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kETvECTOR

Bennett: The heart of The Infinite Regress, both conceptually and musically, can be seen as rooted in the ideas of quantum physics and 'quantum psychology.' For me, the essence of improvisation lies in letting go and allowing certain ideas to take hold and manifest themselves without being forced. Quantum theories have always influenced me, and experimental/improvisational music seems like a perfect opportunity to let those concepts show themselves. This album was about letting the songs decide for themselves where they wanted to go, and then us doing our best to help them get there. I met Stefano Rossello in Bologna shortly after I relocated there; I was doing a guest DJ set, and he was a resident DJ. Shortly thereafter, I joined his band :Bahntier//, and while working with him on the production of Blindoom we discovered we had a lot of similar musical pieces that we were saving to use for some future hypothetical project. When I told him about my idea for kETvECTOR, he became a driving force to push me to make it happen. I took charge of the production and direction of the album, and he provided a key amount of source material during the initial recordings and improvisations, and continued as a valuable resource for critiquing the work as it came along.

You're very well-known as a drummer, having played for groups like Skinny Puppy for a number of years. How does your background as a drummer play into the rhythms you've created on The Infinite Regress? How much of the percussion on the album is acoustic to some degree, as opposed to programmed?

Bennett: One of the main concepts behind the project from the beginning was to use percussion and drumming to create the foundations, both rhythmically and sonically, of the songs. This was an aspect that I heard behind the songs of Skinny Puppy which I feel plays a major role in the impact of their music, and they have always been a big influence on me. So the idea was to bring this element of human acoustic interaction into the modern electronic studio paradigm, at least more so then it usually seems nowadays, and to let it have a driving force in the development of the songs, rather then to just act as a dressing. All of the songs were born out of improvisations that were initially played in real time, whether it was me playing on a MIDI drum kit or MIDI hand drums or me actually playing the acoustic drum kit (often with Stefano playing along on bass guitar). We then did additional improvisational passes using electronics, analog and digital keyboards, drum machines, software, and of course other various experiments in sound recording, generation, and design. All the way to the production and post-production stages, we tried to let the songs decide for themselves where they wanted to go – which parts wanted to stay, which wanted to go, which wanted to change, etc. It can be quite refreshing to steer clear of preconceived notions and avoid trying to force anything

Musically speaking, you also have a pretty strong background in more experimental and ambient material, like your production work in EXP and The Implicate Order. Do you prefer the drumming side of things or the more electronic side of things? On a similar note, do you prefer playing live or working in the studio?

Bennett: I wouldn't say I prefer one over the other, as by choice I spend equal amounts of time doing both. I have the kind of disposition that freaks out with too much repetition of anything! I need both to bounce back and forth between. Acoustic live drumming seems probably more 'endangered' or rare nowadays. I like to think that everyone has raw artistic talent in them; it isn't something gifted to a chosen few, and technology is helping people realize that. Pretty much anyone at home now can make music, make a movie, make visual art – and all with a minimum of effort or time put into developing a skill. I see it as a positive thing, because I think the awareness of the artist in each of us helps in a shift in consciousness, which seems like something the world really needs, and in the end it could make more archaic 'tribal' arts like drumming more unique, as there is no shortcut, in the form of an application or plug-in, to developing the know-how, physical dexterity, and muscle memory that goes into playing a traditional instrument.

Will you be taking kETvECTOR live at some point?

Bennett: I would certainly like to; it's just a matter of timing and scheduling. I would love to try to incorporate the same kind of ideas into a performance of the material, or at least interpretations of the material, so it would be something we couldn't take lightly. We're looking at next year, along with a new kEtvECTOR release, to put the time into creating a show that would be rewarding to do, and hopefully worth going to see!

A number of the songs on The Infinite Regress seem inspired by the novels of Robert Anton Wilson; 'Markoff Chaney' is a character in the Illuminatus! Trilogy, which also seems to have inspired the title for 'Immanentize the Eschaton,' and 'E-Prime' is named for a linguistic syntax that was a big influence on Wilson. How have Wilson's ideas influences your own creative endeavors, and how, if at all, do those ideas connect with kETvECTOR's music?

Bennett: I actually see the album as kind of a personal farewell to him. I am a huge fan of his works, but even more so the ideas in them, and they have always inspired me. He died in early 2007, which prompted me to re-read a number of his books. Later in the year, when the kETvECTOR idea was developing, I felt inclined to incorporate concepts from his work into the project as a signpost of its impact on me. I've even done my best to use e-prime in my responses to this interview!

Apart from recently releasing The Infinite Regress, what are your future plans for the kETvECTOR project? What other projects are you currently involved with?

Bennett: This year I've been focusing on the new :Bahntier// album, which we actually just finished, so that will be out in October as well as The American Memory Project, which is a film and music endeavor with the director and guitarist William Morrison. We've finished the soundtrack, which is now in the post-production stage, and the video is not far behind. We hope to be doing live performances of the music during showings of the film in the near future. A trailer is online at the Web site: www.americanmemory.net.

Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to share with your fans?

Bennett: Don't see the fnords!