INTERVIEWS AND MISCELLANEOUS ARTICLES

Interview: DEATH PIT #8

Today, I talk to the only band of Kiribati (in defiance of any logic pronounced Ki-ri-bass) fresh after their release of Triptych Terror Oriente a collection of three live records that contain new music from the band. I have been following them since their debut release in 2017 of which, as the loyal reader knows I am very fond off, so after a bit of planning we actually got the chance to meet up.

MD: I don't know what to ask.

JR: How are you? What does your band name mean? Who inspired you? Name a few bands you are into right now? - Those seem to be the standards
VG: Just breath… and let the words flow
MD: uhm…alright
JR: You see, I don’t like French people
MD: No? Why not?
VG: He was traumatized by a baguette once
JR: Baguettes raped my father and killed my mother
MD: Well, that's no excuse to hate all French people
VG: Yes, Jay you fascist
JH: It is a scientific fact that all French males are baguettes and the females are croissants.
JR: See, science got my back on this one
MD: The debate is settled.
JH: I like croissants with raisins, though.
VG: Yeah, but that is as French as kangaroos
JH: How so?
JR: You unsophisticated pig, it is too sweet. Don’t you have any taste buds? Where is the cheese? It needs something sour and bitter to be consumable, doofus!
VG: See, that is the true reason we hate the French. We eat like three-year-olds. We are like a medieval nobles that order peasants around and wave deep-fried chicken legs.
MD: Talking about sweets, you ever had blueberry milk?
VG: The Bulgarian blueberry milk? That is the bomb with a pandan sarikaya sandwich.
MD: What’s a sarikaya?
JH: Oh, that stuff is awesome, its like an avocado but sweat. People make yam out of it.
JR: I usually drink three packs of ultra milk a day, only mocha though.
VG: You can't find that around here. Time for rehab.
JR: I am pretty sure I can find it at the airport.
JH: Yeah, but you are not going to go to the airport every day to get your ultra milk fix.

JR: Watch me!

MD: Okay fat people, let’s talk music - any bands that you're into right now?

VG: I don’t know. I don’t really follow bands, just single records. But there is a Band called Truus - they had a album called Ritualis in 2009
MD: 2009? That was ten years ago, how about something current
VG: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh……No
JH: I liked the new swans release. Always looking forward to the stuff they do, since they released the album with the animal head on the cover.
JR: Yeah, Swans, the new Tool, Abbath, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Flaming Lips, Lightning Bolt, Sunn O)))
JH: Anything come to mind yet, grandpa?
VG: …Nope, I am still stuck in the pre-millenium. There is just so much old stuff to discover. Currently, I’m listening to a young whippersnapper named   

Buck Owens.
JR: Urgh, that „four classic album“-sets, those are terribly put together. Without any regard for the original material. You just like them because they are cheap as hell.
JH: That’s because his ancestors were Jewish and Chinese
JR: You are the greediest person on the planet Michael
VG: And proud of it.
MD: How come you don’t do any covers of any band new and old - I could imagine some Buck Owens or Swans going well with your type of music?
VG: We don't know any.
JH: Well, there is this Queen thing
JR: Yeah, but that is just for a second
JH: True
VG: According to some we are an Emerson, Lake & Palmer cover band
JR: No, we are ELP. Our next record will be one sixty minute track
JH: Huzzah!
JR: Huzzah!
JH: We should hire a flutist.
VG: A Peacock's Tale in the Big Top Where Trapez Artists and Clowns Wage Battle in Glass Tears in G Minor
MD: Will there be a mellotron?
VG: No, but we'll do monkey chants
JR: We have hours of that on record. It’s pretty wild stuff.
JH: The Tantric Choir of Divine Salvation in a Perpetual Mystical Macrocosm
VG: Nice use of black metal there.
JR: Stop your archeology - peasant!
JH: We actually saw them live in Germany. They were great. Only two people, but they do it better than most large bands.
MD: I am lost.
JH: Inquisition - a black metal band
JR: They send shivers up my spine, way more than any other band has ever done.
VG: You bore me, let's move on. Next question please!

MD: How do you feel about moving to Mount Pleasant?

VG: Not all of us went. Jerome is the burger among us.
JR: I think it was great. There was literally nothing here. It was good place to work. Suburban heaven.
JH: Yeah, we are not the types who do the LA or Hon Kong thing. I mean any big city. They're all the same.
MD: Well, not really.
JH: Plus immigration was a bitch, anyway. So, hanging out in a quite small town was just what the doctor called for.
VG: It is a pure work thing, in a year we are gone again and probably split into different locations
JH: All this traveling is literally taking years off my life, that's no lie. It's just ridiculous when I compare myself to my parents. I can’t wait to settle down.
JR: No more living off of a laptop.
VG: Culturally it has its advantages though, I mean if I hadn't been like nomads we wouldn't have seen the monkey chants.
JH: True, true.
MD: How does that influence the way you do music?
JH: Well, we send files around everyone adds to it. Michael, as the dictator he is, adds and takes away stuff. And at one point he says it is done.
JR: The recording process becomes more introspective.
JH: How do you mean?
JR: There is no direct competition between us. Nobody tries to impress the other, which would usually be the group dynamic that would develop if we hang out together in a studio.
JH: Yeah, that's a good point. I agree fully.

MD: My friend Shino saw you in Singapore, and he said he didn't really understand what I saw in you, which was really disappointing.

VG: Well, you can’t win them all. But yeah, Singapore was rough. We basically had a video installation and that didn’t fly well with the crowd.
JR: Yeah, they were a bit like „show us what you got“ and were disappointed when we set up a video.
MD: Uh, uh...
JR: How's your magazine doing?
MD: It's doing pretty well I guess.
JR: Selling lots of copies?
MD: Nope.
JR: Giving away lots of copies?
MD: Yup. That's my big marketing strategy. I print around a hundred of them, and give them all away. That's pretty much it.
JR: Sounds like us.


MD: Anything else?

VG: Get our new record Triptych Terror Oriente, which are three live records. Each one containing unique and never before heard pieces of music and look forward to our next studio record in 2020.
MD: Oh geez, that's stuff I should have asked you about.