Photograph by Leah Peah
If there's one word that is commonly associated with sound artist and St. Louis ex-pat John Wiese, it's “volume.” Whether in reference to the extreme peaks (and valleys) in his approach to performance or the sheer number of releases across digital and analog formats, high volume is as apt a descriptor as any.
“I wouldn't say that I'm that concerned about volume, in terms of quantity. As artists we like to work and make new work as much as we can. We don't release all of it, actually. I think each record has a unique voice to it. I think that there's just an unlimited amount of possibilities when you bring all aspects of production together. It seems like a total waste to me to not explore that, if you can,” Wiese says.
Yet Wiese is a prolific sound artist whose propensity to create is staggering. In 2012, an art show titled 100 Seven Inch Records by John Wiese showed just that—nearly 100 pieces of vinyl released in a steady flow over the span of 13 years. Those stats don't even account for compact disc, cassette or full-length vinyl releases, much less digital uploads.
Today, Wiese still produces at an unrelenting rate. His latest export is a trio of albums released on May 3 under the long-running project Sissy Spacek: Disfathom, Reversed Normalization, and Duration Groups each offer a glut of noise divided into distinct songs, musique concrete and ensemble noise, respectively.
“What [Sissy Spacek] is trying to do now is have this very consistent live band that performs material that we've written and recorded. We still like to make a lot of very diverse, experimental work that is primarily for a recorded medium, but as a live band we like to be very specific and very consistent,” Wiese adds.
And that current lineup will co-headline a multi-stage event at the William A. Kerr Foundation on May 27, along with New York percussionist Eli Keszler and guitarist Marisa Anderson of Portland, Oregon among many St. Louis acts, making for a mini-festival that spans experimental hip-hop, avant-garde and electronic music.
Sissy Spacek coming to St. Louis is a more personal endeavor for Wiese, who lived in the river city from 1989 to 1998—a period that spanned the teenage years of his life into early adulthood. While Wiese had worked on many projects prior, Sissy Spacek was first founded by he and longtime friend Corydon Ronnau as an impossibly dense recording project they loosely described as “noisecore.”
He and Ronnau, a St. Louis native at the time, worked out a series of recordings and ultimately performed when possible. Sissy Spacek's first show on Christmas Day in 1999 was a prime example of the band's very nature—Wiese was returning home for the holidays for the first time since moving to California earlier that year.
“Basically, we would play once a year when I would come back for the holidays. Sometimes we would just do recording sessions for the purpose of me taking it back to use as source material to cut up and collage into albums,” Wiese adds.
Danny McClain, the St. Louis-based drummer and member of the now-defunct math rock trio Grand Ulena, performed as the group's percussionist off and on until his untimely passing in early 2011. Wiese counts McClain's influence on the band's sound as “enormous” and formative following early demos and recordings.
The current lineup features Wiese on guitar and electronics, along with drummer Charlie Mumma, who joined in 2008. Both players take on vocal duties—no small feat for songs that revel in the kind of primal screaming that would leave most seasoned singers drained.
“In the last few years we've switched up between different vocalists and it's always posed the same issue of being logistically difficult. Now we are a much leaner band, much more focused,” he adds.
When asked if the upcoming show on May 27 at the Kerr Foundation feels like a homecoming, Wiese had mixed emotions but looks forward to playing nevertheless:
“I have been coming back to St. Louis ever since I left, but it's changed for me in a lot ways. My mom used to live there, Corydon used to live there, Danny used to live there. It's slowly changed in different ways. Sometimes it was cool to come back, sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it was a big bummer. After Danny McClain died, that was my last really strong personal connection to St. Louis. Now I feel like it's coming back around, where there are new relationships in St. Louis that I want to come for.”
Sissy Spacek performs Friday, May 27 at the William A. Kerr Foundation, 21 O'Fallon, near the St. Louis riverfront. Also performing: Eli Keszler, Marisa Anderson, Demonlover, 18&Counting with P Boland, Ghost Ice, Chizmo TV, Kevin Harris, and Alex Cunningham. Suggested donation is $10–$12. A full schedule of the night's performances can be found on the Facebook event page.
