100 Musicians Answer the Same 10 Questions

Part Forty-Seven: Brian John Mitchell of Remora / Vlor / Small Life Form / Silber Records

instigated by dave heaton

Brian John Mitchell is the man behind Silber Records, a consistently great label that's released plenty of intriguing music favoring mood, experimentation, raw songwriting and/or improvisation, and just sheer sonic power in general. But more than that, he's an inventive musician with his hand in a bunch of bands, including the intimate drone/songwriting of Remora, the organic sound animal Small Life Form, and the improv collective Vlor, who recently released the fascinating album A Fire Is Meant for Burning. All of these bands (and the others on Silber) create music with its own distinctive atmosphere, created with heart and energy. For examples, check out the Silber website and the MySpace pages for Remora, Small Life Form, and Vlor.

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What aspect of making music excites you the most right now?

Lately I've been getting a little into making songs that can only be played easily in highly altered tunings. The problem with this is that I lose the songs when I re-tune the guitar. I'm also kind of excited with the tape-&-mail collaborations of Vlor and getting someone doing something non-obvious to me to my songs.

What aspect of making music gets you the most discouraged?

I've never figured out how to get my vocals to sound like I want them to and I always find myself hearing something after it comes out and thinking I should've kept re-working the vocals.

What are you up to right now, music-wise? (Current or upcoming recordings, tours, extravaganzas, experiments, top-secret projects, etc).

Oh, man, too much stuff. Some of it will probably not even work out, but here's the list.

Remora – a little tour in October.

Remora - Songs I Sing is an EP of acapella songs that I sing while tuning my guitar at live shows. That should be out this fall on Shane Sauer's label Northpole Records.

Remora - Raised by Robots is an EP that I really don't know what will happen with. I got this total lo-fi sequencing software and am making these cheap techno versions of some of my songs when I'm bored at work. They're funny, but I'm not sure if it's really meant to be heard by anyone.

Remora - Romance is this thing I've been supposedly working on for about seven years now using samples from 1940's & 1950's romance movies as the vocal tracks. The song "Some Past's Future" is kind of indicative of the style. It seems whenever I find a movie I want to use samples from it isn't on DVD at a reasonable price. If anybody has an extra copy of the movies Love Finds Andy Harding, Four Daughters, People Will Talk, The Bravados, or Nevada Smith - send it to me.

Remora - "untitled next album" - the next Remora full length. The big difference is that I have around 100 drum loops that I'm probably going to build the songs around even though I might pull them out of the final mix.

Vlor - "untitled next album" - the next Vlor collaboration disc. I was really happy with A Fire Is Meant for Burning, so I'm pretty much following the same formula of me recording the initial songs & sending it to friends to complete the songs. Last time there were six of us I guess performing and this next time it might be closer to ten....

Small Life Form - Hundred is something I've been working on for ten years and may never complete. The idea is for me to get together 100 electro-acoustic loops, and I'd deliver these loops for people to make songs into as a collaborative process.

Slipsky Sextet - I wrote a sextet for strings of the Remora song "Slipsky," and a friend of mine that works at a high school is trying to get their string section to play it. It's for cello, two violins, two violas, and bass; if anyone wants to play it, let me know and I'll send you the sheet music.

Remora Prime - I have been joking for a while about it, but I want to get people performing Remora songs under the name Remora in whatever city they live. So I'll send a songbook to anyone who's interested in doing that, and not have to tour anymore....

What's the most unusual place you've ever played a show or made a recording? How did the qualities of that place affect the show/recording?

Umm, my old band My Glass Beside Yours used to record exclusively in drainage tunnels to create reverb & because we'd have privacy. The first Vlor EP Lavished was recorded in a racquetball court & sounds totally chaotic in a way because of it. I once played a show at a squat in Germany where I could see my breath and my teeth were chattering and the spotlight exploded. It made me think the apocalyptic wasteland some of my songs reference was really happening....

In what ways does the place where you live (or places where you have lived), affect the music you create, or your taste in music?

I think living in a place where I am not really part of the local music community has kept me from learning to play in a more traditional manner and kind of let me push myself a little further because I'm only trying to please myself. As far as what I listen to, the college station where I live has a weird metal show that hasn't updated its playlist since 1992, and I can't imagine hearing Exodus or Danzig or Warrior Soul anywhere else. Whether that's a good or bad thing I can't really say.

When was the last time you wrote a song? What can you tell us about it?

I wrote one yesterday in the car on the way home from work. The lyrics were "The girl you love made a mistake when she chose you / You know she'll never stop / Nothing will make her leave you / If you drive your car into a tree / She'll have a chance to marry the right man." I'm abandoning it because it's not subtle enough & doesn't quite work. It's a parody and not intentionally so.

As you create more music, do you find yourself getting more or less interested in seeking out and listening to new music made by other people...and why do you think that is?

Both in a way. What I have found is I get more out of listening to music less times, if that makes sense. I kinda feel I can "figure out" a song hearing it only a few times and it used to take me a long time to figure out what made a song good to me. But I do find I have a harder time enjoying music because it is hard to let go and not listen critically to it. So I really don't listen to music for hours on an end like I used to, but I also don't spend as much time fumbling around when writing music. Both the research and the final product have been streamlined a little. I do find that when I go on tour and play with a couple good bands I am totally excited and invigorated and don't want to do anything but music. I just want turn into a freaking guitar hero or something even though I know it's not going to happen; but if my effect chain gets long enough, someone might be fooled.

Lately what musical periods or styles do you find yourself most drawn to as a listener? (Old or new music? Music like yours or different from yours?)

The records I've listened to the most in the past year are probably Body Count's first album and Ministry's In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up and Kraftwerk's Computer World because my car has a tape deck and I don't own too many cassettes. A lot of times I find myself listening to records by friends who I consider peers and saying to myself, "Crap, I need to push myself further and stop screwing around."

Name a band or musician, past or present, who you flat-out LOVE and think more people should be listening to. What's one of your all-time favorite recordings by this band/musician?

The obvious choice that everyone who knows me already knows is The Angels of Light's Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home, but here are a couple others....

Hefner - The Fidelity Wars is a great record.

Six by Seven - The Closer You Get and The Way I Feel Today are pretty great.

I really feel both of those artists have nothing but bad luck to thank for not being as big as Coldplay, but my musical taste might be skewed.

What's the saddest song you've ever heard?

Maybe the Low song about falling down the stairs and breaking your child's head off. I think it's called "Embrace."

Photo taken by Jessica Bailiff.

To check out the rest of the Q&As, click here.