G.P.: Is there an Abunai! aesthetic ideal?

J.T.: "If it makes pot-smoking hippie girls do the Grateful Dead Dance, we're all for it!" I think reviews and articles end up painting us into certain 'schools' more than we ourselves do, but I also think that a certain cluelessness on any band's part vis-a-vis "how they do what they do" is a good thing. If there are any kinds of guiding principles operating, I think we all may be clueless. We know what we like, and each respects the others' influences, and since arrangements are often communal, it's a case of "group mind" at work.

K.T.: A half-joking motto we've bounced around is that we're "the antidote to Jam-Band Syndrome". Really, though, there hasn't been any ideal spoken of extensively...we knew from our first meetings that we were interested in combining elements of space-rock, folk-rock, drone, psychedelic, fuzz-rock, funk, etc. in a visceral, non-weedy kind of way.

G.P.: How important are dreams or dreaming to what Abunai! is and does?

J.T.: All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Ironically, I caught most of that movie Dreamscape today. Max Von Sydow, wasted against Eddie Albert, Dennis Quaid, George Wendt, and a concept that I can't believe IÕm admitting was done better by J. Lo in The Cell. It also had the annoying whiny dude from The Warriors. That's not a dream, that's a nightmare. I think dream imagery is great but too much of it makes you sound like Robyn Hitchcock. I'm glad we've tried for dreamlike atmospheres, since dreaming's about the closest you can get to a psychedelic experience without taking anything. Everyone dreams, everyone deals with the weird images and strange sudden twists and shifts, so it's good territory to explore.

D.P.: More difficult than you might think to answer. Dreams are pretty important to me personally, though I can't say they're directly influential on my music-making. Let's just say that dreaming is probably the single weirdest thing I do every day. The Olivia Tremor Control seemed to have a knack for directly transcribing dreams as song lyrics, but I've never done that.

B.E.Q.: I think they're fairly important, in that each of us seems to be very influenced by our own dream experiences, but we haven't really consciously attempted to bring any specific dreams into the group consciousness.

K.T.: Both dreaming and evocative psych music succeed at peeling away reality's external layer, suspending the illusion and allowing glimpses of subconscious exploration. Dreaming may not relate to our music as much as say, conscious zone-outs & mild trance states.

G.P.: Is Abunai! psychedelic?

J.T.: As much as we are folk, funk, punk, space-rock, motorik, free jazz, dub reggae, pop ...

D.P.: Again, difficult. We've joked before that if you described our influences, especially currently, you might imagine a very different band than us. I mean, if I hear about a band that combines "psychedelic, folk, funk and reggae", I imagine some awful "jam/worldbeat band" with a guy playing conga drums wearing a vest. And yet, we incorporate those influences and don't (I think) sound anything like a jam band. We've increasingly come to think of ourselves as almost the anti-jam band.

B.E.Q.: I hope so...

K.T.: In the raw "yes or no" scenario, I'd say "yes". In practice, that usually needs to be qualified with something like "...but more like early Floyd or Hawkwind than Phish or The Dead". If you can take "playing psychedelic music" to mean "providing transportational means to the mind, imagination, or spirit by aural stimulus", then sure, baby -- we're psychedelic.

G.P.: Would each of you describe a favorite Abunai! moment, and explain why?

J.T.: There are no good moments in Abunai!. It's like living the Song of the Volga Boatmen 24-7. Um, but really, it's difficult to say. Anytime we really lock in when we're playing, when the telepathy is attenuated correctly and the mystery fifth member is playing well, that's a favorite moment.

D.P.: One time we played at a local "townie" bar and a 40-something woman came up to me afterwards and expressed genuine admiration, though she was having trouble figuring out exactly where we were coming from, finally settling on Pink Floyd as a possible precedent. I don't know why this should seem so special, but I suppose it's because I've always feared that our appeal was limited to people who could spot our influences and who liked "that sort of thing", so to hear a bit of honest praise from someone who doesn't know where we're coming from seems cool.

B.E.Q.: For me that would have to be realizing that I couldn't tell when the Joe took over from Joel on Dreaming of Light, because it meant the track was completely solid.

K.T.: Having Barbara Manning onstage with us to sing her song Dock Ellis. We'd never rehearsed it with her, and she really liked the way that we played it... she said "you'll have to keep playing it on your own!", which we haven't yet done, sadly. (This live encounter ended up on one of those complimentary Ptolemaic Terrascope CDs) Another moment was UK writer Nigel Cross' response after our set that closed Terrastock 3 in London: "Now that was what we here in England call 'the dog's bollocks' !" I had to assume from his tone of voice that it was a good thing to be.

G.P.: What do you feel about the Terrastock shows?

J.T.: Like a science-fiction convention, except without the costumes and the overbearingly abrasive attendees. Several hundred of your closest friends that you never knew you had before the weekend started.

K.T.: The shows have been great - I've been to all four so far, and Abunai! has played all of them except #2 (San Francisco, 4/98). The various venues have made each one unique: a warehouse in Providence, a rehearsal facility in SF, a student union building in London, and a Victorian theater in Seattle. The patchwork of great bands is always euphoric to take in, and it's cool to be around so many other people who've been listening to interesting freaky music for many years. Even before the festivals, though, the 'Scope itself was giving a forum for modern psych/ drone/space music and helping those people find each other to form a loose worldwide community of sorts. That was back in the 80s; by the time that e-mail and the Web rolled around, the community was primed to pull together.

D.P.: Highly inspirational. Like Joe said, I get a similar vibe to what I used to get from SF conventions - a great group of likeminded freaks meeting for the fun of it, largely untainted by commercial interests. Terrastocks aren't overtly "political" but I think that there's an inherently political dimension to events like that that are run against "market" concerns. Despite all the good things I've heard about things like SXSW, it still seems to be basically about "selling the band", which isn't to say that folks don't sell stuff at T-stocks, but the main goal is not selling the band. The magazine also reflects this spirit and so again, while not overtly "political" there is a subtle political dimension to it.

Interviews