“The way I see
it, there's no avoiding the clear lineage between our music and the
dark, alternative music of the 80s and 90s. I won't deny that part of
this project is rooted in nostalgia. But I believe many people of my
age – millennials – are sort of caught in a nostalgic time warp,
anyway.”
Name: The
Walking Wounded
Members: Ron Lipke (vocals, lyrics), Kyle
Porter (synths, programming, engineering)
Year formed:
2011
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
The
Walking Wounded is a dark, electronic pop duo based in the Pacific
Northwest. With three full-length albums and more released since
2011, the project was born out of a mutual love for electronic and
industrial music that arose during the late 20th and early 21st
century. Using a myriad of synthesizers and other production tools,
TWW has created sonic scenes of carnage and introspection while
deploying thoughtful, incisive lyrics. Rather than relying on shock
or the grotesque to distinguish itself from others, TWW presents a
cleaner and more dignified aesthetic - discussing adult themes like
substance abuse, broken romantic relationships, war and historical
conflict, self-preservation, and sex – all while wearing a
three-piece suit and tie.
Intravenous Magazine: Who
are you and how did the band/project come to be formed?
I
am Kyle Porter, co-founder of The Walking Wounded. Over a decade a
ago, I met singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ron Lipke by
sheer chance on the street and we struck up a friendship based on a
shared love for bands like Skinny Puppy, Die Warzau, Prick, Pop Will
Eat Itself, Depeche Mode, Einsturzende Neubauten, and many others.
For a time, we would frequent the dwindling "goth industrial"
scene in Seattle, especially the Noc Noc. After one or two previous
efforts to build large-scale bands with sometimes up to seven
performers, we formed a trio called Control Keys with Seattle
electronic music maverick Vox Mod. After nearly two years of
extensive performances and two records later, the band dissolved.
Rather than give up altogether, The Walking Wounded was born out of
the wreckage. Our first official record, "Pornography and
Propaganda" was released in 2011.
IVM: How would you
describe your sound/style, and how did you arrive at it?
I
would describe our sound as being on the "pop" end of the
electronic/industrial music spectrum. I grew up listening to
primarily mainstream music handed down from my parents' generation:
Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, etc. so it wasn't until my early,
rebellious teens that I discovered and began to appreciate electronic
music: 80's new wave, 90's house and jungle, and the rise of
electronic rock that dominated the last half of the 1990s. I'd listen
to Marilyn Manson and Enya in the span of the same ten minutes – I
wasn't part of a scene, so there were no rules and no dress code. I
never really wanted to play guitar and I grew up with an upright
piano in the home, so keyboard synthesizers seemed like the right
direction to go. I started with nothing but a Casio and a
reel-to-reel. By 2001, I'd amassed a couple of good synths like the
Nord Lead 2 and the Korg Triton, and an old Mbox with ProTools. I'd
mix and edit music all over Seattle's 24-hour greasy cafes, at all
times of day and night - back when it wasn't so common place to do
that sort of thing and before Seattle was regentrified by tech
industry yuppies. For a long time, I was hung up on hardware – I
didn't like the idea of a soft-synth running off of a laptop. Since
then, I've become more open minded about the tools I use to compose
and perform music. I have no proper musical training, so what I do is
largely by ear and feel. The decisions I make with regards to the
sounds, samples, melodies, and beats for The Walking Wounded are
largely informed by Ron's voice and my impression of it. In the early
days of our previous projects, there was a lot of screaming and
roaring – but Ron began to open up his singing voice more as time
went on and revealed himself to be a very unique crooner. I now
compose music with him as a singer, and not a "blast-beat"
poet, in mind – closer to Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen than Trent
Reznor or Al Jorgensen. That said, we're still plenty aggressive.
IVM: Who and what
are your primary influences both musical and non-musical?
Our
main influences are bands that are, for the most part, no longer
around. For me, The Machines of Loving Grace (Concentration) and
Gravity Kills were and still are significant touchstones for our
sound. Depeche Mode, Front 242, and Die Warzau also left a mark.
Other bands like Goldfrapp and The Prodigy were more influential from
a production stand-point. Lyrically, Ron has his own writer's voice,
but I know he admires Oscar Wilde, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, and Leonard
Cohen. TWW also takes some inspiration from films, like Cronenberg's
"Crash", "Ghost in the Shell", Lynch's "Lost
Highway", "Hannibal", "Gattaca", and even
certain television shows like the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. My
dream is to make music for the end credits to a Cronenberg or Fincher
film, or perhaps the live-action adaptation of "Ghost in the
Shell".
IVM: Do you perform live and if so where
can we see you perform in the near future?
The Walking Wounded
have yet to perform live. However, this year we began the process of
building a live show that is intended to immerse the audience
completely. We've teamed up with designer and engineer Wing Gee, who
is custom-building an elaborate lighting scheme comprised of
high-powered LED lights in a number of different configurations. Our
philosophy is that since there's no drummer or guitarist to state at,
we needed to create a visual experience that was unique to us and one
that complimented our guitarless sound. Using our own programming,
we've devised a way where nearly every sound is triggering or part of
a trigger that cues lights, colors, etc. we plan to début live in
the Spring of 2015. While the project is in its advanced stages, no
shows are currently scheduled.
IVM: What is your
current release and where is it available from?
Our
newest release, 'Valediction', arrived on Tuesday, November 18th of
this year. It is available from Bandcamp, and can also be found on
iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, eMusic, and Spotify.
IVM: What have been
the highlights of your career so far?
Throughout my
career as a musician, I've been very fortunate and I've had many
amazing experiences. I used to play piano in a folk rock band called
Exohxo, and one evening we performed with an entire orchestra –
that was a rush. In the predecessor to The Walking Wounded, Control
Keys, we were invited to open for a big Japanese pop band in front of
a large crowd at The Showbox in the Market, my second favorite venue
in Seattle (we got terrible reviews, but that's never stopped us from
having a good time). With The Walking Wounded, our self-produced
music video for a song called "Heel" was a massive and
deeply gratifying experience – forcing Ron and I both into unusual
roles that challenged us in many good, creative ways. And, honestly,
every time Ron debuts new lyrics to me – always in an earnest
spoken-word performance – I get chills. I work with Ron because
he's my friend and he shows incredible trust in me as a composer -
but tantamount to that, he's the best wordsmith I've ever met. When
one of our records comes together, and I hear his voice over these
tracks, the feeling is pure elation. The most recent highlight was
when I saw our new live performance rig in action for the first time.
It's brought me back to that initial level of excitement I had when
Ron and I were just starting this journey as TWW.
IVM: What are your
plans fro the future?
From here, we are primarily focused
on putting together a solid, entertaining show and getting ourselves
booked on appropriate bills. With our stage scheme, there's no room
for a "punk rock" mentality of smashing the guitars,
shoving the drums off the stage, and tossing cables out of the way of
the next band – but we still have to tear down our lights and
hardware in a short amount of time out of consideration for others.
Unlike any other band I've been in, TWW is drilling our set ups and
removals, timing ourselves and then repeating the process to measure
progress. This project, from the music and up, has required a certain
level of discipline that is very foreign to me. Aside from the live
show, I couldn't resist writing new material for the next TWW record.
Ron has already heard it and we are both very excited about the
direction it's headed. There may even be a music video shoot for one
of the songs from Valediction – but that remains to be seen.
IVM: Finally, is
there anything that you would like to add?
The new album,
Valediction, marks the beginning of an era for us – a time in which
we will work harder to expose more people to what we are doing. And
what we are "doing," I think, is a little lofty as concepts
go. The way I see it, there's no avoiding the clear lineage between
our music and the dark, alternative music of the 80s and 90s. I won't
deny that part of this project is rooted in nostalgia. But I believe
many people of my age – millennials – are sort of caught in a
nostalgic time warp, anyway. Post 9/11 reality has been fairly shitty
– even the movies haven't improved, for all their bloated budgets
and CGI. Why not look to the past? Something imperfect, sure, but in
many ways a vast improvement from the current reality – one that
doesn't feel all that oriented towards the future, anyway. The past
is "the devil you know." This isn't to say that I'm not
trying with all my might to produce a "modern sound" to
appeal to modern ears -- but I can't seem to help evoking an older,
sometimes dated vibe. And I think that comes through, despite my
conscious efforts, because subconsciously that older sound is what I
want to hear. I'm making the music I want to listen to. I think other
people my age and perhaps ten or fifteen years older know or
appreciate that tendency for things bygone. While their favorite
bands break up or become irrelevant – or their heroes die – they
will feel less inclined to rock the black leather, face paint, or
piercings that they used to. They – we – are getting old.
Ideally, our music creates a bridge: creating music for adults that
fills them with the feeling of an earlier time – and not in the
cynical, commercial, "ironic" way Franz Ferdinand or others
have. We love the youthful energy of mosh pits and blood and sweat –
in theory, anyway. What we actually want is an elegant evening out,
dressed well, drinking for enjoyment and not pain management, and
dancing only when we really feel like it. It's time for dark,
electronic music to grow up again and embrace adulthood without fear
of limiting its market demographic. The rock star is ostensibly dead,
and the folk singers, lounge lizards, and garage bands are back –
this time with better technology and slightly fewer substance abuse
problems.
Links:
www.thewalkingwoundedmusic.com
www.unsoundamerica.com
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