...covers. They can't afford not to, and after all, who gives a shit
about a scene in Mobile. You late-nineties era punk rock kids have
alienated them by imitating all the dumbfuck hearsay and
unsubstantiated neo-Victorian gossip that has gone around about the
band. What you don't know is that Analog Missionary is more emo than
your girlfriend's record collection and more old-school goth than a
gas-chamber full of trench-coated pimply androgynes in Cure t-shirts.
So fuck you and go see them, dammit, or you'll regret it.
Even if I know they will be slaving to the herd into order to pay
for the technological musical armada they have amassed over the
years, I still show up for the crumbs. For example, at the majority
of the shows they will play an exquisite Arabic progression that
pulls on my out-of-body cord. This seven minutes of music is worth
wading through two hours of covers. It is numinous and eerie, and
makes me swoon every time I hear it. The demos I've heard are
sophisticated, professional, atmospheric, and complex. It is music
that has been poured over and labored with, every little drumbeat
tweaked, every sound smoothed and sharpened. The members of the band
are skilled, committed, and unwavering. This is more than just music,
I think, this is intoxicant. If Analog missionary is on the path of
their True Will, as the Thelemites say, then they are destined to
play so that dervishes may spin.
They do not play for smokes, girls, attention, or local fame.
They do not accept the burned out and easy to play punk rock, rap
rock, and shit metal categories whose cultural gravity so many bands
never escape. They spend years writing songs no one hears using
deductive, rational, supra-rational and mystical methods. They
approach their art like shamans on one day and then scientists the
next; every song must weather synthesis after synthesis, every song
must be a masterpiece. They do not want to write a song in fifteen
minutes and forget about it. They cannot play without an elaborate
set-up. They do not tolerate poor sound quality, crappy set-ups, or
lazy mixes. They aren't cute, they aren't funny, they aren't punk
rock, they're not a cheap thrill. They do not tolerate imperfection.
Whenever I hear their original work, I swoon.
It's understandable why they can't play out at the Splash. There
are logistics problems. It makes sense, but I don't care. Either
Analog Missionary plays an original set at the Splash….
…or Bono dies.

ANALOG MISSIONARY INTERVIEW

DM : Dragonmonkey, ZE: Zen Engines, AN: Anstrom, A : Adam, T : Tony, K : Kevin
DM: What's the CD sound like? Describe the sound of your band.

TL: Oh god, don't ask them that, that's so rude

K: Sounds like Van Halen. (joking)

DM: Well if the sound of your music was an animal, what animal would it be?

AN: I shouldn't be the one to answer that question.

T: Why, because you would see it was a goose?

A: laughs

T: Probably an animal that runs in a lot of directions real fast,
probably a very restless animal.

AN: But with very heavy feet.

DM: Good answer.

A: About the sound of the CD. It won't sound like a
straight line of buzz from the beginning to the end. It's one that
jumps up and down. Sometimes it's real
swirrly, and sometimes it's real heavy. It's not going to be one big
block of noise.

AN: Some of the songs asked for different paths within them. It's not
hard to catch it, it just takes a different outlook on the means to
the end. You can take a song and listen to it 19 times, and on the
20th time you will hear something completely different.

DM: Yeah, projection.

DM: Also, the Egyptian or Arabic song you do live is probably my
favorite, but this might be because I have an arabic music fetish. Is
that on the CD?

A: That Egyptian song is one that we rewrite every time we play it.

AN: Yes, I feel like that song is an entity in itself. I don't think
it wants to be put on a CD. I think that song enjoys being done live.
I don't think it could be put on a CD and have the same energy.

DM:Do you consider the songs alive?

AN: Of course they are.

DM: Have you heard of memetics?

AN: No.

DM: You're talking about a suprarational way of making music, like
channelling, but I get the impression that you are a very rational
band. You are very selective with different sounds, very precise.

T: Yeah, we filter a lot out, and we can be clinical about it, but we
also can't write from music theory. At times we just have to listen.
It is almost easier to be creative on an instrument you aren't good
at. The songs on our CD were chosen from a big library of parts.

AN: But it wasn't really clinical.

K: Only recording was clinical.

AN: Once you get past the drunken afterglow, we have to make it
cognative and sharpen up the edges. But I don't even really feel
that is clinical. That's what the song is asking you to do. It's
asking to be honed. Once
you're not giddy anymore and you're sobered up, you can ask the song
what it wants to be done, and what it wants to be done to it.

DM: It wants to be replicated.

DM: Do yall ever have disagreements?

T: (laughs) Nah.

A: Yes we do!

TL: What was the last big disagreement you guys had?

K: Where to eat.

AN: When you're picking the words for a song from the netherworld of
all possible words, you get close to finding out what the songs want.
The songs we did
together, I didn't really have a part in their skeletal nastiness, in
their mechanics, so it took me a while to get to know them and what
they wanted.

DM: Do you ever get any songs that lie to you, mean-spirited tricksters?

AN No, but I've come into contact with songs that didn't know what
they wanted at first, and I found out that they wanted to work with
us to develop them. For me, the music is the part that gives the
carriage, but the words are what sticks in your mind at first.

T: I feel just the opposite though.

DM: That works out then.

DM: What are the songs about?

A: If we could explain our ideas, we wouldn't write songs.

K: We try to write stuff that sounds like it's already been written.
One of the best compliments I can get is if someone says it sounds
really familiar or natural - I mean, unless you're ripping someone
off. We're really mystical with a lot of this stuff.

DM: I think you have to be mystical if you're a musician, I mean,
unless you're in Kraftwerk.

DM: What's the last book yall read.

T: What's wrong with the world, by G.K. Chesterson

A: Kevin is on a thousand year quest to find another author as good
as Tolkien, but they are all just copying. He's read around three
hundred books now and he's still searching.

DM: Hey, do yall want to critisize the punk rockers in the area?

A: It's sad that there's a group you can point at and call punk. The
idea of punk is that there would never be a group you could point at
and define that way. I mean, I like a lot of punk. Like the Talking
Heads. But still, what we have now, punk music revolution culture,
whatever you want to call it, is a form of expression that has been
around longer than rock n' roll had been around when punk started.
When punk rose up, rock had become bloated and punk showed how
ridiculous it had become, and lets say that they were successful in
tearing it down - look at it now, it's now older than rock was when
punk started. Where do you go from there? powerful drum sounds, and
by being clinical with the recording and not just hitting them really
hard. Kevin and Tony sit there and the computer trying to figure out
how to make the drums sound louder and bigger than life. We try to
be a powerful rock n' roll band, but at the same time we try to have
nice equipment, and we have respect for each other, and we have
respect for other bands - and we have no business going into a club
and trashing the place so that we appear to have this rock and roll
image. We want to make loud and powerful music, but we are also
seeking beautiful sounds. We're also searching for music that's not
just rock and rebellion, we're searching for music that's about
peace. Some songs may be about serenity and have nothing to do with
tension.

DM: Are you going to play the splash?

A: We've never been asked.

T:We got really excited when we heard about the splash, but I think
we would have a logistics problem.

K: We have a lot of equipment, and we take a long time to set up.
Logistically, it would be hard. For instance we have a hard time
playing the Theramin, live because drunk people get too close to and
throws of the electromagnetic field.

A: We will literally spend three hours making sure the sound mix is
just right, so that when the audience is there we're only giving them
the music.

DM: I think I can try to ask Bob and Linda if you can get a night,
because it would really be worth it. It would be so much better than
the restaurant shows. I heard some of the reviews of the band in the
bathroom. They were good reviews, but not for the right reasons. Heh.

AN: There are nights when people love you, and there are nights when
people leave. I'm not saying they're stupid.

DM: I would say it.

DM:We've got three more minutes of tape, what do you want to say.

AN: Someday, when I have enough resources, I will cook everyone on
our email list dinner, and these guys can vouch for my cooking.

A: I will vouch for it.

T: Certainly.

ZE: Alright, consider me on the email list.

AN: I'll do it because it's so wonderful when people come up to us
and tell us that they like what we do.

A: Yeah, we enjoy you for enjoying this stuff, and we're glad you're
not at a fucking football game! DM: Okay, what's your philosophy,
ethics, religion, anything of cosmic signifigance. Do you know any
jokes?

T: Jokes…uh…..

DM: Religion, politics, what do you have to say to America?

AN: We will find Bin Laden, and he will be sorry.

DM: Bin Laden wrote for our magazine. He was our advice colomnist. He
was in the last issue.

AN: Wow.

DM: A week later our advice columnist blew up New York.

DM: Okay, last words, does anyone having anything funny, witty,
utterly mind blowing.

A: Yeah, the last thing is…
TAPE END