The Peak / Arts
7, vol 103 -- October 18, 1999

Delving into an industrial world - an interview with Landscape Body Machine

Usually, when you first meet musicians it doesn't involve toilet accoutrements. Smack, maybe. Ego, probably. But toilet plungers?

Yet that was how I met Craig Huxtable. He and a friend were purchasing a toilet plunger at the Kitchen Corner on 1st Avenue and Commercial Drive several years ago, and my roommate recognized him.

Truth be told, my roommate was also the one who introduced himself, since I was far too shy. I needn't have been - Craig goes a long way towards puncturing the myth of industrial musicians as cold, mean rivetheads who are all about gear and money.

People have always made art out of their surroundings, down to ancient tribes who wrote with earth pigments upon their walls. Therein lies the power of industrial music; unlike other art forms, it explores what lies around us all the time, ignored. The sounds of machinery can be beautiful. Craig makes this so; he coaxes beauty from the oily wheezes, the squeaks, the grinding noises that we hear everyday, bringing to mind the oil-slick colours of patinated metal. But beauty is not all that Craig captures. He exposes the seamy underbelly of the post-industrial world as well; powerful images of chaos and international conflict are prevalent in his stage shows and his songs.

Craig, like the best industrial musicians, elevates the dissection and exploration of our modern world to an art. Mired in the gaudy depths of Las Vegas, his current stop on a tour with other local luminaries Urceus Exit, Craig granted me a tired but very willing 20 minutes of his time. They played last Tuesday at Celebrities, and after the ersatz glitter of California and the wasteland of Edmonton, I'm sure they appreciated a home audience.

Peak: What do you think of Las Vegas?

LBM: It certainly is interesting. I think 'like' would be a strong word. It's truly outrageous, that's for sure. Borderline vulgar, in a lot of ways.

Peak: How was the San Francisco show?

LBM : It went pretty good. We had been hoping for a bit of a larger audience, but things cannot be helped when the Sisters of Mercy are playing two blocks away. Nobody was aware of that when the show was booked. So that was a bit of a draw, but it went over really well.

Peak: What's the story behind the name LBM?

LBM: It's kind of twofold. In one way it's a description of music - landscape being the ambient aspect, body being the sort of dance aspect, machine being the industrial aspect. In another respect, it's a rounding out [of] worldly elements - the planet, people, and technology. I just kept coming back to that one, never was really sure if I was happy with that one or not. Now, several years later, I think I'm glad that I did, I've finally warmed to it myself.

Peak: What do you try to accomplish with your music? What's the vision, the goal, or do you see yourself as having one?

LBM: I try to give songs a bit of depth . . . on occasion I drop in a sample here and there to guide the listener closer to what it is that I'm trying to say. Usually there's a fair amount of political or social motivation for me. I think it's really important that all of my music has a message in some way, shape or form. More or less, just really getting people to think. Looking at the names of songs - if you're not quite sure what the title means, look it up in the dictionary, see what the word means and go from there. A lot of people have asked me, for example Subterranean II, what's terraforming - terraforming is a violent transformation of a planet's surface. Once you know what that means, it brings you closer to the meaning of the song.

Peak: I know you've done work with the concept of 'manifest destiny' ...

LBM: We just get closer and closer with our neighbours, by the day. That's good in a lot of respects, but insofar as Canadian sovereignty is concerned, it's a real threat culturally. We don't - other than say, the CBC, and the CBC is alright, but I wouldn't say it's an outstanding way for Canadians to look at themselves and their own art and their own social habits, behaviour, what have you. We don't really get an opportunity to do that very often, because of the proliferation of mass media from the U.S. Not that it's done maliciously or anything, but I think that Canadians have to wake up and be aware that we are a culture, and that's something we should cherish and foster.

Peak: So what's your vision for industrial music? How would you like to see it change?

LBM: I'd like to see it change once! [laughs] I find the bulk of the stuff that I hear these days is all modelled really after a handful of groups. There haven't really been many artists, particularly in this decade, that have really tried to push it forward. Everything, in my opinion anyway, is highly derivative of stuff done during the 80s. That's not to say that it's not good music or anything, but some new ideas have to be put forth. It doesn't have to be a 16th note bassline, it doesn't have to be Cookie Monster vocals. These are things you can break away from, try something different.

I think, I perceive, that maybe what makes my stuff a little bit different from some of the other stuff, is that a lot of my influences that go into LBM aren't industrial... when it comes to music that I listen to, industrial is ... maybe ten per cent, maybe fifteen per cent.

Peak: Other influences?

LBM: Just about anything I can get my hands on really. Classical, jazz, drum 'n bass, on and on and on. Really the way I look at it, anything that I listen to influences me, whether it influences me [to say] "Oh, wow, I like that, I like those ideas"... or "Ooh, goddamn, that's awful."

- Bess Lovejoy, features editor

original article: http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/99-3/issue7/lbm.html