What do all good
electronic artistes need? A Web site, naturally. Check out
Systemwide's label at www.bsi-records.com.
The man was pushing 60. He had gray hair and a beard and was
dressed nicely in suit pants and a button-down shirt. He moved
spasmodically, reacting to the frenetic beat sputtering through
the speakers. He was alone on the dance floor.
This was the scene at Ohm before the Systemwide and Sound
Secretion record-release show in early May. The DJ spun
experimental electronic music with beats faster than it
seems humanly possible to dance to--the kind of music that's
integral to the men of Systemwide and the mission of their
label, BSI Records. The dancer was far past the supposed
median age of high-tech fans, but he was feeling it more
than any of us ever could.
Weeks later, I'm talking to Ezra Ereckson, the lead singer
and noise manipulator for Systemwide and head of BSI. "Different
people coming from different worlds musically hear and respond
to different things in our music," he says in the even,
calm tone of a precise intellect. "The dub people hear the
fat bass lines, the hip-hop people hear African and funk-derived
beats, the industrial people hear the synths.
"We're definitely not any kind of melting pot or fusion
thing, but there are aspects that appeal to a lot of different
people while hopefully being one unique sound." Indeed,
from its place on the cusp of the electronic music revolution,
Systemwide suddenly seems able to attract everyone from
the youngest of sound addicts to that older, furiously dancing
gentleman.
On its 1997 album, Sirius, Systemwide laid a dub
foundation--Jamaican rhythms, dark bass, deep beats--and
mixed-in flavors of jazz, hip-hop, techno, industrial and
dancehall. On its latest release, the vinyl-only 12-inch
Systemwide Meets Muslimgauze at the City of the Dead,
the band collaborated with with Manchester, England's late,
great Bryn Jones. Jones, who attracted a worldwide following
for Muslimgauze's Near Eastern take on electronic music,
succumbed to a congenital blood disease earlier this year,
shortly after remixing a clutch of Systemwide tracks.
That partnership, which began via e-mail, pushed Systemwide
to abstract its sound as much as possible before filtering
it through song structures, resulting in an undulating,
hypnotic record.
"I was attracted to a number of things about Muslimgauze,
like the radically unhip notion that music and politics
not only have something to do with each other, but in his
case are almost the same thing," Ereckson says of his group's
collaboration with the English Arabist, who first launched
his musical career in protest of Israel's 1982 invasion
of Lebanon. "He was so dogmatic politically, and the obsession
he had with Palestinian issues I found pretty interesting.
"We were talking about having him come out here to do some
shows together," Ereckson continues. "It looked like it
was going to be the beginning of a long-term, hopefully
mutually satisfying relationship, but it got cut short."
Just as Systemwide strives for a wide-ranging vision with
its recorded output, its shows brim with an anything-is-possible
attitude. And anything is--unless, of course, it involves
a guitar. "We've all heard guitars a million times," explains
Jason Lohr, Systemwide's bassist and the other main man
behind BSI. "Everything you hear has a guitar in it. Why
not move on?"
Ereckson adds that the group is hardly on a jihad against
rock's favorite instrument, but rather against the hackneyed
way it's commonly used. "The way people who aren't into
dub or aren't into hip-hop say it all sounds the same, all
the indie-rock stuff sounds the same to me," he says. To
his ear, the music that most bands play comes down to the
same "myopic concerns. You know, the 'ooh, baby, baby' school
of love and personal anguish. I've always been interested
in stuff that is a little more outward-looking."
This thinking inspired Ereckson and Lohr to form BSI. "We
thought there was probably a sound that could be represented
that wasn't being represented," Lohr says. "A lot of companies
have a broad crew of artists they work with and sign a lot
of different bands, but we wanted to create a label sound."
"We felt we had a lot of points on which we connect with
people in other parts of the world," Ereckson adds. Seven
years of working in music retail taught him that no one
was pushing dub and experimental electronic music on the
West Coast. "That galvanized my desire to not only push
Systemwide harder, but to do that in conjunction with pushing
other regional stuff and hooking up with people internationally."
The BSI campaign officially embarked with May's simultaneous
release of Systemwide Meets Muslimgauze and a self-titled
12-inch by Sound Secretion, whom Ereckson describes as a
"world-class breakbeat dub scientist." Future releases will
include albums by Sound Secretion, San Francisco's Bucolic
and DJ Landau and Dan Bitney, drummer for the Chicago ensemble
Tortoise. Also, there will probably be a full Systemwide
remix album, featuring contributions from the U.K. producers
Rootsman and Alpha & Omega, artists from New York's
Wordsounds label, and Portland's Eternal Golden Void, in
addition to more remixes from Muslimgauze.
Even with all the balls it juggles, Systemwide has not
neglected the duty of every good band: to put on exciting
shows. "First and foremost, Systemwide is a live band. The
communication we have on stage--with each other and the
crowd--is what it's all about for us," Ereckson explains.
"When we get together to create music," Lohr concludes,
"it always feels better than what we did the time before,
and that's always nice. That keeps us going."
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Willamette Week | originally
published June 30, 1999
|
