Justin Trosper
Making Beautiful Noise
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Unwound doesn’t receive the kind of fanfare showered on Fugazi or Sonic Youth, the two bands to whom its sound is most frequently compared. But few in the American indie underground made more beautiful noise in the ‘90s than this Olympia, Washington-based trio.
Since its formation in 1990, Unwound has released some of the most bracing albums of the post-hardcore era, from 1994’s Fake Train to the slightly less abrasive Repetition in 1996. Unwound guitarist Justin Trosper chatted with Nude As The News staff writer Piero Scaruffi about the band’s musical evolution, the merits of cough syrup, and unlikely inspiration for album cover art.
NATN: Unwound was born minutes from the epicenter of grunge, yet nothing could be more removed from grunge than its music. Can you tell me something about your musical / cultural / personal development?
JT: I guess in a way we were reacting to grunge. The Seattle pseudo-rock star thing was really uninspiring and cynical. We were into the Melvins alot and Nirvana, but more influenced by the Washington D.C. punk thing happening back then, plus more interesting American hardcore (Husker Du, Black Flag, Mission Of Burma) and post-punk from England (Wire, Gang Of Four, Joy Division).
NATN: Can you comment briefly on Unwound (Honey Bear, 1995) -- which I understand is your real first album -- since very few people ever heard it? Why was it released only years later? What kind of style was it? Are there songs that you wish had been on a better-promoted album?
JT: We never finished mixing it after [original drummer] Brandt [Santero] quit and then later decided it was good, finished mixing it and put it out the same year as The Future Of What. I guess it’s a little more hardcore-influenced and energy oriented. It’s distributed through Revolver in the U.S., so maybe that’s why it is hard to find overseas.
NATN: Fake Train (Kill Rock Stars, 1994) covered a lot of ground. I found references to avant-garde music as well as blues, to Sonic Youth as well as the Velvet Underground. Where did you get inspiration for this album and how were the songs born? Any comments/remembrances that you may have about the birth of these songs are welcome.
JT: Yeah, Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth are big influences. I think at that time I was listening to alot of Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives and a lot of Chrome too. I was living in a fucked up house where we took cough syrup everyday and stayed up all night, rarely seeing daylight for awhile. Needless to say, I was in a weird state of mind. We practiced in [drummer] Sara [Lund]’s basement (a house called the Red House) and as usual in Olympia, it was a dark and soggy winter.
The cover of the record was a collage I made that was hanging in the hallway of our house. We were trying to figure out the cover art and the deadline was really soon. I just looked up and said “let’s just use that fucked up thing.' Much laughter ensued and for some reason we thought it was a good idea. Also, we overdubbed amp hum on the first side.
NATN: New Plastic Ideas (Kill Rock Stars, 1994) is more mature, while no less explosive. What can you tell me about the songs “Entirely Different Matters” and “All Souls Day?”
JT: We were busy writing and touring in that time period, it was definitely our most prolific. I don’t really know how to comment on the songs other than we were just trying to evolve, like always. Alot of people think it’s our best record.
NATN: What led you to cut an instrumental track like “Abstraktions?”
JT: We have always been into instrumentals, like how Black Flag put out entirely instrumental records and also jazz and improv music. I think there is an instrumental on every record, just out of principle. We've always tried to place equal importance on the musical aspects of the band, whereas a lot of pop and rock music is all vocals and loud guitar, stupid sounding drums and no bass.
NATN: Some of Unwound’s best songs were released only as singles. Why's that?
JT: We would have extra material from albums for singles. Now you can get almost all our singles and compilation tracks on one record that came out recently called A Single History.
NATN: With The Future Of What (Kill Rock Stars, 1995), Unwound had moved firmly beyond hardcore, but the instrumental parts were still very appealing. Can you talk about your guitar playing style?
JT: Well, I like guitar music a lot. Should I list my influences? Greg Ginn (Black Flag), Sonic Youth, Greg Sage (Wipers), Jimi Hendrix, David Lester (Mecca Normal), Helios Creed (Chrome), Tom Verlaine (Televison), Toni Iommi (Black Sabbath), and more. There’s a lot of other non-guitarists that influence my playing too, like John Coltrane and Peter Brotzmann. I don’t remember what I was into during The Future Of What. I was under the influence of Situationism.
NATN: The singing is no less unusual. How do you marry your guitar with the angst of the vocals?
JT: I just try not to let either get in the way of each other.
NATN: On that album, I hear more Neil Young and Nirvana than in previous ones. Comment?
JT: I like the album Trans by Neil Young, and that song “Cortez The Killer,” but I'm not a freak. Nirvana, I don’t know. They were more of an early influence.
NATN: Another instrumental, “Full Explanation Of Answer,” steals the show.
JT: That’s just [bassist] Vern [Rumsey] making his amplifier sound like a tractor.
NATN: Repetition (Kill Rock Stars, 1996) is almost your "noise-pop" album, far more "accessible" than the previous ones. The atmosphere is still depressed, though. Why do you keep talking about depressing things?
JT: Focusing on depressing things in the right way can be positive, at least for me. I don’t worship death but I think it’s good to work through that thought process. I'm not trying to depress people, that’s not the intent. People can decide for themselves on how to interpret these themes.
NATN: Tell me something about the Replikants. Why and what? There are only two albums, correct? Is this a new career or a parallel track?
JT: More of a parallel track. Brandt is the other key member of the band. We have been playing music together for like 13 or 14 years now and Replikants is what we do now. We're influenced by more free music and trying to expand our musical horizons, not just rocking out.
NATN: What are the other members of Unwound doing?
JT: Vern runs a label called Punk In My Vitamins (PNMV) and we all have a small studio together. Sara lives in Portland, which is two hours from where Vern and I live.
NATN: What can you tell us of Challenge For A Civilized Society (Kill Rock Stars, 1998)?
JT: With Challenge, we tried to expand our studio sound more than anything. The song structures are tighter and the album contains some of our best songs, but as a whole I think it’s not our best album. It was less inspired than the others.
Steve Fisk’s production is really awesome. He does things that most other people would never think of. I think most producers are wankers with no ideas except commercial potential. Challenge just makes me want to make an album that goes even further out, to really question the whole process even more. What is a record? What is production? What's the audience? What's an artist, and so on?
NATN: A Single History (Kill Rock Stars, 1999) is a (partial) anthology of singles released between 1991 and 1997. Listening to it today, what do you think of Unwound's long journey?
JT: Well, we covered alot of territory between those years. I don’t know. I think we are a good band, but I don’t know how we'll stand up to history.
PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.