Interview with Aids Wolf and the CD release of the ‘Very Friendly’ remix album and ‘Ma Vie Banale Avant-Garde’ on Skin Graft Records.

If you browse Fuzzy Sun now and then I think you know I am a pretty big fan of the Skin Graft Record Label. The label releases new as well as long out of print stuff, remastered weirdo music, legendary noise and punk and Japanese weirdo stuff, Comics, … .It just does not stop and it eats all you money and it even feels good. A while ago the label rereleased the two CDs from the legendary Canadian noiserock band Aids Wolf and now it is time to actually open thy wallet and buy them.

By now most of the Fuzzy Sun readers know I am an excellent journalist with perfect English and spelling skills so what else did you expect then a amazing interview with the band.

So while you are listening to the music of Aids Wolf and counting your money to buy the cds, check out the questions I asked Yannick, Alex and Chloë.

Question 1: You have to choose one song, you will hear this song only for the rest of your life and it will play constantly and you cannot turn it off and you have to choose. You can choose only one song per bandmember.

Chloe: I’d rather live in total silence than have the same song forever.

Alex: Yakety Sax

Yannick: I am more the album type, and frankly even that would be annyoing? I’d rather just chose 4’33” and make my own sounds. However Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band’s Bellerin’ Plain has been a big influence on me, and it’s a really deep and complex song that deserves re-listening, but the prospect of having to listen to anything eternally on repeat— I’d rather be death

Question 2: You can shapeshift into an animal, wich animal do you choose and what would you do most of the time?

Chloë :I’ve been a slug, just laying around for quite awhile.

Alex: Cat and sleep

Yannick: an amoeba, so I have no consciousness and make bigger organisms die

Question 3: What was the weirdest or strangest experience you had on tour/live show?

Chloë: Probably the times people recognized us on the street or at brunch the day after the show. Though they where probably there, it always seemed so odd that our very niche, very abrasive band would get recognized while eating pancakes.

Alex: Oh man… This is a tough question because there are literally TONS of possible answers. I could write a whole ass book just answering that question. I’ll sum it up by saying we almost called the last AW album Harsh Human Style because on any given night of tour you might encounter a variation on Harsh Human Styles. Every story I could tell you as an answer to this question could be boiled down to a Harsh Human Style…

Yannick: A lot of them were weird? I mean there are some really intense stories, or just depressing ones. However, I don’t really feel like putting that on record as I don’t know, someone we care about might feel hurt? It’s the kind of fodder that can only be told verbally. I mean, we toured Israel for instance; already this suggests a lot.

Question 4: Favourite books?

Chloë: Ive been getting a lot from Mary Oliver’s Devotions and Ingeborg Bachman’s The Thirtieth Year lately, and in general am really inspired and influenced by Clarice Lispector, Lydia Davis, Eileen Myles, and Mary Ruefle.

Alex: The Unofficial Guide to Hockey’s Most Unusual Records by Don Weekes and Kerry Banks, Greystone Books, 2002.

Yannick: Have been going through the writings of clarice lispector lately; it’s really disorienting and dreamy, it really throws off your sensation of time and space, while calling for a re-consideration of our sensual relationships with things.

Question 5: Are you still making music in other bands or projects?

Chloë: I work on lyrics and scores with Yannick in our joint art practice. We are artists who sometimes work in video or scored performance and these often have musical components. It’s extremely different from what we’ve done with AW and is even pretty different from project to project but it all comes from the same obsessive interests.

Alex: I have a project with a friend named Rian that’s based around random midi information being spat out to various electronic instruments. I have a long distance collab with my friends John and Nate who are in Michigan. It is really weird music. There should be a seven inch out of that soon. One day I will make a third and final Drainolith record.

Yannick: I have been writing music for our recent video and live works, it’s been quite something to go back into it after like 6 years hiatus, and actually composing in notation and all. Learned a great deal while doing it— doing research for scores I really enjoy consulting Mauricio Kagel’s scores, which are really unusual and playful. Having the privilege to work collaboratively with Chloë on the music, and having great musicians performing our stuff is quite satisfying too.

‘Ma Vie Banale Avant-Garde’ was recorded at Dub Narcotic Studios in Olympia in 2011 as a double LP and is the last album by Aids Wolf. And again we get a CD release from this double LP on Skin Graft Records.