If we don't count some very early informal lessons that I took, with some old musicians who lived in my neighborhood, it started at the age of 10, when I briefly attempted to play the Trombone in my grade school band. I wanted to be Glenn Miller in those days(laughter). But, alas, determination wasn't my strong suit at that time, and I ended up going in a very different direction, which I think now was for the best. As a teenager I got really into experimental projects like THE HAFLER TRIO and :ZOVIET-FRANCE:, and in February, 1996, began doing experiments with tape. Cutting, splicing, looping various bits I would pull off of the TV or radio, making 45 minute long suites with a couple of well-worn double cassette decks. Those were the days(!). Within a year or so of that, I had acquired a magnificent old synthesizer, a used TEAC 4-track machine, and some discarded effects pedals, and, decided that it was time to make sound artistry my main activity, apart from the other things that teenagers normally do, of course. But it was 100% analog for the first five years, and I'm proud to say that I didn't touch a computer for the first time until I was 20. One does have to move with the times, sooner or later(more laughter).
Could you explain to us why the name "Golgotha Communications Ltd."?
It originally came from a dream I had around the time the project started out. In that dream, there was a sort of faux church, with Gnostic symbols everywhere in lieu of traditional Christian ones, and GOLGOTHA COMMUNICATIONS LTD. was printed on the hymnals, latin characters but in a kind of pseudo Greek or Coptic style. For whatever reason it made a deep impression on me, and, at the time using that as the name of the project seemed the natural thing to do. It stuck, and, no sense changing it now =$. I invite everyone to read into that dream as much as they like(!). We have also recorded under the name FARS, which came from another dream that I hardly remember at all.
Do you have some special ways to record sounds? Some rituals?
It usually starts with an idea for an album, which in turn usually starts with whatever I happen to be obsessed with at the time. I'll go and collect audio that I consider to be related to whatever I'm thinking about, cut it up, work the bits into patterns that seem appropriate to me, work those into other soundscapes or rhythms, add this, subtract that, and before you know it you have a dozen tracks or more. It all depends on the idea, but I definitely prefer to work on the album basis. Very rarely will GCL just crank out a track that's not part of a larger project.
Why the choice of putting your stuff in free download? What's your opinion about musical industry? About the netlabel scene?
To be perfectly honest, GCL chooses it's labels entirely because of the aesthetic or 'feel' of the label itself, it has very little to do with anything else. I doubt very much whether GCL could ever make any real money from it's activities, since this kind of music appeals to such a very narrow audience. The only way you make real money doing what we do is if you're scoring films (which I would not necessarily be against doing, by the way), so, with that in mind, I'm perfectly happy digitally releasing things for free, if I happen to like and respect the label.
I also think that physical releases are important, and those pretty much have to be sold, rather than given away, if only to cover the costs involved in making them. So I think we should have both. GCL have released cds and cassettes before, and, would like to again, and I would hate to see physical formats disappear altogether. Why anyone would PAY for a digital download is beyond me, if you're spending money on music, you should have an interesting and unique physical object to show for it, I think. So you can always expect any digital GCL release to be free, you won't see us on itunes.
As for the mainstream music industry? Ha, I think most of us will agree that it's worse than it's ever been, by far, both in the quality of the music itself, and in the way that it's marketed. Pre-fabricated, auto-tuned crap, on albums sold by the song at 99 cents a pop, is a sign of the apocalypse, if you ask me! I think that pop music is more disposable than it's ever been, and the industry more cynical than it's ever been, probably because it knows that it's dying.
Do you play some live? If yes, how do you work on live?
GCL has played live, yes, but only rarely, the main reason being that we are almost never asked to. The other is that, as we learned the hard way many years ago, what we do dosen't very easily lend itself to live performances, and we don't like playing off of too many pre-recorded things, so we have to plan ahead very carefully when we do that. It's better that way, I think. Many of my favorite bands turned to shit once they started doing long tours and playing lots of live shows. I won't mention any names.
What do you consider the coolest moment of your musical "career"? A moment you will never forget!
We have SR to thank for one of them, actually, was very pleased to see our most recent(and, to date, only) live release pass 10,000 downloads last month! Hope that everyone enjoyed it, that release is very special to us, definitely a success story. Another would have to be an early cassette release, Contact Binary, which was the first GCL product to be distributed overseas, over a decade ago, before we had any kind of internet presence. At the time that was a big deal!
Could you speak to us about your new release in Sirona (Music that dosen't exist)?
This is kind of funny, but Music that dosen't exist is actually the rare GCL release that wasn't conceived of before hand, it's a compilation of tracks recorded over the last few years that didn't make it on to any of our main albums, not because we didn't like them--we're very proud of MTDE and everything on it--but because they all of them ended up just not fitting into the projects that they were originally going to be a part of. The title was conceived as a joke, and, it just stuck, but, I'm very happy to be releasing it finally.
What are your plans for the future (soon & later)?
In the near future, releasing some more things on your wonderful label, haha, particularly Life on a piece of tape Pt.2, which, like MTDE, has been on hold for various reasons. You'll be hearing from me about that soon! Further down the road, would very, very much like to release more cassettes, and hopefully vinyl or lathe records, eventually get involved in some video projects...many, many things, if this lovely planet of ours can avoid total catastrophe for another few decades.
Websites:
http://golgothacommunicationsltd.tumblr.com
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Golgotha+Communications+LTD.