by Fred
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Take your favorite album, it probably doesn’t matter which: Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin. Grace by Jeff Buckley. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast. The odds are that each track seems cleft from the next. And, more fundamentally, that the various moving parts within those tracks are alienated from each other. That — even at its finest moments — you can detect the push-and-pull of the mixing board. This is not to indict the dissonance at the level of notes and scales (say, a loud C rubbing shoulders with an even louder C#), but something at a more cellular level: call it songwriting dissonance. Maybe Radiohead briefly shed that skin for Kid A, but they immediately grew it back. Maybe The Cure flirted with the idea while writing – ironically enough – Disintegration. Maybe.

Dave Keifer’s music does not suffer from songwriting dissonance.

To be sure, notes smash joyously into other notes – one cannot help but unpack the Large Hadron Collider as a stock comparison – but as we wrote of Do the Magnet last month, “Disparate samples, instruments, harmonies, and one-liners leap from the ether in a single voice.” Reviews of Dave Keifer/Cagey House seem always to fall back on a few key, potent themes: Cartoon. Playground. Fun. Weird. And these descriptions aren’t far off. Here, you’ll hear a brief nod to the “Rawhide” theme song, and there, the sound of a man pretending to snore. Then, the unmistakable old-school sound of a UFO about to land, and now, what just might be an accordion. Always the bizarro sampling and transcendent time signatures. Always the playful stop-start keyboard riffs and the summer day-dissonance. The jokes are postmodern, like the single bicycle horn that becomes two, then three, then multiplies into what might be a flock of cranes, until you question whether the first honk even came from a bicycle at all.

As odd as it may seem, these elements actually belong together. Indeed, they seem to have been born simply to form music together. To take the conversation back to the world of cartoons: the cat chases the mouse, the dog chases the cat, and the old lady with the broom chases the dog, and in time the walls of the house fall in, but they are all drawn with the same hand.

I mean, really. How the hell does he do that? One was thing for certain: this wasn’t an accident. Chance. Or was it? It was time to unmask the villain behind B for Breakfast and let him explain himself. And he agreed.

The Muse In Music: Other reviews and interviews find you dropping names and terms like Hanna Höch, Dionysian and Aristotle. You’re clearly well read. How does that influence your music?
Dave Keifer: Sometimes there’s a very direct influence. Like when I was first fooling around with cutting up abandoned tracks and editing them together, I went to the library and got all these books about collagists. Hanna Höch happened to be among them, and she had this method of working that I, for a while at least, pretty much adopted.

Sometimes, it’s just a matter of recognizing things you’re into already anyway. Like that quote from Aristotle about art loving accident and accident loving art. I’m not sure where exactly I saw that, but when I did I knew exactly what he meant. My whole method of writing is based on incorporating as many accidents as possible. For instance, I have this big library of sound that I keep as unorganized as possible, the idea being that the longer I spend rooting around for a specific sound, the more likely I’ll find something better than the one I’m looking for.

Also, just to be honest, I don’t know what ever possessed me to use a word like Dionysian. I should probably apologize for that.

TMIM: Maybe, but answer us this before you apologize: had you just read The Birth of Tragedy? Or had you just watched the Val Kilmer film The Doors?
DK: Ha! Neither actually. But I do remember seeing an interview with Ray Manzarek on TV once, and being impressed with two things–his elucidation of the Dionysian/Appolonian dichotomy and how many times he said “man.” Which was a lot–even for an old-school hipster.

TMIM: Your track “Soft Cover” (2007) is downright mainstream compared to some of your more recent work. What is responsible for such a sudden aesthetic shift?
DK: That’s a funny one, because it’s exactly the kind of tune that, at the time I wrote it, I was trying very hard not to write. Up until then I did the tracks that were on The Cosmic Drain, my deal had been pretty much to present odd musical ideas in conventional settings. I would have sort of weird melodies and harmonies, but with standard song structures, and using the standard bass, guitar, keyboards, and drum kit instrumentation. And it was all riff-based music. But eventually I got really dissatisfied with that, and felt the need to do something entirely different. I wanted some kind of different model. But I had no idea of what I was doing, and you can hear me flailing around on the tracks on The Window Hat. Some of those tunes are actually grotesque. “Soft Cover” not so much. I had a pretty cool bass line, then I put some echo on it and it just took off. It sounded to me like a cowboy song, and it more-or-less wrote itself over the course of a couple evenings. Every now and then that happens. You’ll be working really hard on one thing and something else will drop into your lap, and even if it’s not exactly what you want, it would seem ungrateful not to accept it.

As for the “new” stuff I wanted to do, it was probably another year-and-a-half before I came up with anything that was sufficiently different, but also kind of good.

TMIM: You talk about flailing and not knowing what you were doing. Don’t you believe that that is the artist’s job? To make a mess of things, yet at the same time document his life at exactly that moment in time?
DK: Yep. Especially the making a mess part–for me anyway. I’ve found that the quickest way to produce mediocre music is to proceed in an orderly fashion. And for the most part, the ideas that occur to me are pretty banal. The stuff I’ve done that I think is actually good–the stuff I’ve released, for the most part–is the stuff that I’ve done as unconsciously as possible. And for me that means incorporating as much chance and accident as I can.

TMIM: Pardon the disbelief, but Do the Magnet doesn’t sound like chance and accident.
DK: That’s good! Chaos and randomness make for good procedures, but not necessarily for good listening. I really like messy means, but the end product shouldn’t be a mess. I guess it’s like Dr. Frankenstein–things are going to get ugly in the lab, but you want a natural looking monster. Or at least one with the right number of arms.

TMIM: To what sort of music did your parents expose you growing up?
DK: I grew up in the olden days, with a big console stereo system that looked like a dresser, and LPs. They had what would today look like an almost comically eclectic collection, but which actually made some sense at the time. I remember a multi-album set of Gregorian Chants, the soundtrack to South Pacific, some Eddy Arnold records, some Kingston Trio, an album of military marches by the Royal Marine Band, and this really cool Ray Coniff Christmas album. I’m sure there were others, but that’s the general drift.

TMIM: Since I’m always the oldest guy in the room, I always assume that everyone else is 26. So tell me, what is your take on the older formats versus the newer ones? (Vinyl, CD’s, electronic files.)
DK: It’s hard to say because it’s so much a question of perception. I mean, I seem to recall that vinyl had lots more presence than digital music, but I haven’t listened to an LP in years, so maybe I’m just remembering it wrong. As for WAV versus MP3, I usually can’t tell the difference–unless it’s a really poor quality MP3. But one thing I’ve noticed that I think is real–and not just perception–is that when I listen to a piece of music on an MP3 player, it sounds like a miniaturized version of itself. Maybe it’s the EQ settings, or the earbuds, maybe it’s just listening closely at a relatively low volume, but somehow the songs–to me–end up sounding something like models of songs. Not that that’s a bad thing. In fact, I kind of like it. To the degree that I mix my stuff to the way it sounds on an MP3 player. I used to burn CDs and check the mix that way, but not any more. There’s a part at the end of “Camping with Jimmy” from Do the Magnet that has two different tracks running in the left and right channels, and I burned a CD of it and it didn’t sound so hot, but on an iPod, I think it sounds pretty cool. So I guess everything has its merits.

TMIM: More on mixing for MP3 players: please tell me if I’m close. I call that gradual shift “music for cars vs. music for workstations.”
DK: Yes! I think so. In fact, it seems to me that the era of the giant drum sound is already long gone.

TMIM: I once heard an artist – I believe a rapper – say that by early adulthood he had come to terms with all of his parents’ music. It leads to the question: have you come to terms with the Royal Marine Band?
DK: Oh, yeah. I remember all the stuff fondly. The Royal Marines did a version of “Pomp and Circumstance” that was really moving–very slow and sad, but really dignified. And as a kid, and I mean like at seven or eight, I kind of just accepted it as music, as something that gave off a particular vibe, and not as something that had any extra-musical signifiers attached to it. Although I guess I knew enough not to tell my friends to come over and listen to this great marching band record. And I guess if you listen long enough and with enough curiosity, you eventually get back to that state–when it’s just music and that’s enough.

TMIM: What was your first musical instrument?
DK: Harmonica. When I was 17 I was just really into the blues. I started noodling on pianos a little later, and then picked up guitar too. I played drums in my twenties, but never got much better than lousy. Although I practiced a lot.

TMIM: I can’t get my brain around a harmonica, piano, guitar, and drum-playing young man evolving to the point of B is for Breakfast. Do you still have that particular road map still laying around?
DK: Start at Charlie Patton, and then head for John Cage via Schoenberg. Double back through Bali, where they make the Gamelon music, and be sure to pass Scott Joplin along the way. And if you get lost, stay that way for as long as possible.

TMIM: Some of us find track names of instrumental pieces far more interesting than song lyrics. Do you have any internal guidelines you’d like to share?
DK: I like titles too–”Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” “Nine Types of Industrial Pollution,” things like that. I try to make mine distinctive, but I also try not to be too cute about it. Sometimes they’re inside jokes, sometimes they’re very roundabout descriptions, some just grow out of the original file name, and those can be pretty arbitrary. Any in particular that you’re curious about?

TMIM: In your case, political and overly-philosophical and lovesick track names are conspicuous in their absence. That’s what I should have said.
DK: Yeah, anything didactic or too personal–or too overt in any way–gets vetoed early.

TMIM: It’s all cobwebs and crickets at your Myspace and Twitter pages. You’ve also indicated that you don’t Facebook. Your disinterest in online networking somehow seems at odds with your up-to-the-second approach to music. Any comment?
DK: I was pretty active on Myspace for a while. And I made a lot of netlabel contacts there. But a site like that can be a real drain on your time. I found that there were days when I was spending more time networking that writing, and that didn’t seem to make any sense. I’ve noticed the same thing when I’m looking around for new sounds or virtual instruments, it can just eat up hours and hours. Maybe I’m just not good at managing time.

TMIM: “Virtual instruments?” Go easy on us, here. We’re novices.
DK: A virtual instrument is just a piece of software that makes sounds that you can play like a real instrument. There’s one called Tone Matrix for instance, that’s really cool. That’s a web-based one (although you can get an app that does works just like it) and also stand alone, in the sense that it doesn’t need any other software to make it work. There are others that need to be plugged into bigger pieces of software called digital audio workstations, which allow you to record and sequence the notes that come out of your virtual instruments. Alot of the virtual instruments are freeware and there are gazillions of them–an endless supply, it’s like picking up seashells at the beach. If you’re not careful it can become an end in itself.

TMIM: Jump forward ten years from here: where do you see the music industry?
DK: More fragmented, I guess. Still around but not so monolithic. I don’t really celebrate the fall of the music industry–sure it’s a vast, corrupt establishment, but a lot of good came out of it: Duke Ellington, Coletrane, Glenn Gould, Dylan. I mean as an amateur musician, it’s irrelevant to me, but as a listener, a fan, I feel like I have stake in it. Not that there won’t always be good music around, one way or another.

And I guess the creative commons/netlabel scene will keep growing. The best thing about that, I think, is that it’s really international. It’s cool to have this big world-wide free thing going on. Kind of subversive, in a way.

TMIM: I don’t necessarily disagree. But don’t you think that Bob Dylan would face a similar reception today? I mean from the listeners, not in terms of a big-dollar recording contract.
DK: I think so. I was listening to The Freewheeling Bob Dylan the other day, for the first time in years, and it was just amazing. He was around 22 when he made it, and it’s absolutely incredible how good that record is. Especially when compared to the other folk stuff that was going on at the time. So, yeah, something that good is always going affect people no matter what. But I still wonder if what happened next–amazing electric albums, and the long eccentric ride from John Wesley Harding to the present–would have happened if he hadn’t been under the care of a major label. If he would have had the resources, or the latitude to bring it all off.

I could just be being nostalgic. Like the way people get about the old Hollywood studio system. I mean, I think it’s true that there are lots more interesting and odd movies coming out of today’s independent set up, but when you’re watching some really good movie from the ’30s, it’s hard not to think that they did things pretty cool back then.

TMIM: So – in University Economics terms – the entrepreneurial risk has shifted back to the musician, who really ought to be specializing in making music?
DK: That would seem to be the case. As for whether it’s good or bad, now I’m not sure. The more I think about stuff like this the less solid my opinions become. As you pointed out, good music will always find a way. Look at Charles Ives–amazing avant garde composer by night, insurance executive by day. One never knows.

TMIM: What’s next for Cagey House?
DK: There’s an album coming out for Dog Eared called Suspenders–some time this Fall, I hope. That one has a bunch of real strange abstract things similar to the ones on Five Laminated Postures. Then there’s one–as yet untitled–coming out on Umor Rex (also later this year) that’s kind of a follow up to Do the Magnet. One of the tracks (“Ethel of the Rocks”) is posted on Dogmazic.

TMIM: No alt-metal experiments or cover versions of “Pokerface?”
DK: Not yet, anyway.

Thank you, Dave!