Fans of drones and gloomy ambient textures will undoubtedly have one or a few Thisquietarmy releases in their collection. Well, at least they should have. Since the act started, Eric has been touring all over the world, recorded music for numerous labels, including Consouling Sounds and Denovali. Loads of cooperations, most notably one with Aidan Baker in Hypnodrone Ensemble and his solo work gained him a solid reputation over the years, you know, the reputation where you eventually end up as a reference in reviews for other acts. But where do all those drones come from? Who inspired Eric Quach to become Thisquietarmy? Here are his Songs With Stories.
U2 - Alex descends into hell for a bottle of milk/Korova 1
1991's Achtung Baby is one of my favorite albums of all time. It represents U2 at its creative peak when they took the decision to move and record in Berlin shortly after the fall of the wall - rediscovering themselves as a band, breaking out of their 80's signature mold, re-inventing their sound, their persona & their image as a way of surviving their decade-plus long career at that point. Granted, everything went way downhill from there and this band is now the worst band in the world in all aspects (so please keep in mind that this influence is purely period-based), but still it took balls to make such a tremendous shift into the 90's and it's a model that I try to follow to a degree, with every new releases. At that time, nothing sounded like them - Guns N' Roses had released their epic Use Your Illusions stadium albums, at war with Metallica's Black one, the American Nirvanas, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden grunge bands were starting to appear left & right from Seattle, shoegaze only existed in a scene so small that it was celebrating itself and soon to be eclipsed by the whole Oasis/Blur britpop war thing. Yeah, it was an exciting time actually.
But the point is that behind all this, U2 also released a bunch of b-sides including one to The Fly's, an instrumental industrial-inspired and a score to a theatrical production of Stanley Kubrick's clockwork orange. Secretly, this track greatly inspired the industrial side of TQA some 10 years ago, with the track Warchitects off my debut album Unconquered.
But the point is that behind all this, U2 also released a bunch of b-sides including one to The Fly's, an instrumental industrial-inspired and a score to a theatrical production of Stanley Kubrick's clockwork orange. Secretly, this track greatly inspired the industrial side of TQA some 10 years ago, with the track Warchitects off my debut album Unconquered.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Moya
In the mid-late 90s, I had this thing online called open-diary: a journal where you would publicly write your thoughts anonymously via a fictive handle/username (something we totally forgot about with Facebook, yeah?). In my entry, I was talking about how all commercial music and all songs sounded the same and how nothing sounded fresh anymore, that vocals were getting on my nerves and why didn't songs exist more as long forms with cinematic aspects such as in film scores (I probably just discovered Philip Glass' Koyaanisqatsi at that point too). A local friend of a friend (who didn't know I knew who she was, just a detail...) commented that I should check out Godspeed You! Black Emperor who had just opened for Sonic Youth in Montreal. And she was right (thank you 4ever MHS!). On that hunch, I bought Slow Riot EP at HMV's which changed my life for good, opened doors to this realm of free, unconstrained, experimental, creative & emotional music that I was searching for a long time - first through the Constellation catalog: Fly Pan Am, Do Make Say Think, Exhaust, etc. but also by following a GYBE yahoo groups where I discovered, with the help of Soulseek (FU Lars), many great bands such as Mogwai, Tarentel, Slint, Rachels', Sigur Ros, Boards of Canada, Dirty Three, Arab Strap & a lot more. I still listen to all those CDs in my car. And I ended up seeing Godspeed about 22 times to this day, and the whole universe of underground shows with the same type of philosophy had opened up as well. Travelling to New York to see a late show by Mono & Maserati at the defunct Tonic playing in front of less than 10 people or watching Explosions in the Sky play in front of 20 people at Casa Del Popolo in the early 00's seem pretty unreal today. It was also around those early live concert experiences that I had the desire to pick up the guitar and make music, but I'm pretty sure I didn't have this grand master plan for touring the world just yet & making a living by sometimes still playing in front of that many (little) people - it was really just about expressing yourself and undoing this whole myth of having to be extroverted to be creative, to be on a stage and performing in front of people. My first band Destroyalldreamers actually became quite a serious hobby as we released a couple of (some would say) "cult" albums and played many local shows, but it just ended being too dysfunctional to get anywhere further than that. Though no regrets: playing in a band was the best music teacher I could ever find.
In the mid-late 90s, I had this thing online called open-diary: a journal where you would publicly write your thoughts anonymously via a fictive handle/username (something we totally forgot about with Facebook, yeah?). In my entry, I was talking about how all commercial music and all songs sounded the same and how nothing sounded fresh anymore, that vocals were getting on my nerves and why didn't songs exist more as long forms with cinematic aspects such as in film scores (I probably just discovered Philip Glass' Koyaanisqatsi at that point too). A local friend of a friend (who didn't know I knew who she was, just a detail...) commented that I should check out Godspeed You! Black Emperor who had just opened for Sonic Youth in Montreal. And she was right (thank you 4ever MHS!). On that hunch, I bought Slow Riot EP at HMV's which changed my life for good, opened doors to this realm of free, unconstrained, experimental, creative & emotional music that I was searching for a long time - first through the Constellation catalog: Fly Pan Am, Do Make Say Think, Exhaust, etc. but also by following a GYBE yahoo groups where I discovered, with the help of Soulseek (FU Lars), many great bands such as Mogwai, Tarentel, Slint, Rachels', Sigur Ros, Boards of Canada, Dirty Three, Arab Strap & a lot more. I still listen to all those CDs in my car. And I ended up seeing Godspeed about 22 times to this day, and the whole universe of underground shows with the same type of philosophy had opened up as well. Travelling to New York to see a late show by Mono & Maserati at the defunct Tonic playing in front of less than 10 people or watching Explosions in the Sky play in front of 20 people at Casa Del Popolo in the early 00's seem pretty unreal today. It was also around those early live concert experiences that I had the desire to pick up the guitar and make music, but I'm pretty sure I didn't have this grand master plan for touring the world just yet & making a living by sometimes still playing in front of that many (little) people - it was really just about expressing yourself and undoing this whole myth of having to be extroverted to be creative, to be on a stage and performing in front of people. My first band Destroyalldreamers actually became quite a serious hobby as we released a couple of (some would say) "cult" albums and played many local shows, but it just ended being too dysfunctional to get anywhere further than that. Though no regrets: playing in a band was the best music teacher I could ever find.
lovesliescrushing - baby's breath
I met Destroyalldreamers' drummer on that GYBE yahoo group actually. Before we started the band, he would pass along quite a few records that I've never heard of in the ambient/shoegaze realm, including MBV, Bowery Electric, Flying Saucer Attack, Slowdive, etc. Though, the one band that really threw me a curveball was lovesliescrushing: a drumless lofi wash tapestry of shimmering ethereal sounds with an angelic voice floating on top - the guitar was so processed that the original signal had disappeared completely; Scott Cortez actually described his guitar simply as a tone generator (as opposed to an instrument). Between all the shoegaze techniques to make your guitar not sound like a guitar, LLC's was the most extreme to me. By checking similar bands' set up online and combining my own extensive research on various guitar forums was how my early obsession began, notably with the hunt of discontinued lo-fi pedals & unit that I still use for current TQA albums & live performances to this day - such as the Boss PS-2 & PS-3 delay/pitchshifters, Digitech Echo Plus PDS8000 & PDS 20/20 Multiplay, Alesis microverbs/quadraverbs, etc. Both decisions to write Destroyalldreamers & thisquietarmy in one word are secretly an homage to lovesliescrushing. As if that wasn't enough, collaborating with LLC's Scott Cortez on Meridians LP & releasing LLC's Glinter on thisquietarmy Records were quite astonishing accomplishments for myself.
Set Fire to Flames' - Steal Compass / Tarentel - Adonai
Both these tracks are important to me because they are of repetitive, minimalist nature, yet played by several people and they were used as early inspirations in the way I would first compose tracks with thisquietarmy since I often use loop-sample pedals to play a phrase and repeat it, and then trying to transform it into something else by overdubbing layers, making the original track disappear completely. In a way, my very first sketches do sound a lot like those tracks in structure and progression, except that they're strictly loop-based, as I'm adding everything by myself while playing in time with my duplicated self who played that last riff a few seconds offset in the same space dimension of the temporal past. This can be heard on the first track of the first EP, A Hammer Parade Falls From The Sky.
To an extend, I would even add Slowdive's Rutti & most of Pygmalion in that same category of tracks that influenced early TQA as I wanted it to be a sparse less is more ambient project. Naturally, I slowly got bored of this aesthetic and trying to sound like something that already exist never worked for me. Instead, my emotions took over in the sense that as I would figure things along, I would keep pouring more and more of how my "feelings" into the compositions and went on to use different techniques of composition and live performances which ended up as an over-saturated "more is more" projected intensity of what goes on inside of my mind, that is rather closer to being inspired by Swans, but I digress (I just didn't want to pick a song by Swans).
To an extend, I would even add Slowdive's Rutti & most of Pygmalion in that same category of tracks that influenced early TQA as I wanted it to be a sparse less is more ambient project. Naturally, I slowly got bored of this aesthetic and trying to sound like something that already exist never worked for me. Instead, my emotions took over in the sense that as I would figure things along, I would keep pouring more and more of how my "feelings" into the compositions and went on to use different techniques of composition and live performances which ended up as an over-saturated "more is more" projected intensity of what goes on inside of my mind, that is rather closer to being inspired by Swans, but I digress (I just didn't want to pick a song by Swans).
Joy Division - New Dawn Fades​
Aside from the new wave/goth/post-punk aesthetics that I was brought up with listening to Depeche Mode, New Order, The Smiths & The Cure from my sister's tape collection - to me, JD has also a lot of similarities to krautrock, drone and techno (to a stretched extent) in its Martin Hannett drum & bass production mojo: the cold motorik repetitiveness & the elemental separation and opened up space which allows to add tons of guitar or synth atmosphere in between it all. It was actually with the release of 1995's Permanent (then to 1988's Substance) that I started to get into them. Moreso, the mix of raw punk and goth overtones, the bass hooks & melodies created this kind of unique brand of gloomy doomy atmospheric rock that you could hear in TQA as "heavy metal, like a burden or an oath" (directly quoted from a comment on last.fm some 5 years ago, which made me understand the true relation that metal people have with my music) type of feelings and tones. This was somehow proven when I was recording the track The Black Sea, and noticed that the chord progression was in fact a transposed & slowed down New Dawn Fades.
