Since the mid-90s Brian Case released numerous albums as part of the band 90 Day Men with Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (aka Lichens) among others, before in 2008 forming Disappears with Graeme Gibson (who was succeeded by Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley). Case also stood out as part of the duo Acteurs, released by the grandiose London label Public Information. In 2016 Case also stepped out as a solo artist: his debut album Tense Nature was released by Hands In The Dark and Negative Days. This month he returns to the French label with his third album called Plays Paradise Artificial.

These recent projects are characterized by an unparalleled vehemence: the oft-repeated tracks—from Disappears, Acteurs, and on Tense Nature—are reduced to the max, yet fraught with tension. With seemingly simple elements Case’s sound—on tracks so uncomfortable as to almost annoy—burrows its way into the listener’s head. And still one wants to, must listen. The bare spaces Case is able to construct in his compositions open gradually to the listener, Case deftly guiding them through—cliffhanger à gogo.

Case played at Südpol Lucerne in late 2016. Before video-projection of a stone that seemed to move impetuously and jerkily around, he manipulated a small arsenal of instrument and occasionally spoke a few words monotonously into the mic. After the concert Remo Bitzi spoke with the American musician for zweikommasieben.

Remo Bitzi I wanted to talk about two things mainly—the first is tension, the second space. With your solo album it became very obvious—the word tension is in the title, sure, but there’s also the structure of the tracks. And some kind of tension has been there in all of your recent work. So, I wondered where this tension is coming from—are there reference points?

Brian Case Yeah, the city I live in is very tense.

RB That’s Chicago?

BC Right. It’s violent, there’s always tension. There’s this feeling—you don’t have to embrace it but you have to be aware of it.

RB In what way?

BC You just have to be aware, you know that it’s there. And musically I think it’s important to be aware of what you’re doing, and not just do it. Obviously you need tension, so there is some kind of release. And you can either focus on one or the other but how you deal with the two of them is much more interesting, I think.

RB In your work—especially with Acteurs—there’s just tension, and hardly any release. The same goes for your performance tonight. For example, I just wanted to take that stone [from the projection] and smash everything…

BC Yeah. Even the video is replaying—it’s meditative but there’s also tension. It’s totally up to the individual what it is. It’s either a loop that you know is coming—you can perceive it, you know how to accept it—or it’s just the same thing and it drives you crazy. The music follows that.

RB You say in your city there’s a lot of tension. Is there some release at all?

BC I feel there is release. But I don’t know if everybody does…  I feel you get things to a certain point and angle and then they come back as something else; that’s some kind of release. But the release is still sort of tense, too. It’s more clarity than release. You just focus on one thing instead of a few things and that’s sort of a release, even if it has an edge on it.

RB Can you give an example?

BC It’s like a song on the record called “Pattern 1”—it’s mostly just drums that I’m effecting. The beat is very tense and then I slowly bring in some sound. The release is when it’s still the same pattern but it has this high note in it [imitating the note]. And that, after listening to it for a while, becomes a tense thing, even though once it was introduced it was a release.

RB Speaking of the city, can you get more specific? Tension would be the constant notion of violence, and the release would be violence occurring?

BC No, I think the release is acceptance; the release is knowing. It’s not always the actualization or the presentation. You can sit in this thing and be on edge and afraid and tense or whatever, but admitting that you recognize why that happens is sort of a release. A true no-release would be: I am in a state and I don’t know why and I can’t get out of it. But knowing why it’s happening is a different thing. You can pinpoint it; you can address it. It doesn’t alleviate that tension, but if you can put a face or name to it—you know, when you can call it out—it gives you a space to process.

RB Alright, so it’s this kind of double negation. It’s not either or…

BC Yeah, it’s a combination.

RB Today a new president was elected in America. This will make it much harder to think that way, doesn’t it?

BC Yes. Because the person that was elected president is very openly misogynistic and racist, so it almost makes that line harder. It’s difficult… Race in the United States is so bad—there is tension and there are so many issues that… It’s just so tense all the time and now the person the country elected is so on one side of the spectrum that it’s just scary. You can find yourself in a situation you wouldn’t be in because of how you look and because someone assumes something about you they don’t know. It’s just scary.

RB Alright, let’s leave that for the moment and talk about tension and release in the arts: the statue of Laocoön and His Sons is spot on, I’d suggest.

BC Yeah yeah.

RB Are there other pieces you can think of?

BC There is this painting… You can look at it in so many different ways. And I think that’s the most interesting thing, because it’s intentionally minimal and striped down and very basic. When I play a show like tonight, it’s a rock show and there are people who want to dance and have fun. So when I go up on stage and do what I do, there are decisions to make. Is the audience going to look at my performance as something else? What’s their perception? That’s the interesting question. If you have a urinal in a bathroom it’s something you piss in and don’t think about it. You put the same urinal in a museum it becomes something else. So you can ask yourself what makes people reevaluate something. That’s interesting to me. To me music is art, but for a lot of people it’s entertainment. I totally get that, too; it’s different for everyone. And that’s interesting—and it’s also frustrating. It is what it is. You can either do it or not; it’s up to you. There are nights I am feeling uncomfortable and there are nights where I feel it works. If I did this in a small gallery space with everybody being quiet, expecting something avant or out there, the perception would be totally different than if you get in front of a bunch of people who have been drinking for four hours and are ready to just be overcome. Something like I do can overcome you, but how you let that happen is so different to when you have no choice—when a band plays and just controls the room.

RB Something else: last summer I had the idea to make a book—and you’ve got to know first that I am not a choleric person, but I’d like to be one sometimes, to just get angry because of nothing and let it out—so the idea was to make a book on how to become a choleric person. And when I saw you play I just wanted to take that stone and destroy something. The music somehow sounds like that; it sounds kind of passive aggressive.

BC Sure.

RB You’d agree?

BC It’s just a perception. It’s not intentionally passive aggressive, it’s completely honest. It’s also like a painting or a sculpture: you can see something and be offended or confused. Once you put it out there it’s not yours anymore. It becomes someone else’s and it depends on how they see it…

RB It’s funny, we just wrote more or less exactly that into the editorial of our next issue [see zweikommasieben #14].

BC Yeah, you have to accept that there are different ideas about what you’re doing. I have this history with rock music. Even though more or less all the bands I’ve been with have been experimental, you still can see what’s happening. Whereas now you don’t know what’s happening, so you question it. I just have to keep moving. If you stay in the same place it’s not interesting. And if you don’t have any new experience then you’re just giving the same thing to people all the time and that’s… I mean some people love that—like “I love the Ramones or AC/DC,” awesome! But I can’t just keep doing the same thing because that’s not satisfying for me. I want progress and change. Even if the people don’t like it as much, I don’t care. So I have to put myself out there. That’s my job as an artist. I can’t decide if what I do is good or acceptable—other people will ultimately make that decision.

RB Alright. Let’s go on: the other thing I wanted to talk about is space. Again, with your solo album it became quite apparent that space is key to your work. And I wondered how you go about that—is it an abstract concept of space you’re exploring or is it pretty hands-on?

BC Yeah, it definitely is about space… and patience. But it’s very different when you make a record and when you play live. I can’t play that record in a setting like tonight, because it would just be background noise and nobody would care. You have to adapt to the situation and try to incorporate some of the same things. You try to make space, but you try to use a room or the volume or oddness…

RB And when composing: how do you deal with space?

BC It’s a lot of exploration; it’s getting small things together—like a puzzle. Because the record is not like rock song after rock song after rock song. How do you organize your ideas into this thing that makes a complete picture—how does that work? It’s just like writing a song: you have all those parts and these things you want to happen and these moods and you have to put the pieces into place so that it makes sense. It’s the same thing with this—just way different because it is more naked. It’s more abstract.

RB What’s first when you produce music? Do you work within a machine or within a PA?

BC All the samples I used on this last record were made with guitars. There are some drum machines too, but I would just set up a weird guitar chain and play and get something going and then start recording it. Then I would cut that recording really randomly so that something else would be going on. It’s always different. The idea is not to write something and then record it; the idea is to have this new thing that you weren’t expecting or planning. One of the ideas for this record was locked-grooves. It’s one thing but it never makes sense; it’s always imperfect. I like that. And yeah, it’s recoding something you think you know or that you plan and then cutting it in a way that it becomes something new. It’s unexpected. To me the imperfect part is the interesting thing—the human element. This machine’s doing something but it’s not right. And I think that’s a big part of the thing I want to do, but also the way I see art and music and all that stuff. The imperfection is the personal thing. That’s what the people really gravitate to. I mean people love techno music and that’s completely perfect at all times. [Laughs] For me a singer that can’t sing that well—Neil Young for example, he’s not a great singer, but he got awesome lyrics and you believe everything he sings. And his guitar playing is not awesome, but it’s so fucking good. A one-string guitar solo can say so much more than anything Van Halen ever said in their fifty-year career. You know what I mean?

This year Case returns to the French record label Hands In The Dark with his second solo-album Plays Paradise Artificial, which will be released on June 22nd.