Carpe Noctem Magazine - Volume IV, Issue 4

A Phoenix Rising from a Circle of Dust (1997) Klay Scott

"Music is a language by whose means messages are elaborated, that such messages can be understood by the many but sent out by only few, and that it alone among all the languages unites the contradictory character of being at once intelligible and untranslatable-these facts make the creator of music a being like the gods." - Claude Levi-Strauss

The second but equal half of the Angeldust project is musician Klay Scott. The self trained Scott first burst into the public eye as a result of his project, Circle of Dust, and then, later, with the Argyle Park project. Both Circle of Dust and Argyle Park, having been released on the now defunct independent music label Rex, served to often times pigeon-hole this talented gentleman as an "alternative" artist, even though Scott's repertoire is made up of hard driving, utterly engaging, industrial based music. The music on the Circle of Dust releases was possessed with one thing that is usually lacking in the entertainment industry-a conscience. Then, illusionist/song writer/vocalist Criss Angel stepped into the picture and the Angeldust project was born. Scott, working like some possessed orchestral conductor, is responsible for keeping the music end of things together while Angel amazes audiences with his legerdemain and vocal prowess. One intriguing aspect of Scott's side of the Angeldust performance is his utilization of self designed, custom made instruments created from scrap metal which further serves to give an otherworldy aspect to what is already a post apocalyptic vision. These illustrious gentlemen now sit poised to storm the battlements of the entertainment industry with a formidable one-two-punch the likes of which audiences the world over have never seen.

Can you give me some background on your musical training, the bands you've been a part of, and the projects that you've masterminded?
I guess that would be kind of extensive at this point, but there's a few that are worthy of mention. As far as training is concerned, I've never really had any official training. The only training I've ever had was my own kind, which consisted of picking up an instrument I wanted to play, and then trying to figure it out. I would watch and learn from anyone I could, and then just spend hours practicing and discovering. My technological training, such as sampling, programming etc. was essentially me with my head buried in a manual, making mistakes and figuring out the solutions myself. Projects... The most prominent and prolific, for me, has been Circle of Dust which has taken seven or eight years of my life. That was my main creative outlet. I've also produced bands like Chatterbox and Klank and worked with Prong, including a song they did for The Misfits Tribute Album, "Violent World". I've written various pieces for MTV over the years, including the opening theme to MTV Sports. Of course, I've also been guilty of doing numerous side projects using pseudonyms, like Argyle Park for instance.

I know you do a lot of producing and I'm wondering which do you find more satisfying: the role of musician/writer or producer?
I would have to say that it depends on the mood I wake up in. I don't think I would be happy doing one or the other. I've found that, as far as my personality is concerned, and I think I can speak for both Criss and I, is that we're never happy doing one thing, and that is the beauty of our relationship. We're always seeking bigger and better. So, I don't think producing is better than playing, programming, or performing. Variety, as it is said, is the spice of life and that's the beauty of it. I wouldn't pick one over the other.

The majority of the music I've heard from you has been very energetic, guitar oriented industrial, have you ever considered releasing or have you ever released a more ambient or softer sounding work ?
For a combination of both of those, you can pick up what will be the final Circle of Dust record, Disengage, which will out March 10th and distributed through Polygram. There are 3 or 4 "ambient" tracks on the release, in addition to the rest of the new material. The release overall is certainly different, more developed if you will, than the stuff I was doing 5 or 6 years ago. I love the aggression of the guitar and the movement of the electronics in the music I create, but there is something about the simplicity of just a guitar and a vocal, or a synth pad, that evokes a deeper emotion that cannot be obtained through big sounding drums and aggressive guitars and synths.

All the multi-layered stuff?
Right. As far as the way I have been creatively, as far as my releases have been concerned, they have been predominately driven with the heavier type guitar and the more aggressive synth stuff. ...but development and change are essential to creativity. That was the stuff I wanted to create at that time, although musically I was listening mostly to things other than the style of music I was creating.Over time however, both development and change dictated that I expand the material I was writing. In fact, in 1995 I had recorded a version of my song "Onenemy" which is from the self titled Circle of Dust release, that consisted of just my vocals and a few acoustic guitars. The label never did release it, but the concept for me was not a new one. I merely had layed aside the more organic instruments and traditional sounds for a time in place of more synthetic and uncommon sounds.

You might be lynched if you came out with just an acoustic guitar...
Yeah. As I've said before, it all points back to getting bored or not being satisfied doing one thing. You will definitely see that in the future as far as performances go. An Angeldust show will entail more than just the stuff you'll hear on our full length CD perhaps. You will hear just ethereal pieces and some acoustic guitar pieces.

I'd like you to comment on something I recently read on the Internet. "Industrial music is to the nineties what New Age music was to the eighties. Everyone seems to be doing it, and everyone is doing it poorly."
That is pretty damn true. I fully agree… and I'm not saying this to offend anybody, but this is not really anything new to people who listen to industrial. The equipment is affordable, especially now in America they're pushing this whole electronica thing, so everybody and their grandmother is going out, buying a sequencer, and, all of a sudden, they're a musician. I don't see it that way. I think there is more to that than just your programming skills. You need to write a good song, that's the basis of it. When I first had gotten into "industrial" music in the later eighties which is when I was first introduced to it, that was when it was exciting because it was not so prolific, it was much more underground. There was nothing like that preceding it, so it totally filled a musical gap. It was all about the energy. It was all about the vibe. The "industrial" style of music was mostly driven more by angst than anything else, but it has become a caricature of itself with people just going out and buying a drum machine and throwing a guitar loop over it for six minutes.

Overdriving their vocals...
Right! The typical distorted vocals has really become passe. I really don't consider what I do to be "industrial." It's been lumped in with that and, so be it, that's fine. I love sound. I love the sonics. I love relying on more than just a guitar to create your tracks. Think of what you hear in a day, even going down to traffic noise and things like that, subtleties. So, why be limited to just your standard instruments. There's a whole musical palette, so to speak, that you can choose from. Unfortunately, you get lumped into this industrial category and then people think you are talentless and you can't write a song.

We get a lot of industrial music at Carpe Noctem sent to us and I've now had to become real selective because a lot of things sound the same. You can put five discs on random and it's impossible to tell them apart. I mean there are a couple of bands out there that I, personally, think are really good. Mentallo & the Fixer being one of them.
Diatribe, I think, is very good.

There is other stuff out there which is good. Now and again, Metropolis is doing something of interest with Forma Tadre. Reconstriction has Collide. Some of the stuff coming out of Europe is pretty cool. But, by and large, man, it's making music by "cookie cutter."
In a sense, I feel that, in my career, I'm past that stage. I really don't get tangled up in those arguments anymore because I was in that phase five, six, seven years ago. I already went through that and that was just a part of growth and what I needed to do back then. I really feel that we are approaching the new millennium and there's still people writing stuff that could have been off of Bites or Remission from Skinny Puppy back in the eighties. It's time to change, you know? Break out of your confines. You're not restricted musically. Don't listen to a band and then copy what they're doing. Be original.

I think it's that way with the whole music industry in general. I was saying to someone recently, "What happens when the "alternative" has become the "mainstream"?" I mean, "Top Forty" of today is still packaged as "alternative," and it's still supposed to be cutting edge and supposed to be where the music industry is heading, but, if you listen to it, it's stuff we were hearing five years ago when no one gave a shit.
I can only speak from the limited amount of music I browse on the commercial radio stations around here, which I do not listen to and probably never will, but they're still trying to revive Pearl Jam. As far as I'm concerned Pearl Jam died five years ago. That wave has crashed and is gone. Now, they're looking for electronica or they're looking for ska or they're looking for the next big thing. The bands that are going to transcend this categorization are bands that are writing good songs and it doesn't matter what their style is, it's a song that people are going to go and buy the CD because they liked the song.

Do you think that the increased usage of computers and samplers has stolen the "human" aspect of music making?
It depends on how you look at it. Giving you a little personal history, part of what drew me to this style of music and computerized music to begin with was the machine factor, the mechanical factor. I mean, there's something beautiful about that, the technology. If you don't keep up with technology, it's going to swallow you alive and you will become a part of the majority that is left behind because they don't understand what's going on technologically. The people who hold technology in their hand are going to be the ones who rule the future, so to speak. I think that you can use technology for your purposes, which would keep it human, or you can be controlled by it and it makes you a machine. So, it really depends on the individual and their usage of the machine. As far as whether or not a song contains a programmed drum beat or a live drummer, I don't think it's even an issue any more. You can program a drum beat to sound like a live drummer or you can or you can make a live drummer sound a lot less human. It's irrelevant. It's more how you control the technology. Are you going to control it or is it going to control you.

In the film world, when Terminator 2 came out and we all first saw "morphing" and then, suddenly, you were seeing morphing everywhere. Do you think people have to go through that "play with the toys and overuse them, and then, when sanity returns, they can then use them more effectively"?
I fully believe that. I think it's a cycle. I have a feeling that a lot of the things being invented right now, that's exactly how it will be. People are going to over use the technology. You're excited about it, of course. But then, when you see it show up in two hundred movies or there's a myriad of bands releasing CDs that all sound the same because it's the next big thing. For instance, MTV, to pick a scapegoat here. Before MTV was created, the only way you really knew about a band was listening to them on the radio or magazines. Now, we're looking at bands today that have relatively short life expectancies. They are pushed so hardcore on MTV that, after six or nine months, you don't ever want to hear their name again because they are just everywhere you look. I don't know if there will ever be a balance that way as far as television is concerned, but I think just technology in general, people are going to take it, abuse the hell out of it, and then, there will eventually come a point where people will settle back and start to use it in moderation.

Do you ever worry that since the Angeldust project is so visual and can easily become a media "commodity," and, therefore, can be consumed by the "consumer," and then, six months down the road those same consumers could potentially say, "Ok..where's that next big thing?"
Well, I'll tell you why we don't worry about that. There is so much involved with this project. The visuals, yes, are very important, but this project transcends being limited by the visuals. It transcends being limited by just releasing a CD and touring clubs. If it gets to a point where the visuals are out of control, and maybe it does get to that point on MTV or whatever media form, and the visuals are overly emphasized, we very simply can pull back and go do a club tour and stay out of the media for a while. We can go and do a soundtrack for the whole show, which is another one of our future plans. We'll have full length releases with songs as any other "band" would have in addition to "theatrical" releases, which would contain the instrumental pieces in our show. I'm certain at some point in the future, we're going to get involved with movies and things of that sort. We don't look at this like, "This is what we do and that's it." We're looking at this like this is what the project is about and there are a million facets to it.

....tip of the iceberg.
Yeah, we are confident that the possibilities are endless.

•One of the things I mentioned to Criss earlier was that the whole Cirque du Soleil phenomenon where they have this touring company, but now you're seeing soundtrack CDs and all this stuff. Their fingers seem to be in a lot of different pots. With Angeldust, I see that potential increased exponentially because you guys have, virtually, the whole board covered.
For us, that is the beauty of the whole thing. When Criss and I first met, probably going back three or four years ago, we clicked immediately on a personal level and on a professional level and that is why we've spent years developing ideas and concepts. So, we don't even know what is going to be possible, but we have very big ideas and, hopefully, we'll have a chance to live them out.

How did you hook up with Criss and what made you decide that Angeldust was where you wanted to put the bulk of your energies?
Well, that's a fairly lengthy story, but I'll cut it back for you. My former label, where I had done my first 3 or 4 Circle of Dust releases as well as Argyle Park, had lost their distribution. This obviously put me in a bad position because I needed to do another album but they had no way to put it out.Then I started hearing rumors of the labels imminent bankruptcy. There were a bunch of things going wrong. I was [finishing up a] tour and I kept checking my machine back at my house and I kept getting messages from this Criss Angel guy saying that he needed to talk to me. So, I called him eventually. We talked on the phone and he, briefly, ran over this whole magic concept and I'm thinking to myself, "Magic? Oh, my god, that is so cheesy."

"I don't look good in a tux..."
Yeah...yeah! This is what I'm picturing. So, I come home and we end up hooking up. He brings over these plans for the whole show and a book with illustrations and I said, "Wow! This is a lot different than I had expected." So, needless to say, financially I needed the money and Criss, at that point, had really hired me to program and write the music with him for what would be a new demo for his project. Over the months we worked together, not only did we click on a professional level, but very much on a personal level. At this point, we view each other more as brothers than anything else. We share so many common interests and goals and get along in a way that, for both of us, has been nothing like any relationship we've never had with anybody else before, on many different levels. So, for me, I have to say, it was a very difficult decision to lay aside my own project or projects and decide to focus on this, but we discussed it at great length and we both heartily agreed that the two of us together are much stronger than either of us individually. So, that was why we both came to the conclusion that we would work together and we've lived happily ever after. [laughs]

Angeldust has been described as "Jim Rose Circus meets Cirque du Soleil." Do you still believe that this is an accurate description of what the two of you are doing?
It's probably a little extreme. I would say that the show is not really a shock rock show. This is not like we're going to pick up cinder blocks with piercings or anything like that, and I'm not even knocking that sort of thing. We see this as much more of a-I don't want to say "viable" or "Commercial," because those are dirty words-that's not really what motivates us. We're more into, as you mentioned before, The Terminator and stuff more like, "Pretend James Cameron produced this movie." That's what we want the show to be, something that is mass marketable because that's what moves us, that's what stirs us. There is a place for shock rock, but we know that there is no longevity in that.

I think you have an edge and that maybe where the Jim Rose reference comes from.
We've been compared to a lot of different people and a lot of different projects and I think it's because people don't know what else to compare it to. We say, "Fine, you can compare it to whoever you'd like," but it's not until it actually comes out, starts to get into people's faces and they actually see it, will they really understand that it's not like anything else they've seen before. That's the whole thing here. That's what we've been trying to tell everybody. This is nothing like you've ever seen before. Criss and I had and have our own visions and our own dreams and that's why we're trying to really make a strong point that this project is not about taking this person and that person and combining them. It's a very separate idea. It was created from our own dreams and desires, not looking at someone else's career and saying, "Oh, I want to do that too."

I mean, you have an edge, but you're still appealing to the intellectual part of the audience who wants to know "How'd they do that?"
Well, we certainly aim to appeal to our audience intellectually as well as visually, musically etc. We want people to take the experience home with them - give them something to digest and make them want to come back again.

Can you elaborate on what you've called your "anonymity fixation"? Where did you get that from?

This is from the one of the interviews on your web site. I was just curious about whether that stemmed from you, at a certain point in your career, were using a lot of pseudonyms and you wanted the attention to be more about the music.
Yeah. Like Argyle Park, for instance, I was fully involved in Circle of Dust and that was what I wanted to focus on, but, to me, it was exciting to do a project that I could throw out all preconceptions and do something that wasn't [right for]Circle of Dust, but I could do it for Argyle Park. I just didn't want to deal with it. So, to the guy I did the album with, Buka, I said, "Look, you handle it. I'm just going to use fake names. You do the press. You take care of the media. I don't even want to know about that." To tell you the truth, I don't really know why. I was really experimenting to find out what I wanted to do musically, my identity personally. So, the easiest way to do that is to go under a pseudonym and if people don't like it, or I don't like it, which is usually what ends up happening, it doesn't matter because most people don't even know that it's me. Those projects are years old and I've changed quite a bit over the years and over time. From here on in, I'm pretty much done with pseudonyms. There comes a point where you need to develop one identity, or one persona, one individual.

You're preaching to the choir on this. In the past, I've written under, like, ten different pseudonyms. All of that was about trying to find my "voice" and, once you find it, you can be comfortable with it.
That's what it is, experimentation.

So, let me ask you about the new Circle of Dust record, Disengage, it's going to be released by Polygram? Has it been released yet?
No. The album was supposed to be out in July of 1997, and, because of the politics involved, it won't be released until March 10th, which is what I heard today. The stuff has been done for a long time. There was supposed to be a CD single for it that included remixes and, for other political reasons, that was pulled. I did manage to convince them to put the remixes at the end of the CD so there will be actually sixteen tracks on the disc total.

In another interview with you that I read, you said that the song "Chasm" is about "watching who you trust and who you believe." Did that stem from your experiences with your former label, Rex?
Not necessarily that specifically. You have to remember that those lyrics were written probably two years ago. People are going to be hearing them after March 10th of '98, but those were written sometime in '95 or early '96. To tell you the truth, I don't really remember what I was even thinking specifically when I wrote them, but I am certain that a lot of those different things were going through my mind. I think it's just a betrayal of trust. I was raised to trust people and was taught that doing so was the right thing to do. But when it came to real life experience, I learned something completely contrary to what I was taught. It was difficult for me to accept at first, I'm sure, but life's tough - accept it and get over it.

We've been through similar things. People you put your trust in and you think they are the ones who aren't going to stab you in the back...
....and those are the ones who do just that.

Now, we keep in mind the old phrase "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer."
[laughs] It's sad, but it's true. I think it's a hard fact of life, man.

Do you want to talk about the Rex deal at all?
In what regard?

Well, it just seems that you were held for a long period of time in this cage. Here is this creative artist who wants to create and has shown the ability to create and create well, but because of some contractual hangup is now forced to not do exactly what it is that he does best.
Well, that whole period... There were legal conflicts that arose out of that which lasted over two years. I was bound contractually to REX for two years, but could not do anything creatively. This was the period when I first met Criss.

That just seems like that would be a total nightmare.
It really tends to drain any creativity out of you. The only way for anybody to understand it is to actually be in the situation. I don't want to sit here and make it sound like I'm crying about it. It's just not the best situation to be in. It sucked. I was on this small label that wasn't really dumping a lot of money into the project anyway. Here comes all of this great press, and, really, a lot of critical acclaim for the amount of distribution the CDs had, and they couldn't do anything with it. Then, all of a sudden, they pulled the plug on what little they were doing.

You had said it was stifling creatively. I would think that even if you had this brilliant creative idea, you were boo-fooed and had to put it on the shelf.
I hate to say it, or maybe I don't, but a lot of Disengage was written during those periods. I can't just sit back and not write. It's not possible. I'm always in a creative mode whether it be visually with artwork in a computer or writing songs. I've tried many times to just practice playing an instrument. I can't do it. I got for about five minutes and then I start to create something instead. There's no way I could ever stop. I was, in a sense, creative still, but I had to archive the stuff because I couldn't do anything with it at that point.

Ok. One of the things you mentioned was, during that time when you couldn't not create. You had mentioned doing artwork on the computer. You're doing all the artwork for Disengage?
Yeah, I did. I put up the Dusted.com site as well.

•It's beautiful stuff.
Thank you. To tell you the truth, I'd love to rip it all down and start over. It's part of the creative process, I think. The overall thing is technology and that is what completely motivates me. The computer is a much more useful tool than to just act as a device to create a sequence or e-mail someone. It's a powerful and wonderful thing. It's just using this technology to your advantage and, over the last few years, I've gotten very much into graphic design, web design, animation etc. Anything to do with the technology.The whole Internet concept bit me on the ass and wouldn't let go. It's incredible. And, as far as that's concerned, I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. There are going to be so many more things possible. But, I had the opportunity to do my artwork for Disengage and I did.It wasn't until after I had finished the artwork for the whole project that I found out that they weren't going to allow me the 16 page booklet I was originally told I could design. So, now I have all these five inch by five inch panels I had created and I have to figure out how to fit everything into a space half the size. Sounds easy if you look at it mathematically, but it wasn't as simple as all that, unfortunately. I had to redo the artwork and layout. Needless to say, i'm not too happy about it.

•....those bastards!
Yeah. I don't know. I keep getting all the good record deals. [laughs]

I'm curious... When you go into a CD store, who are some artists that you think are making some damn good music these days?
I would say Aphex Twin, Arvo Part, Lycia, Sam Phillips, The Future Sound of London, Nearly God to name a few. I'd have to really think about that. To tell you the truth, I've been going back to old stuff. I haven't really heard much new stuff.

I'm going through a Dean Martin stage, so...
[Laughs] Great! That's a little older than I was talking about, but nothin' wrong with that. Graeme Revell's score to The Crow - City of Angels is excellent. I'm really looking forward to new Curve and Massive Attack releases too.There's the ever present Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Cure, which would mainly consist of anything from Disintegration and back, Depeche Mode. The complete list would be far too extensive to mention.

I know that getting Angeldust off the ground is a major concern for you, but do you plan on spearheading any projects other than Angeldust in the near future or is Angeldust going to be an avenue for every facet of your expression?
That is the intention. The way Criss and I have planned this is that, when we start going, there is never going to be an end to the things we are going to be doing. And, like I said, it's more than just the music. There are a lot of visual things involved. We're hoping that, by the time the ball gets rolling, we're going to have ten things to do at once. The object is that there won't be any time just sitting around doing projects. For me, personally, I will be creating no matter what, in whatever facet that may be, whether it be visually or musically. It doesn't matter. I think that's just both of our personalities. The difference here is that we take those creative elements and we make them into Angeldust and define what Angeldust is. Had I continued with just doing Circle, I'm certain that I would be doing other things; programming and things like that. But right now, Angeldust is the focus.

•It occurs to me that, now that I've had a chance to talk to both you and Criss, it's an exciting time for the both of you.
It is and, to tell you the truth, it's a long time coming. It really is. I have this feeling that, and it happens to a lot of people, they show up on MTV and people say, "Oh, who is this new band?" We've laughed at that plenty of times because if people knew how many years are combined between the two of us, we could be in the Rolling Stones or, at least, in their age bracket.

What was it someone said, "I've spent my life in becoming an overnight sensation."
Yep. That's a hundred percent right. In a sense, it is very exciting because we feel that we are finally at the point where this project is developed more than it has ever been and we are at the brink of pushing it over the edge and things are going to happen. 1998 is going to be a very good year for us. From my mouth to God's ears...

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