{"id":2511,"date":"2011-10-07T10:38:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T16:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=2511"},"modified":"2011-10-07T10:38:03","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T16:38:03","slug":"white-dog-noise-below-the-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2011\/10\/07\/white-dog-noise-below-the-wall\/","title":{"rendered":"White Dog – Noise Below the Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nPhoto by Cole Peters<\/em><\/span>
\nBy Taylor Burgess<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Cole Peters and Chris Jacques two years ago, it all began as an outlet to release their music but since Prairie Fire Tapes\u2019 inception, Jacques has made seven albums under the name White Dog\u2014some really cool and psychedelic, but most others approach horrifying parts of your brain. Since he\u2019s going to be a performer at this year\u2019s send + receive festival, both of his tape labels are releasing killer stuff, and his own music is taking wild turns, Jacques welcomed me up to his \u201cEast Berlin\u201d office space which he shares with No List Records so we could discuss shit.
\nMostly, I just wanted to know why his music is usually such a head-trip.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not meant to be creepy or dark or anything,\u201d he said. It\u2019s because of being a high school guidance councilor that he internalizes a lot of the darker side of the human nature. \u201cI deal with people every day in their psychological needs and hear lots of crazy shit from kids and then their parents about what\u2019s going on in their lives. My teaching has always dealt with people who are marginalized, or downtrodden, abused, and all that kinds of crazy shit. I\u2019m a history student, so a lot of that stuff\u2014things about rebellions and resistance come through as themes in my stuff a lot of time.\u201d
\n
\nFor example, Resistance has audio tracks from the FLQ manifesto, and Retribution has tracks from a documentary on the MOVE organization\u2014a black-liberation group that was essentially shot up by the police.
\nBut for Jacques, he aims his music to be as cathartic as possible\u2014not bleak or nihilistic. Referencing the usually overbearing genre named harsh noise wall (which, if you can imagine, is pretty much like taking white noise and distorting that as much as possible), he said, \u201cI don\u2019t like \u2018harsh\u2019 noise. I mean there are elements that happen, and I use them, but I like the drones, I find them very calming, and really good for me. I\u2019m taking what I\u2019ve absorbed of the human experience, and I\u2019ve probably absorbed a lot of the darker side of the human experience, and then just pushing it through these pedals and making sounds that calm me down, and which hopefully people enjoy.\u201d
\nOne thing that has been influencing his music as of late, most notably Escape the Mystery II, has been his eight-year-old son, Magnus.
\n\u201cA lot of the song titles, of recent, have been things that my son says,\u201d says Jacques with a laugh. \u201c\u2018Escape the Mystery II\u2019 was his, \u2018Beloved Hostage\u2019 was his. He just comes up with this string of words. And I think, \u2018This is so awesome.\u2019 Because there\u2019s no irony in it, there\u2019s nothing behind it, he\u2019s just stringing words, and it\u2019s like, \u2018Yeah, this is great, absolutely fantastic.\u2019\u201d
\nOn the cassette, Magnus just says crazy shit and Chris has delayed it feverishly, making it sound like some childhood madhouse. Magnus has played live with Chris a couple of times, though he won\u2019t be for the send + receive show.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s had fun in the couple times that he\u2019s done it, and that\u2019s pretty much what it\u2019s all about, him having fun. If he really comes and says, \u2018I want to pick up a synth and make stupid noise with you,\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Yup! Let\u2019s do it!\u2019\u201d
\nDuring the interview, Jacques made an aside comment of being stuck in a noise genre, and I thought it interesting, considering that\u2019s how to easily classify most of his releases\u2014and I wondered what genres he wanted to reach for beyond that.
\n\u201cI guess it\u2019s always going to be stuck in this drone\/drift\/noise genre, whatever, underground music. But, there\u2019s always elements of psychedelic stuff, of that krautrock repetition, of Balinese music that I strive to incorporate because I love the sound of it so much.\u201d
\nThose distinctive elements mostly sum up what Jacques releases under his label offshoot Dub Ditch Picnic, over which he has complete artistic control. On it, he\u2019s released Microdot and Tim Hoover, but also Fletcher Pratt, Auntie Dada, Germany\u2019s Krautheim, B.C.\u2019s No UFO\u2019s and a bunch of other wildly psychedelic treats.
\nOf both his tape labels, he said, \u201cFor me, it\u2019s just a really good way to force myself to listen to music, and to be a part of things. Where I could easily just sit in my house, listen to, you know, \u201990s music like a lot of my friends do. It\u2019s easier to be a consumer and expect X, Y, Z of bands. But I knew, when I revived White Dog after not doing anything for a while\u2014okay, I\u2019m sitting here, in my bedroom, making noise. I can\u2019t be the only one in this city. Or this country, for that matter. And that\u2019s totally proven to be the fact of the matter.\u201d
\nDefinitely, I find his output admirable (and his radio show Dub Ditch Radio on UMFM from 1-3 a.m. on Monday nights mind-blowing).
\nBut how is it that he originally came to acquire all these pedals and start playing this kind of music in the first place?
\n\u201cBasically, it\u2019s my severe lack of being able to play an instrument.\u201d
\nI asked back, \u201cBut didn\u2019t you play in the Incinerators with Bill Northcott?\u201d
\n\u201cWell, I was the singer. I just stood up and yelled, spit at people. People spit back, flicked cigarettes. It was a total train wreck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nStylus Magazine<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Taylor Burgess<\/p>\n

For Cole Peters and Chris Jacques two years ago, it all began as an outlet to release their music but since Prairie Fire Tapes\u2019 inception, Jacques has made seven albums under the name White Dog\u2014some really cool and psychedelic, but most others approach horrifying parts of your brain. Since he\u2019s going to be a performer at this year\u2019s send + receive festival, both of his tape labels are releasing killer stuff, and his own music is taking wild turns, Jacques welcomed me up to his \u201cEast Berlin\u201d office space which he shares with No List Records so we could discuss shit.
\nMostly, I just wanted to know why his music is usually such a head-trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[283,563,673],"class_list":["post-2511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-dub-ditch","tag-local","tag-noise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2511\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}