Jester: I wanted to ask you this when you played Chicago with Everplastic, but what made you drive all that way just for one single show? I know it was Jim Marcus's birthday, and the first time his new band had performed, but I was wondering your reasons.
Wade: It was really just a random thing. We wanted to come to Chicago to do a show and it happened to work out. We didn't know that it was Jim's birthday. We just wanted to start going and playing shows aggressive as we could, and Chicago happened to work out for us.
Markus: The opportunity was presented to us so we took it.
Rey: Hunger and money were the bottom line.
Jester: How did the tour with Insight 23 happen? Did it just sort of fall into place as well or was it something that Chase came up with?
Wade: We did it entirely on our own. Totally self-sponsored.
Jester: How did you get involved with Chase at Re-Constriction?
Wade: He had the "Texture Ov Despise" album and called me to see if I wanted to help out on the rap compilation, "Operation Beatbox".
[ At this point I pulled out the original Christ Analogue single 'This Shall Not Breathe' and the conversation suddenly halted. Apparently Wade no longer had a copy of the single himself, while Traci and Rey had never seen a copy because the single predated their appearance in the band. Needless to say the band was struck a little unexpected. ]
Wade: I turned in the track and Chase called me back to tell me how much he really enjoyed it. We got to talking a great deal and developed a strong personal relationship. It was kind of obvious where this friendship was heading and right after Christmas he asked if he could release our next album on his label.
Jester: Was part of it because Manifest Records as a little kind of disappeared?
Wade: Yes. When we had first talked I told him that the future of Manifest Records was very uncertain and when he asked when the next Christ Analogue album was going to be release, I really could not give him a definite answer. At that time I could tell that the label was coming to an abrupt end rather quickly.
Jester: Who else did you release on your label besides yourself and The Tepal Concept? Did the Klavo release ever appear?
Wade: No, actually Klavo is Rey and Traci's side project. They are still working on that release and don't know when or where that is going to be released, but it will be released.
Jester: When is the new Christ Analogue album due for release?
Wade: "In Radiant Decay" will be released in September. That might change because we sort of booked this tour before we actually finished the album. We've only finished a portion of the album.
Jester: Are you playing any of the new tracks live on this tour?
Wade: We're playing three songs from the old album, the single, and five new tracks.
Jester: You played a lot of songs that I recognized in Chicago, 'Surface Like Nerve', 'This Shall Not Breathe', 'Product of the Rape', to name a few.
Wade: That show ended rather unexpectedly with us only playing six tracks which we were not too pleased about.
Jester: On a more personal side, I was dubbing a mix tape for a friend which happened to include a track from your album, 'The Religious Experience of Mankind', and the recording was faulty. Somehow the track was recorded and double the normal speed, and when it was played back, was twice as slow as the original version. I meant to bring it with me to give you as a novelty.
Wade: Wow, how does it sound?
Jester: It sounds really eerie because the vocals are so exceedingly slow.
Markus: You know thats a great idea for a remix! I don't suppose you remix music do you?
[ I met up with the band several days later in Dekalb, IL and gave them to tape. Wade was amazed at how long the track was extended. Markus ended up taking the tape with him, promising that he'd use some of it, maybe as samples or as basis for a future remix if he found the time. ]
Jester: Why was 'This Shall Not Breathe', the song from the single, left off the debut album?
Wade: It was just a bad call really. Ever since we started performing it live it has completely changed my opinion of the track. There is a new live mix which is a lot better. At the time it was a rookie mistake because I had gotten tired of it. I had worked on it too much and left it off which was a really bad decision.
Jester: That particular track doesn't seem to fit well with any of the album tracks. It kind of has a more guitar heavy Chemlab type feel.
Wade: Yes, I've had several people tell me that. Regardless, it is one of my favorite tracks and might even appear on the new album. You probably wouldn't recognize the new mix because it is so drastically different from the original version.
Jester: What was the preoccupation with all the 'Ov' instead of 'Of' on the album title and track name?
Wade: It wasn't really a a preoccupation, it was something we decided to go with at the spur of the moment.
Markus: Wade has always been notorious for taking words and changing them from what their were intended.
Wade: Industrial music has been notorious for doing that. At the time I think I was caught up too much with the schtick. I've now far outgrown and actually have grown tired of that kind of childishness.
Jester: When I saw it I immediately connected it with the whole Genesis P-Ooridge, Temple Ov Thee Psychick Youth, and Enochian magick, etc.
Wade: I can see how that would happen. It certainly wasn't intentional. At the time I thought it looked good, but in retrospect.
Traci: We're ready to cross over as a band now from our immature past.
Jester: How has the tour been going so far for you with Insight 23?
Wade: It has been great. The show in Denver with LD-50 was spectacular.
Markus: The crowd really got into us.
Traci: We kind of starting tearing up the place, and took out a lot of wiring.
Markus: But that's what performing on stage is all about.
Traci: Have of the show is watching the crowd interaction. I'm always watching the projectiles that eventually land on stage over by Markus.
Wade: So far it has been going real well. We're trying to have a lot of fun along the way. It has been extraordinarily good since the album we released has had so little distribution to speak off. We've have people who bought albums at shows who had heard of us, we've had other people who had heard the album and wanted to see us live. A lot of people don't know that we're now on Re-Constriction but were anxious to acquire the new album which we haven't finished yet of course.
Jester: Actually, at the Chicago show, I overheard some people mentioning that they had come specifically to see you perform instead of Everplastic which most of the audience was there to see. That pleasantly surprised me.
Wade: Word of mouth has been very good for the turnout of this tour.
Markus: We have to start somewhere and it is good that many people have actually heard of us in that way. Since we've never toured on this side of the country before.
Wade: Essentially we're out touring to start things really moving for the band, to get our name out there, and make people aware that we exist. It is not going to be some great world tour like Ministry, but some people will recognize us and pass along their opinion to their friends. It's definitely better than sitting around doing nothing expecting people to buy our record. This way at least we're making the rounds. We will be going as far west as Boston and New York. We're really looking forward to the New York show at the Batcave. We'll be doing the full circle across the country and ending is Los Angeles.
Jester: Just in time for me to move out to the Northwest when you arrive home. I'll be moving to Portland, Oregon at the beginning of June.
Markus: Great, you'll be right in our backyard so to speak.
Jester: Can you maybe go a little into the history of how the band started, and each persons eventual role in the band? The reason why I am asking is because there is so very little press information on your band available to the public, that I'm forced to asked really basic questions so that the fans can get to know you.
Wade: I was working on my own music for a while, going the route of blowing it off because I didn't want to get too involved in music. I ended up owning a commercial recording studio and got heavily involved with my own music. I ended up being a recording engineer for Markus's current band at the time, and I recruited him and a percussionist/drummer. After several months, we found out that we worked really well together, and the band kind of blossomed. We found a few people to make up a live band and started performing. We found Traci, the guitarist, about six months ago.
Traci: And then I called Rey, who was a drummer to finished out the band.
Rey: I owed him money.
Wade: Maybe you guys should explain what you do, because you probably perceive it differently than I do.
Rey: I don't know, Wade was one of the few people that I had ever talked to who wasn't afraid of using live electronic percussion when performing. Most bands either have electronic drums, or a full drum kit. That was probably the key reason why I joined the band. The drums that I am playing, are built by this guy in Kent, Washington, called Space Muffins, which I feel are the best drums ever created. If more people knew about these drums, than other bands like Front Line Assembly of KMFDM wouldn't be out there with a full acoustic drum kit on stage, and they would be using the drums that I use.
Jester: Did any of you ever experience problems being from Seattle, the birth place of the Grunge scene in the early nineties?
Wade: I was totally naive about because I had come from the Chicago area originally. I was a bit skeptical that I would be able to put together a band in the first place, but it was not because of the music scene in Seattle.
Markus: We haven't really been affected in anyway by the whole Grunge scene as a band. The whole thing was a media stunt pulled off by people like MTV who suddenly focused on all the bars and clubs in Seattle more than it being a real music movement. More of media hype than anything.
Rey: When I moved to Seattle from Texas five years ago, Grunge wasn't even in existence any more. They were still really popular with MTV but there really wasn't much of a scene in the city itself.
Jester: How is the Industrial scene in Seattle now? I know that there are a large number of bands in the area now and you have a handful of good clubs to play at. When I was in the Seattle and Portland area, I happened to see seven bands perform in two days between cities, and that really impressed me.
Wade: The music scene is slowly growing in the area. Seattle is a weird city because realistically it is pretty small and there are not that many places to play. They only really have five or six nightclubs, but recently there have been a lot more opening as well as a lot more bands suddenly wanting to play out. The whole music scene, not just Industrial is growing.
Jester: Were you ever involved in anyway with the NEC?
Markus: We evolved separately from the NEC.
Wade: We kind of totally bypassed the NEC and what they were trying to accomplish. We thought what they were doing was great, but we didn't look at being industrial as a crutch and never really had problems playing shows. It was never really a handicap to us.
Markus: We ended up doing everything on our own. The NEC was a very good idea when it started by bringing people together who played a similar style of music which was different from the predominant music style of the area.
Jester: A great deal of your debut album contains extreme religious overtones, and it really hit home because of my negative experiences with religion, and I wondered why you choose to go that direction both with the name of the band and the entire album concept?
Wade: The name of the band started out being pretty irrelevant to the music. I didn't mean to focus the entire album on a single topic. I don't think I ever wanted to do that. The album really wasn't as conceptional as it might seem to the casual listener. Religion obviously was what was on my mind and what was frustrating me at the time but it wasn't intended to be a complete overthrow and dominate the entire album. A lot of the ideas on the album, people have been really easily offended by, which to me are more of a pro individual statement than against religion. I didn't expect people to bring their claws out as much as they have about the music. I really just wanted to enlighten people with a different perspective on not only religion but also individualism. I was venting a great deal of my anger and trying to make people realize that there is an intelligent antithesis to organized religion without there being just another god. The new album won't be utilizing religion as much as our first album did. Hopefully it won't piss anymore people off. The whole album was sort of a purging process for me. A lot of it was years and years and years of Christian frustration into one album, which might make it seem overbearing to some people.
Jester: Did you write all the web pages for the record label and the band on the Internet yourself?
Wade: Yes, however instead of maintaining the web pages every single day, I tend to overall them every few months and change them totally, which is why sometime they seem out of date.
Jester: Is there anything else you'd like to add? Any closing comments?
Wade: Just expect a very serious effort with the new album which will be released this fall on Re-Construction Records called "In Radiant Decay" and if we are touring through your city, please come out and support us!