Interview With Kris By 13th Apostle Winter 2001 (questions redacted)...
K. Angylus is an insomniac who lives in the same house as his studio and spends the majority of his time recording, reading, and listening to/researching music. As far as what The Angelic Process is...well, it is my attempt to create music with some depth and an experimental attitude that hopefully will have some merit and be important to music as a whole. The initial purpose of The Angelic Process was to create music based around dynamics and flow within a song-based structure. I wanted the music to be epic and vast and encompass a huge sound range and that could be emotional and cathartic.
I record everything in my own studio (AngelCage Studios). I have a small house and when I moved in I renovated it and put in a pretty comprehensive studio, based around my desire to record everything by myself. I record and mix everything at AngelCage, and in the past have mastered at a place called VSM Mastering. While I'm recording I tend to work from the ground up. I'll usually start by tracking several drum patterns, then adding guitar, bass, and feedback/noise. I never do demos and instead start with something and just re-record parts until everything is right. I record into a PowerMac G4 running Cubase VST/24. This allows me to record and re-record, keeping everything I've done so I can change things around as needed. Vocals (if there are any) go on last and in the beginning were distorted and mostly textural, layered into the music to give it more density. But lately I have been experimenting with using both textural and cleaner vocals. Sometimes I have lyrics, but most of the time I use the vocals as a sort of tonal painting, using the sounds of my voice to aid the songs mood. For the next release I will share vocal duties with The Angelic Process' new female vocalist Natalie Dempster. Big P.S. on my sound.: That huge, "deep choir" sound as you put it isn't synth at all. I get that sound by playing my guitar with a violin bow through a special combination of effects. That is a sound I have had in my head since I was about 16 and only recently found out how to realize it. That sound is the heart of The Angelic Process...the first recordings using it just came together into what was the self titled debut EP. I also have spent several years creating custom effects on digital effects processors to give me a broader sound spectrum with the guitar than most have. As far as when I'll get signed, who knows.
I was in a lot of bands in high school (I was one of only 3 good vocalists) and I could play quite a few instruments, so I would spend my time writing songs only to come back to a band that would rather sit around pretending to be a band rather than actually work. I became really frustrated with this and after high school I just decided since I could play any instrument I needed played, it would be easier to just figure out a way to record everything myself. I started to become interested in recording at about 16 (not soon after I wrote my first song). I bought a cheap 4-track and messed around with it, recording other local bands just to figure out how to do it. After that I spent a lot of time reading interviews with artists who talked about their recording techniques, and on the internet I read everything I could find in relation to recording. After high school, I started engineering local bands' demos and eventually moved into producing and mixing. But at this time I also started gravitating toward noise recordings and my production started to reflect that, so most bands started shying away from me. By this time, I had all the knowledge and experience necessary to really go it alone and record and produce my own material. I started "Artwrek" and began releasing that material on CDR.
And you want an equipment list, huh? Well, as I said above, I record on a Mac G4 running Steinberg's Cubase VST/24. I have a 16 channel Berhinger mixer that goes into a MOTU 2406 72 input soundcard (then into the Mac), Berhinger Quad Limiter/Compressor, tons of out-board effects (old stuff like an Alesis MidiVerb II and the fucking awesome Fender Blender). I put just about everything through the filter inputs on a Korg MS2000R, various stomp boxes and digital effects processors, a Line 6 Pod, I have a Fender Stage 112 Amp and a Peavy rig consisting of a 5150 II head and 2 4x12 5150 cabs, a cello, synths, the Alesis Andromeda, Roland JP-8000, Korg N364, various waveform synths, an old Crumb analog string emulator, Guitars: I bow an Ibanez Talman (great guitar, amazingly warm sound), 2 Fenders, a Strat and a Jazzmaster, Ovation electric/acoustic, Washburn Acoustic and a Washburn Bass, an Ebow, various slides, and other objects (knives, metal strips, nails, paint scraper, etc), several drum machines (an Alesis SR-16, Boss Groovebox, several broken ones), a 6 piece drum kit , and a customized Roland V-Club electronic drum kit. I have 3 samplers: an EMU ESI 2000, an Akai S20, and a Zoom Sampletrack. All samples are usually thru'd on Minidisc then inputed into the sampler or I will input something into the Mac and manipulate it with plug-ins as it goes into the sampler (thats how I get some of the weird bits). I also use various tape decks/cassette players/microcassette recorders to create and manipulate tape-loops. Mics: several Shure Sm57's and 58's, several cheap mics, and an AKG C 3000 condenser mic. Lots of patch cords. I think thats about it. All of this gear has been accumulated over about a 7 year period. The only reason I gave such a detailed list is because when I read interviews trying to figure out what to get, hardly anyone ever really mentions specific gear. At some point or another just about everything has been used on an Angelic Process song (I'm really bad about floating in short texture loops made up of a combination of instruments).
I first started getting into music when I was 15. I started out rather late and got into guitar music and then into things like Nine Inch Nails. Thats what initially got me interested in technology. When I was 18 I was in an extremely bad car accident where I had some bad head trauma and broke my right hand (which hasn't been the same). For some reason after the accident, things had changed in my head. The sounds I had heard before got louder and I couldn't sleep as much and my general interest in the music I had been listening to started to wain. I think everything started to change for me when I read a review for a Merzbow album in some magazine. I was just intrigued with the idea of noise as music. It would be a year or so before I would actually hear a Merzbow album, but when I was able to record again (about 6 months after my accident) I stated putting everything through distortion pedals and just became fascinated by how it changed what I heard.
Everything really changed in my head when I first hear Swans' Soundtracks For the Blind, I was really struck by how everything flowed into everything else and how their songs were more transitions than verse/chorus stuff. By now I'm about 19 and I just spend all my time researching all these bands and how they record. It was at this point that I started Artwrek. Several all noise recordings were issued over the next few years culminating in The Angelic Process' self titled EP released earlier this year. Specific bands I like and that have influenced me: Swans (especially "Soundtracks For The Blind"), Merzbow (I have the 50 CD Box Set from Extreme in Australia, it is an absolute education in sound),
Neurosis (especially the "Sovereign" EP), My Blood Valentine's "Loveless" (an absolutely amazing album, get it now if you don't have it). Not much new music does anything for me...I really like the new Neurosis album "A Sun That Never Sets", M.Gira's Angels Of Light as really good. I am huge fan of Japanese noise artist Masonna, Isis, a mostly acoustic/atmospheric band called "SoulWhirlingSomewhere" does some amazing, emotional stuff, Deftones, Tool/A Perfect Circle, Sigur Ros are cool (the guitar player bows his guitar too). The Angelic Process' name comes from something a girl I knew who died recently once said. She said that creation was an angelic process. That just stuck with me.
How the Crucial Blast release came about was Adam Wright of Crucial Blast happened upon my website. At the time I didn't yet have mp3s, just a description of my sound. He emailed me and asked for my previous releases to see if he liked it and I sent him my debut EP and single (both issued on my label). He liked what he heard and offered to release a limited cassette to see how the response would be. So far response has been positive and I am very happy to be working with them.
More or less, I live in a small town and am surrounded by smaller towns. I live right between Birmingham, AL and Atlanta, GA, but I really have nothing to do with the music scenes here. It's cheap to live here, the people (can be) nice. Its clean and I live out in the country, so no one ever bothers me. There are a couple of good records shops here, the best being "Slip Disc" in Anniston, Alabama. The owner is a cool guy and has always sold my releases there. They also sell weird music in addition to the typical stuff...so its all right. As far as work, I do Internet stuff (basics for websites, etc) to pay my bills. I own my house and car and this covers my bills, so I don't have to make a living off my music (although that would be nice and I hope that happens someday). I'm just in a good position where I can make less accessible music and not have to worry about being able to feed myself.
I hope to be doing The Angelic Process for a long time. I view the music/my art as a progression. I guess I would ultimately like to have a career that spans something like Swans did (in that they constantly pushed things forward and progressed and changed...not the whole be totally under appreciated and broke part). As for new releases, I am currently recording new material at AngelCage for an EP to be entitled "Porcellina". This EP will contain the first songs featuring vocals/vocal-textures and lyrics from Natalie Dempster. The idea and overall mood for Porcellina was inspired by a poem of hers and her lyrics thus far have been truly stunning. We hope to have a recording completed by the end of the year, with a release in early 2002.
