The amount of people that I’ve met from the industrial scene in person versus the amount of people I’ve met online is contrasted by a high margin. While I’ve easily “met” upwards of a hundred people online, I may have physically introduced myself to about five in person…Or maybe less than that. In any event one of the few people I had a chance to have a chat with in person is TEXTBEAK who I knew as a DJ, but now know as a solo producer and a soundtrack artist thanks to this edition of INTRODUCING. A pleasant gentlemen to meet in a small Jersey club and someone who’s fun to read about. Read all about him below.
Give us a brief about your band. Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Mike Textbeak, and I make music as Textbeak. I have released music as Textbeak for about 20 years now. Prior to releasing as Textbeak, I had a project called Bath that was on the band Lestat’s Jevan Records label back in the ’90s. I am actually currently working on a new Bath album and reissuing the Bath back catalogue.
When did you first launch the project and how has it come along since?
I had been working on musick as Textbeak since the early 2000’s but didn’t actually release any under that name until around 2006 when Claus Muzak and I started a small netlabel called Philtre Com. The name came from a piece of multimedia art I made back in the early ’90s that had the word Textbeak written on it. I released a bunch of LPs and EPs on various netlabels and then a couple of my more dancefloor-oriented tracks on vinyl. In 2016, I toured Japan and opened for Merzbow in Osaka, and then released an album called Sick for Songs a Season Eats on Cleopatra Records. That album was produced by John Fryer of This Mortal Coil and featured collabs with Mark Stewart (of The Pop Group), Peter Hope, and Bestial Mouths, among others. After that, I did an East Coast and Midwest live tour. I was preparing for a European tour when the pandemic hit, so I canceled that, along with all the West Coast US dates I had upcoming.
I work in healthcare and was working at two hospitals in Ohio during the pandemic, and that was exhausting and heartwrenching to witness firsthand. Towards the end of the pandemic, I started dating one of my best friends, Noir, and we were married, and eventually I moved to their hometown, Detroit. Kirill from Detroit Industrial hit me up about doing a new album for his label and connected me with Chris Samuels of Ritual Howls to mix the album, and that’s how my new album, ASEMIC MUSICK, came to fruition. I have to give a big shoutout to Joshua Kovarik, aka Obedience Boy, for guitar, synths, and vocal tracking for the album. Also, the guest vocalists, Brood Faye, Antoni Maiovvi (aka Ye Gods), Broken Nails, Bree Rose (from the band Other in Seattle), and Gwendolyn Dot. All their contributions made the album what it is.
What bands and artists influenced you the most and why?
Coil for the sheer emotional truth and weight of their musick. Horse Rotorvator specifically. Skinny Puppy and side projects. For total mental overload. Specifically, everything up to Last Rights. Tear Garden’s Last Man to Fly, plus I’m a huge Pink Dots fan. Cabaret Voltaire, specifically the 70s works (Mix Up is my fave). That period sounds like industrial dub, multi-dimensional urban psychological warfare. Sounds super culturally resonant even now (in a very schizo way lol). Also, Richard H. Kirk’s solo works, specifically Electronic Eye’s Neurometrik album. It’s a total mind-blower. He Said’s Hail album. EG Lewis from Wire doing indescribable things with samples, drum machines, synths, guitars, and vox. I always thought it felt like Arcadia and Skinny Puppy Bites had a baby. Cindytalk, bc albums like Camouflage Heart are darker, scarier, and heavier (especially emotionally) than any metal I’ve ever heard. Cindytalk hones in on the terror of actual existence. This I find much more terrifying than fantasy concepts in most metal.
Cocteau Twins’ Garlands feels like being on a swing set in the void. Click Click. Beautiful neurotic views of sad life. It’s so unsettling and so comforting at the same time (a really hard thing to pull off), and a lot of its subject matter is everyday occurrences and things. Lots more. This Mortal Coil, Severed Heads, Clock DVA, Neubauten, In The Nursery, Siouxsie’s Kaleidoscope, The Cure’s Pornography and Seventeen Seconds etc.
If you could pick a single song from your discography to explain your music, which song would you pick and why?
“I thought I heard You Screaming” from the split EP I did on Vaatican Records. It’s very real, very emotional, and very unsettling in my opinion. It’s about the death of someone very close to me, and trying to just sleep after finding out. Being in a state between awake and unconscious, being conscious in a nightmare that you can’t escape. It’s created around a loop pattern with the elements all shifting in space and timing against each other, creating an uneasiness of nothing to anchor to, even though the elements are themselves mostly constant.
What is your most recent release and what is it about?
ASEMIC MUSICK is a play on the concept of asemic writing or writing without meaning. It’s not a literal connection, but I do use a lot of randomizing and dada ideas like cutups and strange juxtapositions to create something new from the ashes of standard logic forms. All of my musick is just my personal filter of my world view and my existence, a sort of electro vibrofolk. It definitely is a response to living in the current state of chaos in the US and the world, and in opposition to the current oppressive fascist monetary regimes in play.
Take us through your creative process. How do you compose a song from start to finish? Where do the ideas come from?
I have several ways I start songs. I normally hum or beatbox concepts into my phone as scratch pad ideas during the day until I can get into the studio to start flushing them out. I make charts of ideas, similar to Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies card concept, to create jarring or odd changes and movements within tracks. I normally work on something until I kind of feel the universe take over and tell me how it’s going to go. There’s normally a point when I feel that the song has hit that stage where it’s totally out of my hands and the universe is expressing itself. The concepts come from life and dreams. I am constantly jotting down ideas and things that come to me (phrases, sentences, lyrical structures, samples), plus I record my dreams. All of this goes into my idea “mulch.”
What’s your current favorite song, band, or album within your scene? And vice versa, what do you enjoy the most that’s completely opposite of what you make?
This is a tough call because of the chaotic nature of Textbeak as a project. I feel that at any time, it could do almost anything stylistically. I listen to musick all over the board and I’m not big on genre specifics. I just know what I like, and I like to be shocked by the art. “Beauty will be convulsive or not at all.” I am really enjoying the newest releases by Chino Amobi and December on Jordan-based label Drowned by Locals and the new album by Gatekeeper, Wrong Planet. Also. I am digging the songs I’ve heard from The Treasury’s new release coming out on DKA, the latest Thighpaulsandra album, the new Blawan album, the new Blush Response album, and the new Rhys Fulber album. Also, my friend Larry just messaged me about the new Shlohmo album, which I am enjoying. I really liked their album Dark Red, but I wasn’t too into the one after that. This new album is really good.
What is on the horizon for your project? Upcoming gigs, tours, merch, videos, etc. Name it, link it, show it off.
We recently moved to Philadelphia, so we’ve been getting settled. I haven’t planned a tour yet, but I have started playing some DJ events in the region. I am currently in writing mode for several things. One is a sort of bastardized DJ mixtape for Clan Destine Records in Glasgow. It’s a mix of bootleg chops of tracks and originals as my side project, Bloodbeak. The new Bath album is in the works, tentatively titled BOOK II.
I have been doing some soundtrack works also with Joshua Kovarik. One was for an animated short called Poor, Poor Eldon directed by Lorin Morgan-Richards that screened at various film festivals, including the Beverly Hills Film Festival at the legendary TCL Chinese Theatre. Also, we did the soundtrack for an upcoming short film called Marble, and we’re currently working on the soundtrack for a new animated short by Lorin Morgan-Richards entitled The Decline and Fall of Holly Dew and Walter Melon.
