Bant
by Tolga Yagli, 2005

You worked with Kramer since Galaxie 500 and you always said that he had a great addition to the albums. Than you recorded "Playback Singers" at your home studio and you came up with a more personal sound. How did the absence of Kramer affect your sound?

Naomi: We learned a lot from Kramer when we were much younger, just starting to play music. But to work with Kramer you really had to let him be in complete control of everything; so as we got older and started having more production ideas it became clear we needed to produce ourselves.

Damon: Actually in the studio we are still using a lot of things that Kramer taught us. He was our George Martin, we were very naive when we met him but by the time we stopped working with him, we had absorbed so many of his ideas about recording, it's no longer clear which of our studio habits are ours and which were his.

Even though you don't have a very similar sound you're compared with names like Yo La Tengo and Low. Maybe because you make music as couples. Are there any difficulties of making music, writing songs and touring as a couple?

Naomi: Of course there are difficulties and benefits! Like any collaboration and any relationship. We get into arguments about the music all the time, but we are also there to support each other.

Damon: We love to travel and touring as a couple becomes another way of traveling together -- we get to see the world as well as play music, it can be very hard on the road but it's always fun, too.

Before the last elections a group of musicians, lead by Bruce Springsteen started a campaign against Bush. Were you participated in any activity before the election? Was your "Musicians For Peace" movement involved?

Naomi: Damon and I went out with Yo La Tengo on their "Swing State Tour" -- travelling to the "red" (Republican leaning) states to try and rally people to come out an vote. Many people did come out and vote -- unfortunately for the wrong candidate!

Damon: More people in the US seemed to get involved in politics this year than at any time since the Vietnam war. But it wasn't enough. The whole world needs to unite against Bush and his war profiteers.

There is a huge list on the "Musicians For Peace" web site: Sam Shalabi, DJ Spooky, Chessie, Damo Suzuki, Thurston Moore, Boom Bip and many more... Besides being a web site and a list, will it turn into a some kind of activist organization?

Damon: The group started shortly after September 11, as a way to attend anti-war rallies together with other musicians. At the time there was very little opposition to the government's actions here. Now there are many, much larger organizations working against Bush and against the war, so in a way it doesn't seem necessary to continue. But on the other hand, musicians write us from around the world every week, so we want to keep the website there as a way for people to voice their opposition. I think that it can lead people toward a more active stance — if you sign a statement, maybe you will talk about your beliefs more with your friends and family and neighbors, too.

In 2004 two important materials were released for Galaxie 500. A brilliant DVD and unreleased songs, which fans have been waiting for years. How was it to work on these materials and looking back at the past? Is there a posibility of you coming back together with Dean Wareham?

Naomi: Working with the Galaxie 500 materials has gotten easier and easier over the years. When we worked on the Box Set, in 1997, it was still really difficult to think about G500. G500 had a very bad break-up and I don't think Damon & I felt like we were at a point where our work as a duo was appreciated, so it was hard to look backwards. But actually, putting the Box Set together forced us to have some perspective on things, and I think, in the end, it really helped us appreciate what we had accomplished musically, on our own. By last year, when we put the DVD together though, the G500 breakup seemed really, really in the past. We are very far from all of it now. So we had a lot more distance on the whole thing and it was a bit nostalgic to assemble the video clips. We even have been on fairly friendly terms with Dean recently. I don't see any reunion, but it is nice to have the past be truly behind us.

Damon: Well we still haven't actually spoken with Dean since 1991 — but we email each other now, and the contact we do have has gotten much more relaxed.

It's really hard to find your albums in Turkey, so we do some times use the internet. What do you think of file sharing via internet? America has some new and strict rules and laws against file sharing?

Damon: I don't feel it's wrong, after all we make music for people to hear, not to buy and sell. If it's a way that people can discover the music, then that's great. No one ever complained about their songs being shared via the radio or tv! I don't feel it's that different, really.

It's hard to find the "Exact Change" books. Are you planing of having a worldwide distribution?

Naomi: Anyone who wants to can order them from our site, http://www.exactchange.com

Damon: Since many of our books are translated from European languages, they are mostly only available in English-speaking countries. Many are exported to the UK, but not to France, for example, since there's no demand for these texts in English there.

Damon's book "The Memory That Burned" has recently been published and had good reviews. But it wasn't published by your own company "Exact Change"...

Damon: Yes it was published by a company called Turtle Point, in New York. Exact Change doesn't publish contemporary writers, only historical ones. So I submitted my book to other publishers, like any writer, and was very happy when Turtle Point said they wanted to publish it.

Beside album covers, does Naomi have graphic and photograph works?

Naomi: I design all the Exact Change books (inside and out), I design all our websites -- http://www.damonandnaomi.com, http://www.exactchange.com, http://www.musiciansforpeace.com -- and I do take a lot of photos whenever we travel (you can see some of them on the D&N site).

Even though you don't show up at big festivals you have a lot of fans all around the world. You are carrying on without making a concession. Isn't it hard to maintain your own musical character in the wild music industry?

Naomi: Well, it's just in our nature to want to do our work the way that we do — to try and make something that is beautiful and meaningful. That doesn't always fit into what is commercial and popular. But we can't work any other way so. . . .

You are one of the most intellectual groups in the music scene, and you are real music lovers. Since Galaxie 500 you always have a cover song on your albums. You always remind other groups with the songs you choose to cover. Could we say that, "Pearls Before Swine" and Tom Rapp, which were forgotten for years, were remembered again thanx to you?

Damon: Many fans of Pearls Before Swine have done all they can to make sure that Tom Rapp's music continues to be heard — it was because of the English fanzine Ptolemaic Terrascope, for example, that we first met Tom, because they invited him to a festival they sponsored. He is a wonderful person as well as a wonderful musician. He is now a lawyer, he works to promote civil rights — equal treatment for all people by the law.

We know that you are big punk-rock fans. Will we be able to hear you singing or covering a punk song in the future?

Naomi: Well, one day the Galaxie 500 Peel sessions may come out and you can hear Galaxie 500 play the Sex Pistols' "Submission"! But we always feel like we are secretly a punk rock band underneath — no matter what the music sounds like. We love the punk rock attitude towards things!

Damon: But I have to confess we don't listen to those records so much anymore. In fact we've gravitated toward a lot of the music that the original punks hated — prog, folk-rock. However I think it's the D.I.Y. attitude that meant so much to us about that era — and you can find that same spirit in some very different musics.

After reading your interview in the Wire I thought that talking music with you guys must be very fun and I could learn a lot from you guys. What are you listening to these days? Acoustic based music seems to be rising up again. Do you follow new singer/songwriters?

Damon: We love to listen to lots of different music, especially from the 60s and 70s, and also from many different parts of the world. Right now we are listening to a lot of music from Brazil, and also from West Africa — Mali, Angola — places where the acoustic guitar is also used to accompany the voice. We are listening to a lot of Jorge Ben at the moment, his records from the early 70s are incredible!

After Galaxie 500's alternative rock sound, on the first Damon And Naomi album you had a more jazz-driven sound. Now it's more driven to psychodelic-rock?

Damon: Yes we enjoy a lot of psychedelic bands from the 60s and 70s, from all over the globe . . .

In the 70's Turkey had a very strong psychodelic-rock scene. Turkish folk songs were played in psychodelic-rock formats. You make folk songs in psychodelic formats too. Have you ever listened to Turkish music?

Naomi: YES!

Damon: Erkin Koray rules! We have also heard great tracks by Turkish bands like 3 Hur El, and Mogollar. We are lucky because our friends here in Cambridge have a great record store called Twisted Village, that carries as much of this music as they can find. By the way, I am also interested in a record I have heard by a Turkish musician who here is considered more "world" or "classical" music, Burhan Öçal — is he well known in Turkey?

It's been nearly 5 years since the latest album. Now we're waiting for "The Earth Is Blue". Why did you wait so long?

Naomi: We work very slowly. And we reject so many songs that we write — we are not at all prolific. Even after we record we reject a lot of the songs. And, we have been busy! We have been travelling and touring and putting out books (Exact Change and Damon's own poetry) etc etc!

At concerts you play your songs more plain and minimal. Aren't you thinking of playing with a larger band?

Damon: We enjoy playing with other musicians, when it feels right — we often tour with Kurihara, the electric guitarist, as a trio, and recently we have been playing shows with the two horn players who appear on our new album, Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax). Several times we have had the opportunity to perform with all of Ghost, which has been very exciting. But then we also always return to our duo show. As a duo, we really are more connected to the folk tradition, in that the focus is on the song — the arrangments, which we love working on for the albums and for the shows with other musicians, fall away, and the song lives or dies on its own merits. It's a tough test! But I think the discipline of performing as a duo has made our songwriting better.

Is the mystic atmosphere of the album you recorded with the Ghost, an influence of Japan?

Damon: Japan is marvelous, but it has many atmospheres, and most are not very mystical! I think Ghost's version of Japan incorporates the spiritual, ancient aspects that are still there, though hidden by the super-modern, noisy, fashionable street life of the 21st century. Ghost and we share an interest in the artifacts of both our cultures that have survived modern consumer culture. New England, where we live in the US, is actually a very haunted part of our country. There are ghosts all around.

Did you listen to Ghost's latest album, "Hypnotic Underworld"? It was one of the best albums of 2004?

Naomi: Yes, of course! They are great!
Damon: I agree! Ghost, and Robert Wyatt, made my two favorite albums of the year.

On your new album Michio Kurihara plays guitar. Is Kurihara a part of the band now? Will "The Earth is Blue" carry the same atmosphere as the one before?

Damon: We try to make each of our albums very distinct, though I'm sure to most people they all sound similar because they are still us. On this one, we worked hard to push the songs harmonically. Naomi switched from harmonium to electric organ and piano, and we used a small horn section, as well as Kurihara's wonderfully versatile guitar sounds, to build more harmonies and textures. And Naomi and I decided to add a full rhythm section to every track — actually, this may be our first album with bass and drums on every song, since Galaxie 500