Interview Series #15: Jacob DeRaadt

The NO PART OF IT Interview series was a strain of questions sent to a number of different people between February and March 2019. Each entry was scheduled chronologically to be thrust upon the world on a monthly basis since then. Each individual is introduced informally as if they were being discussed at a bar.   

 

 

Scheduled in March, 2019

 

I'm pretty sure I met Jacob in 2010, at Denver Noise Fest, although I am pretty sure he didn't perform then, and rarely did until around five years later.  There he gave me one of his tapes from his main project, Sterile Garden.  It's hard to describe it, especially knowing how widely varied it can be, and frankly, how much of the discography I haven't heard yet.  What I have heard is deeply rooted in industrial noise; wind-licked tape screech, basement drones, grinding piles of near-dead loops, cut-up field recordings crumpled up and set on fire, and so forth.   DeRaadt is also a visual artist and his cover art often is a perfect reflection of this sound via what I can only assume is manual xerox collage, screen printing, elaborate cut-outs/stencils, and various ink experiments. 




  1.  What types of things have you been getting into lately?

1. Paper cuts, beet juice drawings, synthesizer layering, tape editing, field recording, singing in bands again.

2.  What you do, do you do it as an artist, or is it a hobby?  

2.i feel like I'm an artist but it doesn't pay the bills.

3.  How would you describe what you do?

3. Electronic music and folk art

 4.  How would you describe your creative progression over the years, in a brief synopsis?

4. AS AN ARTIST, I feel like i've stayed with most of the concepts that inspired sterile garden, but the tools, equipment and editing methods have changed a bit.  Things have to as you change locations, develop certain fascinations with acoustic locations in the surrounding areas, and discover flaws in the equipment to be exploited.  I started out with reel to reels, a contact mic-ed traffic sign that i scraped with a metal tray, and some shitty handheld tape recorders.  I've moved towards getting crisper field recordings using a Zoom.  I still enjoy close mic-ing acoustic sounds for certain blown out frequencies using mini cassettes and four track recorders.  A consistent theme of object manipulations, fascination in the properties of magnetic tape, and convoluted editing techniques persists throughout the 13 years of this project.

5.  How would you describe your philosophy?

5. 

 Let people know the feeling and atmosphere of project, my personal philosophy is no matter of importance.  I want people to invent their own scenarios for the sounds and only give loose suggestions of ideas that influence each composition.  Psycho-geography as sound?

6.  Do you believe in psychics, magic, ghosts, or gods?

6. yes

7.  What would you say was your most definitive experience?

7. losing my father


8.  Do you have any side projects that I am not aware of? If not, what is something you'd like people to know about you, that you don't think anyone would ever ask?

8. side projects include:  Thomas Kinkaid Youth Brigade(performance art project), Abbreviated Glossalia(vocal/human body gurp), and I'm in a couple of punk bands(Policy and Rich People Sex Party) and a synth pop project, Le Modele Vie.


9.  Would you care to name any theoretical "desert island" records, or at least releases that you think are approaching your concept of "perfect"?  

9.   Can's Tago Mago,

10.  What is the earliest childhood memory you can (or are willing to) recall?   

10.  running into a closet while hearing my mom scream giving birth to my sister when i was four years old at our house in Alaska.


11.  Are you able to appreciate other peoples' creative work regardless of their personal shortcomings or inherent flaws?  To what extent?  

11.  yes.  no limits to that really.

12.  Do you have any heroes or heroines?  Who are they?  Feel free to add anything that makes them stand out.  

12.  Ray Johnson.

13.  What would you like to have on your epitaph?  Or what is your favorite quote?  

13.  I just want to have my ashes scattered in a forest in Alaska... no trace left to a wandering shadow...