For someone with so many famous heads stuck on poles outside his jungle hut, you’d expect he’d put a little more “brag” into it. But the soft-spoken Eric Drew Feldman lets his keyboard playing do the talking for him. When you’ve recorded and played live with a twisted array of musical talent that includes Captain Beefheart, the Residents, Snakefinger, Pere Ubu, the Pixies, PJ Harvey and Polyphonic Spree, you don’t have to blow any hot air into your own balloon. Speaking from his San Francisco home, Feldman touched on the high points of a marvelous career like a flat stone skipping over the surface of a mountain lake. His latest project, kNIFE & fORK’s The Higher You Get The Rarer The Vegetation, is out now via Frank Black’s The Bureau label. Feldman will be also guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Feldman: My friend Don Van Vliet died almost two years ago. I will forever be grateful to him for being so generous with his innate knowledge of how to approach life and art. He taught me how not to do things, which narrows down missteps quite successfully, if you follow those rules. He helped me to hear the sound of one’s immediate environment as musical stimulus, like how squeaky windshield wipers and ceiling fans can be drum and bass parts, how screeching tires outside are the slide-guitar parts, etc. When the urge to compose a piece of music arises, I clear my mind, look inside and listen outside. It’s all there. You just need to prepare yourself to receive it.
Video after the jump.
http://vimeo.com/12765429
