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STIPPLICON - Not greased up and bent over and certainly not doing it anybody else's way, Stipplicon are the first & last truth of NYC.
15/09/01
Stipplicon
are yet another of New York City's undiscovered treasures. Songwriter and general mainmain, and even some time Moldy Peaches guitarist, Jack Dishel has just returned from a tour with The Moldy Peaches, which included the Reading/Leeds festival.

STIPPLICON

STIPPLICON We asked the main in question about the bands second album, "The Late Great Truth", the "Pro-Anti" label he shares with The Moldy Peaches and friends and seeing The Strokes rise and rise!

Crud: Tell us about "The Late Great Truth" and how is it different from your self titled debut?

Stipplicon: It's different in almost every way, I think. The whole thing is just more focused. The songs, the performances, the production. It knows what it is, it's not guessing. When we started, Stipplicon was like an inflated solo project, and now it's a real band. We are one creature with lots of arms and brains.

Crud: This new record seems to have a lot of the different influences you mentioned on your website You can hear the Pixies and Elliot Smith, can you tell me about some of the others? I picked up on a post-rock vibe-am I mad?

Stipplicon: I love all kinds of music. I could list them, I guess, but no matter who I mentioned I'd feel like I was cheating someone else. Some people more than others, you know, like I think that The Beatles and The Doors and Hendrix and early Metallica and Slayer and other metal stuff and lots of early 90's hip-hop like Gang Starr and Brand Nubian and stuff. The influences don't make much sense when you're listening to the album I think, because a lot of the influence you can't hear or see - it's in my head, an approach rather than a sound. But as far as the post-rock thing, I think you might be mad. I don't even know what post-rock means! Why post? I feel like labels like that are so afraid of themselves. I mean, it feels like anyone calling themselves post-rock is horrified to be associated with the past, they think they're beyond it or above it, but at the same time they take the majority of their influences from it. It's like being raised in a family that's good to you and teaches you almost everything you know and then as soon as you've taken everything you can from them, you start your own family and call it a post-family, because you're embarassed of your parents or something. I mean, of course, there's some monumentally cheesy shit that was made, but I ain't embarassed of rock! I fucking love rockin to rockin fucking rock rock rocking fucking rock. Yeeeeeah. It made me care about music more than anything else. I owe so much to it. I mean, we're not pumping out some tired blues shit or anything. I hate boring music whatever style it is. It's definitely new and real and cool as hell. But rock is my family name, no doubt about it.

Crud: "No Crowd" is a beautiful song. Can you tell us about the lyrical influence of that?

Stipplicon: Well, that's the oldest song on the album. I wrote it after I broke up with my first real serious girlfriend, and I was really really sad. I was very attached to her and I felt abandoned and alone and all the other horrible shit people feel when they're forced to leave a situation they don't want to leave. It was a hard thing to go through. So when I wrote the song I was dealing with it, trying to find an upside to the shit-monsoon I had to walk through. It's one of the most patient songs I've written, I think.

Crud: Production wise "The Late Great Truth" is produced by the band and Mark Ospovat and it's a very "live" sound you've created. Was that the intention? Also, were there any records around that you were influenced by production wise. Also, are there any producers you'd like to work with in the future?

Stipplicon: Yeah, we wanted an organic analogue sound on this album. Straight to tape, mixed on the fly. I like our shit to sound like humans actually made it, you know? I'm not ready to take up the cyborgasm lifestyle yet. I like there to be real fingerprints in the sound, that's why there's a thumbprint on the CD itself. It's like a Popsicle stick skyscraper. I've always had a deeeeeep love for Appetite For Destruction, the first Guns N Roses album. It has a distinctive sound, but every song is completely different. It draws from its influences but doesn't just replicate them, it builds on them. That's what we do, too, I think. I don't really keep track of producers' careers too closely because they're all pretty far out of reach for us. We got no money to pay for fanciness, so we just do it ourselves. I don't even think of hiring somebody.

Crud: What have you been doing in the two years since the release of your debut?

Stipplicon: Just writing and playing shows and recording and doing stuff with all my friends and travelling and quitting my day job and spending time with my girlfriend and watching movies and letting shit filter through my system. The last year has just blown my mind to smithers and burnses. Ehhhhxcellent. I'm full of life.

Crud: Tell us about the "Pro-Anti" label?

Stipplicon: Well, I thought of that in college. Me and Seth from Dufus are like brothers and we both care a lot and wanted to leave school with some kind of hope for the future, somekind of artistic union to carry us into the new deal of life. So we made ProAnti. It was initially supposed to be an artist collective type of thing, but as time's passed it's become more of a grass roots record label. All the artists pay for their own stuff on it, so it's not even like a real business venture, more of an association by name. It's like a graffiti crew (I spent a lot of years writing graff in NYC before I started playing music). So it's like, we play on each other's albums, our bands gig together, we all hang out. So far we've put out Stipplicon, Dufus, The Moldy Peaches (solo and together), Jeffrey Lightning Lewis, Turner Cody, Velapene Screen and maybe even some other stuff that's slipping my mind. Pro Anti is true fiction for it's own sake.

Crud: How did you enjoy touring with The Moldy Peaches,and what did you think of Reading/Leeds?

Stipplicon: Touring was the shit! It was my first real tour. I play guitar for The Moldy Peaches, and it felt really good to just jump around and not have to be tied to the mike. We went from playing for our friends in little clubs in New York to 5,000 screaming Japanese kids and then Belgian kids and then English kids at like 10:00 in the morning. It was amazing. One of the best feelings ever. You get to travel with your best friends all expenses paid and just fuck around and laugh and then you get off the plane or out of the shitty van and you rock your crockers off for a while and then hang out and watch shows and talk to people and then go do it again. Awesome. Reading and Leeds were great shows. Especially the Leeds gig (no disrespect to Reading! That was great too). But Leeds was one of the best Moldy Peaches shows ever. Me and Kimya (one of the singers) went ballistic at that one. I did a big old cockrock guitar solo and then we had a wrestling match on stage and I did a flying elbow on her. People were going crazy. I kinda hurt myself a little but I ain'y no pussy! It was worth it.

Crud: How did you feel about The Strokes being moved to the main stage? Was it weird watching your friends on such a big stage?

Stipplicon: Well, that was actually the first time I saw them play. I'd never caught them in New York so that was my first Strokes show. They were great, but they were AWESOME at the Lomax in Liverpool the next night. The demand for them is amazing in England so I wasn't even surprised by the move. Actually, I was more surprised to find out they were ever supposed to play in the smaller stage in the first place. The Moldy Peaches are opening for them on a five week tour in the US in October and I can't wait for that. We go together really well. We're gonna wreak slavic on America.

Crud: You were recently in NME, the pictures were cool, but the article had a bit of an "agenda" it seemed to me, what did you think?

Stipplicon: Yeah, I think that's true. A lot of the time with the press I can't even tell if it's a positive review or not. They like something but won't quite commit to it - they have to throw a back door escape in there so they can backtrack if they were wrong about a band. Scaredycats. The stuff that guy was saying was allright and everything, but he didn't try too hard to thread it together with our band that much. He was on his own mission. But I didn't mind it or anything. He said some good stuff. And the pictures were very cool.

Crud: On your website you rail against "Trendy pop garbage, music made for money" were you thinking of anyone in particular when you said this?

Stipplicon: No, just your generic shitty band with pop aspirations. They try too hard to please. They'll do anything, say anything, sing what they think they're supposed to. They're just bent over, greased and ready for the first business person to pork 'em good. I say if you wanna get filled in the crapper and make money, fine, but don't try to pass yourself off as some kind of real musician or passionate artist or something. They're just business kids dressed in rock n' roll clothes trying to bottle the essence of everything they don't even understand. They're shitheads. Gel in the hair, tight shirts, edgy-but-not-too-edgy hairstyles, expensive instruments, stupid songs about nothing that sound like everything I've ever heard divided by three and then multiplied by shit over money to the most willing power. Everyone's seen the equation, you get the idea.

Crud: I get an impression that the artistic scene is NYC is similar to what is was like in the late 70's,when punk was happening ,and there was that fated CBGB's crown hanging out,and you could afford to just be an artist and live in NYC. Is this the way it is or another terrible misinterpretation?

Stipplicon: I'm not sure. I mean, all the Pro Anti kids are doing it right and if enough people realise that then all the other people we know can get some recognition too. I know LOTS of amazing musicians and songwriters and stuff but I wasn't here in the 70's so I don't know what it was really like. I know the media tale, but not the reality. They can make a square seem like a circle if they try to. But there's definitely a lot of good stuff happening, it's just not concentrated in one place or anything. You have to sift through a lot of stink to get to the flower. I'm having a good time with everybody here. We're making our way.

Stipplicon are made up of Strictly beats-drums, Doug Keith-guitar, Glen Ganguzza-bass and Jack Dishel-voice, guitar, keys.

Stipplicon - Stipplicon available to purchase here

Related features:
The Moldy Peaches Interview
Dufus Interview
Major Matt Mason USA
The Strokes Is This It?

Interview conducted by Priya Elangasinghe

 

 
 

 

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2-4-7-MUSIC.COM 2009

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