[Text by Ted Hamilton] Some bands change instruments like they change clothes; others grow attached to their drums or guitars and give them names (think B.B. King and Lucille). And then there’s the select few who decide to go all the way and build their own equipment out of scraps.
“You have a different connection when it’s something that you’ve created,” says Mark Pearson, one third of the Boston noise band Neptune. “I know it intimately, I know why it does what it does, and I built it for that reason.”
Pearson — who plays, among other things, the baritone guitar and an oscillator controlled by light switches — will be visiting Ithaca with his bandmates on June 29 for a show at No Radio Records. There, fans will be able to appreciate the unique spectacle that a Neptune show affords. “We have such a free approach to how we play our instruments,” says Pearson. “I don’t really worry what kind of key I’m in or anything like that… it’s an overall aesthetic we all agree on.”
That aesthetic has made Neptune one of the most renowned names in noise rock and do-it-yourself music circles in recent years. Started in 1984 by Jason Sanford as a school sculpture project, the outfit evolved over time from an on-again, off-again experiment into a full-fledged rock band. By 2001 the trio had assumed its current lineup of Pearson, Sanford, and Dan Boucher (now all in their thirties) and began an ambitious touring regimen of roughly 120 shows a year. When they weren’t on stage, the musicians-turned-craftsmen were writing songs for their self-released albums and fashioning new instruments out of scrap metal and assorted household items.
In 2006 the band’s career took a turn when they decided to sign with Table of the Elements, an experimental record label that’s released music by luminaries such as Captain Beefheart and John Cale. Although Neptune had never signed a record contract before, Boucher says “we automatically said yes…[Table of the Elements is] a pretty DIY kind of label that really understood what we were doing with that DIY aesthetic.”
After four months on tour, the band settled down to write — for the first time — a record from end to end. “We stopped actively playing shows,” says Pearson, “[and] developed new instruments and new songs.” Sanford, the band’s designer-in-chief, constructed an all-new “lamellaphone” — old hacksaw blades over a guitar pickup that emit a low, bassy tone — and a xylophone made from gas pipes. Pearson, in charge of electronics, turned to his favorite contraption, a light-switch oscillator, which was “built with the intent of looking like a cobbled-together time machine.”
The result of this concentrated creativity was the LP Gong Lake, released on February 19 to enthusiastic reviews. “[It] definitely sounds like a more cohesively written piece of music,” says Boucher, and Neptune immediately hit the road to share their new creations. For the first time in its career, the band began playing shows in Europe and the United Kingdom, and in recent months has spent more time abroad than at home. Overseas, says Boucher, “people are much more open-minded about weird, experimental music.”
The nationwide release of Gong Lake and Neptune’s international travels have certainly helped make the band more visible in 2008. But has this increased exposure changed the group?
“[It] hasn’t changed our sound at all,” says Boucher. “We’re kind of more of a live band than anything.”
Indeed, it is the trademark live shows that make Neptune unique, as few other bands go into sets with such a diverse array of instruments at their fingertips. Besides the light-switch oscillator, the lamellaphone, and a gas-pipe xylophone, Neptune’s creations include Pearson’s 50-pound baritone guitar (with a fretboard made of sawed-off nails), a spring harp played by Sanford (it sounds “almost like breathing” says Pearson), and other miscellany that, as Pearson puts it, “we bang on.”
Visually, the collection suggests the long-buried bric-a-brac of some madman’s attic that has magically morphed together to form keyboards, drums, and guitars. As for the aural approach, Pearson says, “I’m hoping there’s some tension in it.”
The audacity of Neptune’s creations means that their live shows are at once musical performances and visual art exhibitions. “I built it for the challenge of how it would be played and how it presents itself physically while we’re playing,” says Pearson. “You’re watching someone interact with something you see every day…and it sounds horrible… You almost don’t know if there’s some kind of flub somewhere.”
This unique approach also means that the band faces problems unfamiliar to most rock musicians: at one show in the Czech Republic, for example, the crowd pulled Pearson into its arms and began passing him around in the air. Brandishing his rusty, 50-pound guitar and watching it whiz by people’s faces, Pearson feared the worst. In the end, though, “[it just] totally charged my playing.”
Perhaps because they are so committed to the do-it-yourself model of artistic expression, the members of Neptune have a hard time pinpointing their influences. “It’s hard to say what we sound like,” reflects Pearson. “When we write stuff there’s a lot of attention given to what we’re not playing… we’re reductive when we’re coming up with stuff.” Pearson mentions pop music and the sound of traffic on a bridge; Sanford takes inspiration from films. In the end, though, Pearson says, the goal is often “[to play] like you haven’t heard music before.”
Although according to Boucher “we’re playing newer songs and we’re playing a bunch of new instruments,” the sound and the spectacle that made Neptune’s name remains, despite their recent successes and adventures, essentially the same. In the end, it is Neptune’s total control of their music and delivery that keeps their presentation fresh. “We’ve been doing well and we’re not even coming close to playing the bills,” says Pearson, “[but] if we have any modicum of success it’s that we’re happy with what we’re doing.”
This Sunday’s show will be Neptune’s first in Ithaca. The band plans to play the bulk of Gong Lake as well as some new material written since that album’s sessions.
Neptune will perform at No Radio Records this Sunday, June 29. Also featured on the bill are The Skaters, as well as Eskimo King, the solo act of Brian Sullivan (Mouthus), and Zac Davis (Lambsbread). The show will begin at 8pm. No Radio Records is located on 312 E. Seneca St.