An Interview with Jon De Rosa of Aarktica, Dead Leaves Rising and Flare By Jeff Penczak Guitarist Jon DeRosa has been making music since before he was old enough to worry about acne. As a pre-teen, he banged around in a couple of punk and hardcore bands until, at the tender age of 13, he discovered Sam Rosenthal's Projekt label, home to such "love"ly Gothic soundsculptists as lovesliescrushing, Lycia, Love Spirals Downward and Sam's own Black Tape for A Blue Girl. This self-confessed "buttkicking" led Jon to abandon his kiddy "core" roots and refocus his energies on "more soft end, melodic music." We start with Jon filling us in on his involvement with LD Beghtol's Flare project. LD has appeared on The Magnetic Fields' current 3xCD release 69 Love Songs and their leader Stephen Merritt has referred to Flare as an "acoustic Southern Gothic string band." When I first heard selections from their new EP, "Circa" (Subliminal Violence) my first reaction was "Holy razor blades, Batman! These guys make The Cure and Joy Division sound like Howdy Doody time!" On tracks like the stewed-to-the-gills monk-like chant of "Item: June 16th" to their cover of Kid Montana's "Anywhere (like the moon,)" Flare brandish everything from marxo-, stylo- and pixiephones to the Kampanile Tower of Bells with a few baritone and TV Pal ukuleles thrown in for good measure. If nothing else, Flare comes off like the embodiment of those Ellipsis Arts releases featuring bellophones, parlaphones and gravichords and other home-made instruments. The key difference here, however, is that Flare combine all these weird and exotic toys with beautifully honest lyrics which, while almost naked in their innocence, reflect the experience of a world traveler. Jon: I heard about Flare from various friends and from being on the Low discussion list, which LD is also a member of. Last summer, I was putting together the Brighter Sound Collective, which is an annual show that I do for my record label and last year we did it as a party at my home in New Jersey and I invited Flare to come down and play. They actually ended up canceling, but I stayed in touch with them and when I went back to school in New York in the fall, I met up with them and they were looking for someone and it seemed like a totally natural fit with what I was doing. I started playing with them and it really worked out well. You contribute a pretty mean banjo, guitar and backing vocals to that project? Yes. Now, you recently played out live with Flare and I was wondering if you could share with us what the audience's reaction was. Not only to Flare, but to all your projects. Most of them are very quiet and introspective, not your typical loud rock and roll with disco lightshows and screaming teenagers. It's strange. Half of the people who come to see a show of mine are familiar with my various projects, so they know it's very different stylistically. Others may have heard a song on the radio or be familiar with me through various discussion lists. That's usually the case with Aarktica. Most people who only know me through that aren't aware of my other projects. I've also been doing acoustic shows in New York as Dead Leaves Rising since I was about 15. So there are a lot of people who are familiar with that side from the live shows. But what's nice is that there are a lot of people who are interested in my work in general, so I can always count on them to be there for the CDs under whatever guise I call it. That's great that you can build a fan base for one project from the pre-existing fans of another one.Have you ever had an opportunity at the same gig to perform under the various projects. At this year's Brighter Sound Collective show that we did at CBs Gallery [an annex of famed punk club, CBGBs], I started out solo as Dead Leaves Rising and did three songs solo then a few guys from Flare joined me for a song or two and before you knew it all of Flare was on stage performing their songs. Jon has referred to some of his various projects, so to recap, we discussed their chronology. Fade was begun in the mid-90s when Jon was about 15. An example of this work, "Sadness" can be found on the Silber Records compilation Demain. I guarantee you won't believe these amazing sounds and vocals coming from a 15 year old! Yeah, Brian [John Mitchell, head of Silber] has the original tapes and he wants to release them, but I'm not sure they really need to be re-released. Fade eventually turned into Dead Leaves Rising. Jon's next project, Still is also represented on Demain with an excerpt from a track entitled "Each Day Is Like Winter." Did you ever release anything as Still? I did a very limited cassette release. That may also be available on Silber Records in the near future. Still then evolved into Jon's current ambient guitar project, Aarktica, whose debut release No Solace In Sleep is also available on Silber. In between there was also a short-lived pop band, Morning Color Division. However, Dead Leaves Rising, Flare and Aarktica are the only current projects Jon is concentrating on. Getting back to Fade. Was that something you worked on with an eye towards releasing the material or was that just a bit of fooling around in the attic and recording your voice to see what it sounded like? I actually started Fade back when I was about 13 or 14. I had been in punk and hardcore bands for a while and then went through this period where I wasn't listening to music anymore. Around that time, I discovered Projekt Records and that really kicked me in the butt to start doing more soft end, melodic music. That's when I started Fade. I did some demos in my house and recorded some things at my high school studio, before I was even in high school. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I wasn't aware of a "scene" or whether anybody would be interested and I just put together a couple of cassettes. The first one, Pale Broken Truth came out in '94 and Windows came out in '95. Did you ever get up enough nerve to send a copy out to Sam at Projekt? Believe it or not, Padraic Ogl was working for Projekt at the time, and he was in a band called Thanatos. He liked it so much that he got me some live spots on their first shows on the east coast. When I was 15 they asked me if I'd open for Love Spirals Downwards and lovesiescrushing here in New York. So Projekt really helped me get my start until Pat left the label. Next, Fade sort of evolved into Dead Leaves Rising. Did that also coincide with you getting out of high school and going on to college? I was still a senior in high school when the first Dead Leaves Rising CD [Shadow Complex] came out. The next one, Waking Up on the Wrong Side of No One is due out next spring. Brighter is your own label. How did you get into starting that? Especially since you have another label, Silber for example, that's putting out the Aarktica material. It's just something I wanted to do when the first Dead Leaves Rising CD came out. It's largely a vehicle for me to put out my related projects. I have put out a few cassettes of others and when I get out of college I plan on working on it more full time and putting out more releases of other people. How do you go about finding artists. Do people throw you demos at your shows? It's mostly people passing me tapes and CDs. It was never meant to be an orthodox record label where we sign bands. My whole goal is to be a collective of artists where bands work together on each other's projects and get together and help one another out. I just feel there's so much of that lacking in the scene that we perform in. Sounds kinda like what Ivo [Watts-Russell, head of the 4AD label] did with his This Mortal Coil concept. Yeah. It's kinda like that. I think the whole idea behind that was to have bands recording together where everybody contributes what they do best. This is, conceptually, not as tangible. I consider Remora, which is Brian John Mitchell's project from Silber Records, to be part of the Brighter Collective. We've never released any of their music, but he helps put the shows together when he's in town and I helped him with his new album. The same with bands like Mahogany. Aarktica performs with them all the time and we're in the same circle. It sounds a little "hippy-ish" and I'm far from that, but I think it pays off and really helps to have musicians with common goals associate with each other for the common good of everyone. There are a lot of bands that I listen to these days that also run their own labels while simultaneously releasing material on other labels – just like your situation. What, then, is the thought process when you're sitting down and creating a piece of music and preparing a release. How do you decide whether it's something for Brighter or another label? Do you shop your stuff around piecemeal? Putting it like that really simplifies it. In reality, it's more like a kamikaze effort. It's like, "I just finished this CD. I don't know what to do with it." Flare is a little different because LD is more in control with that. With Aarktica, the whole thing with Silber worked out beautifully. I couldn't ask for a better record label. It was also Brian just sending me an email saying, "Remember when I mentioned that I'd like to put out the Aarktica record? Well, I'm ready." And it worked out so well and had such a great reception that we got offers from other labels. For example, the next Aarktica EP is supposedly going come out in November on Ochre in the U.K. And that's what we're doing with the next Dead Leaves Rising. We're sifting through offers deciding what we'd like to do with it. So it's not purely an economic decision as to who has the most money available to put it out? That has a little to do with it, but I've just decided that I'm not gonna put any more of my releases out on Brighter. It's really hard to promote your own project. I'm much better at promoting other people's projects. Brian and I at Silber have that kind of arrangement. I help him promote Silber Records and he helps with Brighter. That works out better and fits more into my mentality. Let's talk about Dead Leaves Rising. Could you tell us your approach when you're writing material and getting ready to record. How do you decide what is for Dead Leaves and what might work better as an Aarktica release? I will usually take a little blue notebook and head off to one of the two or three bars that I frequent and over four or five beers, I will begin penning the lyrics in my head. You'll be surprised to hear that most of the songs I end up writing are more like country songs. (There's another project that LD and I, and another friend, Jesse are working on called Giddy-Up-Go and we have these country songs going all the time.) The point being that Aarktica is mostly lyricless, so I won't write for that when I'm out. Dead Leaves Rising is based more on social commentary and feelings and other things that I'm going through and that mostly happens when I'm out. Later I can sift through it with the guitar and put the songs together. It's not as methodical as me wanting to work on a project and then doing it. On the new Dead Leaves Rising CD, there's a track called "The Glass is Half Empty" that sounds like you have a little vocal assistance. Is that a girlfriend or a relative? (laughing) That's me! (Incredulous) Oh, really! You'll have to listen to it again. (laughing) It's definitely not a girl! It's interesting to hear you describe how you work, because I hear a little influence of Leonard Cohen or Red House Painters or Nick Drake even. The lyrics remind me a lot of New York. They're very New York centric. I can picture you walking around the city (or, as you say, sitting in a bar) with all these nameless, faceless people coming and going and the lyrics seem to describe a person who is sort of floating through that and just observing what is going on. Just like Cohen incorporates Montreal into his work and Drake talks about his visits to London. Do you ever do that sort of thing and just wander the streets and absorb and observe what goes on around you and try and capture that in your work? A few things on that: I think any artist who is sensitive to their surroundings is going to let their environment affect their writing. I did notice a change in my writing when I moved from New Jersey up to New York. New York is the sort of place that can either kill you or inspire you and I'm sort of on the verge of both of those things. It depends on the day. Sometimes I feel positive that I won’t get out of this city alive. It's really difficult for me to live on top of people. I went through a stage in my life where I didn't leave the house for a long time. It was strange when I got back out there and being in a social environment or a bar environment allows me to be like a fly on the wall and see things that most people don't see, or if they do see it, they don't appreciate it. That's how I got the title of the album. I overheard somebody say that to someone, "Oh God, you woke up on the wrong side of no one." I thought: that's really perfect. It's one of my few joys that I can just sit there and have my few beers and listen and watch what's going on and create a story of what maybe is the case (or maybe is not) to accompany what I'm seeing. Listening to your music, I picture you sitting there alone in your apartment all dressed in black with old Joy Division and Swans albums blasting out on the stereo! This is very melancholic and personal stuff – not the usual sex and drugs and rock and roll stuff. It comes from inside the heart. So, I wanted to ask what you do for fun, Jon? (laughing) Hmmm. … What's that!? And by the way, it’s likely I’ll be found wearing a Cramps t-shirt listening to Johnny Cash if you were to visit my apartment any time soon. You're a student at my old alma mater, New York University and you keep busy with that and with writing and recording and producing and arranging – What do you listen to when you just need a break and you have to get away from "work?" When you're trying to either unwind or just sit back and relax…Maybe get some ideas or inspiration? I can give you two answers. I haven't been a big music listener lately. Just this month I started getting back into music. Is that because you're too busy, or that what you're hearing isn't turning you on? It's a little bit of both. I was homeless all summer and I was drifting between places and I didn't have the means or the CD player to listen to anything. I also haven't really heard anything that's totally wowed me in a while. Over the past six months, the majority of what I've listened to is old country music: Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, who's been a really big influence on my even before I got into country. When I was younger, my mom listened to all that stuff and I was being rebellious and didn't want to hear it. Now, years and years later, I'm able to hear them and appreciate what they are and what they mean. I'm getting into the lyrical content more than anything else. Does LD write all the Flare material? Yes. LD writes all the lyrics and he comes in with the skeletal outline and a very strong idea in his head of what he would like it to sound like. He usually lets us fill it out, but he definitely has an idea in his head of what it's supposed to be. Moving along to Still and updating that with the Aarktica project: any chance that was named after the Joy Division album? No, no connection. Although Joy Division is my favorite band, that didn't have anything to do with it. Still evolved into your current Aarktica project. At what point did you feel the need to put an end to Still and start recording as Aarktica? The Still tape I put out was something I did one summer when I was supposed to be going out on the road doing sound for Black Tape for A Blue Girl. But I ended up getting booted out of that and I was pretty pissed and so I decided to do this project. Then in January of the following year, I lost the majority of my hearing in my right ear due to a freak strange occurrence that there was really no explanation for. That launched me into a major fit of depression, because I had just declared Music Technology as my major and I was engineering recordings and this had made it impossible. So, I became a bit reclusive and found all these pain killers and decided I was just gonna be reclusive and all. That's when I decided to work on Aarktica and it was a really good, cathartic way of coping with what had happened. I worked at it all night, every night, trying to capture tones that recreated sounds the way I heard them. The whole idea of the album was to recreate the way "normal" sound sounded to me now that I had this hearing loss. Has that medical condition changed? No, it's permanent. Now that you've explored that avenue, do you feel you've exhausted all the possibilities of that style of music and are you planning on concentrating on music in terms of what the audience is gonna hear as opposed to the way you hear it? The new EP, which hopefully will be out in November is shorter, more structured songs. I can't really compare it to anything because it hasn't been recorded yet. The songs aren't as abstract or guitar based, either. I think you're right that there is only so much you can do in the whole guitar ambient scene. I could release album after album of guitar drone, but it's not gonna be innovative anymore. Your point was echoed about a year ago when I interviewed Jason DiEmilio from The Azusa Plane, who said pretty much the same thing. Yes, they're one of my favorite drone acts. He said he could make the same album over and over again, but he didn't want to do that. So, I'm glad to hear that you've got the album out there and people can hear it for what it is and now you're gonna move on. Do you plan to stay pretty much in the instrumental vein? The new record actually has lyrics, too. It's hard to tell how it's gonna sound on tape. I have an idea in my head, but it could be totally different. I start recording it next week. Do you have your own studio? No, I record at home on a 4-track. However, I’ll be recording the Aarktica EP at Motherwest, the studio that Charles from Flare runs. Are these apartment numbers (referring to the location of the recordings listed in the liners)? No, those are actually dorm numbers. Last year you performed at the Festival Electronique down in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Silber Records is based. Tell us about that. From what I've read, that's sounds like one of THE electronic and experimental festivals to go to and here you are actually performing! We had an early slot. This was before anybody really knew who Aarktica was. It was really strange. We get down there, but we weren't aware that it's really called Festival Electronique, not because of the music, but because they have a sort of vintage video game show. It was really bizarre, because they had all these Atari dealers and stuff like that. What was the music like? Everybody was kinda "shoegazer-y." The biggest acts that played were Hospital People (member of Low) and Jessica Bailiff. Remora performed and Clang Quartet, which is a percussive solo act on Silber Records also played. It was a lot of new artists who were in their first or second release, or maybe even pre-release period. You've studied composition at NYU with Dr. Kenneth Valitsky, a student of Stockhausen's. Could you share a little about his approach to composition and if any of that is reflected in what you've created. He was with me the whole way with the Aarktica album. My lessons revolved around that. I look up to him very much. He was one of the only teachers I had that really threw the rule book out the window when it came to the rules of music theory. He understood all that, the rules of traditional counterpoint and everything, but he did not force me to compose in a way that was unnatural for me. He really appreciated what I was doing. Every week when I came in with a tape, he would be very honest, but most of the time he really enjoyed it. It was encouraging at a time when I was really discouraged and I don't think that without his help I would have gone through with releasing the album. He was listening to the pieces you were recording and giving you feedback? I write string quartets and choral ensembles as well, but every few weeks I would ask if he'd like to hear what I was doing in the studio and he agreed. It was mostly our distraction, rather than our focus. Now, you have a few upcoming projects, including contributing to a tribute album to one of my favorite artists, Low. You're gonna do "Violence" from Long Division. Is this something you're looking to put out on Brighter? It's kind of up in the air right now. I don’t know if it will come out on any label. Is it finished? Yeah. It's been passed around from label to label for the past few years. At this point, I don't know who's gonna put it out. Last I heard it was gonna be on Subliminal Violence, Flare's label. However, I'm not sure if that is still the case. It's probably gonna be a while before that comes out, but hopefully it will because there's a lot of really good bands on it. How did the project come about? Did it grow out of the Low discussion list, or did you have contact with Mimi or Alan [from the band?] Not myself personally. The people putting it together did get their clearance and they're totally fine with that idea. I'm just submitting a track. It's not something that I was instrumental in setting up. The people setting it up were familiar with my work and they approached me. I read in a previous interview that you did in Brian's fanzine, Q.R.D. that you have you eye on a sitar in a New York guitar shop. Has that made it's way into your apartment yet? No. I really wish…. What project do you feel that would be best suited to? Aarktica, no doubt. You're not thinking of turning Dead Leaves into one of these "wyrdfolk" type acts like Incredible String Band or Stone Breath or In Gowan Ring…? No. I think I'm a better straight forward folk singer than try and trip it out like any of the World Serpent bands or anything like that. You have another quote in here that I'd like to wrap things up with . You say, "I would love to see the advent of atonalism, serialism and minimalism in pop music….Bands like Low have brought minimalism to pop music, just as Hood has used atonalism and His Name Is Alive utilized serialism." What have you brought to pop music? What are you in the best position to contribute? That's a good question. I think each of my projects brings something a little different. I think Aarktica is definitely in the minimalist vein, but it actually has aspects of all of that. Now the next step is to make it pop music. That's the way it might go, or it might not. It's easy to utilize minimalism or atonalism in an academic context, but the key is to get people to use that in pop music. That's why I admire The Magnetic Fields so much. They use all of those things in a way that people are bobbing their heads to it and their not even realizing that it's totally dissonant. We have a lot of songs with Flare that are very serialist and our harmonies are very atonal. Dead Leaves Rising is the most straight ahead of all my projects where there's not so much funny business going on. It's just good songwriting in that singer/songwriter style like Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake and those artists you mentioned earlier. They were all big influences. A selected Jon DeRosa Discography: Aarktica The Dead Leaves Rising Fade Flare Morning Color Division Pale
Horse and Rider Still The preceding interview took place on my No Soap, Radio program over WNTI-FM, 91.9 in Hackettstown, NJ, USA on September 18, 2000. Jon can be contacted through Silber Records or his website.
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