Portland multi-instrumentalists Dragging an Ox Through Water and Ghost to Falco make enveloping, hard-to-categorize music. Dragging an Ox Through Water (Brian Mumford) colors his folky jams with circuit-bent flourishes from tweaked oscillators and light-dependent resistors.
Historically, Ghost to Falco (Eric Crespo) has played his eclectic, Elverum-esque compositions solo, but for his show at The Den, he’ll be joined by Ryne Warner (of Castanets) and Aan’s Bud Wilson. I sought out these two friends and co-founders of the DIY imprint Infinite Front for a joint interview.
WEEKLY VOLCANO: How long have you guys known each other, and how did you meet?
ERIC CRESPO: I think the first time we ever really hung out was in the summer of 2006. Brian was living in Brooklyn at the time and I was hanging out there and playing shows for two weeks or so, and I stayed with Brian a few nights. He lived in this very narrow little room in some no-man’s-land section of Brooklyn and he slept on an air mattress that would slowly deflate every night. I slept in the stretch of floor between the air mattress and the wall, on a bed made from dirty clothes.
BRIAN MUMFORD: Sunset Park!
VOLCANO: You both have a very similar approach, where you’re deliberately blurring genre lines but still have a basis in folk or Americana. Do you think the Northwest as a whole is an especially good place for incubating these kinds of far-out-but-simultaneously-grounded sounds?
MUMFORD: I think that a lot of people in the Northwest or “Cascadia” region have reflected a general awareness that the situation in our civilization (advanced capitalism, skyrocketing inequality, wars of aggression, general poisoning of the environment, social alienation and xenophobia, etc.) is untenable. The problem is that there is a lot of systematic obfuscation of facts and narrowing of possibilities in the dialogue that goes on in our culture regarding what alternatives are available and what forms our alienation seems to be taking. I kind of think that this situation leads to a natural inclination toward taking stock of what seems to be fundamental or “grounded,” then trying to free-associate out of the hypnosis, accounting for the “far-out” elements. I definitely think that the Northwest has a history of interest in that kind of activity (Mike L’astra’s “Northwest Passage” documentary, Raymond Carver’s staring-into-the-nothing writing, Emily Carr’s loner paintings) and a penchant for seeking to make it engaging and approachable in some sense without having it turn into an advertising spectacle.
CRESPO: I like the idea that what Brian and I are a part of might be bigger than the music that we’re making individually, that we’re perhaps part of the population that is searching for a new way of approaching everything. I think this new way definitely involves using ancient or primitive methods and adapting them to what we’re dealing with in modern day society. I’d like to think our music is an extension of this idea.
VOLCANO: Have either of you had any difficulty with people responding to the off-kilter nature of your music when you venture outside of the Pacific Northwest, to places where there might be less of an established weirdo-artsy community?
MUMFORD: Even in Portland there’s a limited audience for it. There might generally be a little more interest or tolerance here than other places, but a lot of that could also be just because I tend to play here way more frequently than I play other places. … Pretty much everywhere, though, it’s a small percentage of people who want to experience this kind of take on music. … It’s worth mentioning that even though sometimes the music has some pretty punishing elements, the intent is not to turn people off.
VOLCANO: Big question, I know: Where does your inspiration come from?
CRESPO: Everything I ever come into contact with. Either as a reaction against it or a striving to live up to it or somewhere in between.
MUMFORD: Situationist thinking (as reality not artifact), music, Nueva canción, Nir Rosen, Glenn Greenwald, Víctor Jara, Elizabeth Warren, CRASS, Pauline Oliveras, Public Enemy, Violeta Parra, Wikileaks’ recent successes in the leveraging of transparency against U.S. aggression, abject comedy, Democracy Now!, my friends and co-musicians in PDX and elsewhere.
VOLCANO: I’ve read explanations for where Brian’s band’s name comes from, but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the origin of “Ghost to Falco.” Why did you choose that as your moniker, Eric?
CRESPO: It’s something my grandpa used to say when it was time to go to bed. He died many years ago and I never found out what it meant.
VOLCANO: Anything special planned for your show at The Den?
CRESPO: I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s gonna be sexy.
MUMFORD: Back to the stone age.