Dean Spunt (No Age) and Sun Araw Let the Rack Do the Talking

Cameron Stallones is an LA-based musician who performs as Sun Araw; Dean Spunt is also an LA-based musician, who performs solo and as one-half of the noise rock band No Age. Cameron and Dean both have records out today — Lifetime and Basic Editions, respectively — so to celebrate, the two caught up about E-mu racks, Craigslist finds, Jerry Hunt, and more. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Cameron Stallones: Well, I’m going to start by saying, first off: the record is so good, man. Thank you for sharing it, and thank you for making it.

Dean Spunt: Thank you.

Cameron: It hits exactly right. And I also have to thank you — but also kind of not thank you — that you made me do this thing I do, like, every three-and-a-half years, which is I’m like, “Wait, what are all the E-mu racks?”

Dean: [Laughs.]

Cameron: I’m reading about each one.

Dean: Yeah, I think I’ve collected them all now.

Cameron: You should probably explain, because people don’t know — which rack did you use? The record is entirely created from a single piece of equipment.

Dean: Yeah, the record is made from only those E-mu rack romplers. So it’s the ones that are the Proteus 2000 and the cousins of that. But the first one that I got was the Mo’Phatt, which is the one that’s like R&B and hip hop.

Cameron: Because there’s Planet Phatt.

Dean: So, Planet Phatt is the version before the Mo’Phatt, and they kind of updated it. There was the Planet Phatt and the Orbit, and those were the ones that were a generation before. And then the Proteus 2000 came out around ‘99 or 2000, and that was beefier. You could add cards to it, ROMs. 

Cameron: Huge upgrade.

Dean: Yeah, huge upgrade. The sound is better. And I’m saying this like I know, but I didn’t know any of this two years ago. 

Cameron: Was it a pawn shop vibe?

Dean: No, it was OfferUp. And I was looking for something totally different at first. I was looking for an effects unit to process samples that I was doing with No Age stuff, and then maybe trying to transition to use that into making other things. I had this other piece of gear called the MuseBox — this is a thing I found on Craigslist, too, and you could run effects into it and MIDI stuff, and it had a mic and you could use it as a soundboard. It was kind of crazy. So I wanted something that jumped off from there. I didn’t really know what [the Mo’Phatt] was, but I saw it was only $50 bucks, and I started looking it up and I thought it sounded interesting. So I got it and I met the guy in the parking lot.

Cameron: Oh, man, the days when it was only $50 bucks. And the parking lost?

Dean: Yeah. The guy was like, “Oh, cool, where you at?” And he delivered it to me, which was crazy. But he rolled up and he was like, “You know what this is, right?” I’m like, “Kind of, yeah. I mean, I looked it up. Maybe I don’t?” He was like, “Well, this isn’t a plug and play thing. This is a heavy piece of gear. It’s going to take you a long time to figure it out.” I was like, “OK.” But I plugged it in and there’s an audition button, which is the opposite of what he said. That’s what I really started riffing on first; you hit the button and it plays all the presets. Then I plugged in the MIDI keyboard, which I had just gotten not too long before that, and I realized, “Oh, this is a new instrument. I have a toy.” It was like I got a guitar for the first time. I was like, “Oh, I could do this a lot and just keep going and learn.”

Cameron: Isn’t it a wonder?

Dean: Yeah. So from there I found a few more cheap ones that have different cards in them. But the record is only those. There’s really nothing else on there. 

Cameron: Were there other rules? Because it seemed almost like a programmatic record, like programmatic system music in a way. Even though it vibes. Were you setting compositional [rules], like “it has to be from these racks”? And were you processing stuff in addition?

Dean: No. I mean, there’s effects in the unit that I used. I think a lot of the tempos and the rhythms are programmed in here already. There is some live stuff that I’m playing along to in some of the keyboard stuff, too, but a lot of the rhythms came from just messing around. And then each preset is made up of four layers — it gets really deep. The manual is really thick. I would read it at night to fall asleep. Even yesterday, last night I was playing something and I learned something else that blew my mind. I’m like, “Oh, wish I knew that earlier.” But what’s funny is I made all this stuff and I didn’t save any of it, because I didn’t know how to save it. So when I was talking to Drag City about playing shows, I think I just said that pretty casually, like, “I can’t play any of that stuff, I don’t know…” And they looked a little horrified. [Laughs.] But I’ve since figured out how to sample a few little things.

Cameron: Do you know that composer Jerry Hunt?

Dean: I don’t know.

Cameron: He’s like a Texas avant garde guy. He did a lot of stuff, but one of the things he did was compositional stuff where there were systems involved that were about — I mean, I think it was about a lot of things. He was really into a lot of weird and cool stuff, and occult stuff. But really what I took from it was he was trying to find ways to remove himself. Kind of like indeterminacy, like Cage-y stuff. He would do these things with motion sensors where he would have these primitive sample banks that were literally on 8-track cassettes. He had built these decks that could play a bunch of 8-tracks, and then he had motion sensors and other kind of sensing devices set up around a space where he could sort of just dance and flail around and trigger a random composition. I mean, that’s what I perceive in a preset jam — like trying to let the rack do the talking.

Dean: Well, it’s interesting because I think I saw you perform with Mitchell Brown at the Succession thing in Studio City that I was setting up. I remember watching you guys play, and listening to these racks and hearing the sounds — because I wasn’t thinking about an aesthetic value. It wasn’t like I was trying to make anything, it was just like: most of it sounds dumb, but once you start manipulating the thing or slowing the thing down, that’s where this vibe starts to come out. But there was a moment when I thought about your guys’s set, because some of the sounds reminded me of that. And I don’t know what else the thing reminded me of, unless you’re thinking of hip hop songs from the 2000s or something.

Cameron: And we all are.

Dean: We all are. But hearing your record now that’s coming out — which I think is really, really incredible too. But thinking of that set and then playing this thing, I remember distinctly thinking, Oh, that kind of sounds like that. And there was nothing else I really heard in these presets.

Cameron: What’s interesting to me about it is, like that thing I’m talking about about, trying to put some sort of wedge between your intention and what happens — like putting chopsticks on your fingers and playing piano or something — you’re trying to create a possibility where your precise movements are being interpreted differently than you’re intending them. Thing I do with Mitch is this thing that we do that’s very specific where we run through a mixer in a way where he’s running a live tape loop and he can basically manipulate what we’re playing in real time. So it feels like playing guitar into a wood chipper. You know what I mean? 

Dean: Yeah.

Cameron: It’s like the pedal you’re always looking for — like, “Where’s that pedal that I’ll turn it on and it just doesn’t sound like me playing?” Or it sounds like something I can’t imagine, maybe more appropriately. And that’s kind of what it does, because he’s grabbing little bits of it granularly onto this tape, and he’s manipulating the speed of the tape in real time. I love it, because it’s a complete obstruction system. You start to play something and then what you hear is not what you played. There’s something very satisfying about that to me.

Dean: Yeah. I think with this — because especially these racks, you can slow it down to one bpm, which takes forever. 

Cameron: That’s an incredible feature. 

Dean: But it does this thing where some of the sounds in some of the presets get stretched in such bizarre ways where it’s obviously not meant to really sound like that. And if you speed it up, it just plays the thing at 300 or 120 — because it can go really high too. But when you slow it down, I don’t know if it’s glitching or if it just holds the note forever, but then the sustain doesn’t last that long and it just starts to flutter, and that’s where I found that. And then there was another thing that I found halfway through when I was recording — there’s a randomize button that I got really into. It randomizes the four layers [of each preset] together into a random rhythm. So you can hit this button and just be like, “Bad, bad, bad — what the hell is that?” Some of that stuff’s on there too. But for me, especially in No Age, I’m playing drums and singing and making samples in that band and then arranging with Randy [Randall], too. And there was something really nice about this.

Cameron: I was going to say, it seems like it’s obviously a huge departure for people that are probably only familiar with No Age. 

Dean: Yeah. 

Cameron: It feels like you’ve been slowly inching your way through to this thing that probably surprises people, but has a very linear trajectory.

Dean: Yeah. I mean, we’ve seen each other play for a long time, so maybe it makes sense, but yeah, maybe it feels left field for some people. But the thing that I took from it was that, on one side, I can be very lazy. Like, I don’t have to make anything. And it reminded me of that thing that you played, the Succession thing, where I was curating and organizing, and that’s almost what this feels more like. Instead of being that creative, it’s sort of just plucking things out. 

Cameron: Like an arranger. 

Dean: Yeah. It’s much more arranging than having to come up with the sounds like in No Age, where we’re making samples from ourselves, or writing something and playing. It just feels nice to be able to not have to use that part of my brain.

Cameron: I know exactly what you mean. It’s a different set of skills. I did one thing a while back when I broke my hand a couple of years ago — I couldn’t play any instruments, so I made a MIDI record. I downloaded MIDI files of songs I liked and just did arrangements. It was similar to you — but the opposite, because I was picking sounds but I wasn’t doing any of the playing. It was all sequences that other people made. It was so liberating and so much fun. It’s just like massaging a totally different part of the craft. I mean, they’re both equal, but it’s fun to just literally only focus on that.

Dean: Yeah. I was listening to your new record, and then I went back and listened to the old ones, because the last one I really remember really, really listening to — and forgive me, because you’re pretty prolific — it was the green one that was from, I think, 2017.

Cameron: The Saddle of the Increate?

Dean: Yeah, that one. That one I remember listening to when it came out, and then I was listening to it again as we were getting prepared to talk, but there’s a pretty big departure from there to here. That one feels really fucked. Like really, really, fried. 

Cameron: [Laughs.] It’s pretty fried. 

Dean: And then this record, I don’t know if it’s more subdued… It’s recorded really well. I think it sounds really good.

Cameron: Thank you man. If only people knew how it was actually recorded.

Dean: And you’re such a shredder. This record, there’s some shred.

Cameron: It’s a little shreddy. I’m honestly very curious to hear people talk to me about it, because in the past, I’ve had a lot to say about [my] music. And this one, weirdly, I feel like I have almost nothing to say about it. It came together pretty slowly in a lot of different kinds of circumstances, and I’m really pleased with it. But also, I have this experience — maybe you can relate — where a lot of times I’m very puzzled when the record is finished that that’s the record I made. It’s not like I’m disappointed or I think it’s bad; it’s just like, it was a journey to get there and when I get there, I’m like, Oh, that’s an interesting view. It’s not quite what I expected. And so this one, I agree with you, it feels like some motion in a different direction than the trajectory the last couple records have been going on. But then also, I don’t know how to articulate that at all.

Dean: Is this going to be a band that tours? This is all you playing on the record.

Cameron: I would love that. Unfortunately, my situation right now is not allowing for travel. Also my band, as it stood up to the point of the making of this record, has dissipated. People have been moving to different parts of the country for periods of time. We’re still like, “We’re going to play shows!” But obviously, you know how that struggle is. Long distance band. There are a couple of tracks on the record that were played live with Mark Riordan on keyboards and John Leland on drums. But for the most part, it was almost back to a solo record, because I really just made it myself in my house. I also think that’s why there’s a lot of guitar on it, because I was just seeking catharsis. Jamming with a band is immediate catharsis, and making music by yourself in your house is maybe not always that cathartic. So you gotta find a way to shred a little bit, you know?

Dean: Yeah. I did a record really similar to the Texas composer you were talking about — it had motion sensors, and it was my first foray into anything that was MIDI. That was from a performance that I did for my friend’s gallery in New York. Then Matthew [Clifford Green] from Radical Documents asked me to do a record of it, but that was really simple because that was a performance translated into a record… I’m just saying this because you were talking about jamming with the band versus solo, and [Basic Editions] is kind of my first record that I made by myself. I’ve made tracks and little things here and there. But when I’m in No Age, I do feel like we have a sense of what the record will be — we have songs and they’re written and they’re going to sound a certain way, we’ve toured some of them or whatever. This was like: I started with no idea except that I had the gear.

Cameron: “I’m just gonna use this stuff.”

Dean: Yeah. It was almost like, “I have no idea what it’s going to sound like, so let’s start putting stuff down to see what it’s going to be.”

Cameron: The Mo’Phatt does not sound bad. The Mo’Phatt sounds thick.

Dean: It sounds good. There’s some subby bass on there too.

Cameron: Dude, I always wanted the Xtreme Lead. Do you know anyone that has the Xtreme Lead?

Dean: The yellow one? 

Cameron: Yeah, I want the yellow one. I was looking into that. My friend had the Planet Earth. Do you know that one? Very small runs.

Dean: There’s some beats on there. 

Cameron: Yeah, there’s some beats on there. There’s some really, really, really excellently recorded drum samples.

Dean: It’s funny because I got the Mo’Phatt for $50 and I was like, “These things are cheap!” And then—

Cameron: They’re not anymore. I just looked tonight — I went on Reverb and it was heartbreaking, dude. The Mo’Phatt is, like, $250.

Dean: Come on!

Cameron: I know.

Dean: I’ve gotten a few for cheap just because I’ve found them. But I’ve seen some expensive ones. 

Cameron: I wanted to talk to you about one track on your record because it’s close to my heart, which is “Confusion is SysEx.” That green record that you were talking about, the Saddle record — I had just started making a lot of stuff with DX7, but I was using this free DX7 plugin, Dexed — everyone should go download Dexed, it’s incredible.

Dean: Not the actual DX7? Just the plugin?

Cameron: So, this is what I had: I had a TX802. My sweetest Craigslist night ever was I saw this TX802 for, like, $150 bucks, and it’s basically eight DX7s in a rack with separate stereo outs for each one and mute buttons on the front. So you could literally sequence a whole song on it. I don’t even know what their concept was. I drove to this dude’s house in Brentwood and went into his house — he’s like, “Come on down, the studio’s in the back.” So I go in the back and it’s this raging prog band. They are shredding, like, Genesis level shreddage but with crazy digital synths. He was like, “Yeah, dude, it’s right over there. You know what that thing is?” I was like, “Dude, I’m about to find out.” So one of my concepts for that record was to retrigger everything that I had made digitally, because the cool thing about the plugin is you can actually program it much more easily than you can a proper hardware DX7, because all the FM is in front of you. But I was going to transfer it all to the TX802 and retrigger it, and the SysEx nightmare that I got into trying to save my patches from the plugin to the hardware… I don’t know if anyone’s going to be reading this at this point. I think we’ve strayed.

Dean: [Laughs.] 

Cameron: But it happened. I met a ninja and he solved it for me. And we did a live performance where everybody played the rack; there was seven people playing and everything was coming out of the rack. So it was a triumph, but I needed help. I had to call in reinforcements.

Dean: I’m still so confused on so much of the MIDI talk. That [song] was after reading the manual and understanding what SysEx even was — and I still don’t understand it. It’s all confusing. But that’s what’s also nice about jumping into it for me. It’s all new.

Cameron: Yeah. It’s exciting. What I like about playing music is the feeling of discovery. That’s why I like improvising so much. When I make a record, I don’t have any songs. I literally just start. And there’s not too many discards; most of it develops into something, because it’s so easy to transform until it is something.

Dean: Wait, this is your tenth LP?

Cameron: It is. Tenth proper studio album. Still crazy, baby. [Laughs.] 

Dean: I have to apologize to you — I believe you sent me an LP for consideration or something years and years ago. 

Cameron: I don’t remember!

Dean: It must have been around 2008 — like, full on for me, No Age was in this insane overdrive. And also paranoia for me, where it was like, “I don’t know who’s my friend, what is this?”

Cameron: Lost in the Fader Fort. 

Dean: Dude, yes, exactly. But I remember getting an email and I think I just said, “I don’t know, dude, I’m not sure what is happening.” I blew you off.

Cameron: [Laughs.] I never felt blew off.

Dean: But it reminded me of— 

Cameron: How long I’ve been hacking at it. 

Dean: It’s amazing. I mean, even then, you’d already been a couple records deep.

Cameron: Yeah, it’s been a minute since we’ve been doing this, man. I’m glad you’re still doing it. 

Dean: Yeah, man. I was thrilled to learn that our records are coming out in the same day, September 27. Finding common ground in your record and mine — I was really pleased with that. I could see them playing back-to-back, those records. 

Cameron: Yeah. Thank you, man. Great conversation. 

Dean: I really enjoy the record. I think everyone should go listen to it and buy it, because 10 deep!

(Photo Credit: left, Penny Spunt; right, Alisa Lyudinshina)