Distorted Pony - In the Torture Chamber

Lasting just two albums ("Punishment Room" in 1992 and the posthumous "Instant Winner" in 1994, both produced with distinction by Steve Albini) but with a fierce cult following, Los Angeles's Distorted Pony are one of the many minor legends of that terrifying bottomless pit that is American noise-rock. Their unbreakable alloy, forged with massive doses of industrial, metallic and gothic sonorities, remains among the most powerful ever produced, placing them in the same lineage as Big Black, Jesus Lizard, Unsane, Helmet and all the other bands that put not noise but "heaviness" of sound at the center of their music. Brutal and relentless, yet anything but crude: theirs is actually clean, calibrated music, rich in hybridizations and not without melodic hooks, capable of capturing the anguish that grips the inhabitants of a violent metropolis. A Theatre of Cruelty evoking some of the most painful tortures, cathartic for them as much as for their listeners.

Ted (percussion): The money! (they laugh) The latest reunion started in 2014, when we got together to try recording some new material. This tour came about when Manuel contacted me because he wanted to print some t-shirts with our first album's cover; meanwhile, another tour he was organizing with the Cherubs fell through, and he offered us their slot. We agreed, and very quickly things kept growing bigger and bigger.

This is your first time in Europe, right?

David (guitar and vocals): Exactly. We've been trying to organize a European tour since before the 2010 reunion, or maybe right after it, but we ran into a lot of obstacles.

Eddie (guitar): At first we tried organizing it ourselves. We found some good offers, but it wasn't enough. In 2011 (or 2012, I don't quite remember) we met a booker willing to help us, but between expenses, equipment and accommodation he put together such a costly setup that nobody would have been able to pay for it, let alone make any money out of it. That was our last attempt.

David: Another reason that tour fell through was the suggestion to leave in autumn or spring to avoid competing with festivals and venues closing over summer, which was nevertheless impossible because both Ted and I were working as teachers at the time and couldn't get away during that period. When this new offer came along, it felt like a sign from above...

Ted: Manuel worked really hard, and did a great job (the others nod).

Tricia (bass and vocals): Yes, Manuel was the real reason behind all of this. And it's thanks to this tour that we decided to get back together.

Is the reissue of “Instant Winner” also tied to the tour? Whose idea was it?

Eddie: The idea came about once we'd got the green light for the tour, when Manuel got in touch with Antena Krzyku to suggest reissuing the album to coincide with our arrival in Europe.

Ted: After the dates had been set, almost at the last minute Manuel told us we needed to have some new releases to bring along, so we agreed to have “Instant Winner” reissued, along with our first single and a compilation featuring some unreleased tracks. All of that happened in the space of just two months!

Eddie: My label, Total Annihilation, which only puts out material occasionally and almost always from friends, is in turn reissuing the single together with a Spanish label, Beautiful Records, which co-financed the reissue for the European market.

“Instant Winner” is a posthumous album, if I'm not mistaken…

David: Yes, it came out right after we'd broken up.

Tricia: We were on tour, and during a break we stopped off at Steve Albini's studio in Chicago, recorded the album, and broke up shortly after, cancelling the rest of the dates.

Albini's work on both your albums is fantastic, maybe one of the best he's ever done. On those recordings the sound matters almost as much as the songs, and you can feel a huge rapport between you, as if everything had been made by the same head and the same hands. What was it like working with this legendary figure?

David: Well, when we made the first record he wasn't yet established as a producer, even though he'd already recorded the Pixies. Actually, I think for the second one too…

Ted: No, by then he'd already done Nirvana…

Tricia: When we recorded the first album he came to stay at our place, he slept over…

Ted: He even cooked for us! He's a really good cook…

David: You know, Steve has a reputation for being difficult and sharp-tongued, but in reality he's absolutely lovely to be around when you're with him in the studio. He's extremely focused and attentive to detail (the drums were mic'd with something like twelve microphones!), and when he records it's as if he's taking a black-and-white photograph of the band (that's his own expression): he does very little post-production with compressors, equalizers and all that stuff, he captures the whole sound straight away with the mics.

Eddie: We still have the multitrack masters of both our albums, and I've listened to them: from the raw recording to the final version there's very little difference, maybe just a touch of compression on the vocals, and on David's voice perhaps a bit of distortion too. It's an extremely direct and precise way of recording.

Ted: They're Distorted Pony albums recorded by Steve Albini, not Steve Albini albums played by Distorted Pony, if you know what I mean… He lets you make your own record.

It's no coincidence that he prefers to be called a “sound engineer” rather than a “producer”. Will you be reissuing “Punishment Room” too?

Tricia: I don't think that's possible, because it's still in print with the label that originally released it, Bomp!, which is still active today.

Eddie: That means there's no reason to shell out fifty dollars: you can still get it for a reasonable price!

What about that unsettling mask on the cover, what is it?

Tricia: A medieval torture mask, kept at the Tower of London.

David: I went there last September, it was funny seeing it again! Do you know how we came up with the title? When we recorded it at our house, we had four bedrooms, and Robert Hammer (the other guitarist at the time, who also helped out as sound engineer) slept in the smallest one, basically a closet off the kitchen, on a bunk bed: we used to call it “the torture room”…

Eddie: I actually nearly got fired over that cover, because someone thought it was a gang symbol…

“Punishment Room” and “Instant Winner” are two very different albums: the first is like a bullet, the second like a stormy ocean, longer and more powerful. What happened between the two to create this difference, not just in sound but in songwriting too?

David: First of all… (as he talks he rhythmically pounds on the wooden table we're leaning on, forcing me to interrupt him)

David, forgive me, but if you pound on the table you'll drown out the recording… what a damn punk rocker you are! (they laugh)

David: Haha you're right, sorry! I'll sit on my hands now so they stay still… (in reality he'll keep doing it for most of the interview, ed.) So: for “Punishment Room”, recorded at our house, Robert and I each had one amplifier and a 2x12 cabinet with two speakers per cabinet, while for “Instant Winner” we each had a 4x12 cabinet, and that's why the sound is much thicker…

Yes, everything sounds bigger and louder. So is the difference more in the sound than in the songwriting?

David: Let's say that on the first album I had just started getting the hang of songwriting (the adorable expression he used was “just getting my feet wet with”, ed.), before that we'd only put out a couple of singles and appeared on a few compilations…

Are you the main songwriter?

David: Yes, mostly me (the others remain silent).

Do you all agree on this point?..

Tricia, Eddie: Yes! (they laugh)

David: I was saying... While we were recording "Punishment Room" I was listening to bands like Birthday Party or Crass... punk stuff basically, and in fact it's a record closer to punk. When we made "Instant Winner" instead, Unsane and Helmet had come along, along with all the rap-metal bands, so I thought about heading more in that direction.

Ted: Still, I don't think David ever sat down and decided to write an album. It's a subtler process, something that develops gradually — we were all gaining experience and listening to new music in the meantime. In fact, if you listen to the first single, the first EP and then "Punishment Room" back to back, you notice there's a constant shift in the sound.

The EP is almost industrial...

Tricia: Right, in fact we were still using a drum machine back then. Anyway, I think when you're inside that progression Ted was talking about, you don't even notice it. I mean, I know perfectly well the difference between playing with an electronic drum machine and a flesh-and-blood drummer, but when you're in the middle of the process you don't really pay attention to it, except when you look back afterwards.

Eddie: I wasn't in the band yet at the time, I was a fan who would soon go from being in front of the stage to being on it, but I remember you guys had written the songs on "Punishment Room" with the drum machine, and during the recording you were debating whether to use it or bring in a drummer, whereas by the time of "Instant Winner" London had already joined. There was this awareness that having a "real" drummer would allow the dynamics and moods of the songs to be handled with more care.

Tricia: Yes, the fact that London was playing songs that had been written in his presence let him bring a different kind of contribution, and that changed the sound, which became less robotic.

Ted: London joined the band just a month before we recorded "Punishment Room". In that month he learned songs that had already been written for the drum machine, and we recorded them right away. I think that's why it sounds more like an industrial punk-rock record compared to the next one. But speaking of London: does anyone know what happened to him?..

God, he really has been gone for a while... Was the EP the only thing recorded entirely with a drum machine?

David: Yes, and the single too.

Is there nothing electronic layered onto the drums on the albums?

Eddie: No, just metal percussion and toms, played by Ted. If you listen closely, sometimes you'll hear London playing something and Ted playing over it, and if you don't know there's a percussionist involved you might think it's electronic sounds.

David: Actually there are a couple of other kinds of sounds: for instance, on "Splinter" I created a very abrasive loop with the delay; at the start of "Sinner's Payer" I played guitar with a slide and altered it using the delay again; on "Go Kart" I struck the strings and ran everything through reverb to trigger little explosions. I used some of these vintage effects.

You've mentioned Albini, Unsane, Helmet, and now you've talked about your evolution, which in some ways resembles that of Jesus Lizard, who also started out with an electronic drum machine before switching to an acoustic kit. In my opinion you're fully part of a category that includes these bands and many others (Shorty, Big'n, the already-mentioned Cherubs, and I'd even be tempted to throw in some of the early Swans, perhaps the true forefathers of this whole current), which I like to call "drill (as in power drill, ed.) noise". (they laugh) It's a particular kind of noise where industrial and metal converge, heavy, with clean production and the bass especially prominent. Do you recognize yourselves in this definition? And above all, does "drill noise" actually exist, or was it all just something I made up? Do the bands I mentioned sense this shared purpose?

David: My answer is yes, this particular genre does exist, and the funny thing is that a lot of people used to tell us we sounded like Big Black or Jesus Lizard, but those bands themselves (as well as Scratch Acid) loved certain No Wave and post-punk sounds from the late Seventies and were simply doing a heavier version of them. You know, Birthday Party, Public Image Ltd., Fall, Gang Of Four, Wire, DNA, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, early Sonic Youth… That's what they were doing, and what we were doing too. If you listen to Scratch Acid's first EP, you'll notice it sounds like an American version of Birthday Party, and the same goes for Jesus Lizard. So it's not that I copied them, it's that I wrote in the same way, because like them I loved all that stuff.

Ted: If anything, I'd say we were all copying the same bands! (laughs)

Tricia: I'd like to add that I'm deeply flattered by the comparison you've drawn between us and these other bands, because obviously we love them all. But we were also very lucky to work for college radio stations, where you get to hear a ton of different music, and our goal was to expose as many people as possible to that variety. I also really liked Revolting Cocks and other stuff on that wavelength, actually I was considered the most "eurodance" one in the band…

So basically, "drill noise" really does exist!

Ted: It sure does, and you're its prophet! (we laugh)

Tricia: Yes, and we really like that definition. Thanks again for including us in your list!

Maybe though it's more of a midwestern style than a Californian one, I feel it's closer to the Chicago scene above all…

Eddie: Not to contradict you, but there were also a lot of other bands like that in Los Angeles besides Distorted Pony: Sandy Duncan's Eye, Oiler, Beekeepers, and above all Slug, who blew my mind. The first time I saw Distorted Pony live, I instinctively lumped them into the same category as those other bands. However, because of the kind of music Los Angeles was associated with, those bands never got much attention, even in Los Angeles itself. Sometimes at the early Distorted Pony shows there were no more than 25 of us there… So I think there was a "drill noise" scene in Los Angeles (laughs), but the city was basically identified with the more famous Hollywood scene, even though there were some vibrant bands critical of that whole system, just as interesting as the ones from Chicago, New York, or Austin.

The definitive recipe might be noise + post-punk + industrial + metal, what do you think?

David: Yeah, I'd say so.

Ted: You know, it's funny because just a few days ago someone asked me if we were a heavy metal band…

There's a bit of that…

Ted: I would have been tempted to say no, absolutely not, not even a little! (we laugh) But actually, if you listen to some metal bands, there are some similarities

The ethos though is closer to punk…

David: Yeah.

Ted: Back then there was a kind of segregation: punks didn't want to play with metalheads, metalheads didn't want to play with punks. Keep in mind that LA was dominated by hair metal…

Tricia: What category you got lumped into depended on the kind of solo you played…

Is it different now? Have these almost tribal barriers between genres disappeared?

Ted: My impression is that everything's changed now. Kids today listen to everything…

Maybe back then belonging to a particular musical faction felt almost like a political choice…

Ted: Yeah, I think so too.

Eddie: I think only partly. It was also a matter of there not being many places to play and hear a certain kind of music, so some people tended to support the few venues they identified with and kept going back to, and eventually going anywhere else became unthinkable for them.

Ted: But I think that's more a matter of image than of music. For example, there was a band called Motorcycle Boy who had a strong glam image, but if you listen to their records you realize they were basically punk-rock: yet, thanks to that very distinctive image, they were considered part of the Hollywood glam scene. I think these categories are almost always based more on a band's image than on its music.

No doubt. Back to you: your name is really fantastic, the classic image that works even if you can't quite bring it into focus. I mean: I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, but you really do sound like a distorted pony! (they laugh) Where did you dig it up from?

David: Tricia and I were looking at a picture of a horse shot from the front, so its nose looked huge and its eyes further apart than they actually were, and I told her "it looks just like a distorted pony," and she said "that would be a great name for a band!"

Ted: It was also a way of giving ourselves an industrial edge, because for a fan back then "Distorted Pony" immediately sounded like "Skinny Puppy," you know? It was a way to play with certain labels, to see if people would categorize us before even hearing our music, just because we had a name that reminded them of something else…

Your music is aggressive, violent, but it's neither dirty nor crude — on the contrary, I find it deeply "clean": every element has its precise place and could only be there. It's not noisy, it's not "crazy", in fact it's very structured and "lucid". I've always read that lucidity as a kind of self-imposed discipline, even an existential one: choosing not to flee from the horror of reality (including inner reality), but to look it in the eye. A way to document it exactly as it is, making the listener feel that same unease, but at the same time a survival strategy, because in a hellish situation, if you're dazed you become vulnerable: perhaps it's society itself, and the need to survive within it, that imposes such lucidity. Distorted Pony are a violent band in a violent world, imposing discipline on themselves in order to stay alive.

TED: Wow…

Ha, too conceptual?

Ted: No, not at all, it's fantastic!

Do you think it can work as a statement? Being lucid in order to let the listener experience something extreme without filters, but also a way of not succumbing to what inspired that experience…

David: Okay, give me a minute to process, because you're saying a lot of things I agree with and I don't want to forget how to put the concepts into words… There was a review, I don't remember if it was of the "Go Kart/Dept. Of Existence" single or of the album ("Instant Winner", ed.), that said something like "the lyrics of 'Go Kart' sound like someone trying to escape a real hell every day", and I thought "that's exactly it". Like you said, a documentary, looking at the reality of things, at the hardships of existence, and documenting all of it both in the lyrics and in the music. Maybe there's something cathartic about the sound of the music: you look at this reality and sometimes you scream at it, trying to find some relief and release the tension.

Ted: We lived together in a rough area. Our neighborhood was devastated during the Los Angeles riots (of 1992, ed.)… It was a hard time. And yet we also did a lot of stupid stuff and joked around all day long… If you listen to our music you might think "oh my god, these people are angry and violent!" but actually we're the complete opposite… The tension you can feel in our music is the tension of the environment we were living in, which was really tough at the time.

You seem like very calm, nice people… In the titles and lyrics of your songs there's a constant reference to torture and physical suffering, a fascination that I associate with authors like Sade, Artaud or Bataille, but which is also typical of gothic rock. Is evoking all this violence, especially physical violence, cathartic for you? A kind of exorcism…

David: Yes, absolutely.

Tricia: Violence not just physical, but also emotional. You feel better after venting certain feelings. The intensity of our music expresses the intensity of our thoughts and feelings about life, our city and everything else.

Ted: We lived together, like a little gang… Even though the songs were mainly written by David and Tricia, what we did reflected our experiences together, it was autobiographical.

David: We were like young adults… I worked near the beach in Santa Monica, but we lived together in downtown Los Angeles. I don't know if you've ever been to the city, but if you have to drive two hours a day (one there and one back) through that traffic, I mean, that's a pretty miserable condition in itself…

Tricia: Speaking of living together, it's also worth saying that it's nice to know there are people who know you better than anyone else. Apart from my husband, nobody knows me like David and Ted do, they know things about me that nobody else knows, and that's because we did everything together. It was nice to know we could rely on each other.

David: I want to tell you an anecdote about what Ted was saying regarding our tendency to fool around, which shows you how even that side of us ended up spilling into the songs: you know our song "Dollar Pizza"? Los Angeles is full of these fast-food places that sell pizza, like Domino's or Little Caesars, and there was this ad that said something like "get two pizzas for a dollar!", and that's where the idea for the song came from…

Ted: Maybe it was a flyer… In fact, if I remember correctly, we wrote the lyrics on the back of it!

David: Then I want to add one last thing to the philosophical point you raised: you know "Dept. Of Existence"? While I was going over it for the tour, rereading the lyrics, I remembered that at the time, besides the Los Angeles riots, there was also the first Gulf War, and there were military parades everywhere… That's what the song is about. The one speaking isn't me as David, but me playing a role, that of a kind of fascist dictator… I'm not an anti-State person at all, quite the opposite, I'm in favor of the welfare state and social security, but I don't like imagining being watched over by a police state. "Dept. Of Existence" is about that fear.

There's also a constant sense of tragedy hanging over your songs, both public and private. At times it feels like watching a series of snapshots of the violence gripping American society. Compared to back then, how much has your country changed?

David: I think that back then, the Clinton era to be clear, things overall were still pretty good, at least economically: now there's much more inequality, and less support from the federal government on every aspect of life. There's an interaction between economy and politics, social life and culture: if you're poor, you're probably more exposed to certain illnesses and you'll have a lower life expectancy, because the only food you can afford is fatty and unhealthy, and on top of that you'll be cut off from a whole range of opportunities, you'll have a harder time finding a job, you'll be more likely to end up a criminal and you could even lose your right to vote… It's all a chain reaction, and from that point of view the United States is getting worse by the day.

Tricia: But if you think about certain social issues, things have happened beneath the surface that have raised awareness a bit. When it comes to women, for example, it used to be normal to see them as objects of discrimination and harassment, whereas now at least we're starting to think that maybe that's not quite right… In general, it seems to me there's more awareness now. Take police injustice against certain minorities too: it still happens, but at least now we know it happens and we see it for what it is.

David: I'm not saying everything is terrible in the United States, because it's true that there's much more recognition of rights for ethnic minorities, gay people, trans people, women themselves… There's a lot more recognition of people's dignity as such and of equality among all people, but other problems remain.

Eddie: I think the main problem is that the men in power don't want to give any real recognition, protection, or fair treatment to the people who tend to be discriminated against.

In your view, does this difficult moment translate into greater solidarity or greater competition? Do people tend to fight a common enemy, or to fight each other?

Ted: Right now, with this president, it's actually pretty easy to spot a common enemy… Something I've been thinking about lately, which might sound obvious but really isn't, is how hard it is to look at another person's struggles from their perspective rather than your own, which will always be the only one you actually have. I think about racism — it's easy for some people to say "it doesn't exist, I've never experienced it," without understanding that there are people very different from them, without being able to make that leap and instead viewing everything only from their own vantage point. In LA, the racial situation used to be really explosive; I couldn't tell you whether it's gotten better now, because it's faded into the background and people talk about it less. Maybe things have improved a bit across the country on that front in general, but it's clear that a lot of issues are still unresolved.

And musically? Both in the mainstream world and in the underground…

Eddie: Back then you had bands like Helmet, Soundgarden, Nirvana… Rock bands had a massive following. Now they've been completely replaced by pop stars. I was talking with a friend recently about Coachella, an LA festival that used to always be centered on bands, where the headliners were rock groups: now instead it's pop singers and rappers…

And even indie rock is becoming more and more like pop…

Eddie: To me it seems like indie rock doesn't even show up on the radar anymore, at least not on that scale, whereas up through the '90s you had plenty of rock bands that could compete commercially.

Ted: You know, if the Foo Fighters pass as the most dangerous band in the world, that tells you there's a problem…

Is there any new noise-rock out there worthy of the name, in your opinion? Do you think you've left a legacy? I mean, do you see any new Distorted Pony on the horizon?

Eddie: I own a recording studio and co-own a rehearsal space, and I have to say there are a lot of young people making noisy music, so I think that approach still exists, even if maybe it leans more toward metal and extreme punk these days, less influenced by post-punk. Anyway, I listen to a ton of different bands, and somewhere out there, there's definitely some band trying to make good, noisy music.

Tricia: Honestly, I have to admit I don't go out much, and I don't know many contemporary LA bands, so I couldn't really answer that…

Ted: I think it's an age thing. I used to be more active, but now music doesn't hold the place in my life it used to. I go out to see new bands less and less often. Like, last night it was cool to see that band of kids at the squat you took us to (Xm 24, ed.), it was great to be there, but if I'd been home I probably wouldn't even have gone out.

We've touched on a mainstream world, an alternative world, and an extreme world. Your music is heavy, but there's also melody in it, it's not chaotic. From that point of view, do you feel closer to the alternative world or the extreme world? How much room is there for compromise in your art?

Eddie: Can I answer as a fan rather than as a band member? What drew me to Distorted Pony as a kid was that they were dark but not goth, noisy but not noise, industrial but not like Einstürzende Neubauten, heavy but not metal, fast but not punk… I saw elements taken from other things, which they put together to create something of their own. I think that's always fascinating.

Tricia: David, for instance, appreciates a good pop song, but we could never be a pop band… Still, I like it when a song has a chorus or a groove, personally I don't love pure noise, there has to be something you can almost dance to… We want both things, that's my take on it.

David: I get things done by relying on compromises. I think we're closer to the alternative side, because I'm not interested in simply making devastating, distorted noise. What I've always tried to do is use a bit of noise, but always apply it within a song form. I'm very meticulous about that.

If you think about it, some of your songs could be played on an acoustic guitar, unplugged…

Tricia: That's true, and we actually did it once!

David: We even played some Joy Division songs on that occasion… Anyway, I confirm I feel closer to the alternative world. Lately, while I was re-learning some songs for the tour, I found myself thinking back to the old days when we all lived together. Back then I had Thursdays off, while everyone else worked Monday to Friday. I'd get up in the morning after everyone had left, and I'd sit for hours working on songs, every week… That's the reason we churned out so many tracks in four or five years. And the process was always like, "ok, now I'll take this cue from Throbbing Gristle, but put it over a groove". Sometimes I'd also listen to IDM or dance stuff and try to combine those kinds of elements, though I can't remember now which song they ended up in…

Tricia: I remember when "Punishment Room" came out, a friend of ours couldn't even listen to it, because he found it too noisy for his taste. After the success of Nirvana and similar things, the way people listen to music changed, if he heard it now it probably wouldn't have the same effect on him.

Ted: Everything is relative. For instance, there was a time when Chuck Berry seemed dangerous… Once I heard a Marilyn Manson song on the radio and I blurted out "oh my god, they're playing a Distorted Pony song!"… My point being that, in a way, that kind of music sounds more mainstream now than it did back then…

Eddie: For the average person, though, it's still extreme music. For example, a colleague of mine once googled us and asked me "wait, did you really play in that band that made such noisy music?!"…

Do you have plans to go back into the studio to record new material?

David: A few years ago we went back into the studio and recorded a demo, but I think we still need to work on those songs: Tricia and I sing together and it's kind of hard to do that over those bass parts! (they laugh) Over the past few years I've recorded a lot of voice memos on my phone, and I've often thought, "hey, here's a new idea for a Distorted Pony song". So basically, I've got a few things sitting around that I'd like to try recording and send to the others, just to get things moving again… I hope we'll do it, sooner or later.

Ok, that's good for me. Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview!

Eddie: Wait, I want to ask you a question: how did you discover our music?

The way most of my fellow countrymen discovered a certain kind of music: the website of a controversial Italian critic who now lives in the States, Piero Scaruffi, I don't know if you know him… He wrote a wonderful piece about you.

David: Wow! And what does it say? Does he like us?

Yes, and he's someone with pretty demanding taste…

Tricia: Cool! I'd be curious to know where he heard us… Maybe when John Peel played us on the radio, which at the time felt like an "oh my God" moment for us…

We'd just gotten up when we got a message from London: "Guys, go ahead and start without me, I need to sort out a problem with my credit card"…

The photo above is by Eric Nakamura, founder of the magazine "Giant Robot" and tireless chronicler of the Los Angeles concert scene

(continues here)

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