amoeba

 

“Cause & Effect”

Interview with Robert Rich.

By Sergio Vilar

Please Robert, count me the history behind Amoeba.
Amoeba really expresses a close tie between my friend Rick Davies and me. It's one step in a long series of musical efforts together, but it's more mature than our previous attempts. Our history as musical cohorts goes back to 1979, when a common friend introduced us. I was 16 years old, and I wanted to start a band to play experimental improvised music. Rick had just arrived in California from Essex University in England, and he was interested in playing music with fringe-minded people, although he had far more experience in bands than I did. We joined forces with a bass player from Toronto named Jon Spencer, and made some rather bad experimental music for a year or so under the name Quote Unquote.

A few years later, when I was in college, Rick returned from a year in Europe on business, and we formed another band with our friend Andrew McGowan called Urdu. This was also mostly improvised, and I made rather psychotic attempts at singing vocals along with Rick and Andrew's loudness and my wild electronics. We performed around the San Francisco area a little bit, but we lacked the focus to make anything good out of it. I was busy with school, while Rick and Andrew were busy working at a synthesizer company (Sequential Circuits) and I had already started making my slow solo music, which had a much more serious side. Our best concerts involved small audiences in rather altered states of consciousness. It was strange loud music.

Somehow this didn't satisfy my craving to make "band music" although I was busy building a solo career during the '80s. I still wanted to make music that came closer to "rock music" although I wanted to do something more intense, more introspective. Around 1990, when Rick was living too far away to collaborate, I pulled together the first attempt at Amoeba with Andrew McGowan and another old friend, Matt Isaacson, with a guitarist named Dave Hahn who was a graduate student in early music at Stanford. David is a classically trained guitarist and lute player, way out of my league. I wanted Amoeba to express a quiet psychedelic side, but the social energy of this group of friends kept pushing us toward silliness, more humorous than introspective. I felt a bit frustrated, out of place and under-talented. I realized after a while that the only way I could make things happen with this group would be through a sort of crazy energy, so as a result we expressed more of a manic weirdness. I engineered and produced the 5-song “Eye Catching” CD in my studio, and Andrew McGowan created the cover art; then we stopped playing together. We are all still close friends, something that may not have been true if we kept trying to play together!

I realized I wasn't a good band leader, and I had trouble expressing what I heard in my head. I consider that attempt to be a failure.

So, in 1994, Rick Davies and I started discussing music again, and Rick was talking about a sort of spacey folk-music sound he was thinking about, influenced a lot by late period Talk Talk, Robert Wyatt, John Martyn and such. His ideas fit perfectly with the direction I hoped Amoeba could take. He had moved nearby again around that time, and we decided to try working together. This time, everything fell into place much better. I had a bit of a personal crisis halfway through recording “Watchful”, which caused mi to move out to a remote town on the coast,  putting some stress on finishing the album. But in the end, I think we ended up with something closer to what we had been trying to do than anything we tried before. It's amazingly hard to make a group project work when you are trying to do something new and experimental. I don't know how any band pulls it off, to be honest.

Which were the feelings or the ideas that you wanted to express through the band?
Amoeba comes - in part - from my desire to make the sort of music that I most enjoy listening to, but also to fill a void in the music that I want to hear. I love a certain kind of introspective sound, and I enjoy well-written pop music, but especially the sort of songs that hold a quiet energy, something intense and personal, magical. Very few musicians do this for me. I crave it. I am not so interested in "entertainment" but rather Energy. I want to make music that conveys deep beauty and intensity.

Rick should speak for himself, as I know he has a different focus than I do. He is much better at classic song structure, pop music history. I rely on him for that. From my side, though, I want to express certain ideas and feelings with words, which I can't quite express in my instrumental music. I don't consider myself to be a good singer, more like a producer who can't find the vocalist I need. The ideas in Amoeba songs are deeply coded, layered and hidden underneath simple-sounding words. I like lyrics that have those sorts of layers. They deal with mystical experience, resolutions of love and disaffection, loneliness, privacy, joy. These aren't your typical mating ritual pop songs.

Were you looking for some sound in particular when you began to write your music?
As a producer for Amoeba, I wanted to create something deep and sonically powerful, but also quiet and inviting. “Watchful” had a different intention than “Pivot”, and they sound different. But certainly, we were listening to classics of the genre, like Nico's “Marble Index”, Robert Wyatt's “Rock Bottom”, Talk Talk “Laughing Stock”, early Pink Floyd, that sort of energy. Of course it also gets infused with my own sense of space and sonic signature, which comes from all sorts of related influences, strengths and limitations.

Could you tell me how the creative process is in your music and poetry and what factors do they influence these areas?
It's hard for me to analyze, actually. To be honest, much of my "style" comes from working around my own limitations. I have certain abstract targets in my head, sonically and in terms of the listener's experience, but I often don't know how to reach that goal. My own creative process often involves stumbling around until something works.
I take what I get if it feels right, and throw away the failures. As for poetry or song lyrics, sometimes ideas pop into my head fully formed, with words, rhythms and melodies attached. Then after I write them down and save them for a year until I can use them, they don't seem as powerful as they did when I first imagined them.Then begins the painful process of shaping these words to fit the situation of a song in progress. Usually the result has a bit of the seed idea, but several generations removed. It's always a compromise.

What do you differ you find among “Eye Catching”, “Watchful” and “Pivot”? Which is the concept of each one of them?
“Eye Catching” was not a big success in my mind. I hoped people would find the humor in it. I thought people would notice the influence of the Residents, Soft Boys, Wire, Hawkwind, things like that. But I think it just confused people. I think we might have been a bit confused ourselves!

I think “Watchful” is the most successful of the albums, overall. It conveys the mood of intensity and desperation that I felt at the time, and it is sonically the most adventurous. I like the emotional energy of the album, which hovers between light and dark, just like life. The main ideas behind the album involve an examination of the periphery, unconscious motivations, forgotten experiences, dreams, epiphanies, missed opportunity.

“Pivot” started out with two ideas. I wanted to make an album that had more of a folk-rock kind of sound, a bit more pastoral and acoustic. I had a specific timbre in my head, and I think we came close. The other idea was that the lyrics of many of the songs deal with things that are bigger than we are, the weather, seasons, time, death. Some of the songs that seem to be about relationships are actually about mystical experience, like in the tradition of Sufi poetry which refers to the "lover" in a multi-levelled sense. This is definitely true in songs like “Traces” and “No Empty Promises”. I guess all of the songs deal with getting older. I think the lyrics on “Pivot” are the best I have written so far, but maybe the musical texture overall isn't as strong as on “Watchful”.

Amoeba (Rick Davies and Robert Rich)

Would you say that somehow the three disks are connected?
Connected by hopeful attempt, yes, and by the people involved. “Eye Catching” is certainly the least connected to the others. The other two... maybe they are the start of a trilogy, who knows.

The music of Amoeba spreads to be much more intricate and elaborated that most of the bands common of progressive ambient. How do people receive in your country a musical proposal as that of Amoeba?
Well, many of the fans of my instrumental music didn't expect to hear me singing! I think that the people who already share some of our aesthetics want to hear what we have to say, but most people don't discover music like this that falls between the cracks.  In some ways, this music preaches to the converted. This is not a mainstream sound, and we didn't have the support of a major label, nor could we tour to promote our albums. There is a small audience for progressive music (smaller yet for bands that don't fit the cliché molds of "progressive" established by the '70s bands.)  Some groups like Porcupine Tree or perhaps Bark Psychosis,  get a bit of attention in the press; but typically, even more successful artists than those have trouble being understood when they push limits - I mean artists like Massive Attack, Bjork, or Radiohead. Amoeba is basically anonymous compared to those groups.

How do you see to the band in these moments? Are you conciente from their growth to musical level?
Rick and I are each working on our individual projects, but we do talk about getting together again to make a new album. He has been performing a bit in Tucson, with his duo Simple Question, and I continue to work mostly as a solo artist. Since we live 1500 kilometers apart, we have challenges in collaboration. But we continue to discuss the idea, and we might even try to perform live again together as Amoeba if we can get together long enough to record a new CD. We continue to experiment with new ideas.

How would you say that your development will continue in the future?
I think the next Amoeba album might sound a bit heavier. I want to make something with more distortion, with a trancey, pulsating sound. We'll see,  when it starts to happen. I don't mean to say it will sound like death metal or anything, I think it will still be slow and introspective, but just heavy. I've had this sound in my head for several years, now. It's getting to be time to create it soon, I think.

Then, when will we be able to enjoy a new album of Amoeba? The wait is being long...
I know. I'm sorry. It takes about a year for me to make an Amoeba album, and I need to have Rick nearby to work on the ideas together. With us both busy and far apart, it has been difficult to get started.
Then, once we finish, I am not sure who will release the album. The record business is very different now than it was 7 years ago. We have some practical problems like these to overcome. So, in the meantime, I work on solo projects, and Rick works in Tucson.

Let us pass to another topic. Do you believe that in these moments there is a renovation in the scene ambient? Is there some band to new artist that has impacted you pleasurably?
There is a lot of good music around, but I have not paid close attention to the ambient scene except for some of the CDs that I have mastered for other people. Mostly, I listen to a very broad range of music. I like the recent CD by Emiliana Torrini, “Fisherman's Woman”, for example. I like the new CD by a Swedish jazz pianist, Bobo Stensen, “Goodby”. I like the recent few albums by Bjork. I like the new vocal album by Brian Eno.

Sadly, I get so busy working on music in my studio that when I want to take a rest I tend to prefer silence rather than music. I love music, but I prefer to listen closely to it rather than have it in the background. Maybe this is why I have trouble thinking of ambient music that I like. I prefer close listening, or deep listening. Often, I just prefer the sound of birds, frogs, wind and water.

Do you think that today in day inside this musical scene, does a genuine philosophy exist of innovating?
The music scene is very anarchic right now. The label system is dead but still twitching, and a paradigm of downloaded music is taking over.
People now expect to get new music for free, which means that new artists are mostly hobbyists rather than full-time. That's not necessarily bad, it's just an interesting time of transition. There is some innovation, but it is in so many different directions at once that it is impossible at this point to say where it's going. My own interest is not so much in what is "new" as in what has personal meaning for me, which is often slow and deep, not exciting or revolutionary. Maybe, as people say, we are getting a situation where everyone lives in a bubble of personal taste, not a community of creation. Or, maybe the internet is becoming that community. Personally, I would rather spend time with people in person rather than virtually through the networks.

To your approach, by where does it go the musical vanguard?
Oddly, I think many of the same musicians who were at the front of creative experimentation 20 years ago are still pushing limits. I see the vanguard in terms of individuals, not movements. Some people like to push further forward and invent their own languages. I mean, Sun Ra was as challenging in 1980 as he was in 1960. He had his own personal language. Terry Riley continues to interest me and challenge me. He has a constantly evolving language. Harry Partch's music still sounds new, and he died in 1974. I simply want to hear people expressing their own personal truth.

Thank you Robert, it has been a great satisfaction to have been able to interview. Do you want to express something more?
Thank you for your interest. I think I usually express myself better in sound than in words, anyway. I appreciate your listening!

www.amoeba.com

Nucleus interview: 05/12/05