{"id":259,"date":"2016-01-29T11:48:39","date_gmt":"2016-01-29T10:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/?p=259"},"modified":"2016-03-10T12:57:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T11:57:48","slug":"intervju-james-donadio-prostitutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/intervju-james-donadio-prostitutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Intervju: James Donadio (Prostitutes)"},"content":{"rendered":"
I thought we should begin by talking about A Day in the Desert II<\/a>. <\/strong>
\n\u2013 I played on a little plateau, a natural amphitheatre made out of stone. It was like a pagan ritual. There were lasers … It was almost too intense. There were a billion green lights everywhere. It was so dark; it was a little bit cloudy that night so there wasn\u2019t much moon. Basically it was pitch black with a bunch of green dots flying around. I couldn\u2019t see the audience, I couldn\u2019t tell if they were sitting or standing … I couldn\u2019t even tell if they were there!
\nIdeally, what kind of audience reaction are you hoping for?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 [laughs] Anything more than bottles being thrown … The audience at A Day in the Desert wasn\u2019t really my audience; there was a much more free love mellow vibe which is not really where I\u2019m from or who I play to usually. I\u2019m used to playing on the floor of dingy dark basements with people right in my face, and to be on this big stone stage in this giant vast desert with some faces out in the darkness \u2013 it was more like an out of body experience than a show.
\nDid you enjoy the experience?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Oh, it was excellent. A friend of mine lives in Los Angeles, we went together. He drove me out there. We both had an incredible time. I live in Cleveland you know, just all that open space\u2026
\nWhen \u2018Sup Magazine approached you and asked you if you\u2019d like to play at A Day in the Desert, what were your first thoughts?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 My first thought was \u201cwhy the hell are you asking me<\/em>?\u201d My second thought was \u201cabsolutely, yes.\u201d I didn\u2019t even think twice about it. It was a great opportunity to do something that I usually don\u2019t do.
\nDid you get to meet Garth Bowles, the proprietor of Boulder Gardens?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Actually no, I didn\u2019t. I talked to another man who lived on the land there, but I never got to meet Garth.
\nDid you have the time to check out any of the other activities?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 I saw a little of the sound bath, but basically that was it. I saw Spacin\u2019 and Mark McGuire.
\nDo you tend to gravitate more towards gigs that are like happenings?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 I really don\u2019t play very many strictly techno based shows, they\u2019re usually more experimental or even hardcore punk shows. There\u2019s a punk bar down the street from me which I\u2019m playing in a month. That\u2019s the kind of place I usually play, I don\u2019t have much of a following here in Cleveland.
\nWould you happily play a techno event?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Oh, yeah. The opportunity just hasn\u2019t come around. I think I\u2019m seen more as a fringe artist than a techno artist.
\nWhen you do play in Cleveland, are the audiences receptive to your stuff?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yeah, but it\u2019s usually my friends who show up when I play. It\u2019s not much of a scene for what I do around here.
\nSo you wouldn\u2019t say there\u2019s a healthy music scene in Cleveland at the moment?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 It doesn\u2019t matter to me. I\u2019ve lived here for twenty some years \u2013 I know what Cleveland\u2019s like. There\u2019s a good scene here, it\u2019s small but strong. But I really don\u2019t expect anything from Cleveland.
\nBut do Cleveland as a city influence your music? <\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yeah, totally. I\u2019m influenced by the way it is in the city \u2013 it\u2019s kind of hard to explain. But the city itself totally influences me.
\nDo you have any concrete examples on how the city of Cleveland has crept into your music?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 I\u2019ll try not to get too philosophical … There\u2019s a rich history from the seventies onwards of underground music here \u2013 basically Cleveland is people who just have to make things happen themselves. No one else is doing it for them. And the summers here are extremely hot and the winters are extremely cold and that builds up this layer<\/em>. People here are very tough.
\n\u2013 I\u2019m also influenced by my friends and people who are into what I\u2019m into or into something similar \u2013 people who believe in what they\u2019re doing even though they don\u2019t get much of a reward or payback for it.
\nCleveland has had its fair share of great proto punk bands like the Electric Eels and Rocket From The Tombs … <\/strong>
\n\u2013 Absolutely. I\u2019m glad you mentioned them. I had a very close friend, his name was Jim Jones, he\u2019s passed away, and he was like this … I can\u2019t think of the words to describe him. He was in the Electric Eels for a while, he was in the Mirrors, he was a roadie for Pere Ubu when they did their first tour of England, he was in Pere Ubu for many years in the eighties \u2013 he was a staple of the scene, but he wasn\u2019t a big name that everyone outside of Cleveland would know.
\n\u2013 But just hanging around a kitchen table with him, listening to music, drinking, having pizza, and him telling me stories \u2013 that was a huge influence. He was in so many bands that I love and he had the relics; he had the original flyer for the Electric Eels that had the swastikas all over it. Stuff like that was just sitting in his house, so I was very close to it and I was very close to an honest source \u2013 a person that was involved in that scene. That made a huge difference with me.
\nI can well imagine. Are there any electronic musicians from Cleveland that you like?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Dan Curtin was from here. But I really wasn\u2019t involved in that early nineties techno scene, I discovered those albums later; I bought them from a friend\u2019s record store \u2013 learning about them that way, getting involved that way.
\nWas that store Bent Crayon?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Absolutely.
\nA record store like that must have a huge influence on a person. <\/strong>
\n\u2013 John [Cellura] who runs the store is one of my closest friends. I\u2019m lucky enough to be friends with him, and I\u2019ve known him since before he opened the store. I\u2019m in Bent Crayon all the time, at least two or three times a week. John\u2019s friendship and that store have been a huge influence.
\n\u2013 John doesn\u2019t get the credit \u2013 though I don\u2019t think he wants the credit at all [laughs]\u2026 But if you want to tie anything worthwhile that has happened in this city for the last ten years or so \u2013 Emeralds, Bee Mask \u2013 he\u2019s the lynchpin, the touchstone, the common denominator. He\u2019s definitely turned those guys onto records.
\nLet\u2019s move on to discussing your creative process. Do you record everything at home? <\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yes. Wherever my home is. My earlier stuff was recorded in an apartment which I lived in myself, I now live in a house with my girlfriend and I\u2019ve done so for about a year.
\nOn a few of your releases it says \u201cconceived, recorded & mixed @ Lake Overlook.\u201d So \u201cLake Overlook\u201d was your apartment?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 [laughs] Yeah, that was the name of the apartment complex. On my new stuff it says \u201cElbur House,\u201d because Elbur\u2019s the name of the street I live on now.
\nI saw some photos of your set-up on stabUdown.com from when you were recording \u201cPsychedelic Black.\u201d Have you always had the same set-up? Are you still using that same set-up?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 All that equipment is probably still around, but I\u2019ve added to it. You saw that cassette four track \u2013 that\u2019s what I record everything on. I have some pretty mid-level drum machines and a few keyboards, nothing fancy. I don\u2019t use MIDI, I can\u2019t stand it.
\nSo you\u2019re 100 percent hardware?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yeah. Well, when I\u2019m done recording I have to \u2013 in this day and age – put the tape on the hard drive to do the final mix and to be able to send the files off to be mastered. So it\u2019s all hardware and analogue until the very last minute when it\u2019s destroyed by being put on digital. [laughs] But no one can take a cassette tape and master it anymore.
\nI think that a lot of people listening to your music thinks that it was created in a small, claustrophobic, stone-walled basement. At least I do.<\/strong>
\n\u2013 It is now, yeah. Before it was even worse than that \u2013 I used a tiny office. I had a small back room in my apartment which I used for an office and it was cramped in there with all my gear. It was very claustrophobic; I couldn\u2019t even move my chair back because it would pull out a cord or short it out or something like that. I think that\u2019s part of the reason why \u201cPsychedelic Black\u201d sounds like it did \u2013 it was winter, it was cold, it was dark, I was in a tiny room, I was … upset. [laughs] That\u2019s why it came out that way.
\nDo you have to be in a certain mood to create, or are you one of those people who can create whenever? <\/strong>
\n\u2013 I think it\u2019s a little of both. I definitely sometimes start to feel like \u201coh, I\u2019ve got something in my head, I feel like I want to make some music.\u201d And then I sit down and start hammering away and whatever comes out I start working with that. That\u2019s how my music comes about \u2013 I do it first and then I figure it out later.
\nCan the same be said for your song titles? Do you name a song after it\u2019s finished? I really like your song titles, by the way. <\/strong>
\n\u2013 I\u2019ll let you in on a secret\u2026 [laughs] A lot of people mention my titles and I\u2019m glad you enjoy them, but\u2026 they\u2019re not mine. What I do is I go through the lyrics of songs and pull out fragments \u2013 not a whole line, but a weird part of the lyric. Usually there\u2019s a theme \u2013 on \u201cPsychedelic Black\u201d the song titles are all from The Clash\u2019 \u201cCombat Rock.\u201d And when I did \u201cCrushed Interior\u201d I was listening to The Cramps a lot and not only is the album title a homage to Lux Interior, the song titles are all from The Cramps\u2019 lyrics. The song titles on \u201cShatter and Lose\u201d are taken from Flipper\u2019s \u201cAlbum \u2013 Generic Flipper,\u201d even the title on the album ties into that because of the song writers on that album: Will Shatter and Bruce Loose. But \u201cLoose\u201d became \u201cLose.\u201d So it\u2019s not so much me creating and making up these titles that people love, it\u2019s more me pilfering them from people much more creative than me.
\nI think that\u2019s a pretty creative way to create song titles!<\/strong>
\n\u2013 I don\u2019t think about things before I do them really, but pilfering song titles like that pulls me back, reins me in. I\u2019m like \u201cOK, I can only take these titles from this type of music and this album or these songs,\u201d so it\u2019s a little constraint. The titles are actually there before I record and I arbitrarily assign them to whatever track I\u2019ve recorded. I think the titles subliminally direct me toward what music I will make.
\nYou\u2019ve played in a number of experimental rock bands over the years – The Flat Can Co., Dutch Rub, Getdown Airwaves, Speaker\\Cranker\u2026 Would you ever do something like that again?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 I don\u2019t know. I have no interest right now in doing it. I guess I\u2019m not interested in being in a band, that\u2019s why I do this on my own after years and years of being in bands. I decided that I\u2019m going to do this on my own \u2013 trying to find other people who are on the same wavelength of what I want to do is not easy and it\u2019s not fair to tell somebody \u201chey, this is what I want to do!\u201d So I was like \u201cyou know what, I\u2019m going to do this on my own.\u201d
\nWere you aware of all the other bands called Prostitutes when you started calling yourself Prostitutes?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 [laughs] No! The name was an\u2026 unfortunate accident. I had this high concept when I started doing this
\n\u2013 I had read about Peter Gabriel, about how when he left Genesis he had this idea to release solo albums without titles. I thought that was a great idea, but what I was going to do was even more ridiculous; start an unnamed project and release records with just images on the sleeves. I had a bunch of posters on the wall in that tiny, tiny room I worked in at the time and I took a photo of where four of those posters corners\u2019 touched and I used that photo as the cover for my first CD. And one of those posters was a poster for The Pop Group\u2019s \u201cWe are all Prostitutes\u201d and the word \u201cProstitutes\u201d made it onto the CD cover. So when I put the CD out people started calling me Prostitutes. All my high concepts have a tendency to fall flat on their faces.
\nDo you think people generally have the wrong idea of how you are as a person?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 As a person … no. Musically … I just played Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and it was great, it was phenomenal. But on the bill there were one other act [Ashkelon] and a DJ [Samuel] and they made me go on first, which I have no problem with, but I think they expected me to do isolationist electronic music, and I don\u2019t really do that much anymore and definitely not live. So I played and it was pretty pounding and it was pretty loud, it was intense and almost danceable, I would say. But the people performing after me were much more experimental, so it was a big drop-off \u2013 people were dancing and having a good time and then it became more thinking man\u2019s music. I was approached by one of the organizers afterwards who said \u201cI didn\u2019t know you were like that, if we\u2019d known we would have had you play later in the evening.\u201d
\n\u2013 So when I met Oli at A Day in the Desert I told him \u201cthank you for having me, I hope you haven\u2019t made a big mistake.\u201d [laughs] But he was like \u201cno, no, we know what you\u2019re like, it\u2019s going to work.\u201d
\nResident Advisor tried to create this technoise scene and shoehorn you into it\u2026<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yeah, that was a little weird. The person who wrote that article, Justin Farrar, is a friend of mine. He\u2019s lived all over the country, and I got to know him when he moved to Cleveland and started to write for Cleveland Scene magazine. After a year or two in Cleveland he moved away though, but then he contacted me and wanted to do this article and I said \u201cgreat,\u201d I had had absolutely no exposure at the time and I figured some exposure would be nice. Then he coined this term \u201ctechnoise\u201d and I was like \u201cuh, I\u2019m not really into that.\u201d I\u2019d never use that term to describe my music \u2013 for one thing I\u2019ve never been a noise artist.
\nI really like your own description of the first Prostitutes\u2019 album: \u201cHandmade primitive electronic misinformation created with no regard for man or machine.\u201d <\/strong>
\n\u2013 Thank you very much! Sometimes when I play shows the promoters want a short bio and I every time I have to make up something more ridiculous that the last.
\nYou released two ten inch EPs on Mira in January. Do those two EPs form a whole?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 They definitely go together. They were made with the same mindset and during the same recording sessions and they reflect what I was into at the time. Basically what happened was that Shifted, who runs Mira, approached me for a ten inch. I was floored that he asked me since he\u2019s one of my favourite artists. So I sent him six tracks and said \u201cpick the four you like.\u201d Then he wrote back and said \u201cI want to use all six\u201d and that was too much for one ten inch, but not enough for two. So he asked me to write more tracks and I was like \u201cwow, I wasn\u2019t prepared for that.\u201d But I ended up writing a couple more tracks.
\nYou\u2019ve now released three ten inches in a row…<\/strong>
\n\u2013 [laughs] Yeah, I don\u2019t know how that happened! I have nothing against the ten inch, but\u2026 It\u2019s odd. I never had plans to release one.
\nI like that format, actually.<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yeah, I have a lot of ten inches. Just the other day I was looking at the ten inch section of my record collection: \u201cOh my god, I have a ton of these!\u201d I just don\u2019t remember buying them.
\nDo you have a favourite record format?<\/strong>
\n\u2013 Yeah, which is the one thing I haven\u2019t done \u2013 a twelve inch single. Ever since I was a kid that\u2019s my favourite format. I got \u201cBlue Monday\u201d when it came out … Hopefully I\u2019ll get a twelve inch out one of these days. That\u2019s one thing I really want to do.Originally published in ’SUP Magazine, 2014<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I thought we should begin by talking about A Day in the Desert II. \u2013 I played on a little plateau, a natural amphitheatre made out of stone. It was like a pagan ritual. There were lasers … It was almost too intense. There were a billion green lights everywhere. It was so dark; it […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64,95],"tags":[97,96,98],"class_list":{"0":"post-259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-in-english","7":"category-intervju","8":"tag-james-donadio","9":"tag-prostitutes","10":"tag-sup-magazine","11":"h-entry","12":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7nn96-4b","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facetterad.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}