Saturday, February 10 11:45pm @ Salem’s Loft
Purveyor of: electronic music that kicks the Tetris theme in the T-shaped bits

Alex Snukal, otherwise known as Animalmonster, plays obsolete keyboards for fun and profit, regardless of the emotional strain of staring at computer monitors and fiddling with buttons. Allana Mayer wrenched a very standard and humourless interview out of him, when it was blatant that he wanted to talk about bicycles. Then the tape recording of the interview got horribly garbled. Then an email exchange of epic proportions took place, possibly involving some fire-breathing dragons, belly-dancers, Edwardian textile-makers, and malfunctioning word processing programs.

Where the hell is your full-length album?

I don’t know. I hate recording. My stuff is old and I can’t get the music out of it easily. I have to play the song—that’s already finished and recorded on my stuff, mind you—for a computer that re-records it in a more reproducible format. It’s just very boring. Also, the guy who I’m supposed to record with is an inveterate bourgeois “traveller” who likes to find himself reflected in abject foreign poverty and so he’s out of the country at the moment. We’re supposed to record soon, though.

And why are you rarely doing shows around Toronto?

I play shows but I feel awkward telling people about it. Blocks will, if I remember to tell them, post upcoming shows on their website.

Whatever happened to King Tut, the collaboration with Owen Pallett?

I really liked the name but I’m not totally sure it was ever a sure thing. We talked about it but he’s really quite busy. I’m also busy but not in the same way. I think the only place it was ever discussed was on Les Mouches’ website and that band is yesterday’s news, which probably means King Tut is yesterday’s news too, I guess.

And what of other side projects?

I’m in a band called Awesome but we haven’t been playing that much because everybody has other projects and can’t commit, and the band requires a lot of commitment.

I got a copy of Mighty Magnificence, and I remember hearing “Jumangi” and thinking that it was so wonderful, and having no idea why.

Thanks. I have no idea either, which is too bad. I think that whatever it was I was trying to work out in that song I tried to work out in all my other songs but I’m not sure any of them ever succeeded, even “Jumangi.” Maybe over the course of all of the songs I exhausted whatever it was I was trying to work out-—not in any one particular song but a little bit over the entire Animalmonster corpus, as it were—and now I’ve got nowhere left to go.

Do you have a lot of new stuff created for Animalmonster?

Yes but I’m not really happy with any of it. I’ve been playing different versions of two or three different songs for a while now but none of them are really working for me. Maybe that’s why I’m not telling anyone about my shows. I’ve been thinking about starting to use my computer but I’m worried there won’t be enough restrictions and without them I won’t be able to make anything. Possibility is really bad for me; I find it overwhelming and counter-productive.

Did you have any formal music training?

I did, but it was years ago, and I only got so far, so I only have a vague understanding of how music works. I only kind of know what I’m doing, in a really basic, intuitive way. But not intuitive like those people that understand things and can improvise, for instance. But rather in this way where I can tell that whatever I’m doing will probably sound good five keys further down or up.

What do you have planned for this appearance at Wavelength?

Ideally I’d like to have those two or three new songs finished for good. I haven’t played “Jumangi” in a long time so maybe I’ll play that. It seems appropriate. There’s a Laibach cover I want to do but I don’t know if it’ll be ready and I’m feeling a little bit that’s it’s too much of a joke cover, and I really hate those. Even though I like the song, it feels a little disingenuous.

By Allana Mayer