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Molek FMYACHT: A Discourse on Art, Culture, Education, and Science
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“This idea of somehow if you use a computer to record or make music then you’re not as much of a musician – your musicianship suffers? I think that’s a very patriarchal rock’n’roll guitar bullshit way of thinking.” – Claire
This is a bit surprising to us because we were under the impression that it was better there. Here in Malaysia, there’s almost no arts and music side to our education system, only the basic stuffs – during primary and secondary at least…
C I mean there are private schools and we live in an age now where anyone can teach themselves anything on the internet. But instilling in children from a very young age the desire to care about those things is very important. It’s part of a well-rounded education, and yeah, it’s not better in the States.
J For public school, it’s very bad. Even in some of the most liberal cities like Portland, Oregon there is no arts and music education. For the last 2 years all of it was cut because the budget was so tight.
How did you transition from doing punk rock to a more electronic kind of music?
J What punk taught me wasn’t about the style of music or style of even being at all, it’s more about a personal attitude and ethos to work within the world and use systems to take advantage and manipulate media in a way that’s beneficial for you to get your message out. So for me, it’s a seamless transition to just have a computer for the first time, being able to afford a computer, and using that as a tool to create whatever I want, whether it’s print media, video, music, or web design.
C The computer is incredibly powerful tool and obviously we live in a world now where people receive information mostly from 2 dimensional screens and it’s very difficult to tell when you’re looking from 2 dimensional screen on what kind of work and resources went into making that media. So it could be 2 kids with a cracked version of Photoshop making a website or it could be a huge corporation. Once it hits the screen it’s all the same. You can make yourself appear bigger than the way you are.
J You can punk that by making it whatever you want it to be. The real transition is that as soon computers were less expensive than guitars and amplifiers, that’ll change punk forever. Pretty much everyone can make music. And not just music – their image, identity, and their brand.
Funny that you were from a band, a lot of people seem to have this fear of technology, especially in music. A lot of bands don’t seem to find electronic music valid.
C: Yeah, that’s something that we talk about a lot actually. There’s a movement I think now that’s coming back, this idea of somehow if you use a computer to record or make music then you’re not as much of a musician – your musicianship suffers? I think that’s a very patriarchal rock’n’roll guitar bullshit way of thinking. I think that this idea like you have to be a master, you could be the the best guitar master in the world and still make art that’s worthless. Because it’s not about the tool, it’s about the person using the tool to make the art. You can have the most expensive canvas and still be a terrible painter, there’s nothing to do with the tools in so far the tool is the right tool for you that allows you to express yourself the most accurately and beautifully that you can do.
J Human beings are fickle creatures and every 20 or 50 years, there are people in the music world who are like “Oh wow, using the electric guitars, that’s terrible! You should only use folk instruments,” and then “You should never use synthesiser, that’s horrible, only use rock instruments,” then suddenly it’s “Oh analogue synthesisers, that’s the most authentic you can be, you should never use computers,” and it’s going to be like that in waves and waves.
C It’s like that LCD Soundsystem song, ‘Losing My Edge’, where he sung something like “I heard you bought a computer and you’re throwing your guitar out the window / I heard you bought a guitar and you throw your computer out the window.”
Since you guys are artistically inclined, not just music. What are your influences beyond music?
C Oh that’s a great question. I feel like we have more influences that are beyond music than actually are music. For me as I’m still a writer and I’m a huge reader of science fiction, I love science fiction writers; Philip K. Dick, J. G. Ballard, William Gibson, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin. I love thinking about the world in terms of literature, that’s what gets me going. We also love a lot of visual artists.
J Yayoi Kusama, Matthew Chambers… a lot of contemporary artists have shaped about the way we think about the world and see the world.
What’s the TV show Support about?
J It’s about being a supporting band, an opening band for a larger act. It’s a dark comedy. We feel like all the media that have been created about rock’n’roll and bands have been glorified with backstage groupies, lots of alcohol and partying. We want to tell the funnier side of it. The harsh stories of being on the road and not being the headlining band, being the lowest on the totem pole.
Have you had the experience of looking at rock’n’roll beyond the mythology of it personally?
C Yeah, we’ve experienced being a band at almost every level. We’re not the world’s biggest band but we have toured with those bands. We’ve played in huge festivals, huge arena shows, and we’ve also played at dingy, dingy punk rock clubs, and we’ve played in a shopping mall in Malaysia right now (laughs). We’ve done almost everything. And we’re writing the TV show with the members of our band, the guitarist and drummer, and they’ve also been playing music for years. So cumulatively, all together, we kind of have a good idea of what it is to make music in the 21st century.
