ConsolidatedConsolidated"I think a lot of people have misconceptions of what the band is about," explains member Mark Pistel, who plays several instruments and handles most of the MIDI and studio technology. "They think that we're some kind of holier than thou, more PC than thou assholes, up on stage whining and trying to make everybody feel guilty. That's not it at all. We're just on stage presenting our ideas, and the one thing we keep reiterating is that it's just information. Take it in, make up your own mind about how the hell you feel about these issues."
Consolidated was formed in 1989 by Pistel, vocalist Adam Sherburne and drummer Philip Steir. The group has matured quite a bit musically since their first release, "Myth of Rock," which had brought together material dating back to Consolidated's inception and showed the band just getting to know their musical technology. It's follow-up, "Friendly Fascism" was composed entirely in the studio with lots of manipulated samples and loops. Though it made more extensive use of live instruments, "Play More Music" was also written mainly on a computer , something the band got away from on the new LP, "Business Of Punishment."
"This time, it was exactly the opposite," explains Pistel. "We went into the rehearsal space and just jammed with our regular instruments, guitar, bass and drums and turntables. We had the sequencer there, but we wrote most of the music on guitars and bass and then I adapted the sequences to the music that was written."
For "Business of Punishment," Consolidated once again. made extensive use of sampling, but in a way very different from their early work. Rather than take loops of other peoples music, they sampled themselves playing and then sequenced it together for the final recording. So many of the guitar, bass and drums heard on the LP are four and eight bar samples of their own playing repeated and looped.
Though they themselves are getting away from lifting things from other peoples records, Consolidated don't see anything wrong with the process .
"The laws are really ridiculous, I mean it's really stupid," says Pistel. "I'm really against the sampling laws. As far as I'm concerned, I think it's not very creative of an artist to just sample another artists song verbatim and just do another vocal track over top somebody else's already completed material. I don't think that should be illegal, but it's very uncreative. But once somebody's released something on a publicly available recording, I think it should be public domain, that anyone can grab and use to their own artistic freedom."
Once again, the group received some assistance in the studio from Meat Beat Manifesto's Jack Dangers. Dangers helped Consolidated mix the record, and also co-wrote the track "Born of a Woman."
"Business of Punishment" marks the band's first release on London Records, having previously been on NETTWERK. Although Pistel says they had a good relationship with their former label, the change was necessary for the bands survival.
"We had a decent relationship with NETTWERK, but unfortunately, they signed a distribution deal with IRS records for the US," he explains ." IRS basically hated the group and subsequently shelved us. There was no promotion, we'd go to cities and kids would come up after the show and go 'hey, do you guys have records out?' The records were simply not in the stores, there was no promotion for us at all, no budgets to do things like videos. So our contract was up and we decided to move on. We had an offer from London Records, so we went for it."
Video is a big part of Consolidated's live show, with specially made clips accompanying each song. The videos, put together mainly by Steir, combine specially shot footage of the band with segments taken from other sources. For "America is Number One," Steir originally juxtaposed images of George Bush and Hitler, though this has been updated since Clinton took office. Perhaps the most shocking clip in their current set is played between songs and features "Old McDonald had a Farm" accompanying footage of animal slaughter.
Presenting their ideas in a multimedia format has always been important to the band, though right now they feel a bit limited by the technology. Eventually they'd like to have huge computer banks running images off hard disk, but until the prices come down Consolidated are settling for the "low-tech high-tech" of standard VCRs and monitors.
Though Sherburne is the main lyricist, all of the band members have a hand in coming up with the themes of the songs. Pistel says that the three of them generally agree on key issues, but are "pretty open to other's artistic needs" when disagreements arise. Usually, Sherburne will just come up with all the vocals for a song and then the others may ask him to re-phrase things or make other small changes.
Over the years, Consolidated have been known to make audience members a part of the songs. Some of the open mike discussion sessions are taped so that the band can go back and sample from it. When the group does this, it is always announced, and Pistel says that so far Consolidated have only had positive feedback from those who have been sampled.
Consolidated have often been dismissed by non-fans as being too preachy, but Pistel points out that they are not out to make people agree with their views.
"We don't have anybody's answers, all we're doing is raising questions," he says. "Some people feel very confrontational about this, they don't want to think. So consequently, people say 'oh, you guys are hypocrites' for everything from the fact that we travel in a vehicle that burns diesel or wear leather shoes. Coincidentally, mine are not leather. But someone's going to call you a hypocrite for the type of shoes you wear? Come on, that's pretty fucking stupid. To all those people, I just say get a life, man."
