Dan Burke – his moniker in the ‘quote-unquote’ noise genre is Illusion of Safety – and he’s been very prolific and a huge vortex for me anyway, I’ve learned about lot of really cool stuff from him. I got hip to z’ev through that connection, and how to actually manipulate sound, organic materials, things like that, metals. And of course working in record stores definitely pointed me in various directions of working in that ilk.

And as to “Play”, play is definitely a big factor, huge, we must play, we are curious, we have these damn opposable thumbs. Stupid Monkey, must play. But yes. When I set out to make the packaging, that’s where it all tied in, that’s where the play element got tied into it. I’m a very tactile oriented artist, I like things that I can manipulate, and when I found out there were quite a few women on the project who were interested in circuit-bending.. I’ve been interested in circuit-bending and I’ve been dabbling in it because of all the people I know out here that actually do it, I mean, I live with one, but we have a really good friend who… he goes by the moniker Univac, like the Univac computer or something, anyway he does these amazing modified toys that he takes apart and recreates and does custom paint jobs in all these beautiful shapes and sizes. And great inspiration to us, and as Big City Orchestra we actually use several of his instruments on many occasions.

When I found out that there were other women on this project who were into that, in fact Khate from Virginia, her whole schtick, everything she records with uses her modified toys. She re-incorporates those into her sound , and I actually contacted her and told her ‘Hey I’m going to make the packaging circuit-bent because you definitely inspired me and I want to have some type of tie-in to the artists who are actually into this type of thing in my design. Now all I need is to figure out what I’m going to do.’ And that actually took me like a year.

So that’s why the project took three years, and a year of that was all me trying to figure out this design, because I wanted it to be fun, I wanted when somebody got this in their hands I wanted the whole thing to make sense on that level of keeping your sense of humor intact. And then also like, you know, I’m getting to play with this and make my own noise! How exciting! How fun! But I also wanted it to be ultimately a feminine design, in a way, and kind of half-way a joke without being mean to women. I didn’t want it to be one of those cruel things that you see like tampon art or whatever. Which I find kind of cruel in a way. That’s twisted, but I didn’t want to go that direction too far, but I did want it to be that sort of inside joke, in away.

I wanted people to laugh. I also wanted the glee of the unexpected when you push that spike, when you get that jolt, you’re like “Oooh!” you know, and I definitely wanted that. So the whole thing had to be a fun thing for people to manipulate… Actually Univac helped me design how it works. I saw the same thing in one of his designs that he did for a joke, and he calls it “the dumbest bend ever”… it’s sort of insulting to myself to say but it is actually like the stupidest, easiest thing to do what I did.

WU:
Right, but you made a thousand of them. You don’t want it to be that complex.

NP:
(Laughs) You get really good at soldering after about maybe the 300′th time you do it. You could do it in your sleep. It’s very alchemical, I mean it really is. The whole bending metal thing, there’s really just something about that. And getting high off the fumes. Oh my god the first week after I did that, I almost passed out, it was just so intense to smell that stuff, but apparently they have cold solder irons which I’m going to look into.. they don’t have that problem.

WU:
What are you working on next? What’s your interests and where are you at musically?

NP:
Right now in particular most everything I do is Big City Orchestra these days. We’ve got a couple of big projects that we’re working on. We’re getting ready to go to Europe this summer and take on a live performance version of a recorded work we did a few years ago in 2003 called “In a Persian Market” which is an 80 minute continuous piece, continuous track. It was our adaptation of a 1920’s piece of sheet music written by Albert Ketelby who was a British composer and he wrote these very thematic works. He would get a theme going, like he would do these Persian themes and very short pieces and write several movements and call it “In a Persian Market” They all had little librettos that went with them and sometimes would have vocals. They were very cute.

Apparently he never left his own country, so it’s funny, he wrote songs about Arabia, and he wrote songs about Japan, and other parts of the world but he never actually left Britain. So all of these pieces have these very kitsch flavors to them. And we took this piece and we deconstructed it and put it into our own way with the electronic instruments and the noise and the field recordings and weird lyrics that we made up and things like that and basically we’re going to do that live, in Europe, so we’re getting ready to re-score it and take apart all the digital parts once again, so we can take it with us on the laptop. It’s one of the big things we’re working on right now, is doing that live.

And the other thing is that we’ve got a couple of other live shows. We’re working on a noise puppet diorama that’s taking place here in Oakland. It’s going to be a tribute to sumer solstice and it’s all done in shadow puppets and silhouettes and acoustic instruments. Then of course there’s always like 800 other BCO studio projects that we have. So depending on whatever is going on at the moment we’ve always got recording going on here. It’s constant. For as long as I’ve known dAS, and it’s been almost 20 years now that I’ve known him. BCO has been a long running thing, and it’s always been like that.

Every place I’ve ever known him to live there’s constant flow of people coming through town and recording. Any time I have ever ended up with a BCO recording or cassette before I was with him I would always look at who was in it and go ‘Wait a minute, those are not the same set of people.. what’s going on, why is this band changing so much?” But that’s just how it is, and it’s one of the few things I’ve come across like it, I love collaboration. It’s definitely one of the ways that I’ve found to keep tunneling into the future and cutting things up and throwing them back into the mix. I love cut-up art. Cut-up art is great.

WU:
“you be you, I be I” – I dig that. (ed: ubuibi.org)

NP:
Yeah, that’s a dAS-ism. He’s come up with so many things that have just really stuck, that are fun like that.. “UBUIBI” and a lot of people try to pronounce it as a word, you know.. and it’s just fun to make word play like that. But I’m definitely, you know, more and more inspired by the past BCO thing. There’s been so many releases of this collaborative thing, there’s like over 500 cassettes in the past. I try in the 8 years I’ve been living with him here, he’s got the archives and I try and catch up every once in the while. It’s just endless.

And then he’s got reel-to-reels which I’ve yet to hear, and supposedly there’s like Lisa Suckdog is on one of them and there’s like a rare recording session with her. dAS used to work for Ralph Records, home to The Residents and such, and so he’s got like a ton of that stuff but one day, one day when I’m sitting around and retired.. (laughs)

WU:
You’ll have the vaults to go back to… And how about No Other Radio? What can you tell me about that?

NP:
Well, No Other Radio… let me back up by saying that No Other Radio was originally, about 26 years ago started by one of the guys from The Mutants. John Gullack is one of the guitarists from the band The Mutants, and he started this show out of the need for a basically creating a place where people could hear stuff that no other radio was playing. Meaning home recordings, weird noise, field recordings, all kinds of stuff people were working with in their home studios or bands, but they were all doing it on cassette, because that was the medium at the time. And John was doing mail art, which was a huge influence on this cassette culture at this time, this was in the 80’s. And he was receiving a huge amount of cassettes from all over the world and that’s how the radio show started, was John getting all these people to write in.. he would join lists and groups and things, all through the mail. And people would send him these amazing DIY projects, and he got the radio show on KPFA with that premise, and it was a really cool think, it was a place to find out about these bands, there was no other way to hear this stuff. So dAS, my husband/my partner/Big City Orchestra engineer, he has known John for years and dAS had a radio show in Santa Cruz, and John used to do the KPFA show and then dAS would tape it and re-air the No Other Radio show on UCSC’s radio. So it was more exposure on top of the already huge Pacifica exposure, then there was this university exposure. And it caused this whole influx of, yet again, more cassette culture. And so they were both responsible for this continuing to infiltrate this particular style of radio. And the No Other Radio show, John retired from it and when the hand-off occurred some other people got involved to keep the show alive and those people were Scott Jenerik and Randy Yau who are also huge influence on the sort of sub-underground music, industrial music, experimental music community in particularly San Francisco. So they both kept the show alive and dAS got involved a few years after that. He then took over the show with another DJ so there’s two more DJ’s that continue to do the No Other Radio network and it’s been going for 26 years like this with them and the network of tape trading, DIY trading.

I come in as sort of a co-pilot, I don’t actually do any of the board work, but I do some of the interviews and I definitely network and bring the guests on to play and perform live, I do a lot of that. And since the Women Take Back The Noise project I’ve got like a huge bunch of people who contact me who still submit a lot of work for the radio show. So it’s a good avenue for that, for me, to be able to use this form of communication to help them get their stuff heard.

Don’t forget to check out the upcoming Gspot on Sunday, April 15th, when Ninah Pixie and I discuss more about the circuit-bending packaging and the secret she had in mind that she’s kept to herself until now. Plus, more about the history of No Other Radio, and an in depth focus on Women Take Back the Noise and some of the specific artists involved. With music from Ava Mendoza, Khate, BCO Women’s Auxiliary, and Choronzon, only on the Gspot.

Until then, check out these links:

For the Women Take Back the Noise anthology details:

http://ubuibi.org/wtbtn

For Ollapodrida, Ninah Pixie’s Blog:

http://ollapodrida.net/blog

For more about the Big City Orchestre web:

http://ubuibi.org

and for the No Other Radio network:

http://nootherradio.blogspot.com