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Lucky
Dragons -
by
C. Jones
are
there any other kinds?
Lucky Dragons is Luke Fischbeck's
"one man and his laptop band", and if you are already
thinking "bo-ring" I'll stop you right there! We had
him play The Deli's Hodge Podge party at Asterisk in March and
the guy blew everybody away with a performance that will be remembered
by many (thanks Todd P for introducing the man to us!).
Your performance at the Asterisk party started
with a sort of musical installation that allowed the audience
to create some kind of abstract sounds by interacting with each
other… can you explain?
A lot of shows I've been playing recently involve this-a way
to try and make the band bigger (or not exist at all?) by giving
people in the audience total control for a while. The idea is
that you can form feedback loops by touching exposed wires, and
then transfer the sound from those loops by touching anyone around
you. When it really works, total strangers can get so into playing
these little melodies on eachother's skin, you know? And then
it becomes also very easy for someone involved to invite people
into it, and it sort of grows out into the audience in a very
organic way. When it doesn't work, there's just this mob of people
down in front groping around making a big mess of sounds, and
it doesn't make any sense to people who are standing around and
not directly participating! I think its nice, though, to have
this other role people can assume that's not really a performer
on stage, and not really an audience either.
Do you make your own electronic "instruments"
yourself by messing around with the circuits? If yes, how did
you learn?
I do make my own instruments-usually they use more software
than circuitry to actually make what sounds you hear… Computers
can be very good at looking at or listening to any mess, picking
out patterns that emerge, and then translating those patterns
into whatever you like. So there is a lot of trial and error,
thinking up ways of organizing electricity that would lead to
interesting messes and then using software to listen in on what
happens. I'm definitely still learning, in that I don't know enough
about electronics that I could be less experimental! Treating
signal flow like slightly unpredictable magic, and writing simple
software to do most of the learning for you in a likewise unpredictable
way, that turns up enough new ways of making sound out of electricity
that I am happy to be dumb.
Then the core of the show was basically just you dancing like
a maniac and rolling on the floor to the sound of… your videogames
or something? I was expecting you to use traditional sequencing
software but on the screen of the laptop I could only see cartoonish
characters…
I don't know if I would know what to do with traditional sequencing
software-make a beat and change it over time, I guess? If the
point of that were to make dancing happen, why not skip to the
end and just dance? I'm glad you could see the screen; I try and
keep it out in the open so people know there is nothing boring
being hidden from them. Once boring things are right out in front
of you they become invisible! As for the sounds, and the characters,
and the rolling on the floor, that's the substance of the show!
Everything obvious, I hope, and not invisible either!
Installation and Video Art bring us on conceptual
and visual art territory: do you think what you are doing is actually
crossing different art fields?
I'm flattered you would ask such a serious question! I'm just
a trickster. Do you know what I mean? I am in awe of what people
seriously working in these fields are up to, and I show it by
aping and appropriating, beguiling and becoming . That's not crossing
fields, though, that's just the trickster field.
Quote from the website: "[This is] The
cut and paste digital derivative of musique concrete, melodic
memory, splintery soft glitches, anxious dada, dirty indie, beautytronics".
How would you describe each one of these influences to somebody
who doesn't know anything about it?
I would smile and make eye contact because they sound a bit
pretentious, really, hard to swallow. But anyway: "cut and
paste" means take what you like leave the rest, "digital"
because anything can be erased to true zero, "derivative"
because it has no new parts or ideas. "Musique concrete"
was a style of music made in France fifty years ago that involved
cutting up and rearranging tapes of everyday sounds. "Melodic
memory" is how songs get stuck in your head. "Splintery
soft glitches" is a flowery way of referring to things breaking
or falling apart in a pleasing order. "Anxious" is a
way of avoiding smugness; "dada" was an early 20th century
international art movement that involved naming things, being
ridiculous, saying ridiculous things, etc. "Dirty indie"
is any culture not bought and sold on an anonymous level; "beautytronics"
is the term a Spanish journalist came up with to describe the
music I make.
Did you go to art school?
Ha ha! Not really! Art school is something very specific that
I missed out on. I was an art student, and then an art teacher,
but it's always been part of a structure that made just being
a painter or just being a photographer or whatever kind of undesirable
and kind of impossible. Not having that "professional school"
experience has left me kind of unprofessional, but I think I get
enough art school secondhand from friends!
Does Lucky Dragons belong to the budding Brooklyn
DIY music scene? Do you feel like this project is part of something
bigger, like a scene? And if you do, what other NYC artists are
currently following an artistic path similar to yours? (We want
them to play our shows!!!)
Brooklyn has been turning into such a good place to make things
on a familiar scale… I think half because there is that value
placed on "doing it yourself" and half because firm
boundaries between art music crafts fashion writing living do
not really exist, or at least try not to! It follows from this
that the scene organizes itself less because one band sounds like
another (like a tree, from roots to branches), and more because
of people settling naturally into niches until a total social
shape emerges and evolves… and that shape could look like
a tree but it probably doesn't! So yes, I am either rolling about
looking for a niche or I've already found one and the whole scene
is rolling together. I can't tell, all I feel is the rolling.
As far as similar path people, do you know this lady Natalie rose
Lebrecht? She plays as Greenpot Bluepot, a pretty good example
of a band that can just be whatever it wants to be when it is
out and about…. That's what I mean I guess!
What is good and what is bad about being a one
man band?
I like to think this could be done with more people…
but I think having it just be me has let it grow slowly and steadily
and not ever have to seriously justify its existence, you know?
Why should a one-man band ever break up?
In the website I read that there are some contributing
members to the project all over the USA. What is their role?
Whatever they want to do! I keep waiting for someone else
to make a lucky dragons record, or play a show as lucky dragons.
So far no one has been so accepting and bold, and they only mail
sounds and drawings or videos or whatever to me and I edit them
together into what is then called lucky dragons.
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"I don't know if
I would know what to do with traditional sequencing software-make
a beat and change it over time, I guess? If the point of that
were to make dancing happen, why not skip to the end and just
dance? I'm glad you could see the screen [during the performance];
I try and keep it out in the open so people know there is nothing
boring being hidden from them"
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| what
it is |
Pretty and intense electronic improvisation - and a wild
one-man-band live show.
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