Inspired by the contradictory states of bliss and paranoia, Suzi Ecto bubbles and fizzes, with the listener rubbernecking to keep up with each sonic object and structural transformation. Call Super (a.k.a. JR Seaton)’s interviewing self, the speaking self, is every bit as entrancing as his music. Call Super started as a duo but later broke down to a solitary member, and through this, Seaton was able to explore the eddies of the name.
A Call Super is, as Wikipedia states, “a code smell or anti-pattern of some object-oriented programming languages.” In short, this means Seaton hopes to override the present and recall some prior articulation of form with his music. What that form is remains to be seen, but it can be felt in his music.
Seaton spoke to Tiny Mix Tapes about the varying “voices” on the record, their importance in relation to a lost friend, as well as politics of the club in the modern context, away from the politics of government and country. Seaton explains his process and mode of thought while making the hypnagogic and contraspecific work of Suzi Ecto.
Why the prominent use of clarinet and voice?
The voices in the record all do certain things. The primary example is on Snipe One. The track is a eulogy to one of my closest friends, who died while I was making the record. In recent times he maintained a constant concern about certain things, a paranoia in many ways. Surveillance, data trails, the way he was using Silk Road and so on, all had him pretty on edge past a certain hour of the day. At the same time another friend had given me a DDR-era Telefunken portable recorder and I would sometimes record our conversations about his concerns. I’d play these back to him and we’d crack up laughing at the circularity of things.
The last film we ever watched together was The Conversation, a film about one of the best wire tappers in the U.S. So for Snipe, I wanted my friend there talking about this stuff but kinda too low, lost in the mix and interleaved with tiny snippets from the film. When I played it to him he felt it captured whatever that atmosphere is. As with a lot of CS stuff areas of the mixdown invert norms and deliberately use flipped techniques that then get polished so as to separate them from modish lo-fi stuff. The clarinet is there because TJ vetoed all the pan pipes that I’d recorded.
“My hope is that I’m able to occupy a very organic working place, a place where the pieces and projects I’m occupied with just bubble along untroubled with the angst of where and when they need to be presented.”
You speak of techno as a genre married to politics. Whether it be of the governmental or philosophical, it speaks to the politics of things? And you seem to be interested in both, at once.
It is different in the U.S. but in the UK House and Techno are the only forms of music to actually concern political forces to the point of legislation. Their potency — and this applies to almost anything that wants to have some political edge or strength — lay in its positive message: its inclusivity. The weakest musical movement politically was punk because it was so crass. It was just surface noise that somehow managed to be both hollow and transparent in its aims — hopeless sloganeering and bile and so on. Punk is about exclusivity and the customized. This is an opposition to rave culture, which at the grassroots level pioneered a colorful inclusivity. Strength in numbers, out in the open vs. the lonely individual with their outbursts of rage. In recent time it has been vogue to bring punk aesthetics and attitudes into the dance sphere, and this is a comment on that.
Politically I position my output in the tradition of the former. It should be ambiguous, hopeful, physical, and emotional. Punk techniques can look cool, but beyond that they are fairly one-dimensional.
Where does the title come from?
With a bigger project like this I need a character to carry my ideas. Over the last few years when I’ve sat down to work I’ve wanted to react against some of the incessant stylistic machismo of the House and Techno scenes, which border much of my bubble. Suzi is a manifestation of that. She is someone caught in all the apathy, dread, and need for bliss that is everywhere today. She is the vessel for all the hope and paranoia that flows through this work. She is my mother reborn today in another country to a different family.
When your album first came to my attention it was through the promo package, within it was a simple poem. What is your interest (or intention) in this practice?
The press texts just explain the record. I don’t believe — and I may be wrong but I choose to hold this opinion — that audiences need everything spelt out to them. I believe that you should never be slowed down by your audience, so don’t worry about things being obtuse if they need to be. The people who want to spend time digesting things will, and the ones who don’t won’t.
My intention is always to explain one or two themes that surround the record in ways that match the themes. With Houndstooth I handle pretty much every aspect of the creative side of releasing a record, and the press copy is just another aspect of that. Sometimes I also use it to draw attention to another artist who I was into at the time of making the work, for example with Black Octagons the text was a cut up of Yukichi Watabe crime reports, and the Acephale II text name-checked Katharina Grosse.
Sometimes people have moments of transcendence listening to music and properly losing themselves but for me that relates to definitions of happiness — one defining aspect of happiness is losing track of time — rather than anything specifically spiritual.
There’s so much context in terms of club music, sadness in regards to what is happening on the “outside” or escape from reality is a pretty common theme with the early underground clubs, is that context something you hope to translate or re-engineer?
I think I kinda cover this in my answer to the political question. I’d just add that yes, sadness is the same coin as joy and I want the two to always try and fight their way through my tracks.
Spirituality in the club is something that I’ve picked up from your music, it’s all quite meditative. The uplifting or sublime qualities that come with the four to six hours spent in the club, it’s exhausting and absolutely physical.
I very much agree with a guy called André Comté-Sponville that the narrative of spirituality was hijacked long ago and it is up to those who don’t pursue a defined religion to carve out their own spiritual realm. Reclaim it. One way I can do that is through my work.
I believe very much in spirits. My spirit gives my music its idiosyncrasies. In respect to clubs, however, I am kinda ambivalent. Clubs are in the business of pleasure and that is something else entirely. Sometimes people have moments of transcendence listening to music and properly losing themselves but for me that relates to definitions of happiness — one defining aspect of happiness is losing track of time — rather than anything specifically spiritual.
I would perhaps add in relation to clubs that I believe that much of life is really only enjoyably defined by giving. If you go to a club, or indeed engage in any interactive situation (a conversation say), then the more you give the better it will be. In a club it is up to every person in the room to contribute something. Then together we all have something to enjoy. At a fundamental level I truly believe that many things in life are that simple.
You use a lot of found non-diagetic sound objects on the record, interesting plucked strings, water-funneling, alongside very synthetic instrumentation. What was your intention here?
Actually barely anything on the record is non-diagetic. The water-like qualities are all process work and techniques that I’ve developed. The plucking is a guitar. Generally I have zero interest in sampling. My hope is that I’m able to occupy a very organic working place, a place where the pieces and projects I’m occupied with just bubble along untroubled with the angst of where and when they need to be presented. I am generally certain that whatever answers I need for certain pieces will come to me, but I need to defend that space from those external pressures. Maybe that is reflected in the music. Maybe that is what you’re picking up on.
[Photo: Rodger Brown]