Interview with Keith LeBlanc
Keith LeBlanc about 'Freakatorium' and his plans for a remix album and his new band Noah Ground.
"Hold on a moment, I'm just about to finish mastering Play Back Unit." For a minute the phoneline is filled with the rumble of distant drumbeats, then Keith LeBlanc returns to the phone. "Long distance music! Yeah, that's what you get when you have a studio at home." It turns out not to be the best time to have an interview on his plans for the future and his long awaited new album Freakatorium, so we postpone the interview to the next day.
Freakatorium, released end of March, is your first solo album since Time Traveller and that one was released seven years ago. What took you so long?
"The main reason is that I have been busy running my own record label, Blanc Records, and planning releases for the label. Since Time Traveller Blanc Records released three Tackhead-compilations (The Power Inc.-series) and the sampler Audium Capsule 1. I also worked for Doug Wimbish's solo-album Trippy Notes for Bass, did the two Little Axe-albums with Skip McDonald, as well as seven tracks for the third one, that has yet to be released. And I did lots, lots of sessions, like some tracks for the new album by Sinead O'Connor, produced by Adrian Sherwood.
"In the meantime I moved two studios, which took a lot of time, and my son Kuga was born. So I didn't record a solo-album in seven years, but did quite a bit of stuff. In fact I think I recorded more than most people did in that period. Over the last three years, whenever I had a little time I recorded tracks for Freakatorium because I didn't have time to record all tracks at once.
"Running a record label is just too much work. I'm trying to license Blanc Records now, so I can concentrate on the music instead of the business. I think I'm good at making albums, not at running a label. I'm planning to release a lot more albums now, one or two in a year, followed by a tour, so you can come and see it. I`m at my happiest when I`m playing. Coming up with weird musical ideas, that`s what I do best.
Play Back Unit was meant to be on a 12-inch, that should have been released preliminary to Freakatorium. It's like an experiment that has gotten bigger and bigger. I want to release it some time this year as a mini-album. I call it the Frankenstein-album and it contains bits and pieces of past, present and future. I don't really know what category you could put in into. "
You didn't mention the four Kickin'Lunatic Beats sample cd's you did for the Advanced media Group (AMG).
"Yeah you're right, I also did those and I'm planning to do a new series of three cd's, Enormous Noise Pro-Lab Vol. 1, 2 & 3. Volume 1 will be mostly ambient mood sound scapes, Made by using several orchestral and percussion instruments, played in unison and counterpoint. And of course it will then be bent and mangled by yours truly. There will also be quite a few strong unison beat scapes that sound like a hundred drummers playing.
"Volume 2 will deal with old times and jazz funk fusion as well as rhythms from around the world. All done in the crazy on the edge LeBlanc-style. It wont sound like anything that's come before it. Volume 3 will contain the most striking collection of funk and noise on the planet. Hard is too soft a word to describe it."
Will the Enormous Noise Pro-Lab series also be on the AMG-label, or are you going to release them on Blanc Records?
"No I'm not making them for AMG and I don't know whether to release them on Blanc. In fact I'm still searching for a way to have them released."
About Freakatorium: you said about Time Traveller that you actually wanted to make two completely different albums, and that it turned out to be one album with totally different sides. One violent, Tackhead-like and the other kind of jazzy. What kind of album did you want Freakatorium to be?
"I wanted to make a good album, with nice listening music that would move the people and not challenge them politically. So near to the new millennium I wanted it to be an open thing and not concentrate on one particular concept or idea. So this time no spoken word type of thing, no dark stuff, no conspiracy theories.
"Most important was the enjoyment, the mood of the album. I wanted to do something in the spirit of Major Malfunction. That album has been copied a lot by musicians who made lots of money with the concept. Over the years loads of people came to me saying: 'How did you do that stuff, Major Malfunction was my bible'. During the recording process of Freakatorium a lot of tracks disappeared, simply because they didn't fit in."
You have been planning to rerelease Major Malfunction for quite some time now. When can we expect that album?
"The release will be after 2000. One idea was to have some people do remixes of some tracks and add those as bonustracks, but I've given up on that. I did some remixes myself, but I'm not too happy with the result. I could also add the remix I did with Jello Biafra for the soundtrack of the film Terminal City Ricochet, but's just another option. Another possibility is to put both Major Malfunction and Stranger Than Fiction on one cd.
"Major Malfunction started of a lot of what's going on today, but it was recorded with none of the techniques that are available now. I think it's good to have it released again. Major Malfunction was the start of a whole genre, and I never had the idea I was creating something timeless when I was recording it. I only listened to it again a couple of weeks ago, hadn't heard it in ages."
You're also working with a new band called Noah Ground. Can you tell some more about that?
"Noah Ground is absolutely the most fun thing I've done the last years, musically. It's Manu Ventura's band actually. He's a guitarplayer from Peru and played with Courtney Pine. Apart from him I'm playing with Nico Gomez on bass and Jason Yard on saxophone. It's a slamming quartet and everybody loves the music, whether they are seven or seventy, including musicians.
"We did our first gig after five sessions, and recorded that one. We burned some cd's to promote the band and see whether we can release a record and reactions are overwhelming. I can't really describe the music we're playing, but I think you could call it three-dimensional funk. Musically it's very challenging."
And now for The Big Question: I spoke to Doug at the end of 1998 at a Jungle Funk-gig in Hannover, Germany, and he was quite enthusiastic about you guys doing a Tackhead-tour again. Is there really any chance of seeing The Mighty Tackhead on stage once more?
"Yeah, Doug's a viking. Every now and then he says: 'Come one, let's do another Tackhead-tour', but the point is nobody wants to organize it. When it comes to that, they are all looking at me, being King Tackhead. Doug always wants to do it, but Skip is more into Little Axe now, and Adrian is producing pop songs nowadays, trying to make a hit record for Christ's sake. He is definitely not thinking about Tackhead, he feels like he has to move on.
"Personally I would love to do it, but I think we only could do a tour if we had a new record to promote, and we would have to be able to make some money doing it. Maybe if the old stuff was getting hot again... Tackhead was too much, too early. The people who came after us made a lot of money with our ideas. I said to Skip the other day: 'We were always ahead of the mark'. We got a lot of respect, but someone else made the money. I guess we're the most respected broke artists on the planet..."
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