“It’s a whole visual thing. We’re reacting to the lack of audience approval. We can’t rely on applause. We either get ‘you suck,’ or people who stay and stay and stay. We are all interested in these extreme levels, and we think that’s a part of music that’s missing today amongst 90% of bands.”
It’s clear from the moment US Maple let rip onstage exactly what singer Al Johnson is talking about. Mark Shippy shuffles across stage like a wound-up toy, his leg kicking out involuntarily, while his fellow guitarist Todd Rittman stares madly at the audience. Pat Samson seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown behind the drum kit, straining for the next hit. And Johnson himself is a spectacle, slip-sliding around the stage, a visual equivalent to the music: at once spontaneous and with an air of choreographed grace.
“I think a lot of people think that we’re just up there goofing around, I’m barking like a dog and the band’s just improvising, but it’s not that. We want to unwind rock’n’roll, we’re trying to be the last band that is taking things to places where nobody is going. Our idea is to show up, start at one point and end at another point, and just let it flow all the way through, and let the spaces between the songs be determined by the band. We try and control the whole time and space of the set, not just end one song and start another. We want the control.” US Maple’s music is all about control and chaos, details and arrangements that seem haphazardly put together until you realise that they are capable of reproducing live exactly what they have put down on record. This is why they are frequently compared to Captain Beefheart, who famously locked his band up for eight months rehearsing for the anarchic sound-mesh that is ‘Trout Mask Replica.’ Ultimate recognition has now come in the shape of a collaboration with Derek Bailey, a guitarist responsible for shaping much of the music labelled as ‘Improvisation’ over the past thirty years.
“It’s important for me that what we’re doing is unsettling, kind of scary, and entertaining to people, like rock’n’roll used to be years ago when you’d go and see a band, and you’d be really excited. Right now, in 1998 people turn up and it’s like ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve heard it / seen it before, blah blah blah.’ I want to eradicate that. I don’t really care if they don’t like it, I want them to feel and to hear and to see something that is sour, that is hard to take in, that they can’t forget.” It’s this desire to be different and remarkable that makes US Maple a precious commodity. “In America, there are so many bands, so many artists doing the same thing ... there is a core group of people that are trying to do something nobody’s ever done. This is the nice thing about Jim [O’Rourke]: he’s kind of an electronic wizard, he manipulates electronics, yet here is a guy who decided to do a whole tour with us just playing acoustic guitar, when people expected him to get up on stage with keyboards, and have swelling synth sounds.”
The ubiquitous O’Rourke produced both US Maple albums which both exemplify his unique approach to recording: “he’s managed to capture the band. When I hear the things that he’s recorded for us, there’s such a depth there, you hear guitars soaring in and vocals coming up and down. It’s not flat, it’s not just drums and bass and guitar just layered one on top of the other.”
US Maple are one of the few bands I listen to now who can persuade me that rock can sound like something other than “just drums and bass and guitar.” Tune in and hear rock unwind.
US Maple were talking to Malcolm, in February 1998.