will pain remain the game: part II

an interview with nivek ogre

What can you say with respect to the claims that you didn't come out of your room, and that you didn't put as much time into it as cEvin and Dwayne, and also the idea that you may have brought Martin Atkins into it because of the relationship with Pigface, that Martin would play up to your desires, to retain you for Pigface?

My response to that is yes - I did spend probably about three weeks in my room, and then I'd come out for five hours at a time, three hours at a time, to work in the studio. One month out of six months I was doing cocaine. I got into this state where I was in my room for a while and I wasn't coming out. As far as work on the record, the only work that was done down in Malibu, per se, besides a few songs being written by Dwayne - Dwayne was always a very very very diligent worker and in fact, we had arguments about that.

Are you saying he was a workaholic?

Yeah. He was. I mean, once he was in the studio, he was there for a long time. cEvin had a writing block, and then he had his accident on the Doom Generation (movie cEvin did stand-in work for), so he had a few moments of... I don't see why he's pointing fingers 'cause he had similar kind of things going on in his head that were going on in my head... Mine were kind of, I guess, drug-induced to a certain degree and yes, I locked myself in my room... I was still writing in my room, if that's any evidence of work, I was still writing in my room. I just didn't want to be around people. And that's my right. But as far as work on the record goes, most of the vocals that are on the record now, because once it got back to Vancouver, it slowed down completely, and then when Rave came back we did one or two sessions of vocals, we worked on "Hardset Head", made some corrections in "Candle" and I think we worked on "Death". I think that's it. We were supposed to do a bunch of work we never did, due to the circumstances that took place after. But most of the work on the vocals was done in Malibu. So, to be honest with you, just to clarify everything, I've never done more work on a record than I've done on The Process. I don't think I've ever spent that much time tracking vocals. And with regards to the perceptions - that's cEvin's perception - how it's being used is wrong. His perception is just as valid as my perception.

And what about the assertion that you brought in Martin Atkins because he would take your side do to his needing your talents in Pigface?

No. Not at all. Martin's not like that, for one thing. Martin came in and I'm really glad Martin came in, because I got to meet Mark Walk. Had Martin not come, in the grand scheme of things, I would never have met Mark Walk. We did most of the work together on the vocals. But bringing Martin in was in no way - I guess it could be seen as a political move, but it was a move made out of insecurity more than anything. I'd reached an impasse with what I could do and how I was working. I was working with Ken Marshall, the engineer, and it was like, "Everything's great." You could fucking fart in the room and it'd be like, "Sounds great!" Me as a vocalist, having no one to bounce things off of, that you believe is being critical about what they're hearing, and that is terrifying. If you have someone going, "Yeah - that sounds great," and you're going, "Well no, it didn't," then you really start to question what's going on. And so when I worked with Rave, Rave was always very critical. And anybody I've ever worked with - it's like a two-way street - you feed off of what they're saying, you get advice, you adjust, and you work with that. To not work with people like that would just be totally limiting in what I want to do artistically or what I could do artistically. Because with each person you work with, you always tend to take a little bit of them with you. But the magic of music for me, on a one-on-one experience is doing vocals. I don't think cEvin really understands the true - just what it takes to actually sing and do a vocal track over music, to a degree. Unless you're totally attached to all the chord changes and you're right in there at a musical level, it's very difficult at times to put yourself over top of something that's not your own, in a lot of ways. And a voice isn't something that you can just turn on and turn off. It has to have momentum emotionally, in order for it to carry any weight. So it's a very fragile instrument.

How do you manage with all the cigarettes you smoke?

I'm lucky. I'm so lucky I haven't lost my voice. I've gone to see doctors and they're like, "It's fine." I should have fucking nodules on my vocal chords. They should be like loose rubber bands.

The Archangel of Lungs is following you around.

But to go back - with Martin, it wasn't premeditated to bring somebody who could fight with cEvin and Dwayne. He came in, and he saw what was going on, and was just mortified by a lot of the stuff that was going on. And it's stuff that we had been doing for years and years and years to each other. So I think any involvement he had with any sort of view on any sort of situation was entirely his own. It wasn't based on trying to gang up on somebody. That just sounds paranoid to me.

Tell me about your childhood in Calgary.

Isolated. I was the kind of kid that would like to make rooms under the stairs.

Rooms under the stairs?

I had a little room under the stairs.

I thought everyone in Calgary had horses.

We had horses. I rode but I was thrown off once. I could ride a bit, but I wasn't big on it.

How many horses did you have?

We had four - we had a mare, a buckskin, and my sister got a quarter-horse and then she was working on a farm for a while and she worked to have her quarter-horse bred with an appaloosa, so I got to see a little appaloosa colt be born.

When were you thrown off a horse?

It was one of the first times I got on. I was about 12. I never really got back on. But I was just in Texas and I definitely want to ride again - I think it's really cool.

So you think you can ride again?

Whenever.

And you have one sister?

Yeah. I've got a sister and a brother.

And they are older/younger?

They're both older.

So you're the youngest.

I'm the youngest. By quite a gap too. My brother's almost fifty and my sister's in her early forties, so we really have quite a space between all of us.

So you're more like "only" children.

We were like a bunch of only children. My sister and my brother were closer, but I was the last little sperm shot or something. So I built a room under the stairs. I was really into magic. I was into fake magic before I was into real magic. But I was practicing real magic before I was into fake magic.

I thought you said the fake one came first. Well, but I was probably unknowingly practicing real magic before the fake magic. I was also a real "watcher" - I really didn't participate too much in things. I'd watch things, a lot. When I was a kid I loved to watch things.

Like - what kinds of things?

Just anything. It'd be any situation - I'd love to watch it and try and predict where that situation was going. Like a film?

Like a film, or interraction between people. More interestingly were the interractions between people, because there you have - I mean, film is set in stone, but people are so random and don't really generate normal patterns all the time. I really enjoy watching people. And I was quite an introverted kid, in a lot of ways.

So you stayed primarily under the stairs doing magic?

Yeah. I liked reading books under the stairs and doing magic.

Did you ever read the book, "The Children Under The Stairs"?

No. Saw the film. Wasn't quite like that - it was carpeted.

So do you play any instruments?

I play acoustic guitar, I play a little electric guitar, and keyboards - of course, anybody can play keyboards.

Was that a cut?

No - I'm just saying that programming keyboards is a lot simpler than say, playing acoustic guitar. I was reading on some newsgroups where Kenny was going, "Yeah - guitars. They're just operated physically, and keyboards - you have to use your mind to program them."

I hope so.

I was like, "That's funny. So a person playing guitar is not using their mind at all."

Nah. It's mindless... Tell me about your pets.

I've got a wolf and an Australian shepherd.

What are their names?

The timber wolf's name is Sedu. She's a heavenly spirit - a gargoyle that guards doorways. When she was a pup, she'd sit by the door with her nose down and just smell and she could smell people fifty yards away and she'd bark before people were coming down the street. She's cool - she's really awesome. The other one's Hiro. We actually adopted him from Bill Morrison who does all the Skinny Puppy videos - who's going to be in WELT too, but he couldn't look after him, so we took him in, and he became our little dog. He was named after a character in the book "Snow Crash" - Hiro was a futuristic pizza deliverer. We all call him "Weirdo". You know - if you have a similar inflection to your voice, he responds to "Weirdo" the same as "Hiro". But he's a little angel. He's just a perfect familiar, in a way. And we have a possum too. His name is Merrick

Forth