Wolf Eyes antagonise MothersAgainst Noise

Wed 4th Oct, 2006 in Features

Say a song is like an egg, a round and smooth hard shell with a peak and a belly, neat and symmetrical innards encompassing the textured and flavoursome yolk and a bit of fluff around the outside. Wolf Eyes take the egg and drop it on a cold stone surface, they rub into the broken egg a bit of saw dust and charcoal to mix with the maligned liquid. They scoop it all up with a rusty piece of scrap metal and begin to sculpt it into a form, a beginning and an end but not necessarily a middle. There you have it. That is a Wolf Eyes piece.

Wolf Eyes are throat ripping howls and oceans of choppy noise. Over the years the form of the group has joined and split from different influences and members. Once a solo project of Nate Young, then joined by Aaron Dilloway and Andrew Wilkes-Krier in New York, but the city had the wrong effect for Young and Dilloway and they returned to Detroit with a better idea of themselves. They met John Olson, who brought a free jazz influence and have grown ever since with teh arrival of Mike Connelly. “We put a lot of effort into what we do” Nate says, responding to queries over the seriousness of their sound versus the anti-seriousness of their demeanour. Connelly adds “We’re serious… but we don’t necessarily take ourselves too seriously”. Probing further, we realise that the interplay between group members is the seed of Wolf Eyes’ sound. “I don’t think about these people as musicians I think of them as family, and I think [that’s] what people should get from it… I think that our output is the chemistry between us and the idiosyncratic language we’ve developed” said Olson. Connelly had more to say; “I think it’s a celebration in a lot of ways, to me some of the harsh noise and things like power electronics… outsiders view it as very angry and full of hatred and full of all this darkness but for the people involved with it and to me when listening to it that’s not the main focus and its really… people doing exactly what they want to do in their own free way, its totally unrestrained”. Nate has his own take on Wolf Eyes; “it’s about examining everything and not about one specific feeling. We’re communicating together… what is possible with our ideas”.

“We can look at it from a ton of different perspectives, we can see it from [the perspective of] the old lady down the street… its not so hard to see” said Nate. Funnily, this brings up the curious phenomenon of Mothers Against Noise, a group that blockade and protest noise shows with placards and leaflets. “Mothers are worried, they’re caring and they need to take care of their flock and they consider us a threat” Olson summarises, although they act negatively toward Wolf Eyes and others in the genre he maintains a certain respect for the group “at least they have some type of strong emotion toward something” he offers. Nate feels differently, “we hear that they turn up at gigs and push over people’s merch piles. If they do that [to us] we’re going to break their legs”. Loonies beware. Connelly is dismissive, “it’s on the internet” he intones meaningfully.

Old ladies don’t dig noise? Well maybe they just don’t understand it. Olson has an explanation for them; “think about a bunch of dudes trying to put a circle into a square”. The question comes to Nate; “think about the frustration that goes with hard work and sweat… think back to those poor people pounding those nails into those train tracks, those spikes” Connelly responds to Nate’s imagery; “think about John Henry, steel driving man”. Obviously a tale from American folklore, Nate and Connelly illuminate the issue; ”[Henry] went against the machine” in a competition against a machine to hammer railway spikes, Connelly adds; “fucken died doing it”.

Wolf Eyes Human Animal is out now on Sub Pop Records through Stomp