11/05/2021

Left Spine Down

Hello Left Spine Down and welcome to Brutal Resonance! Let’s start off with a basic, but fun, question. What are three of your favorite albums of all time, and why?

Kaine Delay: This is probably the most difficult to answer because I love music so much that I can never settle on favourites. Last week I found a copy of “Floating Into The Night” by Julee Cruise, David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. The second I flipped the disc around, my eyes darted to the final song “The World Spins”. I am nearly moved to tears just from hearing that song in my head. Next week I’ll probably be on social media making a track by track review of how I believe Depeche Mode’s “Violator” was all about heroin addiction. But I digress, and I’ll play along. In no particular order, my top three would have to be:

METZ, self titled. These guys I first seen at a Sub Pop block party in 2013, and they blew me away from their first note. Legend has it this album was recorded entirely on Shure SM57 microphones to evoke a saturated, claustrophobic feel. Infectious fuzzy guitar riffs, pounding drums and angst ridden vocals make this one of my favourite records of all time.

The KLF. “The White Room”. It is summer 1991. I walk into the record section of a Carrefour in France and am given money for an album I can buy on cassette. This is specifically for listening to on our flight back to Canada. I choose The White Room. As the plane taxis to take off I start the album. The wind-swept landscapes, the chanting, the MACHINE GUNS. I feel literally shaken in my seat and decide there and then it is one of the best things I will ever hear. I was 13 years old and I still believe this to be true 30 years later.

Sleaford Mods. “All That Glue”. “Blood on the hands of working class rage”. I first heard Sleaford Mods in a guest appearance on The Prodigy’s “Ibiza”. “What’s he fuckin doing?” Jason Williamson’s sneering vocals just reeled me in, compelling me to look them up. Finding their singles compilation “Chubbed Up” I immediately got into the laptop-on-a-stack-of-beer-crates sounds and beat poet rants that are the Mods. “Jolly Fucker,” “Jobseeker”, and “Fizzy” were the standout cuts for me, and this compilation is kind of an updated version of “Chubbed”. Expanded to a double LP, they were about to hit Vancouver in April 2020 to promote it. Alas, lockdown prevented me from seeing my favourite new band.

So I bought this double LP instead.

In 2011 you released “Caution” on Metropolis Records. It’s been ten years since and many fans thought that Left Spine Down was done. Was there ever a point where you thought that Left Spine Down was finished, or did you know that you would eventually make your return?

Kaine Delay: To others, it would seem as if there was a hiatus. To us, it was an ongoing saga that never left our lives. After the 2012 tour with Thrill Kill Kult, we wanted to hunker down and write a dance album. Schedule conflicts didn’t permit this, so the dance album idea was scrapped. “The Fall” began in sessions as early as 2015 with myself, Galen, Matt and Jeremy at the helm. We did a few things in the meantime (compilation appearances, remixes, and the odd live show) and by about 2016, both Matt and Jeremy wanted to move on from the group. I then began taking up guitar again, collecting offset axes and effect boxes in an attempt to write another record. Enter Adrian Black and Bill E Organ, who made their first appearance in the band for the 2018 Bowie Ball, a yearly tribute to the Thin White Duke of which we were a part of since 2016. Matt held a tribute for Chris Cornell in Vancouver (Daniel Curtis’ first gig with us) and booked us as one of the bands. He saw me up there with my red Mustang and I guess he missed us, as he was inspired to return shortly after. 2018 was a shocking year for us. It shook us all to our very core and we really had to sit back for a bit and figure out what we wanted to do. We were determined to carry on, but we also saw that our sound was changing, and wanted to signify that change somehow. Vlad had remixed Bithead for the Electronic Saviors compilation and we loved his work so much we asked him to join full time. By 2020 we decided to rebrand as The LSD. It felt appropriate to abbreviate the band name as we were turning into more of a collective.

What exactly got you amped up and reinvigorated to write new music?

Kaine Delay: Precisely, it was the music. The sounds we got back from our work isn’t always good, but what we heard recently was enough for us to say “I think we may have something here”. That’s always how it had been with us: when we hear *it*, we know it’s time to release something.

2021 sees the release of your brand new EP “The Fall”. Tell me a little bit about the single; does the title have a meaning behind it? And what are the themes of it?

Kaine Delay: “The Fall” began in 2015 and remained a demo until its completion in 2018; after playing it a couple of times live we decided it had evolved into what the kids today call a “banger”. Thematically it’s about a determination towards self destruction. We were on a path straight to hell, and survived to tell the tale. The track is bookended with sampled dialogue of which I felt very appropriate to mark our return. The remixes were done in 2020, mostly during lockdown, just trading sound files back and forth across the internet. Lost Transmissions was an EP we leaked digitally in 2021 and when it came time to release a single we felt it appropriate to include them in the CD. Bithead was written right after a Thurston Moore show in 2018. Bill and I raced back to the studio right after the gig and wrote it in one night. Lyrically it was a bit of a retrospective of the last few years of our lives. What the fuck’s going on?

The single was mastered by Chris Peterson of FLA and had some production done by the late and great Jeremy Inkel. What did these gentlemen do for the track that you could not have otherwise done?

Kaine Delay: I recently did a vocal for Damage Control, of which Peterson is a producer for their album. He felt I could be a great addition to the song “Saboteur” so I cut a vocal for it earlier this year. Around that time I was hitting a wall with “The Fall” and needed a fresh pair of ears to round it out for us, so he returned the favour. Plus he was happy to hear us making music again. “Hey everyone, LSD are back!” As he did produce “Fighting for Voltage” it seemed more than appropriate for him to come back into the fold with his sonic expertise. Jeremy provided loops and arrangements for “The Fall” when we made a demo of it in 2015; his contribution was always invaluable, and his signature sound can be heard on the recording.

Word around the street is that you have added a couple of additional members to the band. Who are they, where did you meet, and what do they do?

Kaine Delay: Adrian Black came from Amduscia; he’d fill in for Galen as a drummer at some of our shows, and contributes in various ways in the studio. He did the Amen mix of “The Fall” and plays percussion on the stage alongside Galen when possible. Daniel Curtis is from FLVRHAUS; we shared a rehearsal space for a couple years and I ended up on their record for additional guitars and backup vocals. He plays bass on stage and in studio with LSD. Bill E. Organ is a longtime supporter of the band and is now contributing as a guitarist in the group. He’s also learning how to program and arrange music digitally, which brings a fresh perspective to our sound. Vlad Potrosky of Avarice remixed Bithead for us a year or so ago (under Gunmetal Grey) and we’ve added him to the lineup ever since. He’s our new synth player/ programmer.

The cover art for “The Fall” was done in tribute to the KLF album “The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu”. Tell me how KLF influenced Left Spine Down and what they mean to you.

Kaine Delay: I’m in this semi official Facebook group on the KLF and someone shared an unused 12” mock-up for Burn The Bastards, in where they wanted to call themselves The Forever Ancient Liberation Loophole. The JAMs logo was reworked in felt pen to spell “The Fall”, which happened to be the title of our next single. So Casey and I went to work on liberating the JAMs album jacket. With both us and The KLF making a semi return to the music business in 2021, it felt stupid NOT to do it. On top of that we were reminded of Negativland’s U2 single cover and how much controversy it stirred up; we simply wanted to see if we could get away with it. And for the most part we have. As far as their influence on us, I did mention the impact The White Room had on me as a kid. Aside from that, we happen to share with them a love for situationism, chaos magick and discordian philosophy. If you dig into our back catalogue you’ll see the number 23 has haunted us from the beginning. Jimmy Cauty’s Lord of the Rings poster is also on the wall of the rehearsal space we shared with FLVRHAUS, and because I don’t believe in coincidence, I took all this as some sort of calling. We ultimately felt it hilarious that while we sound nothing like them, the cover is almost a direct ripoff of their logo.

Now, “The Fall” is releasing on Re:Mission Entertainment. Tell me about your relationship with the record label and why you decided to partner with them for this release.

Kaine Delay: We’ve had Re:Mission in our sights for a while now. Their roster is quite diverse and filled with all sorts of acts from EBM to avant garde, so we felt a fringe act like LSD would be a perfect fit. Wes has also been a fan of us for years, so when I told him we were looking for a new home, he jumped at the chance to support us on an official capacity. So far we’re quite happy with it, and we hope to get more releases on the label in the near future.

The liner notes for “The Fall” contains instructions on how to remaster the tracks for vinyl and how to press your own copy. Through this, we get some of your thoughts on piracy, but I’d like to hear it directly from you. Why did you decide to include this information?

Kaine Delay: The initial idea was to release a 12” single. But since there’s a worldwide shortage on materials to produce records, prices have gone way up, and it now comes with an eight month turnover time. So we decided to encourage our audience to make their own. Vlad wanted us to include shredded record shards but we found that would be a little too costly to ship out.

There are rumors that Left Spine Down might be making a comeback with a full-length album sometime soon. Can you comment on this or give any information out?

Kaine Delay: There’s a concept album in the making. It’s been in the works since late 2019/early 2020. Conceptually it’s going to be very reflective of what’s been going on in the world lately. Because we’re indecisive, we have yet to settle on a title. “God Bless America” is one, another is “All We Do In Hell is Play DDR With Jeff Bezos”. “George Soros Riot Dance Squad” is a third, however that just might evolve into a side project. The sound so far is leaning towards cyber metal, which is somewhat new territory for us.

Lastly, I’d like to thank you for your time. I wish you the best of luck with “The Fall”, and leave the space below for you to mention anything I may have missed. Cheers!

Kaine Delay: Most people don’t realize that two large pieces of coral which are painted brown and attached to the skull with common wood screws can make a child look like a deer. Thanks for having us! All the best.