Pittersplatter

Pittersplatter is a project that has been around for about a decade now, and has found a respectable home with Pittersplatter. With that being said, and a re-release of Frozen on its way, I had a chat with Worm Splatter about his previous albums, his upcoming one, and personal curiosities.

The first thing that I want to ask before anything is for you to tell us about yourself. What's it like being a Warlock and the master of electronic evil?

Worm - "It's just me, nothing too exciting about it really. There is truth behind the promotional terminology I use. I really do practice magick, and of course I really do compose electronic music, so I found a way to really make those two facets of myself as interesting and entertaining as possible. I guess when it comes right down to it Pittersplatter is simply myself and my life transformed into entertaining art. Some may say the term ?warlock? is a silly one for anyone to use in this day and age, but its an entertaining term for sure, and so I use it. My visage on stage is simply an exaggerated version of who I am inside. My music is an entertaining version of the noise in my head, and so on and so forth. When it comes right down to it I am a huge nerd obsessed with Tolkien and the Occult, with constant noise in my head. Pittersplatter is my attempt at creating art and making all these facets of myself entertaining as well as my way of exorcising my personal demons."

When did you begin your magical journey into sorcery...Otherwise known as creating music?

Worm - "Many many years ago. I started out in a sort of goth rock/metal band and then after that fell apart I spent some time lurking around in Nevada before finally returning home and exploring electronic music. I figured out that I loved the freedom of electronic music and so I brought many of the theatrics from the goth metal band over into my electronic music project."

As far as Pittersplatter goes, when did you first create the moniker?

Worm - "I came up with the name back in 2002 when I had really just begun seriously working on my first electronic release. I dabbled with a few pretty typical sounding project titles before deciding that I wanted the project name to come from pure creativity just like the music and imagery. I was also studying a lot of history back then and had been reading about how some ancient peoples would name their weapons to imbue them with power from one source or another, gods and ancestors and the like, and I figured I would just give the project a name, not so much a title but a name. Names have more power so the name Pittersplatter came to me."

I do recall there used to be a very harsh direction (musically) to Pittersplatter. But, then, from what I know, your bandmate left and you took the reins. Was not only the music changed, but also the meanings and lyrical content behind the songs?

Worm - "Pittersplatter has always just been myself and myself alone. I have always written and recorded everything by myself. I have had various live members over the years. I record an album, and then when it comes time to play live I ask the handful of musically capable friends if they want to do live support. Whoever wants to accompany me on stage gets a copy of the album, we go into rehearsals, and then we go play live. I really like doing things this way because it takes the pressure off everyone but me, which is how I like things I suppose. Sometimes you will see a 3 man live show for one album, and then the next album we may have a 4 man show or even just a 2 man show, it all just depends on who wants to come along for the ride. As far as the sound goes, Pittersplatter's first few albums were very noise oriented and very political in many aspects and as the years passed I grew and changed and so did the music. I became more comfortable with putting my personal life out on front street and Pittersplatter became more comfortable in its own sound. After I put out my 3rd album the noise stuff just didn't inspire me anymore and I knew at that point Pittersplatter would either change or die. The idea then dawned on me to just simply focus on writing what I want, when I want, and to incorporated all my passions in life and use those obsessions as a vehicle to really get a lot of bad shit off my chest, sort of like therapy. After I figured that out I wrote The Dawn of Carnage which was our best received album at the time, then I followed up with Frozen which was even better received so I guess I made the right call."

I am honestly interested in knowing where your musical influences come from. Do you have any specific artists that really helped you understand what you wanted to create?

Worm - "I am not sure any artist out there helped me understand what I wanted to create, but many artists certainly opened my mind to the possibilities of electronic music. I never put music stock in electronic music back in my metal days, and then when the metal band fell apart and I got more curious about electronic music artists like Gary Numan, and Skinny Puppy showed me just how many possibilities electronic music holds. I could rattle off many many names of artists both old and new that continue to re-define the possibilities of electronic music for me even today."

I understand that you are set out in Oklahoma. Is there a challenge in trying to find a fanbase out there?

Worm - "There certainly has been in previous years but these days people here are becoming very open minded when it comes to music. When we first started to gig here over a decade ago there was a lot of heckling and believe it or not we took a LOT of shit from a lot of the local rock and metal bands around here. As we gained a respectable following around here the attitudes have changed dramatically and now I can say we are respected locally as pioneers. We will never be the state's poster child band, nor do we want to be, but after a decade of hard work we have a solid following and I am very grateful for that. It seems like every gig we play we make new fans who actually stick around and that is a rare thing anymore. We have reached across genres locally and have built ourselves a dedicated and very diverse crowd here."

I see that on FaceBook you've had a few problems with trying to find gigs (For example, I saw that someone wanted you to pay them to be featured). Is there anything you want to say here about it?

Worm - "As most musicians can tell you the live music industry in this country has slowly but surely declined into pure shit over the last decade or so. Gigging has always been a struggle, especially for a dark electronic project in the south. These days I get many requests to play, but after gigging for as long as I have been I have become really picky about where and when Pittersplatter appears. Surprisingly that has actually helped us when it comes to gigs. When someone can talk us into playing a gig the shows usually go really really well for us, which wasn't exactly the case back when we were playing every gig we could get our name on. Less has become more when it comes to gigging, but we still have crooked promoters emailing us asking them to pay X amount of dollars to play their events, which always turn out to be shit in the end. When I first started gigging in bands years and years ago, bands here were hired to provide music for the clubs and what not. Now the clubs want bands to pay them to play, and that to me is total bullshit. Its like a department store paying you to take their clothes home. Pittersplatter does many many shows for free, but I will not pay anyone to provide my music for them, it just makes no sense to me."

Now, I know that you recently announced that you are rereleasing Frozen. Is there a certain reason why you decided to do so?

Worm - "Honestly it wasn't really my idea as much as it was Juggernaut Music Group's idea. Nick Quarm came to me with the idea of doing a re-mastered re-release of Frozen and he had very specific attack plans for it and I thought it was a great idea. There was also a slight label change in which one label who used to work with us decided to sign Pittersplatter over to Juggernaut Music Group exclusively, so it only made sense to make Frozen the first exclusive release. In my opinion Nick Quarm is a promotional and marketing genius, besides that he is honest and up front with his roster so when he comes to me with an idea I always take what he says very seriously. I am pretty certain that Frozen will be the last re-release we do as the next album will be properly released through Juggernaut Music Group from day 1."

One thing that I noticed about Pittersplatter is that you don't really do remixes, which is a dominant trait of the electronic music arena. What are your thoughts on remixes?

Worm - "I think remixes are a great way to collaborate with other artists and I love hearing the different directions that someone else can take your song with a good remix. The reason why I don't do remixes has to do with the way I write and record my music. In an age where the majority of electronic musicians are almost 100% computer based I am still doing things like its 1995. I learned to program on an old boss drum machine and for the most part I had to teach myself how to create and record electronic music. It wasn't until I fell in with an industrial metal band here that I was taught the computer side of electronic music. By the time I started Pittersplatter it was a pretty even blend of hardware and computer based software, but over the years its become more and more hardware based and its just because I am more comfortable behind a synthesizer with a step sequencer and real knobs and wires than I am diving into computer programs. I would say right now Pittersplatter is 90% hardware based and 10% computer based. I like to use computer sequencing for a good portion of our drum parts and beeps and blips here and there, but I really love to play synthesizers and sort of do things on the fly. Because of this though Pittersplatter isn't really remix friendly when it comes to me remixing other artist's material. Most electronic artists do things completely differently than I do from the ground up."

A song that has always stuck out to me in both lyrical content and video imagery would be "Lamb of God". It seems to call out all these big named preachers and religious extremists; is this the point behind the song?

Worm - "As I stated earlier I am a practitioner of magick, thus I am a pretty spiritual person. I have no problem at all with the spirituality of others, but when people choose to use any sort of spirituality as an excuse to hate everyone who is different than they are then I start to have a real problem. In this country of course Christianity is the number 1 offender when it comes to close mindedness and misdirected hatred. Christianity is by no means the only religious movement on the planet who is guilty of this shit, but here Christianity is dominant. Most people around here would claim to be Christian and a fraction of those people have actually read the Bible, much less studied the culture who wrote the book. Lamb of God is directed at all these people who sit there and tell everyone who thinks differently than they do that they are bound for Hell. A lot of people around here who call themselves Christians seem to think that they are entitled to be the mouth pieces, law makers, and enforces for their god. They think they have been divinely privileged enough to do all they can to defame all other religions in existence, and judge all who do not frequent their specific church. It goes even further than that, many Christians around here hate other Christians who aren't a part of the same denomination that they are affiliated with. It makes no sense, it's mass confusion and misguided hate in which any and all spirituality that may have been there to start with has been replaced with the ego. Of course not all Christians out there are like this, not all religious folks on this planet no matter what religion they claim are hate mongering assholes, but Lamb of God is about those who are."

Speaking of themes within your music, do your albums ever have a specific theme? Or do they jump all over the place tackling different issues?

Worm - "The albums became more pointed and concise starting with The Dawn of Carnage. In many ways I feel like The Dawn of Carnage is the first definitive Pittersplatter release because I feel it marks the point where Pittersplatter became certain of what it wanted to say and confident with how it wants to sound. The Dawn of Carnage and Frozen are 2 parts of a 3 part story. The story deals with the death of humanity, but I use these stories to express the real shit I go through in life, almost like parables."

Is there any one issue that you focus on more than others?

Worm - "Life in general honestly. Things I have been through or am going through, things others can certainly relate with. But again I express these issues now by way of story and parable."

As far as your personal image goes, it seems as if you spend a hell of a lot of time on it. Do you take pride in your outfit and your image?

Worm - "I have always been obsessed with monsters, goblins, orcs, wizards, things of that nature. My image embodies all of those things as well as my pretty constant disdain with the monster called man."

Now, as far as exciting news goes, I heard that your next album shall be titled 'Wastelands". Care to spill the beans on the new album, if any can be spilled?

Worm - "The last couple of years have been extremely hard. I have lost friends and family unexpectedly and that compounded with some health problems I was going through really put my head in a really bad place. I have become unhealthily fixated on death, and thus Wastelands is sort of my way of working through that. That?s all I can really say about it right now."

And that just about does it. Do you have any final words for your slaves, err, fans?

Worm - "All I really have to add is a huge THANK YOU to all who support Pittersplatter. I am extremely grateful that there are people out there who give a shit enough to listen."