Final Third: In Conversation “One of the songs Billy and I actually recorded at 3am and both of us were totally tanked”
Billy and I actually recorded at 3am and both of us were totally tanked. It was after he played a huge show and we got home. WB: Yeah, I had done a show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery Masonic Lodge with The Bug and Grouper. Kevin had every subwoofer in town. So we had a real fun show and then we got back home and then just started going crazy, getting this really dirty saxophone sound. PW: So basically whenever the inspiration was hitting we would get in the studio and mess around. It was very random. Some songs we spent six months on, day in day out, and others came together in like 20 minutes. DDW: Was there a plan for this to be a live project? WB: No. I would have to practice for months to get to be able to do a one-hour show, which I used to do no problem in the ’80s and ’90s when I was playing in bands all the time. But I’m not prepared to be able to do that. This is for DJs to play and that sort of thing. Maybe next year if I can get my horn out and try to practice like I should be doing instead of doom scrolling all day.
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PW: It can be really hard to get him to play saxophone sometimes. WB: I’m just lazy. I should be playing it instead of smoking cigarettes. DDW: Is there the typical inclusion of your tape loop drones in here as well? PW: Some of it was fucking around and making some beats or whatever, and then I took one of his random drones, just like an audio file with drones sitting there, and made two chords with it. You know just playing them and looping. WB: That drone came from the planes that come from LAX. By the time they went over our house they were reaching altitude and you’d get drones every three minutes. Not super loud, it wasn’t like we were living right near the airport or anything, but I would listen for these things and that’s what he started playing with. DDW: The background sound of New York often seeped into your work a lot. So is it the same now you’re in LA? WB: Sure, yeah. I mean, I don’t use lots of field recordings but I do pay attention. I don’t always have music playing and I like to see what’s going on. We have new neighbours in the house behind us and they had a whole new lawn put in. They have a new-fangled push mower that doesn’t have a motor on it and it has the most beautiful sound when he’s doing it, so I want to try to get that too. DDW: Preston, were you involved in William’s upcoming solo album too? PW: Yes and I gotta say, while I very much love all Billy’s records, I’m very, very fucking honoured to be a part of this one. Most of the record is older source material but the last three songs are like a 17-minute suite and I had the privilege to actually record Billy doing two tape machines – like he was DJing two tape machines. And then he did two performances and we spliced those performances together. DDW: Is it an opera? WB: In a way. I mean opera means spectacle and we’re certainly living through a spectacle right now. And even though this was all done last year it’s talking about these things that have just been going on and on and building for centuries: the patriarchy, metastatic capitalism, the greed, the misogyny and the hatred. DDW: Will there be more Sparkle Division stuff too? PW: We’re very slowly but surely gonna start working on some new stuff. It’ll probably be headed a little more in the disco/funk kind of direction. WB: He’s really into funky disco, like really old school kind of stuff – which we’ll see about. But I just let him do what he does and we’ll see what happens.