Situation of Noise: An interview with Justin Pearson of The Locust

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In our Starbucks coffee driven fast food and reality based short attention span world, certain challenges arise to the creative minds of our generations. Sometimes these challenges are met with variant modes of creative outlet and of recent years it seems to be occurring in music. The base for era spanning communication has always had a home in that many of societal problems coexist in the ethereal world of sonic composition and creation of ART. Art is merely a means to an end. It can take many forms, painting, poetry, architecture, and most importantly for the purpose of this feature, music.

The Locust are in the trenches of their self-described “noise terrorism” war on contemporary and conventional thought. Formed in 1995 from the ashes of San Diego based noise core bands, Swing Kids, Struggle, Crimson Curse and about a dozen other notable bands, they have seen their fair share of current trends rise and fall with the fickle youth of America. Themusicedge.com had an opportunity to speak with Justin Pearson; the bass player of The Locust and his musical background is about as peppered as the bands laundry list of line up names.

According to J.P., “I’ve always liked music since I was a little kid, when I was 5 or so I was going to go see KISS but my mom said I was too young. We used to always pretend with tennis rackets and stuff. Then when I was ten or eleven my mom’s cousin let me borrow his guitar then eventually I picked up a bass.”

J.P. adds his history on lessons by saying, “I taught myself. When I first moved out to San Diego I took lessons from this guy and all he would do was show me how to play rock songs, so he’d show me this riff. But I never really learned how to play. I only took like three or four lessons from the guy and I thought it was a waste of time so I ended up messing around with other people. My friends and I that also didn’t know how to play, we didn’t know together so we figured things out that way.”

The Locust not only manage to destroy conventional thinking about how music should be arranged but they also have a tendency to create from that chaos some pretty technically proficient song structures. Their sound is somewhere between chaos and harmony, with an emphasis on controlled chaos. When seeing them live recently at their record release show (the new record is called Plague Soundscapes, its on Epitaph/Anti Records) at San Diego’s, Off The Record, playing to a packed house, it was noticeable to most in attendance that it was really hard to see them if you happened to get there one second late, like I unfortunately did.

Their sound is brutal and not for the faint of heart but one cannot deny the musician ship it takes to create such music. Not only does The Locust have an amazing zeal for creating music, but also most of their cleverness comes in the way they merchandize. Instead of your typical T-shirt, hooded sweatshirt fare, most Locust items consist of Skateboards, compacts with “The Locust” logo on the mirror and the standard aforementioned products.

J.P.’s musical tastes are as eclectic as his music, although he retracts his former fascination with KISS, “I think they are so lame. I hate KISS a lot now and I’m not into how misogynistic they are, but when I was a little kid I like the way they looked.”

Adding, “I really was into Styx and Boston when I was really, really little. Then I got into break dancing and early rap like Run DMC and Beastie Boys. It’s weird though because I grew up in Phoenix Arizona, it’s a total hesher state and everyone is into heavy metal. So I got into metal, I ended up living a couple blocks away from some of the guys in Slayer and that really intrigued me. The whole metal punk tie and I ended up getting into punk. The first band that got me really interested in music was the Sex Pistols. I stumbled upon some of the really early skate punk tapes that Thrasher (magazine) used to put out like Septic Death, but I didn’t want to limit myself musically so I take from everything.”

J.P. has played in some of the early GSL Records-style noise-core bands, like his first band which he states, “I got into my first band when I was about fifteen years old called Struggle, that was the first band I was in that was a real band. I was in a band called Swing Kids and The Crimson Curse and I’m also kind of still in this band called Holy Molar, it’s a weird project band. The Drummer lives in Portland and the singer lives in New York. I started The Locust about seven or eight years ago.”

The Locust has for all intensive purposes, felt their share of success. What could be construed as more successful than being used in a John Waters film (Cecil Be Demented)? And with their recent sign to punk rock powerhouse Epitaph and its subsidiary, Anti, The Locust have no choice but to prove that you can be aggressive in your approach when playing music without being predictable. And it’s unpredictability that separates The Locust from other bands. “A lot of people, especially drummers play the same beat, they obviously aren’t being creative. Whatever makes that band works is their deal,” says J.P.

As far as the writing process goes, J.P. says that its group oriented, “It kind of mutates over time and we all kind of write equal parts it just depends, someone will come to practice and they’ll have a couple parts to work with and we’ll build off of them. For instance Joey (Keyboards) will have these parts that are virtually impossible to translate onto guitar and base so it will force Bobby (guitar) and I to write around it and work with what he’s doing but not be playing the same exact riff which is good because it adds some great dynamics. Also Gabe (Drums) writes some insanely complicated beats on drums and we’ll work around those parts and Bobby and I will add some riffs that we add. And after we have a basic skeleton we’ll dissect it and take it apart and make time signatures weird and slow certain parts down and speed certain parts up. Make it a little bit confusing a little bit more creative and over time over a period of a week or two we’ll butcher it some more, then the last step is adding vocals to it and we’ll all decide what parts to sing.”

Beware of The Locust, their music will challenge and dare most people to rethink their concepts of what songs should sound like. Most importantly, The Locust are composing songs of the future and Plague Soundscapes is the vessel they are using to slowly bring in the fans from the conventional crowds.

the locust
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Done in June of 2003, without having a home I figured I’d post here and as such I haven’t changed anything from the original, just added this little footnote. Justin Pearson was one of my very first interviews for themusicedge, which is hilarious considering how conservative the parent company of the site was and is and the kind of ‘obscene’ content The Locust always get lambasted about. At a later time some ‘concerned’ perpetual meddler wanted me to take down the article, luckily I stuck it out and provided a compelling argument to the suits that if our ultimate job was to inspire young people to create music then who are we to sensor what kind of music is created? I also thought it fitting for a first feature, especially after my dour interview with Taboo from The Black Eyed Peas who had, at the time, just added Fergie to the group. Justin is one of the few people, aside from Ben Koller (Converge, Cave In) who supported the basic tenants of that site from the beginning and has always made himself available for interview(s) and linked to whatever it was I happened to be working on at the time. He suffers from being incredibly likeable, maybe that’s why I think of him as an artist more than I think of him as a musician. Maybe I’m just full of shit too. He’s doing a post called “From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry” for HYPEzine.com. Its a tour diary.

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The Deftones: Tao of Chi

This is a feature article I did a while ago on the now shutdown musicedge.com. I tried a new feature writing tactic, combining the narrative of feature style with some Q & A style thrown in the mix. It worked well for this particular article because Chi was quite conversational, which is a relief as an interviewer because the wealth of information lends itself to a fairly in depth article. Though I didn’t think too highly of their last record, Saturday Night Wrist, they are still one of the most consistently evolving bands from that post-hardcore era. Enjoy! *Charles Shannon took the live pic.
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When The Deftones debut album, Adrenaline, dropped in the mid-nineties they inadvertently opened the floodgates for what would encapsulate an entire short-lived genre of music – nu metal. It was a watershed album, full of post-hardcore riffs that drew as much inspiration from bands like Unsane and Helmet as it did melody and dynamics from bands like Smashing Pumpkins and The Pixies.

Was pigeonholing Sacramento CA’s Deftones a Nu-Metal band wrong? Not particularly in this case, The Deftones were and still are way out in front of the game and by the company they toured with in those days they were often lumped into sentences and explanations by many an irresponsible music journalist. The Deftones are too complex a band both musically and in personnel to throw words like ‘Rap-rock’ or ‘Nu-metal’ at just because comparison is appealing to the lowest common denominator. Adrenaline was released in 1995, at the downward slope of the post-hardcore movement. Major labels were pushing bands like Orange 9MM, Seaweed, Quicksand and the almighty Helmet, while bands like Snot, Clutch and to some extent, Korn were popularizing a mixture of down tuned guitars rap infused vocals.

We are aware of what has become of the Rap Metal/Nu-metal movement – irrelevance by way of over-saturation! Like all things that seem new and fresh in music they get assimilated into popular culture, bastardized versions rear their ugly head and are only made to move units through singles and record sales. Adaptability is a testament to the longevity of a band and its ability to evaluate itself from a musical perspective, something that Deftones bassist Chi Cheng attributes to the bands staying power. To remain relevant as the Deftones have done over the past dozen years is a gift many bands only think of in hindsight when the royalty checks cease and their CD’s end up in the bargain bin at the local record store.

Themusicedge.com recently caught up with bassist Chi Cheng as he was on the road headlining the Taste of Chaos tour and learned many things. His love for the works of famed prose writer, Charles Bukowski, wine, classical music and his band mates ability to internalize their creativity and make sure that “We’re the worst when it comes to what we do. If we think that (new song) sounds too much like the Deftones, we can’t play that, because that’s how we sound.”

Chi not only plays bass in one of the most enduring bands of the past ten years, he is also a writer of poetry. His first spoken word record, Bamboo Parachutes, released in 2000, was the result of a restless writing spirit and a need to express himself in another medium besides playing music or as Chi puts it, “I have no choice but to write – I love writing.”

Chi has at least 4 full-length spoken word records waiting in the wings and could essentially release one a year for as many years. His writing is prolific yet there are large chunks of time where he doesn’t get to put pen to paper due to the constraints of touring. “(I do write) with my days off it’s a lot easier. Being on the bus it’s a little too cramped, and there are a lot of distractions. Too much outer stimulus. I’m a Bukowski type of writer so I like to get my bottle of wine and my Mahler (Gustav Mahler, 19th Century Austrian composer) some Beethoven and go to work.”

Proceeds from the sale of Bamboo Parachutes were donated to a music program for homeless teens in Sacramento; a program based in his community, which Chi says, “I believe in working with the community that you live in, there are a lot of huge global issues obviously. I’m from Sacramento and I wanted some of the proceeds to go to charities that I know of and want to work with. This was a while ago, I started bringing in instruments and buying instruments and actually go in and play with the kids which is something I tried to do for a while.”

When you’re not insanely busy with touring?
“Yeah exactly.”

“As far as I know its still going on, I lost touch with it a couple of years ago when my life got crazy and hectic and I had a kid. From what I understand it’s going well. Self-sustaining at this point.” Which is certainly a blessing for a non-profit in today’s globalized economy.

A father and husband, Chi related that a difficult touring schedule and time away from home is the most difficult part of his almost anti-rock star lifestyle. When it comes to touring, he says, “I find it terribly difficult. I love playing music and when I’m on stage I couldn’t be happier but I tend to be a miserable prick 23 hours a day. The music I love, sitting around waiting to play I don’t love – at all.”

With the recent release of B Sides and Rarities The Deftones are looking at a fall release for their new record which is untitled as of this interview. They have been debuting new material on the Taste of Chaos tour; “I see a lot of camera phones every night and I’m sure that almost everyone at the show last night recorded the new songs.”

Have you named the new record? Has it been cut, mastered and edited?

“It’s just now being finalized, vocally and adding little things here and there to make sure it’s absolutely worth waiting for. So most likely September we’ll release it and it will be worth the wait. I’m absolutely in love with the new album.”

One key thing to remember about the Deftones is that each member falls under the category of modern day renaissance men. They were one of the first bands to utilize sample-based music, keyboards and turntables as tools to further a musical idea instead of as gimmicks for mass appeal. When it comes to incorporating electronic elements into the music of the new album it’s there and as Chi explains; “We’ve molded it into some of the songs on the new album, there are touches of it, glimpses on it, there are also a lot of moodiness and variations I don’t think we’ve done since White Pony. The last album was pretty dark whereas this one is more all over the place.”

Chi Cheng; poet, bassist, Zen rock star and family man who connects to people through music, his community and his kindness. Its people like Chi who make music great without ever playing a note.

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