Q: The issue we're putting together is themed "the meat thing". So I'll start out with that. Truth has a reputation as a very physical, almost retro band. What's your response?
A: Of course. As a group we definitely have an interest in physical objects. Some of it is that we've been around a while, but really even before the band formed it was becoming more and more common to think of music as information content. Instead of a record (well, a CD, God does it mark me that I still know what a vinyl record is?) you'd release straight to the 'net. There's still the issue of live performance, but for a lot of musical styles even that isn't meaningful anymore.
Q: So you're saying that the physical presence focus isn't just because of your age.
A: right. As people we're very confortable with information in the abstract. It's really more of an issue of ritual. There's a huge difference between watching a recording of a concert and actually being there. It's a difference of being part of a community. Participating in a sort of cult ceremony.
Q: and you think that's missing from the music as information movement.
A: well... No. Not exactly missing, they just find it different places. I mean, some of the groups that are most extreme in their use of information technology to make the music are also the most extremely physical in performance. Like the NetWork and their global Ritual Workings.
Q: but they don't even appear live. I mean how can they be physical if they're not even really there. The members haven't even ever met!
A: it's not the band. It's the audience. If that's the right word, even. If you've ever been to one of the Workings, it's totally out of control -- huge crowds of people all wired up together, all hearing the same big sound, surrounded by the same big screens. Its very primal, tribal in a way.
Q: But Truth is doing something different. How do you achieve ceremony?
A: Well, the concerts, or course. But we make artifacts. You can get the music by downloading it, but you can also get it as a physical thing. And the thing has a certain character because of what it is. Like the "Days of Wine and Roses" disk.
Q: That's the one that's double sided.
A: Right. there's two recordings of the music, same music but different performances. And which one you get depends on which side happens to be up in the player. You can get both versions of the data off the net, but it's not the same. If you want to find something out about a fan, look at their copy of that disk, and see, is it marked?
Q: marked?
A: yeah. Did they do something to the disk so they know which side they're going to hear, or do they let it be random? Because the disk is a real object, people have to make accomodations for it, or make it make accomodations for them. They get to choose how they interact with it.
Q: I assume you get fans coming up with all sorts of wild theories about secrets hidden in these. You chose an interesting word. "Artifacts".
A: There are some interesting people out there spending a lot of time trying to enderstand everything we put into an album, or a concert set, or whatever else. Of course, they can't spend nearly as much time at it as we spend at making them, so for every crazy idea they think of that isn't in there we've probably got two they haven't thought of that are.
Q: So you admit to secret messages in the albums? In the past the band has denied all suggestions of that sort of thing.
A: Not exactly. We've denied several specific cases where someone claimed something particularly egregious. If you look at the things that people have claimed they found, particularly in the "Focault's Pendulum" album, there are several of them that are pretty obviously in there. Trust me they aren't there accidentally. One of the major themes of that work is secrecy and hidden, arcane knowledge. It wouldn't have been true to the art if everything were right on the surface in plain sight.
Q: So that's where the mythology of Truth, the shadow organization comes from? The notion that the band is somehow connected to secret conspiracies and alien intelligences? It's there because people found hints in "Focault's Pendulum"? You have quite a reputation in that regard -- in fact I told someone who works at the magazine about this interview and he immediately asks "is it one of the human dupes, or are you interviewing the government A.I. that really writes the songs?"
A: [laughing] Right. So that would be one of the ones we'll deny publicly. Off the record, of course, as anyone who has done the proper decription algorithms on F.C. track 5 knows... well, I'd have to kill you if I told you. Anyway. Yes. We drop a few hints here and there that suggest we've got this nebulous secret life. Some of the hints are true, some are false, and it's fun for both us putting the secrets in and the people who go looking for them.