Anyone who spends any time listening to music from Seattle would not have to spend much time before encountering something with Erik Blood’s fingerprints on it. He’s been one of the most in-demand producers in the Northwest, producing such artists as THEESatisfaction, Shabazz Palaces, Tea Cozies, The Moondoggies, Stephanie and Crypts. There’s also his work as a member of bands like The Little Penguins and The Turn-Ons, and his own solo work, which includes his excellent 2009 album The Way We Live and the soundtrack to the Brazillian film Center of Gravity.
Blood’s latest album, Touch Screens, is an exploration of pornography from many different points of view, like the audience, producers and stars of such films. It’s also one of the very best albums to come from the Northwest. In the Seattle Weekly, Eric Grandy called it “an outstanding album.” Charles Mudede of The Stranger said on Twitter, “it’s beautiful, cosmopolitan, erotic, cinematic — in short, everything that matters to me.” The album is full of big ideas on top of a soundtrack that combines elements of shoegaze, psychedelic rock and pop, amongst other sounds coming at the listener. It’s also an album that demands multiple listens and encourages research and Googling (though not at work).
Touch Screens is being self-released digitally and on vinyl, it comes out on Tuesday, August 7 and can be pre-ordered from his website. The artwork for the album was done by the acclaimed artists Dumb Eyes.
I met up with Erik Blood at a popular Capitol Hill bar to talk about Touch Screens and his work as a musician and producer, but we mostly talked about porn.
When did the idea of making an album that explores pornography come about?
It was just something I thought I could do. After I started writing songs after The Way We Live, the first two things I wrote were about these pornography directors. I thought “I could make a whole album about this.” I wanted to do something that wasn’t personal, so I figured porn.
I remember seeing a post a few years ago on Line Out about how you were beginning to do research for the album and was looking for help, so I’ve been interested in seeing how it turned out. One of the songs I loved was “The Lonesome Death of Henry Paris.” What was it about his films that interested you? Was it that they were erotic and also art-house type films?
Radley Metzger’s films are, to me, the pinnacle of pornography. They are pornography as art. They are fun, they are super-playful, they are sexy and a joy to watch. They always look great. That period, there was something so playful about sex, before AIDS and all of the horrible things that happened to the porn industry. I found that interesting and wanted to delve into that more.
What did you mean by “The Lonesome Death of Henry Paris,” as I believe he’s still alive?
Yeah, he is. I just meant that Henry Paris, or Radley Metzger under the name “Henry Paris” made five movies just over the course of four years and that was it. That nom de plum was dead.
How did your research go when you were working on writing the album?
I had already been a fan of a lot of these older films and I had seen a lot of them. I had worked at Scarecrow and we’d always check out the weird seventies porn stuff that they had. I just decided to delve further into it. I spent a lot of time looking up directors and actors and finding their films, if I could. It didn’t just strictly stay with hardcore pornography, but erotica in general and I looked up everything I could and saw as much as I could.
One thing that interested me about your album was that it explored pornography from a bunch of different angles, but it didn’t come with an ideology or any moralistic judgment against its consumers.
I think that is how it unfolded. I didn’t have a story to tell, necessarily. I didn’t want it to just be about directors or actors. There were a lot of things to be said about pornography and I tried to say as much as I could as an observer.
A handful of songs are about actors or directors specifically. We had talked a bit about Henry Paris/Radley Metzger already, but how did you choose to write songs about Rex Roman and the others?
Rex Roman, his name was just so good, and he only did one movie. The one movie he did was with John Holmes and Constance Money and they went on to be huge stars and he didn’t. I thought that was interesting and that story wrote itself.
He was the hardest person to Google of everyone you specifically named songs for.
Yeah, Confessions of a Teenage Peanut Butter Freak was his only film.
I read in another interview with you where you said that this album is about “good porn.” What do you mean by that?
To me, I was inspired by things that are considered to be art, things that were made with an aesthetic in mind, and not just “lights, camera, fuck.” It’s people who had a vision and created this vision and did it in a way that is a turn on and playful and fun and not scary or inhuman. When your subject matter is sex, you have to treat it with humanity because it’s a human act. That’s what I mean by “good porn.”
It seems like there has been a disconnect with films that had a story and sex verses now, where the story takes a backseat.
It’s an industry and they want to make as much money as they can for as little effort. I’m sure there are still people who want to make good films, but are probably not just getting the distribution. Especially now, when you can type in what you want on the Internet and there you go.
Right. Like Deep Throat was a movie that people went to see in theaters.
That’s what I liked about that era of pornography, that it was touching the mainstream. It was so close to being this acceptable art form that people went to see, and then videotape, and a lot of scandal. It’s funny because it’s all the same things that happened to rock stars, like drug overdoses and people going crazy and suicides. It’s happens with every art. When it happens to something controversial pornography, it can just wipe it out.
Changing gears for a moment, you did everything on the album, save for a few guitar parts and…
…The drums. I can’t play drums.
Yeah, Will Hallauer, who was in The Turn-Ons with you, and Garrett Croxon from Tea Cozies played the drum parts and Corey Gutch (also from The Turn-Ons), played those parts, right? Was that how you worked with your previous albums?
Yeah. It was pretty much the same cast. The only people who I trust are Will and Corey. Garrett is amazing and I would love to work with him again, because he was perfect. Our friend Liana (Kegley) played violin and viola, two instruments I cannot play because of my sausage fingers, but, yeah, I’ll definitely be working with her again.
Do you have a band for your live shows right now?
Yeah, I have a seven-piece band: Will and Corey; Andrew (Gaskin), who used to be in The Little Penguins, is the bassist; Scott Kennedy, who is also in Black Nite Crash; and Coulter Leslie of Coulter and Jerry Peerson, of the band Jurek.
I know the record isn’t quite out yet, but I know you’re very prolific as a musician. What are you working on right now?
I’m working on writing music for this art show called Slideluck Potshow. That’s going to happen on August 18 and I’m writing 45 minutes of music to accompany a curated slideshow of different photographers’ work. I’m trying to keep as busy in the studio as possible. A new Little Penguins album is in the works and hopefully I’ll get to start working on new Shabazz (Palaces) stuff soon.
You’ve worked in the studio with so many different-sounding bands, like Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction and Crypts and Tea Cozies and Moondoggies and Stephanie. They don’t sound anything alike, so do you take different approaches with those bands?
No. It’s all my aesthetics. I just try to make everything sound the way I want it to sound. I’m pretty omnivorous with music. I love everything, so I don’t approach things differently. It’s all just my filter.
Is it the same with writing your own songs versus producing someone else’s?
Writing my own music is a weird thing. I don’t know how to explain that, it’s just something that happens. My style of writing has changed over the years. I used to toil over stuff and make things absolutely perfect. Now I’m more interested in capturing things as they come out. A lot of Touch Screens is just ‘I’m sitting in the studio or I’m sitting at home’ and making sounds and getting what I like and making songs out of them. I’m trying to be instinctual. It’s worked out for me. I feel like I’m getting better at it. I’m learning to trust myself a little more.
Are the songs you are making for the slideshow going to be able to be heard for people who won’t be at the art show?
I don’t know. I love them right now so I’m probably going to release them at some point. It might be a free download, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with things until they’re done. I plan on making it available to people.
Are there any expectations you have for what you want to accomplish with Touch Screens?
I just want as many people to listen to it as possible. That’s my ultimate goal, just having people hear it. Now, I just want to make music I like and get it to as many people as possible and hope that they will like it too.
How do you decide who you are going to collaborate with or produce? You’ve certainly earned the right to be very selective.
Some people contact me and if I hear it and like it and I’ll work with them. Other times, it’s stuff that I hear and bug them until they let me. I saw Stephanie at Vibrations Festival and I was just floored and then I saw them again two days later and I thought, “Jeez, this is the best band,” so I bugged them and bugged them until we could go into the studio. I love the record and hopefully it’s coming out soon. God, they’re great. OC Notes is someone who I just admire so much and think he’s an absolute genius and he happens to be a fan of my stuff, so we’ve been working together on some collaborations. Sadly because of time, we haven’t had a lot of time to get together, but what we have done is some of my favorite stuff that I’ve been involved in. I can’t wait to work on more stuff with him.
I can’t imagine your phone ever stops ringing.
Trust me; I have a lot of downtime. That’s great. My boyfriend Brian is wonderful and I love spending time with him more than anything. It is great to be busy and there’s a satisfaction to being busy, especially when it comes to making music.
{Erik Blood’s album release party for Touch Screens is on Thursday, August 9 at the Crocodile with Hotels and Stres, all ages, 8pm doors, $8 tickets available here.}
{Photo by Brian O’Shea.}
Chris Burlingame is the editor of Another Rainy Saturday.
Didn’t you promise to read some Betsy-Tacy? Perhaps Emily of Deep Valley would be a good one to start with.