Flux ov Time Profile: Reid Karris
I first became aware of Reid Karris after we both appeared on a no-synth compilation from Histamine Tapes. I was immediately attracted by the music and intrigued by the process of creation. Reid's newest release Not Only Will This Kill You, It Will Hurt The Whole Time You're Dying (also on HT) dropped on October 20th, and we recently talked via email about the process and philosophy behind it. I am excited to be able to present this first Flux ov Time Profile on Reid.
JB: I find improvised noise and other extreme forms of music inherently beautiful, but I can see how others perceive it as dark, unpleasant or violent. Did the title of your newest release inform the music, or did the music inform the title?
RK: I started with the album and track titles before I got started so yeah, the titles informed the music as I went along. Usually when I am working on an album I like to find themes I can make groupings of and from there try to think about how I can create the grouping out of sound in a way that makes sense. This one definitely has a violent side to it but in a way I think that could be a metaphor for improvising. Being drawn and quartered for example has to be insanely painful but there is really no way to quantify that feeling. Even the most painful thing you’ve ever experienced won’t come close you know and people who experienced these things didn’t live through it to tell how it felt. In the same way, with improvising, you can’t rely on preconceived notions of what is going to happen because it’s something that hasn’t happened and you haven’t experienced. Maybe that’s a weird analogy and it’s really just me still being a teenage metal head somewhere down inside and trying to make something that’s as close to a metal album as I can muster these days.
JB: what the hell is a skatch box?
RK: Basically a Skatchbox is a cardboard box with a various objects such as small dowel rods, combs and washers, attached to it and played by scraping the objects with combs. There’s one or more contact mics on the inside for amplification. I think there is some conjecture as to where the idea of using a comb to play things came from but most of if not all of the research and development for skatch came from a guy named Tom Nunn from the bay area. I remember seeing one at some point way back when and it really stuck with me so one day I decided to make some. I filmed myself playing them and a friend of mine who is an instrument builder ended up being a friend of Tom so he sent him the video. Next thing you know I get an email from Tom and he even sent me a set of the combs he made to play them with. It was really amazing and playing them has opened up a whole new world of how to look at playing things in general. I also love that they are the kind of instrument where there really is no wrong way to make one. I have a number of sets that I try to use in different setting or with different people and despite them being noise boxes there is a lot of nuance you can get out of the sounds. I also find that there is some similarity with them and creating sound from prepared guitars. Lately though the skatchboxes have been just a part of a larger acoustic based free noise tabletop set up I have also involving a springbox and about two dozen metal mixing bowls of various sizes I have found at thrift stores. Incidentally, this album doesn’t have any skatchbox on it, all the sounds are prepared guitars and effected drum kit.
JB: you are commonly referred to as a multi instrumentalist, and you play many on this new recording. I find a very rhythmic theme in all the noises I can perceive- were you initially a drummer who branched out to other instruments or vice-versa?
RK: The first thing I really learned about playing was trumpet in forth grade but some of my earliest memories are of banging on pots and pans in the kitchen as a little kid. I was also an avid desk top drummer all throughout grade school and into high school. So while I may not have started with playing the drums, percussion was always something that was there. There is also a lot of similarities between percussion and prepared guitar. A lot of times there are techniques I use on guitar that are percussion in nature. In the end though rhythm is always a big part of whatever I am doing regardless of what I am playing. As for being referred to as a multi instrumentalist, I tend to first focus on the prepared guitar but I am always a drummer, even when I’m not playing the drums. For my recordings the idea is to form a group of musicians but they are all me. So there are different guitars, drum kit, avant percussion, skatchboxes, or whatever and I try to have a different mindset for each.
JB: there is a strong lo fi diy vibe to alot of the music you make- was this intentional or a matter of necessity?
I think that most of it is a matter of necessity but I would like to think that it’s a bit of both. I’ve always owned some sort of personal multitrack to record with but I’m also not sure if I could really do the albums that I do in a more real studio setting cause a big part of it is allowing there to be experimentation and space between sessions. Doing everything myself gives the music time to evolve on its own and at its own pace. I feel like I am always trying to forget what I just recorded so that when I do the next layer I am focusing on the sound of what has been done and not so much the memory of me doing it.
JB: what are you listening to right now?
My listening habits are pretty diverse. I grew up a metal head but at some point got into jazz. I’m also a deadhead but enjoy harsh noise as well. A lot of time I like to put all the music on my phone on random, although its pretty heavy on stuff like Tortoise to Black Sabbath and Daft Punk to Guerilla Toss as well as a whole host of other stuff I have on there at any given time. There really is just too much music to make a short list, it would have to be a very long list and there’s just no way around that and it would turn into a very long conversation. In the end though all that stuff is a somewhat nostalgic thing that we do, listening to things we’ve heard before and know we enjoy. As far as influences go I typically call myself more of a sound enthusiast than a musician. On a busy day downtown you can walk around and it sounds like a reich piece or you can go out into the forest and listen to birds and the wind in the trees. There are great little accidental sounds all around us that I just love. On the train a lot there’s the rumbling of the wheels on the track but there’s always a loose screw somewhere that give off this seemingly random rattling that produces some amazing rhythms. As an improviser I’m most interested in sounds that just happen, and how a multitude of those sounds happening at once can interact with one another and lead one another. The idea of composing for that kind of thing ends up being more about setting up scenarios for these interactions to flourish then it is about ending up with some pre-ordained piece where you knew what it would sound like beforehand.
Further musings by Nick Dentico (label head at Histamine Tapes)
Reid Karris is someone I likely would have discovered a while ago, just based on his association with Alexander Adams and Lurker Bias who released one of my tapes back in 2016. So I was already fairly familiar with the Chicago noise/improv scene. But I didn’t really become aware of Reid’s work until Rainbow Monolith came out in 2019 on Orb Tapes. Another great tape label that I had become obsessed with at the time. I immediately fell in love with that album and it ended up in pretty steady rotation in my cassette deck well through the lockdown days of early COVID. Since then I have always stopped to give his new releases a listen. I was actually trying to work up the nerve to ask him to make something for Histamine Tapes, but he beat me to it. I didn’t even have to listen to anything I knew what ever he came up with was going to be great. I feel this album doesn’t immediately sit well with the typical HT releases. I tend put out more ambient stuff, and this falls more on the louder, noisier, more frenetic side of the label. Other labels might shy away from diversifying their aesthetic, or have special series for outlier releases (which I actually considered at one point). But my taste in music has always been pretty variable and HT if nothing else is a collection of my music taste. A big part of that for me are these more maximalist improv albums. While I’m not sure where things will go with HT musically I’m definitely trying to be more intentional these days about highlighting other American musicians making experimental music, and Reid’s work is a great example of that.