The Dean Spunt Interview
What was your childhood like growing up and are you originally from LA? When did you first begin to fall in love with music and art, and was this something that was relevant around your household when you were young?
I am primarily from a smaller town about 30 miles north of Los Angeles called Saugus. It was a pretty tiny place with no college radio, or anything like that to help the youngsters, at least when I was there. I live back here now, actually, I quite like it. Cal Arts is nearby, which is a pretty famous art school. There is also an evangelical college here called The Masters College. When school starts it is fun to see the two types out and about in town. I got into music pretty young, 7, or 8 I’d say. My parents weren’t particularly into music. My mother really liked Gloria Estefan, Sade and Whitney Houston and my father liked Reggae music. My mother started a silk screen shop in the late 80s with her sister, so I was around a lot of commercial art and design. I liked working in the shop and started printing my own shirts and random things in Jr. High school.
Who were some of your earliest influences? When did you realize you wanted to pursue a life and career in music and art? Fronting Wives in the early to mid 2000s, what was the landscape of the music community like during those early days prior to the constant echo of social media and the internet?
Well, I fell into punk and metal music when I was about 9, or 10 years old. Just after I had gotten into hip-hop and R&B, while I was living in the Valley. I had friends with older brothers and I borrowed and stole tapes, so I heard a bunch of pretty far out music early on. I was already into Metallica and metal thanks to MTV and Headbanger’s Ball, then Nirvana was a big one. But the tapes I got were like SOD, Misfits, Dr. Know, Cockney Rejects, DRI. Also, some SST / Cruz records stuff like Big Drill Car, Bad Brains and Blag Flag. I think once I heard that stuff and connected the dots, I was into the whole thing. When Wives started, it seemed pretty bleak for a band like us in LA. There really wasn’t a punk scene I was aware of. Maybe Orange County, San Diego, or Santa Barbara were more active as far as touring bands in the DIY / Punk world were concerned. LA wasn’t on the map for that kind of touring circuit then, except for the smell, which was an older, more sophisticated vibe. We couldn’t play any clubs then. Besides the small house parties. No clubs would book us.
Shortly after Wives dissolved, No Age formed. How did you initially meet your longtime friend and bandmate Randy Randall, and what led to you guys pivoting to this incredible duo-based outfit? You guys have released a remarkable body of work over the last decade and a half or so, with titles like “Nouns”, “An Object”, the band’s Drag City debut “Snares Like A Haircut” and countless others. What was sort of the ultimate vision and overall approach/goal for the band in those early days? It seems like you guys tapped into something special and just kept that exciting engine running at all times!
I met Randy through the drummer in Wives. He introduced us and thought we should all be in a band together. I first met Randy when I saw him play bass in this short-lived band called The Count. He had just joined. I had seen the band play before, and I guess the bass player left and Randy took over. He was punching the bass and not even playing any notes. I thought that was a very cool move, and he was wearing skate shoes (I skated back then) while all the other guys were trying to look like they were in The Locust, or The Who. So, we became friends and started jamming with these other guys. That was the beginning of Wives, and it was samplers, mini disc players and guitars. It started out more experimental and became more of a hardcore-type band. We did that for a while and had a pretty intense tour and had to kick the drummer out and really started questioning what we were doing. We decided if we were going to spend all this time and energy on music, we should make something that felt visceral, exciting and would fulfill our creative impulses. We wanted to make music we fell in love with. Take all the dark energy that we were dealing with in the other band and explode. It was a pretty special time, we were just fully committed to making our thing work. We gave it all we had. We have a good chemistry. We work well together and complement each other when we are being creative. It just works.
You're both prolific in that you're constantly shape-shifting in your process with various mediums and that is simply one of the most compelling elements about your career. Tell me about writing and recording your most recent solo effort, entitled “Basic Editions”.
This new record is something I have been working on for the past two years. It uses pretty old gear, all from the late 90s and early 2k’s. These synth Romplers by EM-U. They have funny names like “Mo Phatt”, “World Expedition” etc. I got one used randomly for really cheap and felt like I could learn it like any instrument. I really enjoy going through the sounds and organizing and manipulating them. They are pre-set sounds. I can’t add anything, so it is like a synth in that way, but they are sampled sounds from other instruments, so the fidelity is really pretty good. They were made before computers took off, so they are crammed full of features and editing abilities. I usually start messing around with buttons and find things I like and go from there. It's not terribly complicated, but I’ve got a good workflow going. It can go south pretty quickly if I am not careful.
I understand you also operate the label, Post Present Medium. It’s fascinating that you’ve come full circle from being an artist releasing material on labels to now being on the other side of the fence. What's the most fulfilling part of running a label for you, and would you mind telling us about some up-and-coming releases?
I have been running the label since 2001. Actually, before I was in Wives, which was my first serious band, so I have always done both things together. It feels natural for me to do both in tandem, separate but informing each other I guess. I missed doing the label, I took a couple of years off, and I didn’t feel balanced quite honestly. I love to do it. Work with creative and inspiring people and help do these things. I have an album by The Intima coming out October 18th. They were a band from 1999-2004 from Olympia / Portland and this is their final album from 2003 called “Peril and Panic”. We are reissuing it because it didn’t live up to the moment back then. Got mastered and mixed kinda quickly. It is a really cool record, and I am happy we get to get it back out there. Also, in two weeks, another release by The Split Bell Chime which has members of Behavior, Wand etc. It’s instrumental improvisational rock music, it’s pretty fried music. If that sounds up your alley, I got you covered.
