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by Robert Vilar
(originally appeared in Stylus Magazine, April/ May 2007)

Drone, fuzz, glide, crash, and purrrrrrr . These are the stratospheric sounds of Winnipeg's own resident spaceman- Ryan Settee who goes under the moniker of High Watt Electrocutions. Just recently releasing his new album night songs on his Instrospection Records label, the album amalgamates a fiery combination of the hazy drug blues of Spacemen 3, the slinky dark riffs of Sabbath, with a touch of the orchestral grand sweep of Soft Bulletin-era Flaming Lips. A feast for the ears and a ride for the soul! Recently Stylus took to the other side with High Watt Electrocutions which went as follows.

Stylus: How long have you been involved in making music?

Ryan Settee: Like most musicians, I had an affinity for the guitar, and i've been playing guitar for 13 years now since late 1994. It's evolved from me making crappy, primitive recordings on crappy boomboxes, to recording on really high fidelity equipment these days. It's always nice to get better equipment, and that comes with time and experience, and getting the sense that you've earned better equipment through getting better as a musician.

Stylus: How long did it take you to concieve the new album Night Songs?

RS: It took about 6 years, and probably a few hundred hours! Some of the songs like "Erosion", date back to about 2001, and others like "Radiance" are about a month old, others like "Dragged Into The Vortex" were done a couple months ago. There was no real set time frame for anything, it was nice to have the time to work on things to get them right. I find that it's integral to have the time to work on things, to at least explore a few ways that it could go.

The initial song that really got the album going in a hypnotic Joy Division/ Velvet Underground thing was "The Thief Steals In The Darkness". It was originally just a weird bass riff played over and over into oblivion on a Fender Precision bass over a drum track, and it had this weird, tribal feel to it that I thought would sound great over the majority of the course of an album. That sorta sat in "the vault" so to speak for a couple of years--it was done in late 2001 or 2002 or something--then I added the massive fuzz guitars and all the instrumentation and weird percussion a few years later. It was then that I decided that the majority of the album should sound like cavemen beating on rocks and logs around the campfire or something, haha. Tracks like "Sonic Maelstrom" and "Electric Midnight" came next, and then I realized that some of the mellower songs that I was working on like "Stranded" and "Ascention" could break up the monotony and add some different gears and elements to the complete album.

I could see some people liking the mellow stuff but not the heavy stuff, or vice versa. But I like albums that change up with their moods, that pace themselves well.

Stylus: What's usually your process when it comes to writing material and recording?

RS: I'm pretty lazy...that's the process, haha! Really, I only write when i'm going to record. It's a weird mindset. Alot of bands write with the intention of going live, but I always write around how I can cram 50 overdubs on a song or whatever! There's actually 39 tracks on "Sonic Maelstrom", you know....really built up. Most of what I write is done about an hour before it hits the recording, and there's been some definete flaws with that, but most of the time I find myself quite happy with the results, and it tends to yield a more realistic writing and performance angle.

The reason for that is that I find that if you rehearse something, you can actually work yourself out of the inspiration, you know....what inspired you to do the song in the first place. I find by the time that I demoed things in my other bands, we'd already played the songs at least 50 times, and you're sort of set in your ways in that's the way that the song will stay, and you tend to not question what purpose something serves in the track. With the spontaneous writing/ recording thing, it does backfire at times....but I always think that it yields a truer, more nihilistic experience. It's sort of inherently flawed at times, which is great, I think. I don't think that most good music is extremely laboured over at it's core--the end product might, but great songs I think are usually knocked out and captured early on.

I found that repetition can yield some amazing results, because if you play the same rhythm, the base of the song is primitive, but it allows for cutting and pasting and working with ideas that can expand and build up. With the regular verse/chorus/verse stuff, that's harder to do. It gives you alot of room to edit out dynamics from soft to loud, because you're working with various tracks.

Stylus: In making the new album "Night Songs", who and what were your key inspirations?

RS: Oh...where do I start? There's lots. In the last few years, i've got more and more into the old obscure psychedelic scene, like bands from the 60's such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Michael Yonkers....weird eclectic dudes, you know? Plus there's this old recluse, Leon Russell, who's not really psych per say, but he put out an album under the name "Asylum Choir" which was a really weird, schitzophrenic psychedelic pop album. And the "Carney" album is just nuts, you know, it makes no sense in the best possible way! Then there's protopunk stuff like the Stooges and Simply Saucer, weird 70's stuff like Hawkwind and Suicide, the 80's psych revival in Spacemen 3, and the early 90's shoegaze scene--all which were centered around noisy guitars, weird electronics and really monotonous playing.

I always thought that I was primarily a guitar player, but over the years, I think that i've become a better producer than anything else. That's still a work in progress, i'm still not as good as i'd like to be....but i've paid my dues on crappy four tracks! I think what's important to realize as a band is that the studio and recording gear are instruments, as well--and that's why i've always sought out to produce my own stuff, because I always say if you've got songs going on in your head, only *you* know the way that they should be transposed to a recording medium. It's hard for a producer to adequately capture that stuff on record, if you don't have a definite vision.

I've analysed the great recordings, and tried to approximate some of what they did. Some of it I fell short, but I think that alot of the process of making effective music is through trial and error and allowing yourself to make mistakes. There's alot of this record where it was improvised and done on feel, rather than rehearsal. Similarly, there's alot to be said for "failed sounds"....that ability to allow yourself to make mistakes. What I mean by that is that you have a band like the Stooges, who--and I love their stuff--but they were essentially a failed version of the Doors, if you really think of it. Iggy really wanted to be Jim Morrison, and had the band been better on their instruments, I don't think that they would have defined the protopunk sound....they may have done that by default. I'd certainly hate to think how history might have changed, had they been virtuosos. Your own limitations as a musician can be great--I don't think anyone should sound exactly like anyone else.

Another thing that was a big influence on me was shows like City Limits on MuchMusic, way back when. They always had things like Dead Can Dance or Lee Ranaldo's noise stuff. Also, shows like Brave New Waves and Nightlines were big influences. I sort of learned that alot of cutting edge music was being played at night, so that's a bit why this album is called "Night Songs"--it's inspired by darkness, as well as a subconscious way of making music, that campus radio DJ's could relate to at 4 AM, haha! Sleep deprivation could have been an influence.....I think music can work on a subconscious level, sort of how you shut the brain off to let certain ideas surface and let them come to you when you're not thinking about it.

Stylus: Do you have plans to play live and possibly tour the new album?

RS: I originally didn't have plans to tour or play live, but there's definetely plans now! There's been a really good response for this, albeit in an underground way, which was my goal. Ottawa seems to be a place where it's caught on, too, i've got some fans there. I've been talking to some people--one of which is a big Stooges and Spacemen 3 fan--and it's interesting to see how it will work out, because really, it's not my band in a sense, it's just a forum for free expression and artistic musings that people don't have the chance to fully develop in most other bands. It will probably be a revolving door of musicians that can come and go--I think I might play a few shows by myself with me singing/ speaking, a two amp setup, an organ and a few instruments, backed by a drum machine, with psychedelic crazy lights and strobes. It might cause seizures, haha.

Stylus: There's some really nice artwork featured on the soon to be available double vinyl gatefold, who was the artist (or artists) involved?

RS: Thanks....that was me. I try not to really advertise it too much, but that's another thing that people have asked me "who did that?", so they might feel cheated if I was to say it was someone else. It's not really about an ego, it's more like that it's cheaper and more effective to do everything that you possibly can in a band. Running a band is incredibly expensive, so i'm all for one cutting costs any way that they can. As i'm running my own record label, I eventually want to help other bands by releasing their music, and the more that I can do myself including the artwork and design, the easier and cheaper that becomes for them, too.

Stylus: If you had an opportunity to collaborate with anyone in the music world, who would it be, and why?

RS: Hmm....good question. That's tough, as there's many, but i'd say Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. He always seems like such a genuinely positive person in interviews and from everyone that i've talked to. Also, he's done alot out of making the best of his primitive musician skills, and knows how to produce amazing sounding albums. Okay, maybe that's Dave Fridmann, haha...but Wayne would have all these crazy ideas that would push the boundaries of musicality, which i'm all for.

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