Stabscotch - Art-rock visions from the uncanny valley

Just like the drinking game of the same name (in which, after knocking back one too many, you rapidly stab a knife between the splayed fingers of your hand resting on a table), the music of American band Stabscotch moves, seamlessly and with fearless disregard for danger, from one genre to another, while still holding firm to a background that is, all at once, noise-driven, metallic and arty. We first stumbled upon them in early 2017 when, digging through the undergrowth of the most experimental music out there, out popped “Uncanny Valley“, a colossal Babel of styles and genres assembled with the flair of mad scientists who are nonetheless fully aware of humanity's impending collapse. A genuine masterpiece, in short! In a few days “Twilight Dawn“ will be released, their fourth album, which we've already reviewed in advance for you on these pages: a new center of gravity, rich with fresh sonic solutions and tied to an art-rock vision that's among the most intelligent and creative around right now. To find out more and try to prise out their secrets, we had a long chat with Tyler Blensdorf and Zack Hubbard, respectively the singer-bassist and guitarist of one of the most important bands of the moment. 

Listening to your new album, “Twilight Dawn” (which brings together, as two opposing tracklists, the EPs “7 Is A Cycle” and “Drama Dragon”), I was struck by the new sonic solutions you've adopted, helped along by the presence of sax and violin. Tell us how the album came about and which direction your music is taking.

Tyler: “7 Is A Cycle” and “Drama Dragon” reflect black magic and white magic, respectively. “Uncanny Valley” and “7 Is A Cycle” exhausted the black-magic exercise, while “Drama Dragon” focuses on the white side. So our next album, “Prison Jar”, will focus on white magic too. As with everything, both have different shades that reflect their opposite spectrums, but we felt the urge to move forward with something that, as far as we're concerned, is indescribable. What you hear on “Drama Dragon” and what will end up on “Prison Jar” are exactly about that. Our trajectory is interested in tapping into every possible power, and that means we're constantly lurching forward.

Could you go deeper into this distinction between black magic and white magic? In musical terms, what sets them apart?

Tyler: I think articulating the matter further with words alone risks undermining our purpose, which is to communicate it through our music and through symbolic iteration. I'll add, though, that the concepts we've developed come from authentic experience, but they've also been thoroughly cross-referenced with every kind of perspective and teaching we've received from all corners of the world. All of that confirms that the question of magic is very real. For us, it's not some fanciful idea, but something tangible, something that actually happens. If people feel connected to the things they're creating, I think they can shape them by listening closely enough to their subconscious.

Dominick Grand on sax and {arsonist} on violin supported you on this new album. You've also got a new drummer: Tom Good…

Tyler: Everyone who contributed to this new album is a good friend of ours, and they'll still be involved at various levels going forward. Because of our pace and dynamism as a band, we think of everyone who collaborates with us as a kind of satellite band: the core (me and Zach) drives the band forward, while the others take part in orbit at various levels depending on logistics. For instance, we'd love for Tom to play with us full-time, but that's not possible because of location. Same goes for the others, though for different reasons. There's a whole range of levels at which they could be involved: in a perfect world we'd want them involved in the band as intensely as we are, but unfortunately that's not possible right now.

Stabscotch still strikes me as a very mysterious band. There aren't many photos of you around. Where do you come from? What drove you to make music and, in turn, to form a band? Had you already had experience with other projects?

Tyler: For both me and Zack Hubbard, this is our first attempt at making music. Our music comes from a stream that originates from a subconscious source, which is in turn tied to other forces in the universe. We create in response to that, like a waterwheel channeling a river.

Zack: I expect that level of mystery to change soon. After the release of “Uncanny Valley”, we weren't able to work at full capacity, but lately things have taken a different turn. We're ambitious about expanding the Stabscotch universe by leaning on what we're now capable of doing creatively, while trying to track down new ways to push ourselves even further.

How would you define your music?

Tyler: I still don't know how to answer this question properly. As far as I'm concerned, I tend to classify musical creations according to how they're made. I have three general archetypes for music, based on how it's produced: the songwriter configuration, the band configuration, and the MC configuration. Songwriters are completely autonomous in the music, the imagery, the performance, and so on. The band configuration represents a small hub of resonating minds that communicate and grow like an army of ants. The MC configuration, which is the most contemporary one, is built around a musical shadow that stages a character who, in turn, drives the imagery and the cultural energy of the project. These three configurations are present in every form of music, and I feel I can hear them in the creation itself. In my view, that's where the real similarity between different musical projects lies.

Zack: It's hard to answer a question like this. If we look at the core instrumental arrangement of our music, based on the classic guitar, bass and drums setup, then we operate like a rock band, but when we think about what we want to achieve, we don't choose to align ourselves with or think in terms of a particular genre. Even that basic instrumental layout has become flexible. What we do will always keep evolving.

Your lyrics are often very cryptic and full of poetic imagery and graphic explosions, which makes me think there's a deliberate desire to give them a strong literary imprint. What themes interest you the most?

Tyler: If you're thinking about political or social implications, then I can tell you that nothing about our music will ever be political. Full stop. However, it is social in the sense that I'm very inspired by the flow of social hierarchies that are driving our culture and our evolution as a species. Obviously, things like technology are tied into that discussion. As for my lyrics, I'd describe their origin in a similar way to what I said earlier about why we make music: I'm just channeling something more powerful than I can fully understand. But I can feel that it's there.

Are you aware that with Uncanny Valley you've made one of the most important works in that thing we still, despite everything, insist on calling "rock"?

Tyler: That takes us back to the point where I broke down how I like to classify music. I think the term "rock" originally served to classify the band configuration I described earlier, so, going by that logic, there are plenty of "rock bands," so to speak, doing incredible things right now. We're aware of all the wonderful things people have said about our music, and I'm deeply grateful to everyone who gets something out of it. I'll tell you that over the past few years we've been very frustrated by having to personally handle every stage of our production ourselves — the path we've mapped out for the next few years was actually put together months before Uncanny Valley came out, back at the end of 2016 to be precise. A lot of people probably thought our silence meant we wanted to take a break, or that we'd lost interest in what we were doing, but it's exactly the opposite: we have too many things we want to release. We've worked non-stop making our material, refining it, constantly trying to push past, to break through our own ceiling of ability. And all of this while handling the entire process ourselves: recording, production, mixing, mastering, visual effects. So, thank you to everyone eagerly waiting for what we're about to release, because it genuinely goes beyond anything we've ever heard before, if I can say so myself.

Zack: Before releasing Uncanny Valley, we believed deeply in the album in a way that transcends any outside validation. That said, we weren't sure how it would be received on a bigger scale. The feedback we got has been incredible, and we thank everyone who's supported it.

What is Uncanny Valley about? Is the "uncanny valley" a region of the soul?

Tyler: We think of Uncanny Valley as an intoxicating journey through the area named in the title. It's a lightning-fast baptism for those who aren't attuned to the more hidden influences and to the sciences of experience. It's our companion piece for the process of enlightenment we want to see through. It's rooted in black magic.

One more thing I'm curious about: does the title have anything to do with Masahiro Mori's theory of the same name? In other words, does the music of Uncanny Valley aim to represent the unease people feel toward robots when they become too similar to humans?

Tyler: Other people have asked us that before, and my answer is "yes and no." No, in the sense that the music isn't specifically tied to that theory and the robotics experiments that stem from it, although I do think the sensations that Uncanny Valley's music can generate overlap with that theory. That feeling of a warm rush flooding through your whole body, when you're faced with something that seems unreal, or when you realize you shouldn't be there, as if you were peering through a deeper layer of reality — I think that's the power of Uncanny Valley.

Why did you choose to release Uncanny Valley only on cassette?

Tyler: That's simply the format our friends at Visual Disturbances use to release music. For our future work, we intend to rely only on unique, meaningful physical formats, like the one we made for The Witness. Down the line, once we have more money, we'd love to release music on vinyl too, but even then we'll try to do something special, something unique — something that, well, isn't made just for the sake of making it.

Zack: When we released the album through Visual Disturbances, that was what they had to offer. Recently we've talked about the possibility of releasing the album in new, special formats, but right now there's nothing definite.

I find the cover of Uncanny Valley really fascinating. What exactly does it represent, and who made it?

Tyler: It's the symbolic representation of the possible manifestation of the "uncanny valley." It was made using various found materials, like organic byproducts and production waste, but a lot of the color you see comes from chemical compounds I synthesized in the lab. I made it myself, though I don't remember exactly how - back then Zack and I split the work between us. What I do remember for sure is that I'd gone into the woods looking for mushrooms with Hubbard and James (Vavrek, the drummer on "Uncanny Valley", ed.).

Zack: Besides the lab-synthesized chemicals Tyler used to make those colors, we also used other materials found in the Bloomington forest, as well as a canvas we wrote on with charcoal. Then we arranged all the objects on the canvas and took a photo. For a brief moment in time, the cover was a living thing.

I get the impression that "Open Sesemji," the opening track of "Uncanny Valley," is a kind of manifesto for you, especially when I think of the lines: “This place that I have chosen ill call it my home/ this place that I have chosen ill call it my throne/ I speak for the walls/ swallow the fog/ just till you’re gone/ THIS IS THE SHAPE TO COME”.

Am I wrong?

Tyler: I think what you're saying is correct, more specifically for "Uncanny Valley," but also as a general trajectory for the band.

In "Uncanny Valley," the visceral tension and highly dramatic narrative development, born from a constant alternation between reflective moments and truly explosive ones, seem to want to reproduce the tensions that people today are subjected to because of an increasingly complex and troubled reality. From this point of view, could you say that "Uncanny Valley" embodies the zeitgeist of recent years?

Tyler: I don't think reality is becoming increasingly complex or troubled. We're definitely more exposed to all the world's information, and so we're overloaded, but I actually believe a species moves slowly toward order despite entropy. For us, the experience of "Uncanny Valley" doesn't depend on any specific timeline - if anything, it's more or less the opposite, since we were interested in tapping into a place that has always been and will always be present beneath the veil of our normal perception of reality. At most, you could say its musical shell is probably what bears witness to the zeitgeist of our culture of saturation, dissemination, and so on. So the tools used to activate the experience are modern, but the source is eternal.

Zack: I think all music, in one way or another, is a product of the reality surrounding the artist and of their attempts to make sense of it. In making "Uncanny Valley," I think the reality you're referring to was channeled, but we didn't consciously reference that zeitgeist.

Is it fair to say that "Uncanny Valley" represents a radicalization, and in a sense a refinement, of what you put forward on "Eldritch," your debut album?

Tyler: Yes and no. The intention behind "Eldritch" was sincere, but not as clear as what we developed from "Uncanny Valley" onward - and it took time to get there. We still love the songs on "Eldritch," but we hate its production and rough edges. We've thought about re-recording and remixing it at some point in the future.

Zack.: In a way, yes. I think that by the time we made "Uncanny Valley," we were able to draw on a deeper, more defined understanding of what we were doing. We were also more skilled with the tools we used to make it. That said, listening to "Eldritch" still gives a meaningful picture of our ideas as a band.

Also in 2017, after "Uncanny Valley" you released "The Witness," a record dominated by droning, electroacoustic, ambient, stretched-out sounds. What was behind that choice?

Tyler: "The Witness" was recorded during the "Uncanny Valley" sessions, as a side exercise to give deeper substance to that album's experience. "The Witness" tapped into something truly wild, and the result is something really unique, which is why we decided to release it right away. That album is special, because I don't think we'll ever be able to reproduce anything like it again: it depended entirely on the energy conjured in the house where we were recording "Uncanny Valley" during those months. It's interesting to think about.

Zack: "The Witness" was produced using sounds and loops similar to the ones we used for "Uncanny Valley," but we filtered everything through improvisation and various instruments. It was an interesting way to dabble with the same energies as "Uncanny Valley" while experimenting with a different way of producing them.

Tyler, would you like to tell us about your solo project, Dizayga? What does that name mean?

Tyler: Dizayga is the embodiment of my raw psyche, it's the strongest subjective voice in my head. I think of Stabscotch as something that exists outside of me, even though I take part in it by giving my own contribution: it's as if we're all listening together to reach for something bigger and try to go beyond it. Dizayga is more of a channel through which I evoke the deepest part of my psyche, which is itself responsible for what I do with Stabscotch. Dizayga is more of an exploration of the science/spirit of the subjective psyche, while Stabscotch is projected toward more objective phenomena.

"Anthrocide: Exit By Accented Figures" is, in some ways, even more radical than "Uncanny Valley". What drove you to record it?

Tyler: Much like "Uncanny Valley", "Anthrocide: Exit By Accented Figures" is the darkening of Dizayga's embodiment, the process of nigredo. It will develop and push further in its onslaughts. Even while working on Stabscotch, I'm almost always simultaneously working on other projects, and Dizayga is definitely one of them. This year, another personal project of mine will come out, but I have plenty of other contributions, pseudonyms people aren't really aware of. I'll tell you more: at one point over the past few years, I found myself working on about three to five projects at once, including my work as sound engineer on the Silent Gallery record.

Zack, you're instead the mind behind the Silent Gallery project, with which you recorded "Neon Winter" last year, a less jagged record that moves between psychedelia, avant-prog and math-rock.

Zack: I launched the Silent Gallery project to keep making music while Stabscotch was on hiatus. To me it represents, at the same time, a way to experiment with my ability to craft unique guitar sounds, to grow as a multi-instrumentalist, and to portray something meaningful. What the project tries to represent is inseparable from my experiences and from the way I look at reality. Still, it draws on the raw feeling of those very experiences, in a way I believe everyone lives through. It's a level of subjectivity that can't be put into words, but that also transcends the individual.

"Twilight Dawn" came out on the label Mr. Snow Productions!, which has released other extremely interesting records, including those by Dizayga and Silent Gallery, but also the one by Bob Wilson & The Brown Eyes. Who runs it? 

T: Mr. Snow runs it. I ran into the guys from the label shortly after "Uncanny Valley" came out: they were really struck by our music, and we talked at length about how a good creative product should be released and how you can build something out of it. I then started working a bit as a sound engineer for the label, helping Mr. Snow handle the money, distribution, and so on. But they also helped me open up to the visual arts, and I really enjoyed that, especially once we started sharing ideas. They help me with graphic design and with plenty of other things I'm not very skilled at.

Among fans and music critics, you often hear it said - though some have been saying it for almost thirty years now, to be fair - that rock is dead. What do you think?

Zack: In my view, when a lot of people talk about rock music, they tend to think of it in the context of bands that now belong to the past. People usually assume rock has to sound a certain way, but I don't think that's true. Personally, I consider "rock music" to be any music composed and arranged starting from the basic guitar-bass-drums structure, plus whatever else you want to add to it. That said, I believe the combination of instruments can expand into limitless space, so rock simply won't keep sounding the way it always has.

Where does the inspiration for your music come from: records, books, everyday life, or something else entirely?

Tyler: A bit of everything. If there's one unique thing worth pointing out about my inspiration, it's my scientific background. I think a lot about how important it's been to my creative process and to the way I look at the world.

Zack: My inspiration comes, besides from the intersection of all these things, also from other art forms, as well as from the way they get transmuted through visceral experience.

Which bands and artists do you feel closest to, musically speaking?

Tyler: Coil. While we were developing "Uncanny Valley", they sparked in us the ambition to achieve a sound capable of triggering a sensibility that transcends music itself. Coil thought of themselves as sorcerers using sound as a tool for their own experiments, and I think that holds true for us too. Their music, and especially their perspective on creation and on the world around us, has influenced me beyond words.

You're originally from Bloomington, Indiana. Are there any other local bands you'd recommend to us?

Tyler: No, and let me clear up something that's been floating around online for a while: we're originally from Indiana, we went to school in Bloomington, where we formed Stabscotch. But we haven't lived there in years. We've lived in various places and now our main base is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Back when we lived in Bloomington, around the time "Eldritch" came out, we had some sporadic punk experiences, but there's no nostalgia today, no connection to any Bloomington scene whatsoever. We really like the environment of that place and we think about it often, just as we often think about growing up in Indiana. We were very proud to be doing powerful things rooted in the Midwest, without any nepotism or trust-fund-kid bullshit.

Zack: We haven't had ties to Bloomington in years, and we're not aware of what's happening there musically.

What are your favorite records of the last decade?

Tyler: We refuse to answer that question. I don't find it that important, and I don't think I could answer it properly anyway. It's not my habit to think in terms of "best albums of the year" and so on. Sometimes going out and listening is a deeper experience than sitting at home listening to records. People should be absolutely aware of all the sounds they run into every day. While you're going through mundane or uncreative things, your consciousness keeps working away underneath. If you're aware of that, you can start to catch glimpses of the source of Energy. As for records, for us they represent, at best, a deeper expression of that kind of experience, and they reveal the tools you can use to express it. What we do want to say, though, is that we're really proud to be in a place like Pittsburgh, where we're surrounded by a lot of extremely talented friends doing truly incredible things. Many of the people we worked with on our latest record live here.

Will you ever come play in Italy?

Tyler: We'd love to, and we'd also love to play shows of a certain caliber. Right now, we're putting our time and resources into developing a great live show, so we're not available for that just yet. If we ever make it to Europe, Italy would be a priority, because there are people there who mean a lot to me.

Zack: For us, this is a period of reform. Right now, Tyler and I are the only ones able to play our material, so we don't even have a setup to play locally. We'd like to turn that around, but at the moment there's no schedule for live shows.

Besides playing music, what do you do for a living?

Tyler: I'm a chemist.

Zack: I currently work in clinical research, but I'm also studying for a graduate degree.

As you've already mentioned, "Prison Jar" will be the title of your next album. Will you manage to release it this year?

Tyler: No. Maybe next year, but it all depends on the resources we manage to get and the time it takes us to finish it. The ideas are all there, and have been for a long time. We're always fighting against logistics.

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