1995 October Eclectic Musician Interview

Volume 1

This is the exclusive interview with Mune Mud front-man Jason Watson as it appeared in the October 1995 issue of Eclectic Musician. It is the first interview ever done with Jason.

Eclectic Musician: First question, why have we not seen anything new from you in over a year? Jason Watson: As I was mixing down the last album [NueroMud’s …Libra 971] I was in the process of moving to a new house. That was in the fall of 1994. The studio I had been using [Circle IX Studio] stayed at the old house and nothing was recorded for months. Then the current studio [Metal XOR] was built at the new house in January of this year and the recording resumed. It was a slow process at first, but has really picked up in the last few months. EM: Which group will the new album feature? Mune Mud, NueroMorgue, NueroMud, or something new? JW: I am actually working on two albums simultaneously, the same way I did when I recorded Mune Mud’s Pryme Material and NueroMorgue’s debut Devis Tortura. The slower material will probably become a NueroMud album. That will be the album completed first. The faster, heavier material will be released as a new NueroMorgue album. EM: What about a new Mune Mud album? We haven’t had one of those since the 1993 release of Pryme Material. JW: I am reserving Mune Mud for really peaceful, slow music. I am considering a collection of piano pieces as the next Mune Mud album. That’s on my to-do list. EM: How far along is the new NueroMud album? JW: I have enough material recorded to release it today. But I want to be able to select what songs I put on the album rather than use everything I have. So I will spend another month and a half recording even more new songs. Then in December I’ll begin the mix-down, copying, and packaging processes. So hopefully by the end of the year the new album will be out. EM: Do you have any album titles selected? JW: I’ve played around with several different ideas. I thought about calling it Scented Journey. I have no idea. I’ll have to hear all the material put together to see what album title fits the entire work. It’ll probably be an astronomical or astrological name. EM: What overall mood will the album set? JW: There are two different types of music that appear on the album. Some of the songs were recorded just after …Libra 971, so it is reminiscent of that album. They deal with darker subjects such as loneliness, screwing things up, dying, etc. The other songs were recorded more recently and have a lot more personal meaning than most of the songs I have recorded so far. They deal with relationships, personal conflicts, and more of the serious things. One may not pick up on all the meaning, but they are there. Then of course there are a few songs that were written in fun. EM: And will the lyrics be provided?

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Not this time. I may make some of them available later but initially I want people to hear the songs and try to figure out what they mean by themselves. Some songs may mean totally different things to different people. Did you incorporate any new recording techniques or sounds on this album? There are a lot of songs without drums. I used a lot more synth sounds, keyboards. And using the sequencer, I am able to record all of the keyboard parts onto one track at one time, eliminating the need to bounce tracks and degrade the sound quality by a couple of generations. All of this helps in creating cleaner music, but it still isn’t the same as digital recording! Have you done any digital recording? Not yet. But rather than mixing down to an analog tape for the two-track master, I may mix down to DAT (Digital Audio Tape), and from that make the copies. Doing it that way, the final distribution copies are still only at third or fourth generation, whereas using an analog two-track master as I always have, it could be at fourth or fifth generation by the final tape. In addition to cleaner copies, the DAT can be sent in and transferred to CD. So within the first part of next year, I plan on having a couple of albums transferred to CD. Are there any guest musicians on the album? Not yet. It’s all me again. But I did get some lyrics from a friend’s poetry. In addition to letting me use her poems, Nicole Rohde will provide vocals on some upcoming tracks I am recording. She may even provide a lead vocal for “A Dreamworld” [a song that appeared on …Libra971]. What has served as inspiration on the new album? And who are some of your musical influences? A lot of personal experience. That is ninety percent of the inspiration. If you could read the lyrics of the songs in the order in which they were recorded, it would be like a journal of what has happened to me in the last several months. As for musical influence, the main band that influences my slower music is REM. I love the writing style of vocalist Michael Stipe and have tried several times to reproduce the mystery in his lyrics and the way they are sung. And the arpeggiated style of guitarist Peter Buck has had a major influence in all of my guitar and keyboard arpeggiations. You can listen to any of my songs with a piano in them and hear the left hand doing the arpeggiation-thing! How many tracks will there be? Probably somewhere between fifteen and twenty. But again, it’s hard to tell right now. I may come up with some really good longer songs between now and then, which will decrease the number of songs. I try to put fifty to fifty-five minutes of music on a tape. Are all the songs new or are there remakes or remixes on the album? Well, there is actually something I’ve never done that’s going to be on the album. I did a cover of Anything Box’s song “Carmen”. It’s the first cover I’ve recorded. In addition to that, there may be a couple remakes. I have a “live” semi-acoustic version of “A Dreamworld” that may end up on the album. Right now it’s an instrumental, I can’t get the vocals right. What is your favorite song on the album?

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It’s hard to say. I like so many of them for so many different reasons. But ones that stick out in my mind are “Legacy of the Harvester” and “Eloqui de Sleep”. What are some of the other song titles? There is “Song of Songs”, “Ocean Body”, “Blind”, “Blue Rust”, “The Perfect Place”, “Magic:”, “Blue Wish”, and a lot more that I can’t think of right off hand. Do you have any ideas for the album cover? No. I haven’t even thought about it. That is usually the last thing I do. My priority is getting the material mixed down and then copied. Once the tapes are done, I’ll work out some kind of cover, probably using the computer instead of being hand-drawn. Will this be the first album released under the new Metal XOR label? Yes. And many more are planned to follow. Metal XOR has a catalog of all of my previous albums under various labels, including full-length LP’s and the shorter EP’s. All available lyrics are in the catalog also. A current list of all my songs is being put together now. It looks like well over two hundred songs have been recorded in the last five years. Well, I think we have the scoop on the new NueroMud album now. Is there anything we should know about the upcoming NueroMorgue album? Just that it is the fastest one yet. I have one song that has a part recorded at 180 bmp (beats per minute). I broke two guitar strings trying to keep up with it. Any working album titles for that one yet? I thought about Industrial Evolution. Or Revolution 8:U, a title taken from a song that will be on the album. Nothing definite yet. How will it compare to the 1993 debut NueroMorgue release Devis Tortura? Totally different. The first NueroMorgue album was just heavy Mune Mud music. The new album is closer to NueroMorgue music: dark, fast, heavy, noisy, weird. Each album gets a little closer to the kind of music I’m looking for. It may be another two or three albums, but eventually, we’ll reach pure NueroMorgue. And what kind of music is “pure NueroMorgue”? A choice blend of industrial, thrash, metal, techno, and dance. With a little bit of my own style, whatever that is, thrown in. And NueroMorgue musical influences are? Of course Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Faith No More, RevCo, Praxis, etc. Probably too many to name. What other projects do you have planned once these two albums are done? I have many projects I’d like to get started or complete. I want to video tape a live, semi-acoustic performance of me performing some of the earlier Mune Mud songs. Try to revive them. I also want to try to do some videos. I have plans for an autobiography written in third-person perspective about my music career, from the early days of single track keyboard songs from 1986 to the present day projects such as NueroMud and NueroMorgue. I have also acquired a 35mm camera setup that I hope to use to take black and white photos that I will use to setup a picture album to accompany each new music album. I am also currently involved with a music project called O.R.C., which is myself and my cousin Jimmy Doolittle. That album is about one-third complete. I recorded a live jam

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session with my cousin Harry Doolittle as the new Metal XOR studio was being built. I want to do some overdubs and clean up those songs and release an album from that session. Then there’s the Mune Mud piano collection previously mentioned. Too much. When will you find time to do all of this? That’s just it. The list is so long because I keep adding to it without ever taking away from it. In reality, I’ll probably end up just recording more songs now and then and when I have enough of one style of music, I’ll release another album. Thanks for allowing this interview. We realize you normally don’t do interviews. Any closing comments? Yes… no more interviews!

Just moments after the interview was completed, a mob of screaming young people broke down the door and flooded the room. The grabbed Jason and tried to steal him. They allegedly had a getaway car waiting in the alley behind the building. But Jason calmly lifted his arms and the mass got quiet. Jason spoke, “If it looks like strudel, treat it like strudel!” Everyone went to Taco Bell and bought Jason supper. Good night.