It's my great pleasure to share this interview with my dear friend Stephen Petrus. Stephen has been performing the world renowned industrial noise project Murderous Vision for nearly twenty years. He runs the prolific Live Bait Recording Foundation and produced, along with Aaron Vilk, the film City/Ruins, about industrial music in northeast Ohio. Stephen is currently involved in many projects including The Utter Darkness After a Dying Flame, Perestroika and Vengeance Space Quartet.
http://www.livebaitrecording.blogspot.com
http://www.livebaitrecording.blogspot.com
ARH: What are you working on now? Please describe current projects you’re most excited about. Are they collaborations or solo work?
SP: It seems that as of late, I have been doing mainly post production stuff on already finished work. I haven't been doing a lot of creating new material for a couple reasons. Mainly, the backlog of stuff that i need cleared up before proceeding. I most recently have digitally transferred my earliest recordings that i did on a 4-Track tape machine many years ago. It netted a few hours of material. Most of which is being given away for free on the Murderous Vision bandcamp site. I also have recently finishing the mixing for a new Murderous Vision album that was recorded earlier this year. I have a couple collaboration gigs/recording sessions coming up in the next month. The first of these is with Vengeance Space Quartet and with Steve Lull and Jason Rodriguez.
ARH: When and how did you get into performing? Feel free to discuss any influences and early experiences.
SP: My first gig was in June of 1996, at a place called The Pieta, here in Cleveland. I was working with two other people under the name Otaku Majime (we also comprised Murderous Vision at the same time). We were making material and jamming for quite some time before the gig opportunity arose. We hung out there almost every weekend. It was my first exposure to experimental electronic music being performed live, and it completely blew my mind. It made me want to try my hand at something other than recording in solitude, which is all we did at the time. We asked Shawn Sandor for a gig and he penciled us in!
ARH: Since you’ve started performing, have you noticed repeating cycles in terms of style and energy of experimental music? How would you describe the current zeitgeist?
SP: It may have seemed cycles were repeating, but it was more that i got off the train for a bit. I don't think there was ever a void in activity of this nature here in Cleveland. For awhile I lost contact with what was going on here, and only gigged out of town. Currently, i think there is a higher level of diversity in styles of experimentalists. Back then it was pretty much harsh noise and industrial together on one bill. Nowadays, it seems you can have free jazz, drone, industrial, noise, psyche rock or spoken word, not only on the same bill, but in the same band! It is an interesting climate.
ARH: What qualities excite you in performances of others? What takes you by surprise and keeps your interest in experimental music?
SP: I am most interested when I can close my eyes and feel the sonic bath. I like to use the performance of others to slip out of body and float. What you are feeling is just as important as what you are hearing and seeing. What surprises me is the infinite number of combinations of people in our local scene that pop up. Different styles that mesh together in new and unexpected ways.
ARH: How does language factor in your creative process? Does your inspiration often begin with words or sounds – how do these interact?
SP: I guess to some extent it factors in. Murderous Vision, specifically, usually doesn't have much to say vocally, when it does I struggle to choose my words wisely. On the occasion that I think a dialog approach is warranted, I spend days making sure it is expressing what the music is asking it to express. Lyric writing is a really long and strenuous process for me. I get it wrong more often than right. Live, 90% of my vocals are more or less caveman on cough syrup grunts.
ARH: Do you feel performing is a mystical act and/or ritual? If so, how does that work – how do you use ritual awareness in your work? If not, how would you describe the performing process in terms of mental, physical and emotional transformation?
SP: It should always be mystical. Just as in listening, I should always feel out of body. If everything is going right, I am completely unaware of anything else in the room. For sure a cleansing ritual is always present, from my own approach, of course. To channel the moment from my body, to my equipment, to the speakers and then back into my body again. When the circle feels complete, I turn off my mixer.
ARH: That's a wonderful and clear description. What do you think the future holds for you as an individual artist and experimental music generally? What is the relationship between local and global experimental music now?
SP: The best I could hope for is more of the same for myself, personally. Each year sees growth in my comfort with what I am doing. I am content to go with that and only wish for more in the future. Experimental music i think will continue to be what it has been for many years. A place for those who don't wish partake of art that that is easy to find or digest. This is underground music. I wish it to always stay that way, and i suspect it always will. Despite the occasional flavor of the month publication grabbing on and trying to push it to the next level. It always falls right back where it belongs in the end...
ARH: What's been on your mind these days?
SP: There really hasn't been a lot of noteworthy things on my mind these days. I have been thinking how great it will be the next time I can crack a beer or twelve with my buddy Amanda!
ARH: Me too!
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