Diem
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This interview was held at my place with legendary Perth Industrialist Nathan Baxter, read on about his band Diem.
Pig: Where did the name Diem come from?
Nathan: It actually came from a t.v. show. I was watching China Beach one night, it was cut into the flesh of a young Vietnamese whore, Diem in Vietnamese means whore, and I just really liked the idea of it, it was a very striking visual concept. I have experimented with that in a photography style myself, I had a friend who cut herself for me, I was going to use that as a cover but I thought it was a bit to striking. I thought the symbolism of machinery was a much safer form of imagery than the human body even though they do relate to each other quite well. It's in very personal context, I can't see anything wrong with any form of mutation, whatever people do is entirely up to themselves and people should not be ashamed of themselves, that's one of the main reasons why I am doing this music. Mutation is a natural form of life, anything unusual is a natural form of life and should be seen as such. You are beautiful no matter what you look like, that is an important thing to think in this day and age that is so caught up in conformity.
Pig: Who is in the band?
Nathan: I used to be helped a lot by Anthony Steer but unfortunately he's passed away, that was a big blow in more respects than one. We have a bassist Clayton who helps a lot. I do most of the work, then give it to him and if he has any ideas he comes back to me and says "Hey, how about we do it this way", not that we've put any bass lines in it yet, but we are hoping to. We are looking at getting a guitarist pretty soon, I play guitar but I would rather concern myself with percussion really.
Pig: In your own words describe what Diem is about.
Nathan: Diem is going away from the Stereotypical view points of most industrial bands. We are moving away from the technology side of the whole thing, basically because we do not have the funds, which in it's self is quite limiting. So it's more back to basics, we're doing sampling not from keyboards, but going out into junkyards and possibly destroying a car body then coming home and listening back to it and then taking samples from that.
Pig: So your music is not from traditional instruments, do you use any traditional instruments?
Nathan: We are trying to introduce a base guitar and possibly a normal electric guitar. I'm having trouble with that at the moment because I find that with my own work it doesn't lend very well with that sort of thing. The work we're doing at the moment is more of an ambient nature, and most of the time that sort of thing doesn't mesh very well and sometimes ruins it.
Pig: I hear you did some music for a film, tell me about that?
Nathan: 90% of the music we're making at the moment is actually sound track, so it is different from the music you would hear otherwise. It doesn't necessarily have a driving beat, It's once again more of an ambient nature, quite oppressive because we're not really working with anything that is easily listened to it's more of the bassier tones.
Pig: So your music is easily put to images but would not go down well in a disco?
Nathan: That's the whole idea of Diem, we're not looking at it in a musical context but as a visual context as well, and possibly as an art context. I do quite a lot of sculpture, which has not only inspired my music but some of my music has inspired that as well.
Pig: Tell me about your sculptures?
Nathan: I'm simply working with plaster at the moment, it's quite limiting in the fact that I don't really have that much money. So maybe music is a way of expressing what I was expressing earlier on through sculpture.
Pig: You have some quite unusual instruments, can you tell me about some of them.
Nathan: It's really quite strange because most of my thoughts and ideas come from common place things like in (the song) `Head' the whole background base of it is my car engine on idle which has been slowed down enough so you can hear the flutter of the engine, I thought that was quite interesting. I don't like a bare sound. I find that you've got gaps to fill up, so we like a very full sound. We use quite a lot of instruments, we use iron bars for percussion usually, there's quite a lot of blisters along the way. It's basically walking about the house, around the back yard, or going to a junk yard and having a look around. At the moment we're trying to figure how on earth to electrify a car body.
Pig: Please explain the electric car body?
Nathan: The whole idea is a charge going in one point and coming to another point, the difference in charge between those two points creates a sound. If you can imagine electrifying a car body and hitting it with something, you would have a discharge and that difference in charge would make a sound coming through a speaker.
Pig: What sort of voltage would you require?
Nathan: I was trying to work out the principles of it and we would possibly need eight car batteries (At 13.8 Volts each this would be 110.4 Volts, at a large current this voltage can kill!, do not try this at home kids. - Ed). We would definitely be wearing lots of rubber. Another big instrument at the moment is cut down sledge hammers that give off a good sound. That again would be coming back to the visual side because as you would be hitting the car body it would be arching. I just hope you don't touch someone else while you're doing it or someone stage dives onto it, it wouldn't be very nice.
Pig: You haven't performed live yet, are you planing to do so?
Nathan: Live is a very big issue, I'm in no hurry to perform live what-so-ever, I don't particularly like the idea myself. I prefer to do things not in a controlled environment, it's a very personal thing. It's not something that can easily be put up on stage and performed.
Pig: So the only thing that will be live from Diem is the car body?
Nathan: I don't feel that any club a) would let us play and b) I don't think I would want to play at any club. Club O(riginal) doesn't have the right atmosphere, the only place we would play live is possibly in an abandon industrial factory, I think that would be a good idea. Some of the dilapidated buildings around inner city Perth would be good or on top of the old Q Club. They used to have the Gamer's Guild there and you would go up some abandon escalators and you would have a whole story that was striped bare and all the windows were broken and open to the elements. I thought that would be a very good place because it ties into the music, it's bare and has a very good oppressive feel about it, that's what it's all about, excising my own paranoia.
Pig: How do you go about putting your music together?
Nathan: It's very basic really, we go out into the field with a portable recorder and we find something that we like, we hit it a bit, see what it sounds like and we say, "Oh yes that's a nice tone, or nah don't worry about that one," and then we play maybe a five minute sample of one, then we will go back and work that up through a two track.
Pig: Have you had any strange looks while recording samples in public?
Nathan: Nothing really major, basically you just get strange looks, but that's nothing really.
Pig: Does Diem, like Metallica have the power to cause today's youth to kill themselves?
Nathan: What? Is Metallica influencing young teen death?
Pig: Apparently I heard that one of their slower numbers has caused a young couple to off themselves. Do you hope to aspire to such greatness?
Nathan: I think the only reason why people would kill themselves over Metallica is possibly if their room-mate was playing some and they didn't like it. We have songs dealing with that sort of thing, `On Death and Dying' is pretty morbid I think.
Pig: Explain 'Alt das gebaud', what's this song about?
Nathan: That was one of our first songs that was a soundtrack for a mining film, that was done between Anthony and me. We took a couple of hammers and iron bars into an old building and set up a porta pack and found some interesting objects to bang upon, we then went away and came back later to sort the percussion out. With instrumentation I don't really like relying on a guitar, I think as soon as you pick up a guitar you're limiting yourself, the sort of instruments we used are a power band saw, a drill and a circular sander on instruments of metal and wood, that turned out quite well, it's a fairly basic song but the idea that spawned it was a good idea. I think there is a big difference between the idea and the final analysis.
Pig: Tell us about the next song 'On death and dying'.
Nathan: `On Death and Dying' was a really interesting one, it's actually a cover of an early Cut Slash Kill song. Basically we sampled about twenty percent of the stuff we couldn't make up ourselves, like the vocals and then we just recreated it, we wanted to see if we could do it so we tried to get it as close to the original as possible, that was good fun, I actually played an AC/DC riff on my guitar which was pretty horrifying.
Pig: Do you see yourself rolling around on the floor like Angus Young?
Nathan: What wearing school shirts and trousers two sizes too small? No actually, I can't.
Pig: What about the song 'Fehrzaug'?
Nathan: That was the first song I was really quite happy with and that's one of our longer ones, I think it's about five minutes. This one was again using unusual instruments, anything you can pick up and you can make a noise out of is an instrument, that's a very important point when you are making music. We used everything; samples from would you believe 'Christian Death' of all things, and everything from 44 gallon drums loaded up with glass thrown off walls to banging on pieces of wood. A lot of the ambience came in when we were mixing, because unfortunately we have to use a lot of tape, but we also slowed it down and sped other things up, when mixed we got a very full sound.
Pig: Next on the hit list is 'Head', you have two versions of this, the demo and the original.
Nathan: The original version of Head was quite interesting, that was using the car engine, and what we did was get a violin sample and randomised it and put that through as a loop. The original one was quite annoying because we recorded a normal voice and put it through a few distortions, slowed it down and made it reverb and unfortunately the equipment we were using was pretty shoddy and we were getting a lot of feedback and that ruined the song a bit. The new one was quite good because we edited out (the voice) and replaced it with serial killer samples which worked very well, that was one of the better ones, we might re-do that one again. It's a constantly re-birthing process, where I'm constantly going back over songs and seeing something else I'd do with them.
Pig: So are we going to see Diem remix their greatest hits?
Nathan: Well most of them I want to re-do because I don't think the sound quality is that good. The first one we did 'Alt das gebaud' will have to be re-done and I want to re-do the ending of 'Fehraug' I want to extend that one a bit more.
Pig: What did you do on 'Neu chrome'?
Nathan: That was a very enjoyable one, that was done with Anthony again. We went down to a foundry on it's off day when there was no-one there and we started hammering away at various objects, it was really good because they had an industrial forge there which is one of the major samples that made a really good sound, as you can tell I am totally fascinated with anything that is big , shiny, metal or anything to do with technology. I think it's an important aspect of our life and we really have to humanise it, making it into an instrument. 'Neu chrome' was very good because we were using two samplers and they were sampling real time, while we were pounding away they were sampling and because we had them at slightly different settings they were playing at different speeds so the pitch would up and then go down. I like the feeling of the wave effect which I think gives a very good flow to the sound, you'll pick that up time and time again in our music.
Pig: are you going to release anything to the public?
Nathan: I'm thinking about releasing it, not through anyone in particular, it will just be off our own backs. I'd really like to be able to do it by myself, it's a very personal thing for all of us.
Pig: So will we be able to buy it soon?
Nathan: Hopefully. I'll be talking to Initiation one of these days to see if they can re-do it for me because I don't want people to go out and spend money on a shitty tape, I'd rather the tape quality be good.
Pig: Is it going to be tape format?
Nathan: Tape would be the easiest and cheapest of course, but then because there's such a visual side to the band I would also like to have a big format to work upon.
Pig: Video?
Nathan: Video is a very big idea, I was thinking we could possibly do something through DaDa's, do a few videos and put them up there. I was also thinking about a record, we might end up putting out a small book with it.
Pig: Where do you see Diem going in the future, conquering the world or plodding along?
Nathan: Maybe not conquering the world, but I see us playing an important part in some respect. I think it would be nice for people to be able to sit down and listen to the music and possibly understand what feelings went into it. It's about giving information to people and taking in information.
Pig: Do you see Diem as a life long thing, something you will keep with you throughout your life?
Nathan: This has been with me for a very long time. The whole bands concept is dealing with the fears and paranoia that I have in my own life, I am a very naturally paranoid person, and I think this helps a lot. It goes back to the idea of art, any form of art is expression of the self really, and one would hope that people would understand me a lot better through listening to the music.