Source: [Uzine] e-mail magazine
Date: issue U0218 was sent out on Friday 9 August 2002 (14:31 CET)
[UZINE] 02.18 [Daan Cassini's child's roommate Mobius issue]
[INTERVIEW: ROOMMATE AKA OCIE TRIMBLE]
Roommate has just made one of the most promising debuts of the past few years with his "Celebs" chronicle (see [uzine 02.17] for a review). Apart from making the music therein, he also makes samples/textures music, as Ocie Trimble, and videos. The artist lives and works in Chicago as Kent Lambert. Kent Lambert grew up in Colorado Springs and has spent five of the last seven years in the USA's Midwest region, attending the University of Iowa, co-directing the 2000 edition of the Thaw Festival of Video, Film and Digital Media in Iowa City (which was co-founded in 1996 by Lloyd Dunn of the Tape Beatles), and making experimental videos and pop music. His videos have been screened at festivals across the USA and at other such venues as Other Cinema in San Francisco, Exploding Cinema and the late Lux Centre in London, and the Mediawave Festival in Dunajska Streda, Slovakia.
Questions by Patrick Vandenberghe, answers received via e-mail, August 8, 2002.
- U: What are you up to? And how blind is your ambition?
+ Rm: As far as ambition goes, I would like to eventually get on some kind of label so I don't have to burn cd-r's and cut, fold & glue cd sleeves for every copy of every album I make, but I'm in no hurry. And while it would be nice to be able to partially support myself by making music, that's not my goal. I just want to make interesting music and to share it with other people. If I have to share it without the assistance of a label or distributor, so be it. I think I might also really love to do remix collaborations with other musicians, which seems to happen frequently in electronic music. I also just started a mail collaboration with my friend Cody who records as the Rhombus (no label or website); he sends me ProTools files on cd and I add sounds to his sounds and send them back to him, it's a good time. Someday I would love to be able to bring some good friends into a studio and make a thick, organic, collaborative record. But I can't see that happening any time soon. I'm patient. So you tell me - are those blind ambitions?
- U: What are you up against? And how unaware is your anger?
+ Rm: I'm up against myself, most significantly. I can be an obsessive perfectionist, which can be useful but can be equally destructive. My anger is considerable, but I try to keep it aware and under control, as I am fortunate to be alive and life is too precious to be spent feeling angry all the time.
- U: Whom are you the Roommate of, ideally?
+ Rm: Figuratively, I am the Roommate of anyone who chooses to listen to Roommate music, and I don't have any kind of ideal listener in mind.
- U: You're also making music as Ocie Trimble... Whose roommate is he? Can you please explain the pseudonym?
+ Rm: When I first moved to Iowa City in 1996 I didn't know anyone there and spent a week taking all sorts of photographs around the town. I forgot about those pictures and developed the film some 2-3 years later. One of them really struck me and I couldn't remember actually taking it. In the background there were some nondescript university buildings and in the foreground was this canoe with 'Ocie Trimble' printed on it. I had no idea what that name meant and assumed it was the name of the canoe company or something. I'd been trying to come up with a name to use for music I'd been making for some classmates' films, and Ocie Trimble seemed like a great, abstract, non-signifying name. And I thought the photo would make a nice album cover. Maybe a year later I made some music sketches for a cd-rom project in a class on interactive multimedia and credited them to Ocie Trimble. My professor Franklin Miller later told me that he knew a guy named Ocie Trimble and asked me why I had used that name for my music. I told him about the photo and he told me that his friend Ocie Trimble was this old guy who lived by the river and had founded the Iowa City rowing society, so that must have been his canoe in the picture. It was an alarming coincidence, as I'd already unknowingly assumed his name for my e-mail address and these bits of music. I actually have yet to release anything as Ocie Trimble, and I haven't finished an Ocie Trimble track in about three years. But I've got all sorts of skeletal sketches and ideas, and this vague conception of what an Ocie Trimble record might be like. I think it will be abstract and ephemeral, somewhere in the middleground between pop and pure soundscape. I figure since I named myself after this man who seemed to have made some fine accomplishments in the rowing field and everything, well, an Ocie Trimble album had better be something special. Right now I'm working on some new Roommate songs and just finished sequencing the music for one of them. During the process of arranging it I tried to include this conception of Ocie Trimble - like, how would Ocie Trimble make this last section more interesting? What kind of sounds would he add to the mix? It's like a collaboration between these two musical personalities that I've previously thought of as being separate or even oppositional.
- U: Are there any other pseudonyms in the making? Are they planning any other releases?
+ Rm: No other pseudonyms in the making at this point. Two pseudonyms is quite enough, thank you.
- U: "Celebs" is an albumette about celebrity worship and that whole 'famous people worship' culture which has gotten really 'bad' in the nineties. How did that come about? Had you been fascinated with the subject for ages, was there any irritation involved, or...? Have you any respect for celebrities an sich?
+ Rm: I wrote and recorded "Celebs" not long after moving to New York City, where I was working for the acquisitions department of a film distribution company. I had become very interested in the way in which people in the film business (myself included) would obsessively track, chart and speculate on the careers and personal lives of celebrities as they moved in and out of the various dimensions between relative obscurity and absolute notoriety. Films would get bought and sold according to the degree that their actors or directors were 'known' or 'recognizable', or because of praise from 'famous' critics. After work I'd go out with friends who'd recount having seen George Stephanopoulous shopping at the Virgin Megastore or having heard about Puff Daddy stalking J.Lo at a film shoot in Soho. The songs on Celebs came out of this interest in the distance between myself and these strange beings called celebrities. I suppose I spent a lot of time contemplating their world and my relation to it - as consumer, spectator, insider, outsider, and fan. I don't think I would have made these songs had I not been living in New York. While I might have been fascinated with the rich and famous before that, it wasn't until I worked in such close proximity to the celebrity world that I became preoccupied (and yes, perhaps irritated) enough with it to work the fascination into music.
- U: What about the commercialisation of media? In the USA, that happened a lot earlier than in Europe, so could it have gotten any worse at all, of late?
+ Rm: I can't imagine the commercialisation of media (or at least mainstream media) getting much worse than it is now in the US. Of course, it probably will get much worse. The most disturbing part is the way the news is packaged and presented like Hollywood spectacle - it's particularly disturbing now as the Bush administration is trying to build public support for war in Iraq. Conservative news networks like Fox play right into the government's wishes, and most people seem to accept the news as authority and as entertainment. It's very unsettling. At the same time, there's all sorts of exciting and wonderful things happening on the fringes or outside of the so-called mainstream - webzines like [uzine] or alternative news sources are able to proliferate and please growing readerships without commercial sponsorship, and relatively inexpensive consumer technology allows so many more people to produce media with their own equipment, in their own homes. I think it will be a long time before we can see the full implications of these changes, but I think they are extremely significant, and promising.
- U: What is an 'axis of evil', in your opinion?
+ Rm: To start, I'd say an axis of evil is anything extending from the man who so foolishly regurgitated that phrase earlier this year. But please don't get me started...
- U: Could you please provide the family names of those celebrities you mentioned in the title track of your albumette?
+ Rm: No, I can't do that. When I came up with that song I wanted the names to be generic, one or two syllable names that could apply to distinct celebrities or that could just as easily belong to co-workers at the office, my friends' cousins or even biblical figures. I had come up with all of these gossippy phrases of things that people were doing (again) and they were things that celebrities ˆnd 'regular' people could conceivably be doing any day of the week. I made a list of first names of movie and music stars and tv personalities, leaving out any names out that would only be associated with a specific celebrity, like Benicio (as in Del Toro) or Britney (hmmm...) + I matched the phrases up with the first names in ways that sounded good and that could reasonably apply to actual celebrities with those names. I thought that part of what could make the song interesting for the listener would be trying to figure out to whom I was specifically referring with these phrases. A few of them unmistakably refer to specific celebrities, like "Alec's with Kim again", but then with a line like "Ben's at the gym again", who is it? Ben Affleck? Ben Stiller? Ben who lives down the street and likes to lift weights? What's the difference, and does it matter? By playing that little game, by trying to figure out who the celebs are, the listener is in essence acknowledging his/her complicity in a culture of celebrity worship and fascination, and then is sort of primed for what's to come.
- U: Who were the first 'celebs' that struck you in such a way that you said to yourself 'I want to write a song about them'?
+ Rm: It didn't really happen that way. The first song I wrote for the disc was "Hudson Crocs" and it was really just silly rhymes coming to my head while I was on the subway. Eventually it developed into this idea of famous movie monsters having to resign themselves to conventional jobs and quiet lives now that their stars have faded and scarier things have replaced them in the public consciousness. Then I wrote "Hindight is 20/20" about this particularly disturbing installment of the newsmagazine show 20/20 that played during the 2000 electoral crisis and featured an interview with John Lennon's assassin Mark David Chapman. By that point I could see a celebrity/fan theme emerging from these songs, and shortly after encountering River Phoenix's mother and sisters at a party (see below) I decided to write a sort of tribute to him. By that point I knew I would call the e.p. "Celebs", and the title song fell into place from there.
- U: Would you agree that there's celebrities and there's stars? And that you don't come across the latter category too often? Have you any criteria for what makes an actual star?
+ Rm: I'd like to think that stars are simply people who are really good at something or who are very special in some way or other, and that one does not have to be famous to be a star. 'Celebrities' should be more of a technical category: those people who happen to travel in the sector of society where privacy and anonymity are exchanged for luxury or public recognition. Perhaps some celebs become stars because what is special about them is able to transcend the machine that fuels and feeds on their celebrity. I know a lot of non-famous people who would be 'official' stars if they had a publicity factory broadcasting their charms to the world, but they're stars to me nonetheless. I don't know what this has to do with your question, but what I think is great about celebrities is that you can gossip about them without worrying about it coming back to you. I mean, that's what they get for stepping into the spotlight, right? If us regular folk can't take part in their luxurious, extravagant lifestyles, at least we can be entertained by their exploits and follies.
- U: Whom would you consider to be actual *stars* - both past & present?
+ Rm: Too many to list, especially since I would count people like my girlfriend Alison and my parents, etc. Stijn is a star. That's my shout-out to Stijn. [See our issues U0124+U0203+U0204 for more info on Stijn - ed.]
- U: Why did you pick River Phoenix as the subject of your song about fan worship? And what about those other names - Gus Van Sandt, Michael Stipe, Casey & Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Depp, Samantha Mathis... Were their names chosen because of the way the rhythm of their names would fit the meter of the lyrics, or because they are particular instances of people to you? Did you work a long time on finding the right names and the right words?
+ Rm: It happened pretty much as it's depicted in the song - I went to see Arnaud Desplechin's film "Esther Kahn" (starring Summer Phoenix) for my film distribution job, and after the film there was this small party that was attended by the Phoenix family (sans Joaquin) and people like Gus Van Sandt and Michael Stipe, as well as Summer's alleged boyfriend Casey Affleck. It was the first time I'd seen so many famous people in the same room, in the flesh, and I was admittedly sort of stunned. But I was even more taken with River Phoenix's mother as she really did look a great deal like him, but more so because she presented this particular phenomenon: here's a woman who is famous only in that she is the mother of these notable actors, one of whom died at a tragically early age and achieved a sort of legend status. Were you to see her on the street you would not recognize her as any sort of celebrity, and she wasn't really mixing with the 'glitterati' at the party. Seeing her in person really brought it home that River Phoenix was fundamentally just a person with a mother and father, like everyone else. I was looking at her as a mother not unlike my own mother ?nd as the mother of this legendary actor, and I suppose that duality was perplexing and fascinating to me. But still I felt this distance from her and wondered what really separated someone like River Phoenix from someone like me, his mom from my mom, etc. Growing up I had been a fan of River Phoenix's acting, and I was quite sad when he died, so the experience at the party seemed to present a good opportunity to explore these themes of celebrity and fandom in a less detached and more personal manner than the other songs. I wanted to make a tribute song to RP but I wanted it to be more complicated than your typical hagiographic tribute to a dead star. I wrote most of the song in one day, and while I did really labor to get the rhythm of the names to fit the meter of the song, the lyrics fell into place much quicker than usual for me. It's very rare that I will write and record a song in the space of two days, but I did so with that song. I just knew that I had to finish it in that weekend, before the inspiration could fade.
- U: Have you said your last word on the 'celebrity' subject, or have you got more songs in the pipeline? Are there any other topics or projects you'd like to work on or are already busy at?
+ Rm: I don't have any more songs about celebrities planned. I live in Chicago now and there really isn't a celebrity-centered culture here the way there is in New York. I might see someone like Sam Prekop at a show and recognize him from having seen the Sea and Cake play, but he doesn't have an entourage or anything, he's waiting in line at the bar with everyone else. If I'd stayed in New York I might have felt compelled to continue with the celebrity subject, but at this point I've moved on to other things. As I mentioned earlier, I am working on new Roommate songs and without being too overt or preachy about it I think that some of them might touch on the sinister implications of a perpetual war on terror and other realities of life under a second Bush administration. I'm working on a cover of the Camper Van Beethoven song "Sweethearts" which has this great closing stanza about the mind of Ronald Reagan and I've slightly modified it to be about the mind of Richard Cheney. However, rather than trying to develop concepts for albums, or to 'tackle' particular topics, I'd rather just write songs intuitively and figure out how they fit together later on.
- U: Upon hearing "Celebs", one might assume you're an artist who thinks it's important to speak out on certain subjects, who wants to 'cut meat' in his lyrics, rather than sing songs about silly somethings. Would that view be correct? Do you consider yourself as belonging to a satyrical or other tradition, by any chance?
+ Rm: No, I don't think that view would be correct. I certainly don't believe that songs must be vessels for political or social commentary or any kind of rhetoric, but if done effectively, I think they can function very well that way. At the same time, I have nothing against a nice chorus of 'oh yeahs' or inexplicable vocals as in a lot of earlier Cocteau Twins songs. I try not to spend too much time considering what tradition I belong to - I'd prefer to let writers like you figure those things out for me! In writing the songs on "Celebs" I did consider the tongue-in-cheek humor that's become the sort of trademark of Stephen Merritt and the Magnetic Fields, but I didn't necessarily set out to make a work of satire. I try not to take myself too seriously, and as such I imagine that there will always be a certain amount of humor or even sarcasm in my songs, but whether or not it will function as satire or social commentary is not a primary concern. First and foremost I want to make songs that will give people pleasure.
- U: You're also heavily involved in movies, e.g. providing video images for other artists but also by organising a short film festival in Iowa, viz. "Thaw". Is that your first love? When did you start making music?
+ Rm: Music was my first love. I started playing the piano at age 8 and writing songs when I was 15. I started doing four-track recording when I was 17, while I was still playing classical music as well. I studied music at the university level for one year, doing intensive piano and a little bit of composition, but decided for a number of reasons that I would prefer to be studying film. Film seemed like a good choice because it had so much to do with music and I liked the idea that I could compose music for my own or my classmates' films. That ended up happening and it was great experience for me. Eventually one of my videos got into the Thaw Festival and not long after I was asked to take over this volunteer position as director of the festival. That was a really incredible year - one of the most gratifying things about it was being able to incorporate film/music performances into the festivities. Seeing the Tape Beatles perform in front of a full house that had just endured a marathon screening of 'difficult' experimental films and videos but were still compelled to stay, knowing that it wouldn't have happened without the efforts of myself and other dedicated volunteers, that was a very fulfilling and memorable moment for me. Anyway, I guess I very much enjoy bringing sounds and images together in various ways.
- U: What are your current plans regarding cinema? For instance, are you going to organise another film festival, or...?
+ Rm: Well I actually still work for the film distribution company as a consultant, basically watching mostly shitty independent movies and helping to determine which ones might be suitable for commercial 'arthouse' distribution. I also work for a non-profit distributor of experimental video (VDB) and have recently travelled to several film/video festivals where my videos have been screened. (Most recently: NY Video festival, also Thaw, Maryland Film Festival, New York Underground, ...) [See also our links section below - ed.] I'd have to say as a participant I prefer the experimental media community to the world of cinema - at experimental festivals I come in contact with all sorts of interesting film and videomakers in a low-key setting where it's easy to have dialogues about work or anything else. With the big festivals of cinema it's more about the business and you're much more likely to talk to a sales rep or agent than the director or any creative personnel. There's usually more of an atmosphere of desperation at these big festivals because so much more is at stake. But I digress...
- U: One might argue that Roommate's singing style is not far removed from Vincent Gallo's?
+ Rm: I hate to admit it, but I haven't actually heard Vincent Gallo's singing yet. I've been meaning to get his album "When" since it came out last year (especially after reading your review) but haven't got around to it yet. It took me a while to get around to seeing "Buffalo 66" but I really loved it when I saw it. It had such a beautiful look to it, and it was so romantic in this audacious and very charming way. I'm interested to know how we might have similar singing styles, but I'm mainly interested to hear his music - I think he's a very interesting person. A good friend of mine practically worships him, he's definitely a star to her. I suppose it's time I get the record...
- U: Which are some of your favourite movies or directors - and why?
+ Rm: Too many to mention, not enough time...
- U: Which are other important influences?
+ Rm: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astor Piazzolla, Scott Walker, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Ennio Morricone, Angelo Badalamenti by way of David Lynch, Brian Wilson... See more below...
- U: Which record or band has influenced you the most?
+ Rm: Hundreds and hundreds of records or bands have influenced me to varying and immeasurable degrees...
- U: Which is your favourite record to fall asleep with?
+ Rm: No favorite, but Bola's "Soup", My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless", Cocteau Twins' "Victorialand", Mum's "Finally We Are No-One", Bjorn Olsson's "Instrumental Music", Gavin Bryars' "Sinking Of The Titanic", Child's View's "Funfair" and Fennesz' "Endless Summer" are some recent and perpetual favorites.
- U: Which is a brilliant record to wake up to on an active, sunny morning?
+ Rm: Prince's "Dirty Mind" or "Purple Rain", New Order's "Brotherhood", Stereolab's "Sound-Dust" (I know you weren't so keen on this one but I really love it), the Cure's "Head On The Door", Sun Ra's "Supersonic Jazz" or "We Travel The Spaceways"...
- U: Which is a brilliant record to wake up to on a hazy Sunday afternoon?
+ Rm: Leonard Cohen's "Songs Of", the Clientele's "Suburban Light", Tinderstick's "Curtains", Takagi Masakatsu's "Pia", Gillian Welch's "Time (The Revelator)", the Buda Musique label's "Ethiopiques Vol. 10 (Blues & Ballads)", My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless". My favorite song to wake up to on any hazy morning is Billie Holiday's "Good Morning Heartache".
- U: Suppose you've got 800 km of road ahead and you're going to be stuck with only one cd or tape in the car... which one had it better be?
+ Rm: This might be blasphemous to Brian Wilson purists, but right now I would say "Hawaii" by the High Llamas. It's like the longest, most consistently luscious Beach Boys album that the Beach Boys never made. But that would only work in the late spring or summer, on a sunny day. In the fall or winter I'd say the Morr records v/a comp "Putting The Morr Back In Morrissey". It's chock-full of delicious ear candy. And it's a double-disc comp, or is that cheating?
- U: What are other instances of superior driving music?
+ Rm: Bola's "Soup", the Notwist's "Neon Golden", Radiohead's "Amnesiac", Elliott Smith's "Either/Or", John Coltrane's "Live At The Village Vanguard", Yo La Tengo's two most recent albums, Cannibal Ox's "The Cold Vein" (futuristic hip-hop on the Def Jux label), anything by Boards of Canada, any mix-tape that my girlfriend made for me or that I made for her.
- U: Suppose the same thing happens to you on a desert island: which album would you want to study forever?
+ Rm: I don't think I could do it. Any album that I'd conceivably want to study forever would inevitably become tiresome. I'd rather make instruments out of rocks, gourds and branches, or just listen to the surf and the wildlife.
- U: The horror, the horror: what if it'd be the other way around... which album would be unbearable to be stuck with?
+ Rm: The Steve Miller Band's "Greatest Hits"?
- U: Which other bands would be sheer terror to be forced to listen to?
+ Rm: Any Top-40 country music from the late 1980's through the present - this kind of music was very popular where I grew up, lots of my friends would listen to it, and now to my dismay I realize that songs like "Boot Scootin' Boogie" by Brooks & Dunn or "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood (I remember singing this in my junior high school choir around the time of the Gulf War, and it had a recent revival, of course) are forever lodged in my brain. Those songs transport me to a distinct, grotesque pocket of hell.
- U: What's the biggest laugh (i.e. the funniest thing) you've heard on record?
+ Rm: Perhaps Ween's track "Pollo Asado" from "The Pod", or "Raw Hot Dog" by my friend Zach Lint aka Coolzey of the Sucka MCs. Also maybe this parody of a beer commercial that my friend Rob Smart made for a class project...
- U: Which record (or track) gave you the biggest kick ever? (Is it a "play loud" track?)
+ Rm: Mercury Rev's "Yerself Is Steam" and its opening track "Chasing a bee". It gave me such a thrill when I first heard it as a young pup and it was definitely a play loud track!
- U: Thank you ever so much!
+ Rm: No problem - thank you!
Questions by (pv), answers received via e-mail, August 8, 2002.
Source: [Uzine] e-mail magazine
Date: issue U0218 was sent out on Friday 9 August 2002 (14:31 CET)
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