Wyrd Question Daze

Wyrd Question Daze: Philippe Gerber and Mark Harris

Posted on by Leigh Wright

Where did you come from and where are you going?

Mark: I was born in Birmingham UK – even as a kid I was fascinated by experimental / electronic music – as a teen at school in the late 70’s and art college in the early 80’s my buddies were all listening to chart music, or Led Zeppelin et al. whilst I was listening to Stockhausen, Brian Eno, Free Jazz, Krautrock and Motorik. I would spend hours recording radio static and speeding it up slowing it down on reel to real tape recorders and messing about with oscillators experimenting with sound – I guess what I’m doing now is just an extension of what I was doing all those years ago.

As for where I’m going? Never had a clue where I’m going, I just follow anything that I get the ‘hmmmm that’s interesting’ vibe from and go with that.

Philippe: I was born in France, but I have German roots from my father’s side and Asian/African ones from my mother. (she is from La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.) I think my love of music/sounds was born from being raised as a CODA child. I started listening to stuff like Depeche Mode, Prince, The Cure from an early age, as well as heavier stuff like Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, etc. I started playing guitar from an early age and I never stopped since. I’ll be into music until the day I die! I want to keep pushing the boundaries of my music and I’m hoping to play more live shows in the near future.

What preoccupies your mind these days?

Mark: As I’m your average Anarcho-Communist leftist, the appalling state of the world at the moment. Apart from that I’m fascinated by the creative possibilities of new technology, AI in particular – the human interaction with these technologies could potentially open up whole new vistas of creativity to explore.

Under lockdown I’ve started experimenting more with MIDI programming using multiple chains of probability gates to create endless generative music I’ve put some examples up on my SoundCloud site particularly the ‘Staring at the Sun‘ series – https://soundcloud.com/mark-harris

Philippe: I’m becoming a real misanthrope – it doesn’t worry me too much to become one. It just shows how I’m feeling less and less in touch with humanity. I think it’s happening to more people since COVID. Being a long-term nihilist, I’d say I’m heading into the right direction haha. The only thing that could preoccupy me is to not be able to be creative on a daily basis. I need to play and record music all the time, it’s the only thing I really want to do in his world.

Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell

Mark: Taste – this is a weird one… ‘Bloaters’ which is a dry smoked herring which used to be common along the Norfolk coast (the East Of the UK) where I spent a lot of time as a kid – almost impossible to track down these days but the taste sends me right back

Touch – Snow / Sound – Sea / Sight – As a kid I would set for hours watching clouds develop and change / Smell – Fresh ground coffee.

Philippe: Favourite taste: hot pepper sauce. I love the way it gets my mouth on fire. I’m addicted to the taste to be honest.

Favourite touch: my wife’s hair and skin.

Favourite sound: the sound of nature. Birds, ocean waves, anything humans don’t produce. Which is weird, since I’m a music lover generated by humans. It’s a real paradox.

Favourite sight: the ocean and the sky blending together.

Favourite smell: coffee!

Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares

Mark: I’m blessed as I can often lucid dream – so I’ve had many times where I can wander about in a dream walking into landscapes or exploring dream buildings and interacting with what I find there. But I guess the most memorable on was I was on a beach and these massive Lovecraftian Cthulhu like creatures came out the sea – As I walked up, I saw they were made of pots / pans and various cooking utensils – Anyone who can offer an analysis of that is welcome to it.

Philippe: a dream where I’m floating and falling at the same time, some kind of out-of-body experience. I try to scream, but no sound is coming from my mouth, I’m kind of lost, struggling to get back into my body. But at the same time all these dead people under me are trying to devour me. I had this dream when I was kid, and it still haunts me. Like some kind of after death experience. Some kind of visions of the hereafter.

Have you ever had an uncanny experience?

Mark: Oh boy… can of worms there! my family particularly on my Mother’s side of the family were heavily into hard core spiritualism … My grandmother and grandfather used to sight in a ‘rescue circle’ where they would help earthbound spirits into ‘the higher realms’ she told me of heavy Oak tables lifting off the floor and flying across the room smashing into the wall – my Dad and Step Mother swear blind they saw a spirit materialise right in front of them at a seance (“just like Star Trek” as my dad put it).

Personally, the strangest thing I saw was a walk past the old cottage I used to live in and they had demolished it and workmen were rebuilding it – what was strange was that they didn’t have any modern machinery and the dress looked out of place… Not thinking anything of it, I was coming back 1/2 hour later and the cottage was there completely normal- maybe I experienced some kind of time slip or something.

Plus, I was extremely ill a few years ago and spent two weeks in intensive care and three months in hospital – I spent a whole month solid hallucinating.


Philippe: I have had visions for as long as I can remember. It’s related to a part of my brain that is over-stimulated sometimes. The first one I can recall was at 6-years old. I screamed in my bed asking my sisters to remove the cross that was on the wall above my bed. I could see Jesus going down the cross and coming right at me. I think there is a reason I chose the JOHN 3:16 moniker for my project. I have learned to live with these visions, they can be really inspiring.

How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself?

Mark: A formative experience when I was a kid in Norfolk… the area we stayed around was called ‘The Wash’ where the sea would go out for miles and the salt marsh would go inland for miles. That area of the UK is almost like Holland it’s extremely flat … All along the coast during WW2 they built small hills along the coastline with concrete bunkers looking out to sea so they could lookout for incoming invasion of the UK.

I remember as a kid sitting on top of one of these hills looking out to sea  you could see the lights change on the water and mud flats – and see storms grow and fade miles out to sea and inland … I often think this has been a massive influence on my work particularly my ambient pieces, as I’m interested in very gradually change and development 

Philippe: I lived in different countries and cities – Paris, London, Geneva, Philadelphia. The way I’m writing music has been directly connected to where I live. Philly can be a rough city and I think it really affected the song writing. ‘Tempus Edax Rerum’ – the second JOHN 3:16 album – has been written and produced here in Pennsylvania. It’s a cold, raw, dark album.

What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?

Mark: I recently rediscovered the drone work of Pauline Oliveros. The Album ‘Deep Listening’ is incredibly moving!

Also, Ellen Fullman’s work with the ‘Extreme Long String Instrument’ an instrument she developed:

The film ‘First and Last Men’ with score by Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson with text by the English communist philosopher / science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon.

I also was very moved by Laurie Anderson’s Animated Film / Album – “Heart of A Dog” when I heard the album, I was incredibly moved almost to tears…

Philippe: ‘The Requiem’ by the Hungarian-Austrian composer György Ligeti, Cliff Martinez’s score for ‘Too Old To Die Young’, as well as a couple of Japanese films such as ‘The Human Condition’ (Masaki Kobayashi), ‘The Sword of Doom’ (Kihachi Okamoto) and ‘When a Woman Ascend The Stairs’ (Mikio Naruse). I have been reading much more lately too, rediscovering some books from Hubert Selby Jr, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Paul Auster, etc.

Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke

Mark: I was recently thrown out of the local supermarket for allegedly throwing cheese at an old lady. I was doing my Saturday morning shop and picked up a large ball of cheese, then dropped it and in trying to catch it I fumbled it & it bounced off my hands right into the face of a rather posh elderly lady… I Immediately went to apologise but she looked at me with complete indignation and started shouting ‘you threw that at me! You threw that CHEESE AT ME!” It was so absurd I started laughing as I was trying to apologise…. this took it to a whole new level – she started shouting “YOU THREW THAT CHEESE AT ME AND YOU’RE LAUGHING AT ME!!! SECURITY SECURITY!!!!!” Eventually a store manager came and I was escorted off the property being told “We don’t want your sort here, you should know better at your age”.

Philippe: Back in 2007, I had the chance to record at the ‘Electrical Audio’ in Chicago owned by Steve Albini. I recorded the first and only ‘Heat From a DeadStar’ album there. It was produced by Rick Harte of ‘Ace of Hearts Records’ and Bob Weston of ‘Shellac’ (long time pal of Steve Albini) was the sound engineer. We spent a couple of weeks in Chicago, I was hanging with Bob Weston, checking his every move on the mix console, etc. We had pizza, hot dogs and other unhealthy food together. Then long after the recording, he got me a VIP pass to the ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ in London in 2008. I managed to hang out with the Shellac dudes, as well as OM and other cool bands. Good memories.

Mark Harris: Twitter – Instagram

Philippe Gerber: Twitter – Instagram

Wyrd Question Daze: Frequency Domain

Posted on by Leigh Wright


Ali: I co-run the Frequency Domain label, which was started with my friend Paul accidentally in 2015. Paul and I met through a magazine I ran some years back called Overload – quite a few of the artists we release are connected to that project in some way. We had last year off from FD, but we’ve just released our third label compilation and have three artist albums out soon, which we’re pretty excited about. I’ve never really considered myself an artist or musician, though my lifelong imposter syndrome feels like it’s fading slightly with time.


Paul: I skew towards the admin side of the label and make music as Southfacing, where I try and forget all about having to do the admin side of the label. I should have an album coming out on our Space Surgeries sister label this year, if we get round to releasing it.

Where did you come from and where are you going?

Ali: I grew up on the edge of Dartmoor and recently moved back here. It feels like home and I’m enjoying the pace, familiarity and of course nature. It’s very hobbity around here.

Paul: I came from the 1970s and I’m hopefully headed for the 2040s.

What preoccupies your mind these days?

Ali: Music, DIY, habitat restoration, my parents’ health, feeling fortunate for what I have. Paul: I’ve just read Paul Rainey’s “Why Don’t You Love Me?”, so I’ve been thinking a lot about permanence of being, relationships and the power of simple, well-crafted line work. Musically, I’ve been re-listening to a lot of stuff like Happy Flowers and Lard and thinking I should drop the deep, serious schtick and get stupid for a while.

Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell

Ali: Freshly picked strawberries, old oak bark, random tonal interactions (my fridge playing along nicely to Pauline Oliveros, that kind of thing), sun through fog (bonus points for heavy frost), toasting spices.

Paul: Sugar, edges, feedback, darkness, coffee.

Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares

Ali: I have this recurring dream where I’m having a bit too much of a good time at a festival. I lose my car keys, then my wallet, then my clothes – then I wake up. It’s been going on about ten years now. I draw my own conclusions.

Paul: When I was about five, we visited my aunt and uncle, who lived in a vicarage near Lincoln. I remember it being a vast, creaky mansion, but I think it was probably quite cosy. In the dream, I woke up, hearing a disturbance outside. I crept my way through the dark corridor, climbed down a dark stairway and was confronted with the sight of my stepdad, who had turned into a space hopper.

It terrified me and to this day I still get freaked out by those nasty orange bastards.

Have you ever had an uncanny experience?

Ali: Quite a few, actually. The one that shook me up most was some years ago when I briefly dated someone who I’m certain was a practitioner of witchcraft. I’d never really spoken to them about my family, but when I called her to break off the relationship, she said to me, ‘I hope your father gets better soon’. I called him straight away to find he’d fallen ill that morning. It took him a week or so to recover, much longer for me to process the unfathomable weirdness of that situation.

Paul: The space hopper experience was enough uncanny for one lifetime.

How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself?

Ali: I’ve moved around a fair bit and noticed how much my environment shapes my creative output, listening habits and interactions with people. It’s very rural where we live now and when I travel to Bristol or London to hear music I feel like a mute bumpkin with straw in my hair. I’m listening to a lot of the records I grew up with – less purely electronic stuff, more dub, folk, off-beat indie, etc. – and getting a lot from that. It’s very grounding. I know it’ll be an inspiring place to make music once I’m more settled.

Paul: Not as much as I’d like it to. A lot of my favourite music is where a band or artist has captured an atmosphere which feels like you’ve been transported to a different place, but I’m not sure how you go about doing this. It certainly isn’t achieved by slathering everything in a tonne of reverb. I think it only comes from having a very deep connection to your environment, which living in outer South London I spend most of my life trying to avoid happening.

What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?

Ali: My partner and I went on the recent protest against the actions of Alexander Darwall, the hedge fund manager who bought up a large chunk of Dartmoor, then won a legal case to ban wild camping across the whole moor. Camping on Dartmoor as a kid was really formative for me, so I found the verdict quite upsetting. He just wants the land used for pheasant shoots – it’s the most backwards shit, honestly. The protest was joyous – 3,000 people amassed in just over a week, with the local community overwhelmingly supportive. I saw friends I’d not seen in decades and there was a stunning sunset as everyone descended the moor. Feels like a pyrrhic victory for Darwall – he’s galvanised a whole bunch of grassroots organisations and blown wide open the whole debate about increased public access to the outdoors.


Paul: In a bad way, reading the details about the 2021 shootings in Plymouth made me incredibly sad. In a good way, I saw Rolo Tomassi play in London a couple of weeks ago and seeing Eva Spence get overcome by the reaction was both touching and inspiring.

Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke

Ali: I always manage to break one egg nice and cleanly, but then make an absolute mess of the next. It’s that difficult second albumen (With thanks to Dan Bean).

Paul: The only joke I can ever remember is one my daughter brought home from school when she was about nine, both because it’s very funny and pretty inappropriate for a kid of that age to be telling it: What is a kidnapper’s favourite type of shoe? White Vans.

Wyrd Question Daze: Letters From Mouse

Posted on by Leigh Wright

Hi, I’m Letters From Mouse or Steven which is probably easier. No idea why I used LFM as a name, it was chosen when playing around with variations of Low Frequency Modulation and it just kind of stuck. Never been that keen on it to tell you the truth. Anyway, I’m a music maker from the heart of Scotland who makes kind chilled tunes. Family man who uses music as a therapy away from a busy work / family life.

https://linktr.ee/lettersfrommouse


Where did you come from and where are you going?

I came from there and have no idea where I’m going, I prefer to live in the present.

What preoccupies your mind these days?

The direction that people stir their coffee / tea has me fascinated just now.

Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell

Fish and Chips at the seaside. I lived in a fishing town as a kid and the salty air, seagulls crying etc just take me back to a happy place.

Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares

Losing things or trying to find something is a recurring theme for me, sometimes they are dreams which are pleasant and other times it involves a Clive Barker style scenario which will have me waking up in a sweat, those ones are fun.

Have you ever had an uncanny experience?

Lived in an old house once where we found an old soldier’s tin helmet in a cupboard. That cupboard door never remained shut, kinda freaky

How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself?

The world is a beautiful place, but it’s easy to not see what is right in front of you. My local surroundings are a constant inspiration in music that I write.

What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?

I’ll be brutally honest here as from a musical perspective I haven’t switched on my equipment for a few months, guess a break was needed. I’ve found myself picking out a lot of my old vinyl and playing that and it’s stuff like old Genesis, Black Sabbath etc that I’ve been re-discovering. Perhaps a full on prog/metal concept album played on modular synths is on the cards, who knows.

Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke

I once visited Rosslyn Chapel as very interested in all the old tales of the Grail and the Knights Templar. It’s a fascinating place where you can really feel history. Spent a long time walking round and taking photos of everything only to discover later that I hadn’t loaded my 35mm with film, what a numpty.

Wyrd Question Daze: David Salisbury

Posted on by Leigh Wright


Hello, my name is David Salisbury and I make weird melodic ambient music and cinematic dronescapes under the name Camp Of Wolves. The name comes from a town I lived in in the interior of British Columbia some years ago which served as a base for working across a very wide, sparlsey populated region. One theory as to the origins of the town name was said to have come from early French-Canadian fur traders in the area who marked it on a map as Camp des Loups. The mysterious and sinister translation of the name really stuck with me and became the inspiration for the project along with the abundant wilderness and brutal landscapes that I found myself in. I have been lucky enough to work with some amazing labels since then including Hotham Sound, Soundtracking the Void, Waxing Crescent and Woodford Halse as well as having a forthcoming album with the Castles in Space sub-library a little later this year. Out right now (as of Feb.24!) is my album Planetar with Subexotic Records, soundtracking a long, lonely and harrowing journey into the darkest corners of the cosmos that is accompanied by a feature length video done by my good friend Mark Holden (Invisible Plan).

https://linktr.ee/campofwolves


Where did you come from and where are you going? 

I was born and raised in a somewhat infamous -at least locally- working-class city/ suburb just outside of Vancouver, BC (which is part of the inspiration behind my album Hills Of Cedar on Hotham Sound). Increasingly as I get older I hope to make the leap to our own little hobby farm or property out somewhere in that vast wilderness.

What preoccupies your mind these days?  

Unfortunately work seems to eat up far too much of my mental energy lately.

Name a favourite taste, touch, sound, sight and smell. 

Taste – I’m a bit obsessed with a well made west-country style cider and those soft tannins that bite you a bit on the way down. I’ve been trying to make my own for years and picked up a few competitive medals along the way in doing so.

Touch – Dog fur. I have two, one with a plush silky coat and the other with a rough, frayed-rope-thats-been-years-at-sea like quality, they make for a great tactile contrast

Sound – Rain, rustling leaves and trees in the wind

Sight – My wife of course

Smell – Cedar, freshly cut or heated (burning/ cooked with/ saunas/ fences baking in the sun etc). It smells like home to me.

Describe one of your most vivid dreams or nightmares

My dreams tend to be very cinematic or take place in some odd version of my childhood home and neighborhood I grew up in, never really both, but often quite vivid. One that really stands out to me is of the former. I was some small creature in a lab type setting (perhaps mogwai-like?). I was there against my will and it was heavily guarded. One of the guards had placed his helmet on a table. I crawled into it and slowly inched out of the facility unbeknownst to the people around me. I emerged in a crowded train, not dissimilar to the skytrain that cuts it’s way through Vancouver, but it was surrounded by a futuristic mixture of dense city and almost tropical foliage that we passed through. There was a boy who greeted me and I knew him somehow. Our reunification was wrought with emotion before realizing that we urgently needed to escape. He picked me up and pushed his way through the crowded train. Sure enough we were being pursued. We moved through, car after car, as fast as we could always just out of reach of them. Finally we reached the last car and could go no further. We knew being captured was a fate worse than death. We opened a door and leap.   

Have you ever had an uncanny experience? 

When I was about 18 or so I was out driving around with a few girls I knew from school. One of them had brought her younger sister who had in turn brought a oujia board. Sometime after midnight, out of sheer boredom, we decided to stop at a local park called Green Timbers (which, again, inspired an album of the same name I released with Waxing Crescent). We sat on the grass near the small lake and began to “summon a spirit” to talk to. Soon enough we were engaging in some sort of back and forth with something that vaguely indicated he was 16 and had died at the hand of a knife in that very park, let’s say with the initials AK. The eeriness of everything was heightened when each person withdrew their hands to prove they were not controlling the planchette much like I think most people do in this situation. With things getting all a bit too much we decided to say “goodbye”. The planchette with our hands on it kept sliding to “No” as the fear quickly slid into hysterics and tears for some. We decided to just pack up the board and walk back, stopping at a bench before realizing that it had a plaque bolted to it that said: In Memory of A… K… – matching our “visitors” initials. At that point we bolted back to our car. We pulled out into the long dark road through the forested area and began the drive home, being the only car on the street. Not long after with the stereo turned completely off, strange droney bass sounds started eminating from the speakers and the interior light went on and off on its own. As we approached one of the homes of the girl’s the car finally shut off and we slowly rolled to a stop on the side of a road. At this point we were in an area with some traffic around and I was eventually able to wave down a passerby to try to jumpstart the car’s battery, which did not work. Young and being in the pre-internet days, we had no choice but to continue the rest of the way to her house on foot to wake up her dad for some roadside assistance. En route someone had the idea of burning the cardboard ouija board in a park and we did before stomping it out and moving on. Finally we made it and awoke an angry, confused dad who was in disbelief at the story he was hearing. He drove us back to the car, connected jumper cables and wouldn’t you know it, the car started on the first try. Now I’m not a believer in these things and I put this all mostly down to a series of cooincidences, electrical malfunctions and things like the ideomotor effect… BUT you have to admit it’s a pretty weird!

How does your sense of place affect the way you express yourself? 

As you might have guessed my sense of place is incredibly important in my creative process. I love the history of a place whether it’s of public record, familial or folkloric in nature… or any combination of these. The two are symbiotic and create the most wonderful atmosphere and world’s in which to tell real or imagined stories or even just soak up.


What has particularly touched or inspired you recently?

I was really inspired when I recently discovered Ernest Hood’s Neighborhoods and then Back to the Woodlands. So much beauty, playfulness, humour, atmosphere, its quite lovely and re-awoke an interest in field recordings for me. I don’t know if I will ever be able to capture a place and time like that musically but I certainly will try.

Tell us a good story, anecdote or joke. 

Hmm I’d love to tell a joke but I’m drawing a blank at the moment… I guess an entertaining story would be how I met my wife. Many years ago I was nearing my college graduation. I had planned a trip with two friends to fullfill a lifelong dream and backpack through the Amazon rainforest. When I get into something I tend to get a bit obsessive and this was no different. I started to take a deep dive on Brazilian music and decided to download some I had been extensively reading about from the peer-2-peer client Soulseek (not unlike Napster if you are unfamiliar with it). One Tropicalia collection particularly caught my interest and I randomly messaged the person. We struck up a conversation and over the intervening months the relationship blossomed. I soon found myself planning to visit her in Brazil before meeting up with my friends for our Amazonian excursion. Once there it felt like home as she showed me the sites, sounds and food of her culture and I got to know her. While visiting a swampy region in the interior together I managed to contract Dengue fever and became quickly incapacitated. Her family took me in and cared for me, I still have a distinct feverish memory of waking up to her grandma wiping my forehead with a wet cloth while I lay there in my underwear shivering, too sick to be embarrassed. Anyhow, I was nursed back to health and able to go on the trip with my friends in the end, with the whole experience acting as the catalyst to flying back and forth before she moved here and we got married 15+ years ago. I like to think of us as early adopters of internet dating haha.