52nd City

Q-and-A with: Lee Ranaldo

Had an opportunity to interview Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth this past week, in advance of his appearance in St. Louis with his side-project Text of Light at Webster University. On Saturday, the group will be performing alongside the films of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, at the Winifred Moore Auditorium. Tickets are $10 at: 314-968-7487.

This is the full version of the interview, granted because of a story written for the Post-Dispatch. That shorter version of this Q/A is running in today's "Get Out" section of the P-D and I thank Michael Steinberg of the WUFS and Cliff Froehlich for helping make this chance available to me. It was no small amount of fun.

By Thomas Crone

The opportunity to interview Lee Ranaldo was too appealing to even think of passing up. Coming to St. Louis as part of Text of Light, an all-star improv group dedicated to playing along to the films of Stan Brakhage, Ranaldo gave up 15-minutes of a recent Friday morning to discuss this single-outing gig. And we even snuck in a Sonic Youth question at the end. Part of this interview ran in the Thursday, September 15 edition of “Get Out” in the Post-Dispatch. The rest of the questions and answers, though, appear only here, in full text.

TC: How does this show fit into your schedule?
Ranaldo: We’re just coming out to do the one date. We do some touring, on occasion. We’ve toured Europe this year, with tours, for us, being four or five shows. More often that not, we’re playing cinemas and festivals. But not all shows are linked together.

Had an opportunity to interview Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth this past week, in advance of his appearance in St. Louis with his side-project Text of Light at Webster University. On Saturday, the group will be performing alongside the films of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, at the Winifred Moore Auditorium. Tickets are $10 at: 314-968-7487.

This is the full version of the interview, granted because of a story written for the Post-Dispatch. That shorter version of this Q/A is running in today's "Get Out" section of the P-D and I thank Michael Steinberg of the WUFS and Cliff Froehlich for helping make this chance available to me. It was no small amount of fun.

By Thomas Crone

The opportunity to interview Lee Ranaldo was too appealing to even think of passing up. Coming to St. Louis as part of Text of Light, an all-star improv group dedicated to playing along to the films of Stan Brakhage, Ranaldo gave up 15-minutes of a recent Friday morning to discuss this single-outing gig. And we even snuck in a Sonic Youth question at the end. Part of this interview ran in the Thursday, September 15 edition of “Get Out” in the Post-Dispatch. The rest of the questions and answers, though, appear only here, in full text.

TC: How does this show fit into your schedule?
Ranaldo: We’re just coming out to do the one date. We do some touring, on occasion. We’ve toured Europe this year, with tours, for us, being four or five shows. More often that not, we’re playing cinemas and festivals. But not all shows are linked together.

TC: Did you know of the Webster U Film Series, specifically? How did this show come together?
Ranaldo: I think it came about through Roger, his connection to the Series. For us, I know only the little bit that I’ve heard from him. It’s certainly something that he brought to the table, having played there with the Alloy Orchestra.

TC: What’s the difference in the group’s dynamic, playing a one-off show, compared to run of several dates?
Ranaldo: When you play four or five shows in a row, there’s a certain kind of rhythm with the way we work. But it’s improvised, so we’re not playing songs that are going to get tighter. Doing one-offs can be more special. We choose the films very carefully. We’re focusing all our energies on playing the show in St. Louis right now. That makes it cooler, in a way.

TC: What was your initial introduction to the films of Brakhage?
Ranaldo: I studied his film and the whole American avant-garde cinema while in college. At that time, I was a film minor, majoring in visual arts. I was collaborating with a few different people in cinema. I made some film, took some classes and immersed myself in that type of cinema. That was the focus of the school: the American avant-garde, the non-Hollywood film. And there were some really interesting people there. Brakhage and others of his ilk spoke there.

TC: What were you looking for, in putting the group together?
Ranaldo: This group came together through an idea I’d had with Alan Licht, the other principal in it. It’s been our concept. He was also schooled in, and had an interest in, avant-garde cinema of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It started in 1999 with our friend Ullrich Krieger, a sax player from Berlin, who was playing with Zeitkratzer. They’d transcribed Lou Reed’s “Metal Machine Music” for a small orchestra, and had been playing that around. They commissioned different works from artists and I wrote some pieces for them. We became friends with Uli, who was coming through New York and asked about collaborating. Somehow, between the two of us, Alan and I, we decided to use films between the elements. We had Christian Marclay on turntables and William Hooker on drums. “Text of Light,” the film, is very extreme and minimalist and it showcased well. We tried to continue it whenever we could. With Ullrich being in Berlin, he can’t make all the shows. But we’ve become a little group collective. Either Tim Barnes or Hooker on drums and percussion; either Marclay or DJ Olive on turntables. I feel like I’m leaving out somebody. Oh, Roger Miller, formerly of Mission of Burma. So it’s been Alan and I with a rotating group of percussionists and turntablists. Sometimes, it’s pretty feasible to go gigs as a trio, with Alan, Olive and myself. We’ve played with a bunch of different quartets. There are a pair of nights coming up in early October, here in New York at the Kitchen, with a different grouping each night. It’s pretty fun when we do different lineups and it’s a different soundscape each time, that way. The first CD we’ve released has three pieces: one a trio, one a quartet and one a quintet. Which makes it neat to hear each version.

TC: Through your work and Roger Miller’s, I’m imagining a lot of people have found their way to this through more rock channels?
Ranaldo: The nature of what he’s been involved in, and with me, and playing with different Downtown musicians, there’s definitely interest in hearing us as players. I’d say there’s a 60/40 split with people interest in us and in the film work. We try to be clear and make a rule that the films are not bastardized in any way. We’re not presenting this as a Brakhage screening. We’re not really even reacting to the film. We’re playing improvised music to the film, juxtaposing each to each other. The film sets the time to a degree: when it starts, we start; when it ends, it’s over. It’s not like what Roger does with the Alloy Orchestra, playing to old Buster Keaton films and you hit your mark when he slips on a banana. This is not like that, at all. We’re abstract and improvised. We don’t as a rule watch the films carefully, sometimes we’ve not even seen the films before. That keeps it pretty separate. Having come out of the film world from university, or what not, there was a little controversy around this, in the world of non-mainstream film. There are purists, very strict codes of how to view these and Brakhage is the high priest of it all. It upset a lot of people, this work. There were some conversations on blogs and BBS’s, where people were upset by it. Which all lead to quite an interesting discussion. It’s documented that Brakhage himself had no issue with it, at all. What was clear was that this wasn’t a screening of his work or a collaboration. Hew knew people would do this and we never presented this as “Stan Brakhage Films with Music.” We’re creating textures to the music and that’s the history of it. His widow, Marilyn, has been very cool with us. No problems with what we’re doing, as long as we adhere to the rules. We keep the films in concert-like setting, not festival-like settings. She doesn’t want them shown in those settings. We’ve managed to work out a pretty good situation between her and us. And many of the structuralist film-heads have cooled out, by this point. Still great is that Brakhage is a great American artist that many people don’t know much about. It’s fun when people come away from shows, intrigued by him and seeking him out and his works. That’s a cool by-product of it.

TC: I can’t let you go without asking about Sonic Youth. What are the next steps there?
Ranaldo: We’ve been touring in Europe this summer for the most part. We played some really great shows. We have seven, eight, nine songs underway for our next record. We took a month’s break for some of us to take on our own projects. I have a big gallery show coming up in New York and Kim’s in England, working with an art project. Over the winter, we’ll record the next record. And we have a new SYR record coming. You know what those are? We’ve got a new one of those coming by the end of the year. It’s actually a Sonic Youth show, playing in front of a Brakhage film. We did it an Anthology Film Archives, where we did a memorial show for him, raising money for the preservation of his films. That’ll be out on SYR in December, or January. In the spring, Sonic Youth’s record will come out and we’ll see what happens from there. A big museum show will be coming in the fall of next year. It’ll feature artwork by all of us and collaborations between us and the people who’ve done our album covers. There’ll be films and a performances series and a highlighting of our covers. We’ll probably tour four-six museums with that, which is an exciting thing for us. And it’ll be our 25th anniversary next year and all that shit.

TC: That’s great. Thanks a lot for all your time today.
Ranaldo: That’s okay, thanks.

TC: Looking forward to the show next week. Take care.
Ranaldo: Okay, yeah. Take care.