#briancook

INTERVIEW with Brian Cook of SUMAC, Russian Circles, Botch, These Arms are Snakes, and Roy 

Brian Cook of the MANY gnarly bands listed above took time to answer a bunch of questions that had been burning a hole in my mind for years earlier today. Did you know that aside from playing bass in some of the heaviest bands currently in existence, Brian is also an avid record collector and he also runs a very similar page where he posts all of his records and writes up a bit of history and personal context with each one? A man after my own heart! I’ve dropped a link to his Tumblr below and you’d be a fool not to go check it out and follow his work there.

https://bubblesandgutz.tumblr.com⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

I really appreciated having a chance to talk to a very talented musician who also places a LOT of importance on physical medium and the recording process. All too often I get submissions from bands who either don’t know the in’s and out’s of the vinyl format or they took a lot of shortcuts and deprive their art a chance to really shine in the ways that vinyl allows. I picked Brian’s brain about his approach to creation of physical musical media as well as his history as a collector (and even tried to convince him to get These Arms are Snakes play my big gay wedding reception!). Thanks for taking the time to tell your story to us, Brian!

You've been a member of several incredible bands over the past few decades (Botch, Sumac, Russian Circles, These Arms Are Snakes), all of which have released pretty much everything they've recorded on vinyl. How important is the vinyl medium for you as a musician and creator?

Thanks for the kind words. It's really important to me for my music to have some sort of physical format. I realize that mode of thinking might seem sort of old school or outdated, but i've always been enamored by music as a kind of historical artifact. When I was younger, that meant it was important for me to have an actual Dead Kennedys cassette as opposed to a dubbed version from my friend. It was like the difference between owning a painting versus owning a xerox of a painting. When I became a musician, it was a sign of validation. By having a record with my name on it, I had created something that would potentially outlive me. And now in the digital age we've convinced ourselves that everything lives forever on the internet, but it's not true. Myspace just lost all their music. I've written for a lot of online music outlets that have closed shop or simply deleted old posts. Meanwhile, I have a trunk full of old zines that outlived the supposed permanence of blogs. So while the digital age is great for convenience and scope, creating a physical recording is really the more reliable way to make sure something exists for more than five to ten years, or however long it takes for the newest technological fad to become obsolete. Vinyl seems to be the longest lasting format, so it's my preferred medium. But if my music exists on tape or CD, that's fine too. 

Do you approach your recording and production processes with specific formats like vinyl in mind? If so, what do you do differently? Absolutely. The main concern is that we're dealing with the time constraints of vinyl. For bands like Russian Circles and SUMAC who have really long songs, it means we have to be careful how we sequence our records because we can easily exceed the 22-minutes-per-side rule. We've also been told by pressing plants that it's better to have long drones in the middle of an album side than at the beginning or end because there tends to be more surface noise at the beginning of a side and more warble at the end, and drones don't do much to mask these imperfections. But while one can complain about the limitations of vinyl, there are also issues with digital formats that can alter the way an album is put together. For example, the digital version of Empros has a longer drone at the end of "Batu" than the LP version, partially because of vinyl's limitations, but also because digital outlets like iTunes don't recognize records with long songs as full albums unless at least one track is longer than ten minutes. So we stretched it out on the digital version so that we'd be compensated appropriately for our work, but condensed it on vinyl so that we didn't compromise the sound quality.

Of all of the albums you've contributed to, which one stands out to you as the one you feel most connected to?

Probably Geneva by Russian Circles, if I had to pick one. We wrote that record over the span of several months at a house in rural Wisconsin. It was one of those ideal scenarios I'd always dreamed of---hunkering down in some isolated retreat and just immersing ourselves in the writing process. I've never walked away from an album feeling as accomplished as I did with that one. It just felt like we'd achieved something that had previously been out of my level of expertise. I think we've made better records since then, but I don't think I've ever felt as successful in making the sounds in my head translate to the recording. With regards to my other bands, I feel that way about Botch's We Are The Romans, These Arms Are Snakes' Easter, Roy's Killed John Train, and SUMAC's What One Becomes. But Geneva will always hold a special place.

How did you get into vinyl collecting and how does it play a part in your life?

I started buying vinyl around '92 because it was cheap. My first LP was Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet's Savvy Show Stoppers. I bought it for $2. Then I discovered 7"s, which was the dominant format for hardcore and punk bands at the time. Throughout high school, I mainly bought 7"s because i could buy 3 or 4 a week on my allowance. And let's be honest... most hardcore bands in the '90s had better 7"s than full albums. But vinyl was so dead at the time that you could also go to thrift stores and scoop up the entire Creedence Clearwater Revival discography for the cost of one CD. Even new vinyl was cheaper than their CD counterpart back then. So it's a bit of a drag now considering that vinyl is currently the most expensive format, but I still get a thrill from going to record stores, digging through crates, and coming home with a new LP. I can't say I buy that many 7"s anymore though.

What do you think about the relatively recent resurgence of large-scale vinyl production and collection?

It certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. I buy a lot of reissues just so I can have a clean, good-sounding copy, so I appreciate the resurgence in that regard. At the same time, the vinyl boom has made used record shopping a bit more of a drag. I don't know how many copies of Neil Young's Harvest I saw in used bins throughout the '90s and '00s, and then when I finally decided to buy a copy five years ago, it seemed like they'd all been snagged and the reissue was going for $50. When the Zeppelin discography got reissued a few years back, I mentioned wanting a new copy of Physical Graffiti to my husband. He went to our local indie record store in Brooklyn and asked the owner if they carried it and he totally balked at the question. "Why would we carry a reissue when you can buy a used copy of that in any record store for $5?" he said. My husband was like "every used Zeppelin record you carry is beat to shit and goes for at least $20... what the fuck are you even talking about?"

If you had to pare down your entire collection to no more than three albums, which would you keep?

What's the broader context? Like, are those the only three records I can listen to for the rest of my life? Or is it just a matter of only being allowed to own three records? If it's the former, I'd probably choose Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Miles Davis' In a Silent Way, and a Can album... either Ege Bamyasi or Soon Over Babaluma. Ask me tomorrow and I'd probably list off a different three. If it's the latter... like, if i'm merely holding onto records because the actual artifact means a lot to me but I can still listen to music in some other capacity, then I'd probably go with the His Hero Is Gone / Union of Uranus split LP, Undertow's At Both Ends, and Sticks & Stones Theme Songs For Nothing, just because those seem like a pain in the ass to replace and they're important records to me. I have records that are worth way more money, but I'm not someone who buys records because they're valuable. 

Do you have a "white whale" record you still haven't found?

Not really. For ages I resisted the urge to buy used records online, but I've since relented. The record that finally broke my ordering embargo was Hack's The Rotten World Around Us. They were a band from Adelaide, South Australia in the late '80/ early '90s who sounded like a grungier version of the first couple Swans records. Super heavy and scary. I got turned onto them through a 7" on Alternative Tentacles, but the LP was never available stateside. The first few times I toured Australia i went to every record store I could find in hopes of finding a copy. No one had ever heard of Hack. The singer was in another band called Grong Grong, and members of that band had gone on to be in King Snake Roost, Lubricated Goat, and Tumor Circus (with Jello Biafra on vocals), but no one had heard of them either. In my mind there was this rich underground of Australian noise rock from that time period that was still vital and valid, but the reality is that it was largely ignored and forgotten. I eventually found a copy online and bought it for $20. A year later i found a used copy in Boise. Oh well. I'd love to find Acme's To Reduce The Choir..., or an original copy of Popol Vuh's second album, or the Neu! 7", or the Greenlandic prog band Sume's Sumut album.

Hypothetically how much money would I need to raise to get These Arms Are Snakes to reunite to play my wedding reception? My family will hate it but my partner and I will be very happy, etc.

These Arms are Snakes - Tail Swallower and Dove

Some of the artwork, designed and painted by Brian Cook for the dust covers of the Batsford books  printed between 1930 and 1950. His mother’s maiden name was Batsford and it was his maternal great grandfather who started the book selling and publishing firm. Brian started work in production for the company and became it’s chairman in 1952 after the death of his Uncle.

I love these covers and if ever I was to buy a book because of it’s cover...