Hardboiled Little Nobody

You know, I just looked up the word ‘schizophrenic’, probably on the worst possible resource (Wikipedia), and it says that it’s “a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction.”

Commonly, however, most people think of schizophrenia as related to those people on the train, bus or tram who’re seated there talking to themselves, quite often in heated debate, which is what I decided here to try out for size: Yacking with myself about myself. You know, a bit of me, myself & I. Weird concept, for sure, especially before breakfast.

It’s occasionally interesting (and some optimistic types would suggest insightful) to read what people write on their personal soap boxes across the broad spectrum of social networking sites – a form of schizophrenic propaganda bomb, since these diatribes are usually inscribed in the comfort of one’s own home and head space.

Then there are mine, which somewhat fizzle.

In my ho-hum bio on Resident Advisor it says “Australian expat Andrew Bergen (a.k.a Andrez) has been making music as Little Nobody since 1997, and relocated to Tokyo in 2001. Formerly from Melbourne, Bergen helms Melbourne/Tokyo label IF? Records. He’s played live in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Detroit, New York, San Francisco, Beijing, Windsor (Canada), in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and especially Melbourne.” Yawn. I can’t actually remember when I hacked together this vacuous claim-to-fame – I think in about 2006 or 2007, around the time that I did a more churlish one for MySpace, which now sits pretty on Soundcloud: “Entrenched in Tokyo, Andrez likes to steal furtive glances in a pseudo-metaphysical rear-vision mirror, greedily brushing up on the ‘found art’ chapter of the Dadaists’ handbook – all the time stimulated by Marcel Duchamp’s display of a toilet urinal. Blah, blah. Oh yeah, and he also happened to run IF? Records.”

(By the way, that MySpace site is a chaotic mess; soon I’ll get around to tidying it up, but these days… does it really matter?)

The platform on Facebook for Little Nobody is just plain sad: “Little Nobody is the 14-year musical itch of Tokyo-based Aussie expat DJ/producer Andrez Bergen, also known as Funk Gadget, DJ Fodder, Schlock Tactile, Conversational Dentures, Atomic Autocrac, and a member of the LN Elektronisch Ensemble.”

Insightful my arse.

Insight probably better comes via the music itself I purport to make, and let it be said right here and now that making music is for me a hobby rather than a profession – something I like to potter over in the wee hours or in those moments when my wife and 5-year-old daughter aren’t home. I do often play the half-finished tunes to my daughter (she’s one of my best critics), but the act of making music in this day and age is hardly one that’ll support family livelihoods, so I have a rash of other jobs that actually pay the bills.

Also I have a deliberate tendency for waywardness in my music that tends to make chart-action unhappy. See, I was brought up listening to jazz and Gene Krupa, and discovered Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, and a post-punk mentality in my late teens; my Melbourne Uni thesis was about the industrial music putsch in Britain in the 1970s. This madness just has to have some kind of disruptive effect on any kind of attempt at ‘stream-lined’ music or the quintessential smooth groove.

Other people tend to be more tactful, which is nice. Sebastian Bayne, who took over IF? Records last year, in promoting my new album Hard Foiled wrote that “Little Nobody and his unique take on the regions between house and techno can be often times raw, with a swinging groove yet never formulaic; he treads a path that would be considered unsafe by other artists, letting nothing get in the way of creativity.” That sounds far better than anything I’d tend to ‘fess up here, so let’s stick with this theory.

DJ Hi-Shock, one of my best mates over the past three years, has said particularly nice stuff I’m too chuffed to add in here. Hats off to you, Si.

Subjective kudos aside, this brings me to the new album mentioned above. Hard Foiled, a 13-track beastie out now via Beatport as well as via a stripped back 10-track CD, is supposed to be my first deliberate attempt at an LP concept since Action Hero in 2000, though strictly speaking this isn’t true – I also released a 9-track LP in 2009 through British imprint Dead Channel.

That’s free to download and has a lovely, shambolic title (I Have Become So Many People I Do Not Know Which Is Myself), which was a jab at the 30-odd aliases I was making music under at the time. The mentality behind I.H.B.S.M.P.I.D.N.K.W.I.M (my abridged name for that LP) is equally shambolic. It’s a jumble of tracks I pushed together, though I do dig the fact that it’s free and I love working with Dead Channel.

Hard Foiled, however, has a wee bit more of a game-plan involved.

To my mind it’s an accompaniment to the novel I just had published, Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which – while it’s available in a lovely softback format I’m still coming to terms with (hey, it’s my first novel!), and the publishers, Another Sky Press, are hawking that for cost price (just $4.74) – is also available online from Another Sky in digital PDF format for free, right here. Did I tell you I adore free? One of the things that buzzes my socks is the opportunity to be able to share things I love for reduced cost and/or gratis.

Anyway, where was I? Talking up game-plans? Ha Ha Ha. Sometimes I wish this were truth; most of the time my so-called game-plans are just compulsions I follow through with dogmatic intent, come hell or high water. Especially when the world itself (or at least that part of Japan north-east of Tokyo) appears to be going to hell with earthquakes, tsunami and potential nuclear meltdowns. This kind of scenario, bordering on the post-apocalyptic, makes you appreciate the simple fact of living all the more – and adds a sense of impetus to a lot of what you’re doing. Hence novel and album at the same time, I guess.

But Hard Foiled is related to Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, and not just in the terms of similar cover art colours (which were incidental, by the way – neither Scott Campbell, who did the cover for the novel, nor Marcin Markowski who did the Hard Foiled art, had seen each other’s work).

The novel has been sitting somewhere within my head space for the better part of 20 years, taking precedence on and off (mostly off, I have to admit), but over the past four years it’s been at the forefront – and this has coincided with my resurgent interest in making electronic music. So some of the themes and ideas have obviously cross-pollinated: the movie sample/references/allusions; the underlying focus on a futurist take the hard-boiled/noir detective concept, something my friend Viveka would dub klepto-modernism. Just as IF? itself makes a guest appearance in Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, so many of the tracks in Hard Foiled were born in the novel’s head space, from around 2008 on.

Which accounts for a lot of my other work, too.

Some of you may have brushed up against the ‘Get Away From It All‘ EP, which was released on 12″ vinyl late last year and digitally through Elektrax a month ago, bearing with it Bas Mooy’s and Dave Tarrida’s brilliant remixes. The 12″ label artwork (again by Marcin Markowski) was very much based on the central protagonists of Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, Floyd Maquina and Laurel Canyon.

Then there was ‘The Condimental Op’ 12″ vinyl at the start of this year, again released digitally through IF? last month also. While the cool cat remixes came from Detroit’s AUX 88 and Chicago’s K. Alexi Shelby, along with a sweet bonus mix by IF? boss Sebastian Bayne, the title is a riff on Dashiell Hammett’s detective character The Continental Op.

Finally there’s ‘Metropolis How?’.

I’ll be the first to admit that James Ruskin is the best-known purveyor of this tune. His remix decked me when I first heard it at the end of 2009, and it kicked absolute goals on our 12″ vinyl release last year through Gynoid Audio/IF? – but I think the other interpretations on that wax (by Justin Berkovi and DJ Hi-Shock) were equally brilliant. Since then we’ve inducted other remixers like Dave Angel, Luke’s Anger, Paul Birken, Ben Mill, Kultrun, Advanced Human, Alkan, Enclave, and others; there’s a remix compilation through IF?, and Gynoid Audio just did a killer batch of remixes in the digital realm titled ‘Metropolis How? Redux‘.

The dusty original mix of ‘Metropolis How?’, from way back in 2008, is on Hard Foiled – and the track always was a deliberation on the post-apocalyptic world in which Floyd resides in Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.

Still, it’s the remixes that grab me and smack me about.

The truly special part of making music over the past three years has been the return of quality rejigs of my own material from people whose music I dig and respect in spades. Think Ruskin, Berkovi, Tarrida, Bas Mooy, AUX 88, Inigo Kennedy, Steve Stoll, Jammin’ Unit, Shin Nishimura, Wyndell Long, Luke’s Anger, Dave Angel, Mijk van Dijk, DJ Hi-Shock, Ben Mill, Cut Bit Motorz, Advanced Human, Jason Leach, Fila Brazilia, Paul Birken, Takashi Watanabe, Si Begg, Kultrun, Koda, Alkan, Enclave, Ben Pest, Patrick Pulsinger, Craig McWhinney, Captain Funk and DJ Wada – all of whom are far more professional, versatile and talented than I’d ever aspire to be.

Coming up in May and beyond are a series of releases (vinyl/digital/CD) collaborating with and being remixed by the likes of Cristian Vogel, Blake Baxter, Tobias Schmidt, Vadz, Justin Robertson, Bill Youngman, Alan Oldham, Chris Finke and JE:5, for labels I absolutely adore: IF?, Slidebar, Gynoid Audio, Elektrax, Finn Audio, Dead Channel and Auricular. I’m also conjuring up ideas for another novel.

More, please – and now for some strong coffee.

© 2011 Andrez Bergen