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An Interview with kAINE D3L4Y, Denyss McKnight, and Matt Girvan of Left Spine Down
Posted: Monday, July 30, 2007
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

While many may think of Chicago as the hotspot for industrial bands, especially in the heyday of the Wax Trax! era, one must remember that at least two of the genre's greatest proponents, those being Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly, originated from Vancouver, Canada. Following in the Vancouver tradition is Left Spine Down, one of the new generation of industrial acts making a name for themselves as a powerful musical entity. Comprised of six members, and infusing elements of industrial, punk, metal, and drum & bass, Left Spine Down's music strives to push the boundaries between genres, creating a new sound that offers hope for the punk and industrial music scenes in danger of decline. Forming in 2003, and never shying from using the latest technology to their advantage, they've created a new brand of punk music, a version of that once revolutionary genre that is perhaps cleaner in production and performance, but no less intense and unpredictable, affectionately referred to as iPunk. Having performed alongside such heavy hitters as Combichrist, Genitorturers, The Birthday Massacre, The Black Halos, and Rabbit Junk, and with band members Jeremy Inkel and Jared Slingerland pulling double-duty in Front Line Assembly as well, Left Spine Down released their debut Smartbomb EP, featuring production by FLA/Noise Unit/Decree member Chris Peterson, in June 2007. With all of this in mind, the future does indeed look bright for Left Spine Down. ReGen speaks with the digital punks on the damage their Smartbomb shall inflict on the world of industrial and punk music. Vocalist kAINE D3L4Y, bassist Denyss McKnight, and guitarist Matt Girvan touch on the seventh member status of Chris Peterson, the sampling benefits of cassettes over iPods, the coolness of Timothy Leary, and just why Front Line Assembly wanted to kill kAINE when they first met.

Let's start with your debut EP, Smartbomb, which was produced by Chris Peterson of Front Line Assembly, Delerium, and Decree. How did he come to be associated with Left Spine Down?

D3L4Y: We got to know each other through the clubs in Vancouver. He'd been frequenting the industrial clubs almost way back to the Poem sessions, actually, when he was recording Delerium's Poem in 2001. We got to know him through there. The band was really just forming at the time with a lot of different members. I had just taken over the singer's place, but he got to know us before, during, and after the whole Leipzig thing, the Wave Gotik Treffen thing. I was the guy that actually pointed out on 'Mindphaser' who it was. I was the person who put the two together. It was that one ring that K-Rec wore at Love Affair like the day before, and it was the same ring he wore, and it just put the two together for me. Chris was so impressed by my detective work that he stopped me at the club, and after the whole band actually threatened to kill me, he bought me a drink. After awhile, we got to know each other, just hanging out and being friends. I also shared a day job with Chris at his brother's shop running T-shirts for a while, so we really got to know each other a lot as friends far earlier than this whole production work thing came along. He followed the band closely, our early gigs and stuff. Eventually, we were going towards more of a sound and style that would really happen to fit Chris's tastes. We both happen to be big drum 'n' bass enthusiasts, and when Jeremy got the crazy Warp Records style programming going on, he was like, 'OK, this is actually something worth chasing and I want to work with you guys.' The first couple of songs were 'Reset' and 'Hang Up,' which are both on the Smartbomb EP. From there, it's just slowly turned into a working friendship where we'll come by with some brewskies, and just sit down in the studio and jam.

McKnight: Chris is very much a seventh member of the group, absolutely. Not even in just the creative process or the recording process. He's one of the guys, and very much a member of the band.

Girvan: I love working with him, man. He kind of takes on the role of the other member of the band. We'll be sitting there trying to work on a song, and he'll come in and say, 'Do you have any other ideas?' And he'll come up with his business and do it like he does. One time, he sent me down and said, 'Can you do this part again? I don't have a good guitar here.' He wanted a sound from a different guitar, so I rerecorded the guitar with an instrument I wasn't used to, and I did it in a different tuning and I relearned how to do that part on a moment's notice. It's like he pulled that out of me. He made me do something different and new. It was new to me at the time, because I was playing the exact same guitar part, but I did it in a way that was different. He did that for me and we got a good guitar sound out of it, and we used it on the record. I love that we're working with him.

How did you find his production abilities benefited the overall sound of Left Spine Down?

McKnight: I think he's responsible for making Jeremy the programmer that he is right now. In every project that he's ever worked on, he's got a definitive touch, and specifically he's got an amazing ear for percussion. As far as production goes, he's got a vision that I haven't seen before, and that I might not ever see in anybody else ever again.

D3L4Y: Chris has played a big role in our production and our sound as far as presentation is concerned. He's really helped out with the arrangements a lot. Absolutely, I think that without his expertise and knowledge, it would be a lot noisier of a record, and probably a lot flatter sounding. If you'd heard some of the demos that we constructed over the past couple of years leading up to the form they are now, you'd see where Chris' work really shines. There's a lot of what he calls the 'Shit Filter,' where he'll just go ahead and delete large waveform chunks, and be like, 'This sucks, this sucks, this sucks.' Then he'll call me up and say, 'Hey kAINE, remember that vocal you did like a week and a half ago that you spent like three hours on? Well, you're going to have to come in here and do it again.' I'll be like, 'OK, what was wrong with it?' So, he'll pour me a good four ounces of Jack Daniels or Crown Royal, gives me a pack of cigarettes, and says, 'Go into the garage and come back in five minutes. Your vocals will be great then.'

The role of a good producer.

D3L4Y: Yeah, pretty much. I'll come back with that whole rough, scratchy, grungy punk rock voice, and he'll just capture that and scum that up even more. Then you get what you hear on the record. I honestly don't think we could've picked a better person to work with when it comes to Chris. There's nobody else that we could work with on this particular type of sound now. He's really helped us to find our sound and present us in a way that's probably a lot more menacing like we envisioned it to be, which is a good thing. We're still a pretty aggressive and loud band live, and he's gone to great lengths to replicate that in the studio.

I've got to tell you that the EP threw me for a loop, because when I heard 'Hang Up' on the Hordes of the Elite compilation, I thought that it was some cool drum 'n' bass mixed with metal, but the first track on Smartbomb, 'Last Daze' is more of a punk rock song.

D3L4Y: The funny thing about that is that 'Hang Up' was one of the first songs we wrote with Chris as this experiment. We were inspired by a 12-inch that we listened to. I believe it was a drum 'n' bass band called Bad Company. We listened to that 12-inch like over and over and over again at Chris' house. I remember we were at one of Jason Filipchuk's parties, one of his infamous, crazy, debaucherous parties where there are 300 people, hired DJs, kegs of beer, and half the people are on ecstasy. Chris came up to me and Jeremy, and Chris said, 'I got it, guys. Sound of nitrous meets punk rock.' And we just jumped all over it and that's where 'Hang Up' came from. 'Reset' explored the catchier side of Jared Slingerland's songwriting. I believe most of that guitar riff came out of him. After that, 'Last Days' was something that was originally a ballad back in the early days. It was a slow, kind of drudgery, Cure-like song with the bass guitar leading the whole thing. It sounded more like a Depeche Mode song than a Left Spine Down song. We'd never been able to do anything with it because we just weren't happy with it and the way that it was presented. And Red–I call Jared Red–and Jeremy came up with pretty much the skeletal version of 'Last Daze,' and I said, 'Wait a minute. Remember that song that we had lyrics for?' 'Yeah?' 'Well, why don't we use the lyrics for that?' 'Oh, I don't know. Maybe we should try something new.' Blah, blah, blah. As soon as that breakdown comes in, with the lyrics, 'Every little contribution / 21st century prostitution,' they just knew the lyrics fit and it just came out of the jam. We were very inspired at the time by a lot more punk rock stuff. I know Jeremy was digging up his old Minor Threat records and we had just booked a gig with The Black Halos at the time, so we said, 'OK, let's play a little more punk rock stuff for the crowd.' That came above, and at first Chris hated it. He was afraid that it would come across as too commercial. I think it was the 'Whoa' part that worried him the most. But by the end of the recording session when he was mixing it and putting it all together after we'd convinced him that it was worth pursuing at least as an experiment, he actually became really, really proud of it. He decided to add orchestral pieces to it and timpani parts to it, and we were like, 'Wow!' That whole session flowed once the song was put together and played live a few times.

I was going to save this question for last, but the band defines their sound as iPunk, with elements of industrial, drum 'n' bass, metal, and of course punk music. How important would you say is the electronic element to LSD's sound? Could the band exist with the synthesizers and electronics and act as a purely punk/metal entity?

McKnight: Well, it could, but it would suck. [Laughs.]

D3L4Y: I don't think so. Back when we first started as a more experimental band, when we were just jamming in a garage and figuring out what to do, we were primarily a synthesizer band. We had three analog synths, a drum machine, two guitar amps to run everything, a four-track machine mixing board to blend it all together, and a live bass that ended up turning into live guitar. Over the years, we've become less of an electronic band that played with guitars and more of a punk rock band that used electronics for that unique edge. I guess you could say if it wasn't for the electronics, we'd sound like every other punk rock band out there. We have that same kind of sound, but it would definitely be a lot more stark and minimal. It wouldn't be as strong. The whole idea behind the iPunk thing was actually done during the 'Reset' session. I came into the studio, and I said, 'We're running off of iMacs left and right, and we're not even using CDs or file transfer protocol anymore. We're just dumping it to our iPods and swapping it from computer to computer. Wow, this is so punk rock for the digital age.' We're so digital in that sense, no tape at all, and in fact, the band looked at me funny when I said I wanted to use cassettes. They were like, 'What? You want to use cassettes?' 'Well, yeah, everything from voice stuff to drum loops and such.' I have a four-track machine, a bunch of little hand-held tape recorders, and do some William S. Burroughs cut-up experiments and such. I have a tape-splicing kit at home. Actually, a lot of the samples you hear on the record come from my cassette collection. The ranting in the middle of 'Hang Up' and such, that's just me roaming around late at night in a delirious state, putting my hand-held tape recorder to pay phones and shit. I'll sometimes jot down stuff in my notebook or yell at a vagrant asking me for spare change, which is not uncommon in Vancouver. It really helped us in the sense that Jeremy likes to use lots of samples when composing, and in Front Line's case, he can get away with anything. We're a band that's just started, so if we were to go ahead and clear a list as long as my arms for movie samples, we'd be broke. So a lot of the samples come from my personal tape collection.

McKnight: You've seen a million bands that can play the same chord progression and the same drumbeats. I think it's just the next natural step in evolution. Everything got cluttered up with all that shitty pop punk and this whole gothic emo shit that's going on right now, and I think, 'Where else do you have to go?' You don't have any other direction to go in other than that. I think Left Spine Down jumped the gun and set the trend before they even knew that a trend was going to happen. I predict that within the next few years, you're going to see a lot of bands emulating what Left Spine Down does. Not even on purpose because there will be a lot of bands who don't even know who Left Spine Down are, but I think that's what's going to happen, and we're going to see a lot more bands using sequencing and programming and the whole thing. I think it's just natural.

D3L4Y: I think the iPunk thing really separates us from all the other industrial bands, or all the other metal bands, or all the other punk bands, because we are doing something new and exciting and we want to push the envelope. There are a lot of bands out there that do caught up by the whole record industry or their egos, and they're stuck doing the same kind of music over and over again. There are only so many more shows I can go to where there are like two guys on stage with keyboards and a DAT player and they're charging me $30. because they're from Europe. Not to name any names, but I've had it. I've had it with this poor and terrible representation of something that was originally something to be so fucking exciting and almost revered as punk rock's evil twin. Industrial music was something to be reckoned with at the time, and it's become this half-assed thing where people feel like they can get away with a lot less based on the technology they have. I understand and appreciate that if you don't have a drummer or a drum rig that you have to use a drum machine. We were doing that for a good two years, from 2004 to 2006. Then Denyss came along and Tim came along and it all just flowed because we found these people, and the timing just happened to fall into place. They joined the band last fall. Even when we were doing stuff with the drum machine, we were still using megaphones and props on stage, with lots of visuals and all the guitars were up front. We put Jeremy on a drum riser with his gear, very much like Liam Howlett of The Prodigy, and people accepted that and appreciated that and understood it. Now that we have a drummer, things are obviously rearranged, but it has definitely improved our live representation at the very least.

Jeremy Inkel and Jared Slingerland have also performed with Front Line Assembly on their latest albums and tours, Artificial Soldier and Fallout. What sorts of differences and similarities are there in their methods between the two bands, and how has their working in FLA affected your way of working in LSD?

D3L4Y: That's really hard to say. One common thread is that Bill and I both write about really personal stuff and a lot of that extremely heartfelt and personal stuff can be interpreted as an almost universal sociopolitical message in a sense. I know a lot of people have been saying that about Bill's lyrics. Now, more than ever, I find that a lot of Bill's lyrics actually echo or paint certain pictures in regards to personal life. I guess that's just one thing I share in common with Bill. But I don't know. I guess the influence has always been there. I was 13-years-old, at home, late at night, surfing channels on the television. I came across City Limits, which was Much Music's answer to 120 Minutes, and at that time, it was way more of an indie grassroots kind of a station. Now, Much Music is miming MTV with the screaming girls and such. It's horrible, but back then, it was really personable and they would show drawings of fans sending in requests and stuff. They played everything alternative under the sun. They'd go from Neubauten to N.W.A.'s 'Straight Outta Compton,' you know? I came across the 'Iceolate' video. Up to that point, I'd been living somewhat sheltered, just getting into high school, and aside from grunge, listening to really cool New Wave bands with keyboards. My favorite album at the time was Depeche Mode's Violator. And then 'Iceolate' came along, and I remember all the hairs on my body standing up on end and me just dropping my jaw going, 'Oh my god, nobody's ever done this before.' It wasn't until I did some rather expensive research, because there wasn't the Internet, that I found out they actually came from Vancouver. That gave me a lot of personal motivation to carry on the tradition and pursue this seriously and learn how to do it. They played a small but important role and they play a large part in what we do. Even Jeremy got into industrial and electronic music because of Front Line Assembly. One of his girlfriends in high school listened to Millennium and Hard Wired, so he got into it that way. I met him in the clubs and we struck up a friendship and became rather close friends over that period of time. When the band was still forming and finding its feet, he helped with that. There are actually a lot of things that I noticed off of Artificial Soldier, and it's actually kind of funny for me to be able to point out the influence. Right off the bat, 'Buried Alive' is such a Jeremy track. It is so Left Spine Down. He pretty much penned that drum pattern and that groove himself. They had their ideas and Bill had his bass lines and lyrics, but as far as arrangements and stuff, Bill said, 'I want to hear an Aphex Twin sort of thing, but I want it slower and distorted so we're not ripping Left Spine Down off.' It was really flattering to hear that from the great Bill Leeb. Hearing that, I can definitely see where the programming comes in. Jared's guitar work is very minimal in Front Line's work, in comparison to our work. I'm guessing that's just based on the limitations of what they do, where they're an electronic band that experiments with guitars, whereas we've embraced the whole thing and give it our all.

As far as the common thread is concerned, Chris's influence does play a large role in both Front Line and LSD. I see us as taking a lot of the noisy elements and dynamic elements that Decree has. I still use Front Line as a comparison when we're in the studio, but I find myself namedropping other songs from other projects Chris has done. I do admit that it was a bit of a fear that crept up in my throat that we would come across the Marilyn Manson/Trent Reznor thing, and be perceived as Front Line's little Muppet Babies or something. Or would we be recognized for doing something different? Because we don't sound like them, but I guess that's no different from other bands that we listen to. We don't sound like Radiohead. We don't sound like Depeche Mode. We don't sound like Skinny Puppy. We don't sound like Dead Kennedys. We don't sound like Nirvana. We don't sound like Leonard Cohen. And we definitely don't sound like Tom Waits. But we listen to all of them. It all just comes together into a big melting pot of six people...and Chris, making seven. You definitely come up with an interesting mix. We constantly try to do something different.

All the songs on Smartbomb are set to be featured on your upcoming full-length album Fighting for Voltage. How is the full album progressing and how do you feel the songs on Smartbomb are representative of the album and Left Spine Down's sound and style?

D3L4Y: The album is still very much in the works, and the work only gets interrupted with Front Line and The Black Halos going on tour. For awhile this last year, things were in a bit of a standstill as Jeremy and Jared were really busy putting together the Artificial Soldier record. I could selfishly say that we would be in this position last year if we kept going, but I don't think that without that push of them going out on tours that we would be as far as we are now by this time next year. I remember before the Front Line connection even happened, we had a thousand friends on MySpace. It's exponentially larger exposure now. This is advertising that money can't buy, you know? That's something that after giving it a lot of thought, that we definitely gave everybody in FLA the thumbs up for. We'll just sit here and refine our sound and our attack. I guess Smartbomb is a good foot in the door or brick in the window of what we're about. If Fighting for Voltage is just a gang of football hooligans coming after you, then Smartbomb is the baseball bat that hits you on the head first. That's probably the best way to describe it. It's a definite teaser. It's got what I wouldn't say are the strongest songs, but some of the stronger songs on the record. I'm not sure. I really can't say how it will turn out in comparison to Smartbomb, but I know that a lot of the songs we play live and a lot of the ideas and themes that we explored on Smartbomb are going to be further explored and explained on the album.

McKnight: We haven't delved too far into anything yet. It's all being dabbled with as we focused on Smartbomb. But Chris and Jeremy are work-a-holics and they'll spend hours and hours and hours working on the same song and remixing it in different ways. You will hear the same songs on Fighting for Voltage that you heard on Smartbomb, but I guarantee you they will not sound the same. They will be there in all their full glory.

Girvan: Honestly, when I listen to Smartbomb, and I guess the other reason is I know it's a precursor to the album Fighting for Voltage, I look at it as a good primer, like I'm going into something knowing what I'm going to expect from the full-length. So, when I listen to Smartbomb, it will be like, 'OK, I've got these four songs. What's going to happen after that as soon as I hear the full-length record?' I think it might just be that we're going to master the tracks differently, or if we have a problem with one of the mixes we can include or exclude something that might be there, and we'll just go with what we got. I have a pretty good feeling about the record, and I think it's going to sound awesome.

As Left Spine Down has six members, what is the working dynamic like among the band members? What is each person's role in the creative process?

Girvan: Sometimes, it just happens at random. Someone will come up with a riff, or Jeremy will program something and I'll come up and record a guitar track for something. Or Jared will be there when Jeremy comes up with something, and we'll just see what comes up. We'll come up with a beat or something. We just go with whatever works at a given moment. Jeremy's really good at writing songs like that. He'll come up with a beat, put a keyboard part over it, and we'll have an awesome song right there.

D3L4Y: There's one thing about this band, because there are six of us, and if you put us all in a room and we're not being drowned out by the PA, we're all complete clowns. It's sometimes tiring when you're trying to talk about something serious and Tim is up there doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions, and Denyss is texting people at random, and Jared's off drinking, and then Jeremy starts laughing, and the whole meeting goes down the tubes.

Since the band started in 2003, what major developments have occurred for you? How has your sound developed or progressed from the time of your inception?

McKnight: The biggest development with the band is that I joined it. [Laughs.]

I saw these guys a couple of years ago, and at the time I didn't know what was going on, if it was something with the sound or what, but I said, 'Something's weird.' I played a show with them with The Black Halos on the bill, and I was completely blown away by what these guys did, and I thought that this was something that could be really cool. So, I started harassing them to let me join after that, and I swear to god, it took me two years of harassing Jeremy to let me join the band. I'd say that the biggest development is that we've honed our songwriting craft. It becomes more than just an electronic or industrial band when they start to incorporate real musicianship into it. I think that's what sets Left Spine Down apart from other electronic bands because if you can play an instrument, you have to be able to write a song instead of simply programming something into a sequencer. If you have an idea, throw it on the table and if somebody else picks up on it, that's exactly what happens. It's the beautiful chain reaction of shit happening. Somebody has an idea, somebody seeks out that idea, and if it fizzles out, it doesn't become a thing. But if people can grab onto that idea and put their own things on it, then you have the makings of something really interesting. I think that's what's been happening and everyone is really good at what they do.

Girvan: We really started out as this crazy industrial dance kind of band, and we had some member changes and Jeremy joined the fold. I would say the first major thing was when Jeremy came along, and when Jared came along that was great. Before that, Adrian [White] was on drums, and that was pretty cool. That was a great time, I loved Adrian on drums. That was one of my favorite times. All of a sudden, we just bloomed into this six-piece band. I would say the biggest thing would be moving into the six-piece band, because that's been my favorite thing all along. I've always wanted to work with a lot of musicians in the first place. Anything you need can be compensated.

You have shared the stage with such acts as The Birthday Massacre, Combichrist, Rabbit Junk, The Genitorturers, and of course FLA. What would you say distinguishes an LSD show from that of the bands you've toured with? What defines an LSD live show?

McKnight: Well, I can only base my answer on the stuff that I've done with them, but I would say that despite the fact that you have the layout of your set already planned out and the basics of how your set is going to go, you never know what's going to happen over the top of it. The last show I did with these guys, I ended up in a big destructive, bloody dog pile on stage, like touching each other with a grinder going on in the background with sparks flying everywhere, and Jeremy beating the shit out of his keyboards. There are some things you can plan, but you can't plan what you're going to see at a Left Spine Down show. Something's going to get broken, and it's not always going to be a piece of gear. Sometimes, it's a bone. If you go to see a band enough times, you know what to expect. But with Left Spine Down, I've never seen a single show that looked the same, sounded the same, or had the same energy, and I don't think that will change. The band is really reflective of its members, and you can't plan anything based on that.

Girvan: You can expect the unexpected.

One question that I did want to ask is about the band name. Left Spine Down, LSD...

McKnight: Yeah, I don't know if that's on purpose. We don't really do all that stuff, but I do know that the band likes Timothy Leary quotes. They think that he's pretty cool. Mostly, I think they enjoy the experimentation aspect of it, how they used it in the military, and I think it's more an interest in that versus the drug itself. If I had to be quoted on it, I'd say that Timothy Leary was a pretty fucking cool guy. It's not as if we were 100 percent ignorant of the fact.