Adam Sherburne: On our first record we didn't know much about the studio, and on our second things started to come together really well. [Jack Dangers] was able to come out for a few weeks after we'd finished the album and he just threw ideas, a beat here, a sample there, and helped us mix it with his ears. He taught our tech guy Mark [Pistel] a lot about how to use a studio. Yesterday they were off mixing an MC 900ft Jesus song, Mark did the whole mix himself and Jack just said "Good Work", he was following orders perfectly.
[Previous to Consolidated]
We all played in various bands in the San Francisco area, and they all met with varying degrees of Spinal Tap like exploitation, industry contradiction. We just wanted to try something new and try to make music that we could deal with more in terms of feeling dignified about being musicians in an industry that is in our opinion totally exploitative. We haven't found a way to do that yet, we're still working on it.
[From my previous band Until December] there is only a few elements that were changed to make that drastic a difference, you just stop prioritising career and profit, and selfish interests, drugs, and going through the machinery. And try and make music on a level where you prioritise each others needs instead of career, career. . .
AS: I think what we were trying to come up with, if we had a comprehensive attack or concept that we wanted to start with was that one of the more analytical critiques of Western society was that we live under fascism. Bertram Gross was one of the primary inspirations for us to view it in that way, and the positive prong would be the understanding of the potential for unity of oppression.
So that's what we put together on Friendly Fascism, then after it was done Bert was very interested in participating with us and he said "I'd like to submit something". Phil went over to his house one day and they worked on it. And that's his ideas and our ideas and they merged somewhat.
PS: Originally he said "Get out of the rat race", we changed that to "Get out of the night clubs".
AS: We're just telling people that they needn't feel that, personally and politically they are going to change anything in a night club, we are not encouraging people to stop listening to music, we're just trying to encourage people to stop being so completely obsessed with pop culture that they are just brain-washed by everything that they see. And they are unable to formulate any kind of individual opinion because they are so ground up by amusement.
PS: Most bands would say that our crowd reaction is not typical, we are alienating a lot of our fans every night. A lot of the men that come to see us get very upset you can see them walk away, they'll probably return their albums.
We're successful if when we leave that stage everybody is talking about whatever issue we raised that night. Whether it is racism, sexism, homophobia, men and their dicks, the treatment of animals, slam dancing, whatever. In some ways it's really bad because we alienate everyone from an issue or we bring everyone in on an issue, it's good and bad.
AS: There is always a contingent every night, who say "we came here to fucking dance and we don't want to hear what you have to say".
PS: We just went through a really wierd thing in this country, and that's people who accepted the brainwashing, accepted the propaganda, accepted the war. And when they come to see a Consolidated show they are seeing all that contradiction come back up again. And they cannot deal with seeing their president who they believe in being compared to Hitler visually. Even if it is done with a sense of humour. If we come on stage as Tom Selleck, they can't deal with that. They get upset, they come up and try to kick us, yell at us, Tell us that we have destroyed everything that they hold dear about their president, their country. . .
AS: And Industrial Music.
Philip Steir: Consolidated are speaking from the position of being privilaged people in society, white males that don't know what it's like to be oppressed, to grow up where you have to fight your way to school everyday, where your teachers are so underpaid that they are crack addicts too. We don't know what that is like, so how can we talk about the US and Oppression? We are trying to talk from the position of being the oppressors, trying to get over that mindset, where we come from.
AS: We made a video for MTV of the song Unity of Oppression of course we tried to isolate all the different forms of oppression; sexual oppression, homosexual discrimination, and class discrimination. They've seen all that, but they won't let Phil edit in a corrosponding amount of depictions of when people endorse, or contribute to, the oppression of animals.
PS: It's a wierd thing, people want that to stay secet in society. They don't want you to see young men grabbing a bunch of rabbits and clubbing them on the head for sport; that shows a lot about what we are as people.
AS: It's so wierd that people refuse to admit the correlation between different forms of oppression, they are so paranoid that they are never going to have any impact in irradicating the form of oppression that they have been singularly fighting against.
AS: People say "Why don't you write a song about Russia and the sort of Tyranny over there and how it's so much greater than over here"? I tell them those points are apparent to us but we only have seventy minutes on a record and we try to at least view things that are in the scope of our own experience, we're just not going to be equal to the task of making a huge comprehensive historical analysis of all forms of tyranny. We just wanna make it clear that for all the reaffirmation that we get in the media, and through government manipulation of the public to the effect that Capitalism is Democracy, we'll be there to reaffirm for everyone who questions that by saying that Capitalism has nothing to do with Democracy, nor does Communism as it has evolved.
AS: I believe in the principal of Democratic Socialism. Capitalism is bullshit that has destroyed our potential impact as musicians, has destroyed our ability to have jobs, to have lives, and then still play music based on it. We have had to become either unemployable people working 60 hours a week for nothing, can't pay our bills, and then abandon that and become full time entertainers. Who wants to make music based on the life of just travelling around playing shows everyday. It's not really an existance, it's sort of supposed to be a reflection of an existance.
Does that make any sense?
AS: America is based on censorship of expression, that has been around ever since the constitution was signed, there has been all kinds of institutionalised forms of censorship of expression, and that's bogus. We also try to point out that the media bringing up that topic is a huge smokescreen for much larger forms of censorship; censorship of housing, healthcare, education, women's rights to do what they want with their own body, much larger forms of censorship that we have to deal with in America.
AS: We were [at the New Music Seminar] last year. It's a joke, but it was a learning experience definately, to witness what a large scale corporate self congratulation it is.
PS: One guy had the nerve to get up to us and say "Industrial music is fascism and if you don't like it then play some other type of music".
AS: One guy came up to me and said "I really like you guys, I've got both your records, but I don't agree with barely anything you say". So I go, what is your favourite band?, he says "Well I like Revco." So I ask him, what do they say? He goes " Uhhh" and walks away. We're saying something, and they can understand it, and that scares them.
Consolidated's last release was the dance-floor epic This is Fascism. However, Mark Pistel has been a very busy guy recently, working on the Dangers remix of MC900 Foot Jesus' The City Sleeps.
In addition to that, the band are friends of Mike Ferranti of Beatnigs and Hiphoprisy fame. If you are into the likes of Consolidated then I would definately say check out the new Hiphoprisy album which is destined to be a classic. On the album, as well as remixes of their two earlier releases: Television & Famous and Dandy are such classic tracks as Music & Politics, California Uber Alles and more. Hiphoprisy ranges from the metallic Beatnigs style to almost PE style rap and are as politically correct as you would hope to find.