Huntsville

Huntsville took some time during their recent tour to answer some questions about their fantastic new album For the Middle Class, out now on Rune Grammofon.

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CMG: Introduce yourselves. How did you get into music? What do you do besides music?

Ingar Zach: I’ve been playing drums since the age of 7, beginning with school band and later performing prog rock, jazz big band, modern jazz, folk music, and then dedicating my time to improvisation and experimental music in many forms. Basically, music is my life. I live off my music and when I am not working I am home sleeping, playing with the kid, and spending time with my wife, family, and friends.

Ivar Grydeland: I started with music when I picked up my mother’s old guitar that she used in the Salvation Army when she was young — a terrible guitar, and as I have done with all my other guitars, I managed to destroy it totally after some crazy and stupid idea of making a “very special guitar with a very special feature.” This guitar, I think, was “rebuilt” as a fretless guitar. What a stupid idea!

I have no life besides music.

Tonny Kluften: I started with electric bass, of course, playing Norwegian folk dance music in a duo with an accordion player. I soon abandoned that for more “exciting challenges” in pop/rock cover music. I still remember the first time I improvised; it was during “I Just Called to Say I Love You” by Stevie Wonder. I was 15 and I did a slide up from D to G using a pentatonic scale. That was sweeeet.

I went to blues, jazz, improv, and finally ended up in Huntsville. Besides music? Nada. Well, I have a nice family. And I make some crappy Internet sites.

CMG: How did the band come together?

Ivar: The trio is a sort of continuation of a duo composed of Ingar and I. We played some gigs every year between 2000 and 2005 and we realized that our music had developed into something new that really needed Tonny to be fulfilled.

Ingar: The three of us have been working together for 10 years now in different combinations, mostly in the ever-changing No Spaghetti Edition (an improvising collective), but also for a short period in the quartet HISS with keyboard player Pat Thomas. As a trio we had been rehearsing and playing together off and on, but had not really discovered a group sound we wanted to take further until three years ago when we started buying sruti boxes and tabla machines. We came across some lovely country music and Ivar bought a banjo, and we started to include these instruments at our rehearsals. From then on even old man Tonny got his hard head interested in things other than Ornette Coleman, and things started to happen.

CMG: What’s the composition process like for you guys? Is this all improv-based?

Ingar: No, it’s not, although it’s a very important tool we use to achieve the organic development in the pieces we create. Tonny and Ivar live in Oslo, I live in Madrid, so we have to meet up once in a while, and also exchange ideas over internet. We work with specific parameters for each piece: it could be a groove, a tonal center, some bass lines, or whatever, really.

Ivar: We put these elements together and Ingar’s groove, a certain bass line and some guitar chords makes a composition.

Ingar: And then we try to improvise a form where we are all equal and responsible.

Ivar: …find new ways to work around these elements, new ways to put them together. So we play compositions — it is possible to hear many of the same elements in our concerts. Some people even think that we are playing the same tunes at the concerts.

CMG: I’m really interested in the way you draw disparate sounds together (the banjo, your tabla boxes, etc.). What instruments and equipment are each of you using?

Ingar: I use two snare drums, one upside-down to be able to use the snares. When I put my electronic tabla machine close the snares it vibrates and gets an amazing sound that I am totally in love with. It doesn’t sound like anything else I’ve heard. Then I have one bass drum, horizontally on my right hand. The snare drums and the bass drum are in the same height. I don’t use any cymbals and I don’t use bass drum pedals. I do this deliberately to force myself to think differently about the role of the drummer in a band. I mean, how many drummers take the traditional drum set for granted when they start playing drums?

In addition I use a lot of metal percussion, singing bowls treated with bass bows, and also electric fans all over the place.

Ivar: I use a good (not yet destroyed) acoustic guitar, a pedal steel guitar with a simple loop machine, an electric guitar, and a plain 5-stringed banjo. I also use a prepared 6-stringed banjo and short wave radios for the more noisy electronic sounds.

Tonny: A double bass, often prepared, and a Roland TR-77 Rhythm box.

CMG: In my review of the album, I talked a lot about temporal and tonal elements, or I guess more specifically these great moments where things realign or completely derail or irrevocably change the tone of the song. That’s my interpretation, but is that what you guys are going for as a band? What’s a GREAT musical moment for the band?

Ingar: For me the best musical moments are when all the layers working in performance vibrate, like total dissonance, and the concept of time disappears. That is a great place to be. You just don’t want it to end.

Tonny: When the time vanishes, I simply love that. And when we can stretch the tonality to the point where there is no more tonality — just a state of tones? That’s fantastic.

CMG: How much of your material is looped? Because, I mean, Ingar’s arms must be falling off with some of those steady drum lines if it isn’t.

Ingar: The tabla machine on my snare drum creates a kind of never-ending groove. On top of that I add brushes; I want to integrate those into the tabla groove as much as possible to be able to make an organic rhythmic whole.

Ivar: On the album I just use a loop on my pedal steel guitar. Now I also use a loop on my electric guitar live.

Tonny: The Roland TR-77 works like a loop of course, but its hard to tell where the loop start and stops only by listening. That’s because I will not play it in synching 4/4 tempo, but rather in polyrhythms against other stuff. I also very often adjust the tempos of different parts of the looped sequence.

CMG: Do you have jazz-training, or experience in jazz? To my ear, it especially sounds like Tonny has played in more traditional bop or post-bop ensembles.

Ingar: I think all three of us have a jazz background. None of us has had success, I’ll take the liberty to say, but yes, we have had jazz training.

Ivar: I’m the least successful jazz player of us. And you’re right about Tonny.

Tonny: How the fuck did you spot that???

CMG: What’s the influence of Ornette Coleman on your work?

Ingar: This is Tonny’s world. I have never listened to Ornette, I am sorry.

Tonny: Hours and hours of listening many years ago. Not anymore. But the polyrhythmic approach of Coleman and Prime Time have influenced me, yes.

CMG: Any other influences?

Ivar: Gillian Welsch.

Ingar: Good music in general, like Olivier Messiaen, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Nusfrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Dolly Parton, Giacinto Scelsi.Stevie Wonder, Bjørnar Andresen.

CMG: The Norway scene continues to astound me with some of the best flagrantly experimental music, and it has been doing that since the late ’90s. What’s it like being part of such a vibrant community, but also one that has that kind of staying power?

Ingar: I like good music from many parts of the world and I personally don’t think it’s so much better in Norway than anywhere else, it’s just that Norway has been really hyped the last decade. I am not saying there isn’t good experimental music in Norway, just that there are a lot of nice things out there which don’t get so much attention.

Ivar: I totally agree with Ingar on this. Norway is a small country with quite a weak cultural history (compared to France, Germany, or Austria, say). It also happens to be quite rich. The only way a small country like ours can get its culture known is to spend a lot of money on exporting. So Norwegian musicians can actually live from their music and play more abroad than many musicians from other countries. (I have no statistics on this, but anyway, this is how it is.) You see some of this in Switzerland as well — all this money doesn’t make the music better, just more known/seen/heard.

I spoke with a journalist from the Czech Republic about this some years ago. He seemed quite sad that all the good Czech music got so little attention. He was happy for all the Norwegian music, though, and wanted me to explain why there’s so much good music coming out of Norway. I think there’s just as much good music coming out of the Czech Republic, Poland, Wales, Portugal, wherever. It’s just that you don’t see all these bands touring that much.

Tonny: In the late ’90s it was great to be in Oslo and play; you played with everybody as many of the now-established musicians were starting up then. There have been some years or periods in between then and now that have been slow but things are picking up again. More young musicians are moving to town again. The quality of the music played is up and down, but things are happening and it’s good for the future.

CMG: Do you play experimental music? How would you describe what you do?

Ingar: I play what I play because it is a necessity for me. I never label what I play so for me it’s not a decision to play “experimental” music. I just want to play the music I like, something that matters to me, and I don’t care what it is called.

Ivar: Me too. I find it hard to describe, but not so necessary to do it. For some our music could be jazz, for others pop, and others electronic music.

And about experimental music — I don’t think it is experimental, really. Or to me experimental music is music made from experiments. And we are not experimenting; we simply play the music we like.

Tonny: I do not play experimental music. I know how it will sound before I play it. I experiment in the practice room. I am struggling too much with what I know so how would the audience take it if I even started experiment on stage? They just would throw me out and I don’t want that.

Ivar: The only thing I know is that it is music for the middle class.

CMG: Why?

Ingar: Because it is! I know many middle class people and they can’t get enough of Huntsville.