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Bill Brovold and Larval biography, Bill Brovold and Larval discography
Disc one is their new studio recording, which is an amalgamation of styles and approaches to music, from quiet and limpidly beautiful passages to an aggressive onslaught of screaming horns, guitars and strings, moving from very controlled passages to almost complete chaos and back, all the while following a master plan of intent.The second disc is compiled from 7 years of potent live recordings; here, as anyone who has experienced Larval live knows, the band eschew some of the more quieter moments that are on the studio albums, and just rock loud and hard!Larval are willing to sacrifice the glory of the individual for a tightly wound whole.The music brings to mind a blending of aspects of Glenn Branca, Godspeed You Black Emperor!CDs were all given 4 star reviews by the All Music Guide.Blistering in its intesity, relentless in its propulsive rhythms, the music on Obedience is nevertheless disciplined at its core.Bill Brovold has been a fixture on the avant garde scene since the early 1980s as a member of groundbreaking no wave groups like Rhys Chatham Ensemble, East Village Orchestra, Fast Forward and the Zen Vikings.How do you describe what you do?Splendid: But clearly you take some things from all three of those genres and maybe some others that I'm not familiar with.Bill Brovold: There's some country music in some of my work.Bill Brovold: Do you have any of my other CDs?Splendid: No, I just have the one, but I may have to do a little shopping.It's like the mind is a sponge.Bill Brovold: On one of the songs on Larval 2...Blue Oyster Cult song in my life, but at the end of one of the songs, there's a (sings a phrase), and I asked somebody, "What's that?""Godzilla" from Blue Oyster Cult, and it was.Splendid: Did you grow up in Detroit?Bill Brovold: Well, where I grew up was out in the country and a lot of people played it.It's always had a meaningfulness.And some of the old country, like Hank Williams and some of the more traditional players, make a really rich, meaningful sound.Splendid: I've had people say that to me, that I can't give up on country until I listen to Hank Williams, but I think that having heard so much of the commercial country that I just have never made the effort.Bill Brovold: Oh, I never listen to that.Splendid: But it's like any genre, I guess, that the stuff that's on the radio is the absolute worst of its type.Bill Brovold: It's an acquaintance.Luke's and Orpheus, and she's always getting asked to play on things with pop musicians.She's completely isolated from it, but she does these jobs.Let's talk about how you write your songs.There's not as much improvisation as one would think.I'll improvise over it, then I'll come back and build something on that, but I personally have a problem playing stuff like that.I'm a fan of improvisational music, but with a big band it often doesn't work.I've got to show every technical trick in the book.We'll play in a bar sometimes and get up on stage, which is torture, especially if you're playing rather tight stuff in a little space and the drums are right next to you, so the guy hits the cymbal and it's like sticking a knitting needle in my ear.Splendid: Yeah, I've been to shows like that where the music was a little too complicated for the venue.Usually you can hear everyone else but yourself.Bill Brovold: Yeah, but as I say, the band is pretty tight so we don't fall apart.Where there is improvisation as a group, it runs for a certain length of time and then someone will come in.When the improvisation ends, you're ready.Bill Brovold: Yeah, it's always different.Splendid: So how do you put the band together every time?It's the tail end of this real exciting music scene.It's a little more, you know, meaty, but they don't know how to stop or slow down.Some of the guys who are either married or ensconced in businesses and jobs here came for longer periods of time.They move their spouse and children.Splendid: So how much of what you hear on the record happens all at the same time, and how much is layering things on in the studio?Bill Brovold: Let me see.On a lot of the stuff, it starts out just me and Toby (Summerfield, the other guitarist).Bill Brovold: Yes, the rest of the stuff gets added later.Bill Brovold: Yeah, Toby's been with me since he was 19.Bill Brovold: 25, something like that.Splendid: I wanted to ask you about the titles of the five tracks on Obedience."Something Terrible's about to Happen", and then "When the Bullet Meets Flesh", and then "Her Last Good Day" and "And One I Just Kept on Walking".Is there supposed to be a narrative?Is there a story going on?Bill Brovold: Oh, well, for one thing, I draw storyboards for films.Splendid: Yeah, I know you've been involved in writing film music.Bill Brovold: I don't draw them for films.Splendid: But you also do some music for films?Do you ever do accompanying visuals?Bill Brovold: Well, the storyboard is the part where you're coming up with the concept and the ideas, and then you make the film.I'm just a little short of a camera and film.Bill Brovold: But there's almost a real literal time sequence to how things work.Bill Brovold: Well, here's something that was brought up to me, and I had thought about it, but I hadn't actually put it in words before.It's three minutes and a week's worth of action.Splendid: So it's more of a state of mind than an event?There is this incredible amount of action happening in a thousandth of a second.When I'm in the frame of mind of writing things, I really get into it, and these things start getting heavy and dark, and then I consciously say, "Okay, time to back off."So I'll back off and work on it.Bill Brovold: It's like life.Things get out of control, and then you need to get them under control pretty soon.Splendid: I wanted to ask you about the electric guitar.It's hard to play an electric guitar so it doesn't sound like rock, isn't it?I'm trying to make it sound more rock and roll.Splendid: What do you get from them?Bill Brovold: One of the reasons I want to do that, the same reason I brought strings into this band...You notice this a lot with the violins, wherever that's happening.It's almost like four guys in the string section.And the other thing is that with the tunings that I have, what I like about them is that you can have, like, six E strings, and you can bar all of them, and it makes it easier to create minor chords, and you can shift a little bit and you're taking some of them into microtonal levels.The chords may come out real confident, but they start shifting within the scope and they really react to the strings.Because they make those same kinds of sounds?It really emulates the strings and makes a very rich sound; without using a synthesizer, you get all the overtones of the strings ringing and weird harmonics and stuff happening behind the scenes.So live, it sounds really over the top.Splendid: Let's talk about "Her Last Good Day".Tell me about writing that.And when she got sick, I went and stayed with her and took care of her.She just kind of sunk in a dream world.She would go away and come back, until after a while, she was gone more and more and coming back less and less.She would come to for a bit and say something funny."One Day I Kept On Walking", which is my favorite track on the album.Bill Brovold: Which blows my mind.Splendid: Why does it make everyone feel so good?The frame of mind I was in, I just wanted to shake it all off.Forrest Gump, isn't that what he did?Splendid: And you know the way it just sort of imperceptibly shifts from being a very sad song to being very uplifting, in the middle?Your song has that same kind of quality, where you're not really sure exactly what's happening, but all the sudden it just opens up and takes off.We're not really sure what's happening, it's mindless wandering, until at some point you just decide to keep on walking.Splendid: It's a great piece.You were involved with Rhys Chatham and a whole bunch of other really influential no wave ensembles.How did you get started playing the guitar?Splendid: (laughs) You don't have to go that far back.The School of Visual Arts.Splendid: Were you playing guitar before that?And you know at that time, the art school and the music guys and girls were intertwined.Rhys Chatham had done a lot of interdisciplinary multimedia projects and he wanted to work on building some things in my studio, and of course, it involved making trips there, and he saw that I had instruments...Splendid: How did you get comfortable with that?Splendid: What was so new about what you guys were doing?Wasn't it seen as really experimental and different?He was doing work, way back, with tape loops and horn pieces, and it was very new.Ramones that inspired him the most.Bill Brovold: Yeah, he went and saw the Ramones, and...Or the same song, over and over again.Bill Brovold: I don't know.He knew a lot of people.He was involved in a lot of different projects, and there was a period of time when he was playing at the Knitting Factory and CBGB's and the Mudd Club and Max's Kansas City, playing for everybody.It had Ernie Brooks, who was in the Modern Lovers, and James Lo, who played with Live Skull.Bill Brovold: I think 1996.Bill Brovold: Yeah, I was painting.Do they come from the same place?From Miles Davis to Tony Bennett to James Ensor.Splendid: Some of them are better than others at their second thing.Bill Brovold: Oh yeah, sure.There are people that do both for all the wrong reasons.Bill Brovold: I don't want to answer that one.Splendid: So what's going on with Larval now?Bill Brovold: Actually, day after tomorrow, we have a show at the Detroit Arts Space.Splendid: Are they Larval albums or solo?If it requires any good musicians, then we bring in the band.Read Splendid's review of Obedience.You'll also find Bill Brovold's solo album, Childish Delusions, on Tzadik.Here's more info on Rhys Chatham.Splendid looks great in Firefox.ARCHIVE:
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Create a Listmania!Sponsored Links ( What's this?Can't find what you're looking for?Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session.The second disc is compiled from 7 years of potent live recordings; here, as anyone who has experienced Larval live knows, the band eschew some of the more quieter moments that are on the studio albums, and just rock loud and hard!"These live recordings reflect the efforts of all 45+ members that have passed through the Larval camp.There were several shows recorded, some on better equipment than others, and some great shows with lousy recording gear.Average Customer Review: no ratings
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