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Throughout his nearly thirty year career, David Grubbs has collaborated with members of The Red Krayola, Sonic Youth, and Animal Collective, among others, and remains a major figure in the American avant-garde underground. His solo work features haunting, Jandekian sparsity paired with charmingly off-kilter folk, informed by his punk rock roots and scholarly interest in experimental composition.

David Grubbs – An Optimist Declines (Edit)

How much of a role does improvisation play in the creation of your music?

I’ve played in a number of improvised settings, but for me it’s not the most satisfactory approach.  I’m perpetually wanting to pause the proceedings and refine what I’ve just played, and work on shaping it into a written piece of music.  Not the best approach to free improv, you know?  That said, I have done a lot of playing song-based music in the company of improvisers like Noël Akchoté and Mats Gustafsson, and that can be a fantastic experience.

Does the amount of improvisatory freedom you allow yourself change based on the mood you are trying to convey?

Most definitely.  To speak very generally, I’d say the greater the quotient of improvisation, the more the mood becomes one of patiently searching, of working with a greater time scale, with the acceptance of dead ends and, above all, dead time.

You’ve mentioned the idea of forced cohesion between band members and in fitting text to music in past interviews. What does the inclusion of conflicting musical elements bring to a song?

It creates gaps between the elements.  That’s where much of the pleasure lies—in those yawning chasms between disparate elements.

Being a self-taught guitarist and traditionally educated pianist, how does your approach to composition differ from one instrument to the other?

When writing on the guitar, I’m led largely by gesture.  I try to analyze as little as possible.  When writing on the piano, I can’t help but be more cognizant of what I’m playing as musical material—and less as a series of gestures or movements.

During the Gastr del Sol days, you forged a partnership with Jim O’Rourke, who later worked extensively with Sonic Youth. Do you feel Jim O’Rourke brought some Gastr del Sol influence to the Youth in his collaborations with them?

Not especially.  The only thing that I can think of in response to this was that Gastr del Sol was the first time that Jim was onstage playing electric guitar in a rock club in front of a large audience of people who might not have the longest attention span.  But by the time he was playing in Sonic Youth, he was a veteran of playing in more-or-less rock bands.

I was introduced to your music through Crumbling Land, your split 12″ with Animal Collective’s Avey Tare. How did that come about?

The Animal Collective and I were on the British label FatCat at the same time, and I really enjoyed playing shows with them.  I remember hearing them rehearse in the living room of one of the FatCat folks and thought that it was dazzling—just Dave and Noah and two beat-up acoustic guitars.

Are there any authors you can identify as having an influence on the style and themes of your lyrics?

Not to be coy, but not really.  In Gastr del Sol, I had the idea that the lyrics should work just as well on the page as when sung, but I would say that that is less of an ideal now. My goal at present is much more about how words are put across in a performance.  (Which I guess makes me just like everyone else, ha!)

Though your music has elements of noise, it feels more emotional and human than that of noise artists such as Merzbow or Wolf Eyes. How do you incorporate the coarseness of noise into your music while maintaining a sense of poignancy?

Portion control?

Having moved to Chicago right after the hardcore punk scene had died down, what sort of music did you experience there?

Prior to moving to Chicago, I had known the folks from Big Black and Urge Overkill, and that definitely played a role in my deciding to go there for school.  I knew that I’d be getting in a lot of extracurricular activity.  By the time I moved there, the stuff that excited me the most was the improv and new-music scene around Jim O’Rourke, Ken Vandermark, John Corbett, etc., etc., but also the record-store culture through friends like Bundy K. Brown who were complete musical omnivores.  It was a crash course in all directions at once.

In 1998, you described your music as post-punk. Do you still agree with that label? How has your opinion of your music changed in the last 12 years?

Oh, I use the term somewhat ironically, because people rarely hear “punk” in what I now do.  But punk was the thing that made me start writing music and putting out records, in the same way that psychedelia was the original context for a group like the Red Krayola. And even if you no longer sound anything like that original context, it still was the motivating force that started for you.  The trajectory.

On An Optimist Notes the Dusk, you have a song called “Eyeglasses of Kentucky.” Living in Brooklyn now, do your memories of Kentucky still influence your work?

More so than ever.

When you compose music for art installations, such as your most recent soundtrack for Angela Bulloch’s Hybrid Song Box.4, how does your approach differ from making music that is not tied to visuals? How much input and influence does the visual artist have on your soundtracks?

The visual considerations are paramount—although, as I mentioned above, I still pledge allegiance to the gap or the mismatch between collaborative components.

Do you have any projects in the works?

I’m finishing a book for Duke University Press entitled Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, The Sixties, and Sound Recording, and writing music for a new solid-light installation by artist Anthony McCall.

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To find out and hear more from David Grubbs, check out his MySpace page.