Interview by Jenni Miller
Images by Vania ZouravliovPlaid is the electronic music outfit manned by Andy Turner and Ed Handley, formerly of the seminal early 90's group The Black Dog. Andy and Ed are currently on tour with fellow Warp Label musicians Mira Caliz and Nobukazu Takemura of Thrill Jockey Records.
MacDirectory caught up with Andy Turner and Ed Handley before their show in Brooklyn at the Warsaw, a club within the Polish National Home.
Downstairs, the older folks in suits enjoying complimentary Pepsis and hors d'ouerves looked slight put out that their community center was recently turned in an ultra-hip Greenpoint hotspot for the fashionably disheveled. We made out way upstairs, where the Plaid boys were relaxing with some mueslix, organic looking salads, and hand-rolled cigarettes. Ed and Andy were more than happy to talk technology with us before their show.
"Well," said Angy, "we do use Macintoshes. We've got 2 G4s that we're currently using live, and we have them plugged into MOTU 828... and then we have an external effects unit, an Eventide. We have the MOTU plugged into an old mixing console. And we also have some drum pads.
The MOTU 828 is a Mac-only Firewire recording device that is relatively affordable and doesn't require a PCI card. The MOTU features 18 input/output audio channels, AudioDesk software, and advanced mixing and production features. It's also portable, so it's perfect for world-traveling electronic musicians always creating new music.
"For production, we have a Jewel 500 and one of the old G4s, and we have some studio cards which are made by Sonorus We just use that with 16 analog outputs into an analog mixing desk. It used to be loads of hardware, loads of synths, but now mostly it's software," added Ed.
"[My] concept of dynamics and movement was influenced mainly from the early electronic composer's like Karl Heinz Stockhausen, and Morton Subotnick," says Richard. "I studied their works early on in high school," he continues Richard. "I was totally blown away by their use of constantly evolving timbres and panning movements."With that much gear, it stands to follow that the two use computers in their everyday life. When asked, Andy responded, "[For] Internet. Communicating. I still get dressed myself, and stuff like that." And they play the vids, as the kids today like to say. Any just finished Grand Theft Auto 3 and was contemplating buying a GameCube while in the States to play Luigi's Mansion. "That should put our album back another month or so," he said.
And Ed said, "It is personal, really, music, or at least it should be, so yeah, we do, on a daily basis, we use Mac systems all the time."
The Plaid website (www.plaid.co.uk) will look exceedingly familiar to any Mac user. The Flash-heavy site is made to look like an Apple desktop, complete with pull-down menus and floating windows.
So, about those new CPUs everyone's talking about? When we came in, Ed was holding court with some of the other writers about the 110 GHz CPUs just announced. Would something like that sway Plaid?
Ed responded, "If those chips are around, I can't see Apple ignoring and just kind of going. 'Oh no, we're going to stick with our Motorola or whatever chips,' because they're just going to go under if they don't embrace them. We might have to wait a bit longer, but I think it will be worth it, just because MacOS is so much better than any Windows version I've ever used."
Speaking of OS, I asked them about Unix. Andy said, "We used to, when we had day jobs and it was all PCs, we used Unix and stuff like that. Macs are just so much friendlier for what we do, we don't really need that kind of level to get it to work."
Ed added, "There was that whole BeOS thing, that sounded like it could have been good for music, but [it didn't happen]."
Plaid is currently touring to support the "Double Figure" album, the third part in a series with "Not For Threes" (with vocals by Nicholette and Bjork) and "Rest Proof Clockwork."
Andy explained why the albums are regarded as a trio. "They were quite similar albums... and after we'd finished Double Figure, we thought, we don't wanna do another album like this again. [laughs] The trilogy thing was sort of our way of forcing ourselves to do something a bit different next time. That's what we're doing. We're working on a DVD project... with Bob... We're writing the music, and he's designing the visuals at the same time, and we've kind of got it mapped out what the whole piece is gonna be like." Bob is a video artist currently on tour with Plaid.
He added, "We can mix 5.1 with Logic so we're gonna keep using Logic, and we just need to get the speakers."
How does a pair of technophile musicians react to the current digital music conundrum?
About MP3s, Andy said, "I think it's really great. There's just so many people that haven't had access to this area of music, and it can only be good... It's only people's music that gets boring after you listen to it a couple of times, but I think generally people get something on MP3 that they're already into and they go buy a copy of it. But on the whole, if they like the album, they'll get it, 'cause the quality's better." Ed pointed out the convenience of downloading music. "It's a really easy way to find obscure music. "It's convenient for that."
Some DJs are starting to trade their prized vinyl for MP3s. Ed said, "I don't see why not, really. There's this technology where you can get basically a sync code on a piece of vinyl,move the piece of vinyl, it will speed up and slow down the MP3. So that sounds promising."
I asked them what they listened to in their spare time. Andy joked, "We don't have any spare time. We don't have any fun." Then he admitted he has been listening to Noah Sasso of the Kracfive label. Ed commented that the Toytronic label out of the UK almost never disappoints.
Additionally, their striking press photos were taken by Deirdre O'Callahan and more recently, Vania Zouravliov, who is responsible for the beautiful daguerrotype-like photos featured in this article.
With that, I thanked them for their time and proceeded our to the club to enjoy the show.
For more information on Plaid, check out their website at www.plaid.co.uk or their label Warp Records' website at www.warprecords.com
