Justin Curfman of Feeding Fingers Interviewed at Gothic Magazine (Germany)
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This is an interview, in its entirety - in English, with Justin Curfman of Feeding Fingers, conducted by Daniela Turss for Gothic Magazine - Germany (issue #63). This edition of the magazine also comes with a 2-disc compilation sampler, including the Feeding Fingers song, "Is Heaven All That You Hear" from the album, "Baby Teeth". Please visit the site and order a copy of the magazine and tell your newsstand to order it.
Could you please introduce yourself and FEEDING FINGERS to our readers? Who's who and who's responsible for what? ....
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I am Justin Curfman, front-man for Feeding Fingers. The group is a trio consisting of myself, Todd Caras, and Danny Hunt. Because we are a trio of multi-instrumentalists, the duties of one member to the next changes from song to song, when we perform live. Typically, I am responsible for vocals, guitar, bass, and keys. Todd is usually on bass, keys, and his custom lighting rig, while Danny is nearly always on percussion. ....
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Please try to describe what your music sounds like - or what you want it to sound like. Is there any genre you feel comfortable in?....
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For me, our music sounds like a musical illustration of my dreams and pre-occupations with everything from missing children, entomophagy, drowning, sex, and duality. I would like for our music to sound like an accurate soundtrack for my unconscious life. I am not a very subjective writer. I prefer to think and write about impossible lives and situations. This is the closest that I am able to get to living out my fantasies - excluding my animation work. ....
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I never attempted to seek a genre to sort of burrow into - I don't think that many people do. But, it seems that we've found a small place in the sort of post-punk/dark-wave/death-rock spectrum of the goth-alternative genre. ....
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Please describe the band's development up until today. (How did you meet? When did you finally have the current line-up? Any funny little stories / anecdotes from your past...)....
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The creation of Feeding Fingers developed around my psychological need to purge out of my mind a collection of music that I had been writing off and on since age 16 that I had originally intended to be used as the soundtrack for an animated film project that I had in mind as a teenager, which I eventually lost interest in and abandoned. ....
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In 2005 I began production on a different feature-length stop-motion puppet animated film titled "TICKS", which I am working on to this day, and found myself with nearly twenty pieces of complimentary music in my sketchbooks, on cassette-tapes and hard-drives spanning nearly ten years. ....
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I decided that "TICKS" was going to be a film unto itself, in which I was going to abandon all of my previous ideas and start from the ground up. I tucked this older music away in my studio and decided to never re-visit it. ....
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Several months later, I purchased a home in a suburb of ....Atlanta.., ..GA.... (....USA....) which had a large performance/studio space spanning the entire lower level of the house. The original intent of purchasing the house was to allow for me to have the space required to work on animation and music projects and I initially devoted most of my time to working on "TICKS". But, seeing the space and thinking about the abandoned music filled me with the desire to start a band and to perform this music for a live audience, just as a temporary experiment - so that I could get the urge out of my mind. ....
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I had never started a band. I had played with people through my teen years and have written music since I was a child, but this was a new and exciting beginning for me. ....
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I submitted advertisements in music papers, internet networking sites, etc., etc. calling for a bass player and a drummer interested in playing in a group similar to Joy Division, Cocteau Twins, Echo & the Bunnymen, and on and on. A few days later, phone calls and emails started trickling in and everything fell into place very easily. ....
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The first phone call was from a bass player named Todd Caras. I was staying evenings at a hospice with my dying grandmother at the time of his call. I took the call on the back patio of the hospice. His voice was loud and confident. Todd knows his history and knew EXACTLY what I was looking for.....
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Todd asked that I make a CD for him with as much music that I had ready to perform and to pass it along to him right away. ....
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I made a disc with ten songs and we met at a bar near the hospice. Neither one of us had any idea of what the other looked like, but for some reason as soon as I walked into the bar he called my name, "Justin!" And we chatted for the next three hours. We've been joined at the hip ever since. ....
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Finding a drummer was a bit more difficult. I went through at least a dozen phone calls from very well-intentioned people, but they all had too many outside obligations to be able to take my seemingly temporary project as seriously as I would have liked. ....
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One afternoon I took a call from Danny and I asked when he would be available to come to my place for a try-out and he said, "How about tonight?" ....
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Danny is a veteran percussionist of any style that you can imagine. He offers to the group a certain finesse and professionalism through his experience that you don't often hear anymore. After learning a little about his history with the many national touring acts that he has performed with over many years, I was a little intimidated by him initially and was a little afraid to have him involved in the project, for fear of his just abandoning us eventually for someone with a little more experience and financial sway, but the man has found a comfortable home with Todd and I.....
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The three of us have been together and unchanged since 2006. The idea of a fourth member on keys has been discussed off and on for a year or so, but at the moment I think that there is a certain something from the group that would be lost if a fourth member were involved. ....
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Also, given the temperament of the three of us and the amount of time that we have spent together to be able to deal with one another's eccentricities, I do not think that I would feel comfortable subjecting a fourth person to dealing with the three of us. ....
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I have my own passive, nice-guy, workaholic, O.C.D., nature that my guys have to deal with from day to day. Todd has a legendary temper which is known both here in ....America.... and in the ....UK..... And Danny… he scares people. ....
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How did your music change during that time?....
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Our music has changed quite a bit since the beginning. In my mind, my only reference for the music that came to be known as Feeding Fingers, was that of my own. All of my writing and recording was done 100% on my own up until the group came together. At first, the music, when performed live, was rather subdued and a little too loyal to the sound of what you hear on "Wound in Wall". There was a certain sterility that I was not able to overcome at first, because I was used to playing this music a specific way that I had been playing and thinking about for years.....
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I always thought of my music on my own terms. When we first got together, I would show Todd and Danny the parts that I wanted them to play, and they would play them. It was not very collaborative. In the beginning, I felt as if I was almost like a singer-songwriter with a backing band, and I was their director. ....
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Eventually, as boredom crept in and as my ideas came slower, Todd and Danny started to get comfortable and offer their own interpretations and flavors into the music and it became much more dynamic and vicious live. In and out of the studio, we're nearly a different band altogether. ....
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What’s your personal connection to bands such as THE CURE and ECHO AND THE BUNNYMAN, which you call your main influences? What’s your motivation to write music that is rooted in their style and how do you react to people who might accuse you of being “stuck in the past”?....
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I am glad that you asked this question. I am usually "accused" of this before I can even give my position. Sometimes I wonder if I should even give some critics the satisfaction of a response. But, I think it's overdue… so here we are…....
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I was a loner, American teenager through the 1990s and I had no interest in what was contemporary corporate-radio pop music in those years. As a matter of fact, I didn't really listen to music at all as a child. I hated rock music. I thought it was very dull and imbecilic. My father was a blues man. My grandmother was a country musician, who regularly performed at the Grand Ole' Opry in ....Nashville.., ..Tennessee.... (....USA....) in her youth. So, of course, as a defiant kid, that didn't interest me either. ....
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I was always more interested in literature, film, and comic books. Yet, later on I think that I had devoured so much of those mediums in such a short amount of time, that I branched out into music. ....
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I remember reading, as every kid does - it seems, people like William S. Burroughs, Alfred Kubin, Georg Trakl, Bruno Schulz, and the like. These writers, among other artists, filmmakers, painters, sculptors, etc. all sort of pushed me into finally discovering music. ....
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I listened to "modern" composers like Shostokovich, Lutoslawski, Penderecki, John Cage, and the rest until some boredom sank in. Then, I moved on to the more original "industrial" music from groups like Einsturzende Neubauten, SPK, DAF, Cabaret Voltaire, and so on. I digested all of that and finally bought an analog four-track cassette recorder from a small amount of money which I was awarded at age fourteen as a result of a car accident followed by some cosmetic surgery, which has given me the prominent scar across my left cheek. ....
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With this recorder I would record EVERYTHING. I secretly recorded conversations with other people. I secretly recorded other people's conversations. I recorded television and radio broadcasts. I recorded sounds from animals and machines. I recorded words and poetry. I recorded everything and would mix much of it together into a sort of dissonant sound-salad. I still have at least one hundred or so cassette tapes in my studio over ten years old with all of this. I have no idea what I will do with these, but it would break my heart to see them in a wastebasket.....
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Over time, I lost interest in the random noise-scapes. I lost interest in mixing this. So, I wanted to start writing "proper" songs. I didn't know where to start. Initially I had more interest in manipulating sounds than I did with "sculpting" them into recognizable music structures. I knew that I wanted to write something closer to pop music, but I didn't really have a genre or school of though to sort of draw influence from. There wasn't really anything to my knowledge at that time that really inspired me. But I knew that it was something that I wanted to try. ....
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There are two major college-radio stations here where I live outside of ....Atlanta..... One of those stations did, and still does, broadcast a lot of noise/avant-garde/ambient music late at night. I used to listen to it nearly every night before going to bed. I remember not being able to sleep very well one night and staying awake past this noise show and there was a show calling itself "Dead Air". ....
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On this show they played a lot of Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, ....Japan...., and sometimes interspersed with music closer to things like Throbbing Gristle, Kraftwerk, Psychic TV, etc. and through all of this, I fell in love. I felt like I found this little corner of the music world that I was excited about exploring. In all of this, I found something that spoke to me, musically. I understood the arrangements and I identified with the philosophies and sometimes non-philosophies of all of these guys. There were elements of drama, performance, and non-literal ways of thought and expression that really excited me. This was music that was meant, on some levels, to be more interpreted than simply listened to. ....
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I would listen to this show and write down the names of the groups and artists which I liked the most, so that I could get my hands on their albums. ....
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I coaxed my father into driving me to some media stores around ....Atlanta.... to try to find some of these bands on store shelves, and was disappointed when I found that almost none of them were available, unless ordered. Somehow, this made it all a little more intriguing.....
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Of all of these groups, the only ones that ever had anything on store shelves were The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie and the Banshees. For whatever reason, here in the States, these are really the only groups that sort of penetrated pop culture and stuck around for more than a few years. So, of course, as a fourteen year old kid, on the same day with a gift card from a relative, I picked up "Pornography"(The Cure), "Heaven Up Here" (Echo and the Bunnymen), "Juju" (Siouxsie and the Banshees) and "In the Flat Fields" (Bauhaus) from some retail franchise in a shopping center. It all seems so cliché now, but back then it felt good to sort of "discover" something and to dig a little deeper into this brief little music phenomenon that took place over two decades ago. I am not sure what it was about the collective consciousness at that time. Maybe the Cold War and the economic strife of western culture at the time ushered in this music. And, I think, in some ways, we are seeing a cyclic return to form because of the recent resurgence of problems with the ....Russian Federation.... and the current economic condition. ....
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We see these themes in literature occur in cycles through WWI, WWII, and returning again with a lot of people embracing escapist surrealist and non-representational, neo-expressionist literature and art. I think that when faced with conditions that we are not necessarily able to fully control, we retreat within ourselves to escape until the wave runs over us and we may be able to stick our necks out again once it passes. Maybe this is why when a lot of musicians that work in this "genre" pursue solo careers, it usually turns out to be a dull mess filled with sentiment. ....
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I don't think that I knowingly or purposefully write music in "their" style as much as I am just able to identify with the structures of what I feel are well-laid plans. Pop music has changed very little since the 1950s, really. The structures are still the same. The tones, the technology, and the ideas have taken on new identities, but there are a lot of things that have not changed. There are some things that just universally work. There is just something very seductive and beautiful to me about certain tones that people laid ground-work for years ago. I just hope to work within some of them and add something of our own and eventually maybe cut through. Who knows, maybe we'll burst out of a bubble and become a Flamenco band someday. ....
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I wouldn't say that we're "stuck in the past". To be honest with you, I don’t know that this type of music ever really penetrated the mainstream to become dated. This is why so much of it still sounds contemporary and relevant. If anything, I would say that what you hear on the radio is stuck in the past. ....
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Mainstream radio turned "punk" into breakfast cereal jingles. R&B is NOT R&B - it is just a group of handsome jocks crooning about how great they are and how many women (they think) want to have sex with them. Hip hop hasn't really been hip-hop for years. That really sort of died when Public Enemy disappeared. This singer-songwriter thing is tiresome. Indie rock that you hear on the radio is trite, I think. ....
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What you hear on the radio is stuck in the past because it is tried and true and will not upset or challenge the masses. And I do not blame the corporations for dumbing down and sterilizing mass media. It all sells because it is what the LISTENERS want. This is a sad truth about popular culture, but I don't know that it has ever been any different. I don't opine for the "good ole' days" because I think that things have always been this way. I think that we live in the best days so far. And to be honest with you, I think it's wonderful. Let them have theirs, and let us have ours. Do you really want your grandmother to be listening to "Adolescent Sex"? ....
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What else are your sources of inspiration?....
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I am not as inspired by music as I am by dreams, conversations, memories, confusion, and literature. In music I can find structures and patterns to help me lay foundations for something that I would like to communicate, but the subjects are never influenced by music. I enjoy not quite understanding what people say to me, and remembering things my own way. I love to fill in the dots. Music is sometimes, for me, one of those dots. ....
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Please tell me everything about your new album “Baby Teeth”? What was the creative process like on “Baby Teeth”?....
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"Baby Teeth" is the follow up to "Wound in Wall". I felt that "Baby Teeth" was a necessary step to take with Feeding Fingers as a proper band. "Wound in Wall" was more or less my own solo vanity project. With "Baby Teeth" I felt it important to involve Todd and Danny very closely as collaborators on this album to sort of give the listener and us a sense of what the group might sound like if I took a little bit more of a back seat and allow more of the their creative input and criticism. I felt that "Baby Teeth" needed to be shorter, tighter, and more a Feeding Fingers album rather than a Justin Curfman featuring Feeding Fingers album - if that makes sense.....
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I come out of an animation background, where I am used to controlling 100% of the creative process. That habit bled over into my music, and I have had to learn to let some of that go in order to give the listener a little bit more of an unpredictable experience from album to album, and to make sure that my mates don't get bored silly working with me. The process of creating "Baby Teeth" was very different than that of "Wound in Wall". ....
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We started to work on "Baby Teeth" in June of 2008 and finished it four months later in September. Stickfigure Records and my company, Tephramedia, released it officially at the beginning of this year. ....
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I typically write all Feeding Fingers songs on bass and drums first and then add slashes of keys and guitars, where appropriate. I then listen to the music hundreds of times, over and over again, and sing nonsense over it. Through this nonsense I find some recognizable pieces words and phrases and I translate them to myself phonetically until I find out what it is that I think that I am trying to say. I write lyrics in a trance. I later alter them through some alchemical process of association and eventually you have a song with lyrics that I intend for one to translate the same way that one might interpret a non-narrative painting or still image. I do not like literal language. I can't think lyrically like that. Thinking that way makes me feel like Robert Palmer must have felt. ....
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My mates listen to these song sketches and add their touches and suggestions and we fight a little until a happy medium is found between us. I have to do all of the engineering. I can't imagine working with a stranger in the room with us. The creative process, for me, is very personal. I can't work with someone not involved directly with Feeding Fingers in the studio. It gives me that feeling that you get when you are using the restroom at someone's house, you notice that the bathroom door is broken, and the whole family will be home at any minute. It is a terrible intrusion of privacy, and I can't do it. ....
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What’s behind the name “Baby Teeth”? Are the individual songs thematically interconnected?....
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I think that the album's name, "Baby Teeth", is both a reference to the lyrics of the title track:....
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"I would rather watch you up....
On a silent stage....
With baby teeth still in....
Still inside your....
Mouth…"....
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These lyrics were inspired by a dream that I had about a beautiful female singer singing to me on a stage. She finished her song, smiled, and I noticed that she still had her baby teeth, making her gums appear grotesquely enormous. And for some reason this sexually aroused me enormously. ....
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And I believe it is a reference to just the place of the album in its relation to Feeding Fingers', as of now, relatively short career. There are a lot of things brewing in the brain right now for the future. ....
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I believe that "Baby Teeth" is altogether thematically connected in some way. I think that this is the reason why it was decided to make this a 9 song album, rather than a 14 song marathon like "Wound in Wall" was. I like to think that the listener can put "Baby Teeth" in a CD player and listen to it in its entirety as one complimentary piece of music, which is why; admittedly, I don't think that there are nearly as many radio-friendly pieces on this one as was on "Wound in Wall". ....
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From those songs I already know, I got the impression that you concentrate on minimal compositions that combine influences from 80ies Minimal Electro and the more rock-based tunes. I feel that you allow each song to develop, and that you want your listeners to take some time to really “get” them. Do you agree with me on that? If yes, are you with your music trying to work against the trend of catchy, but often superficial rock-songs?....
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Yes. I agree. There has been something of a complaint about it "taking too long" for me to get to the singing on some of the songs. There are some songs where the lyrics don't appear until well into over a minute of music. People complain about this because they are used to the radio-format. I don't write music for the radio. I write music that I feel is right. I like to think of songs as little experiences unto themselves, where the artist has enough time to introduce himself to the listener and to usher them into an experience. I think that people that are appreciative of this "genre" understand this and are a bit more patient. In addition, radio is DEAD.....
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I don't know that I am actively working against the formula, but I can tell you that I am unable to write like that. It just feels stupid and wrong. I would feel like I would be insulting our listeners for me to assume that they have the attention span of a mosquito. Not only do I feel that it is my responsibility as an artist to escort our listeners into the songs, but I also have to write music the way that I do in order to put myself into that same state of mind, otherwise I feel like a fraud. ....
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What are the main themes of the lyrics on “Baby Teeth”?....
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Blurry language and vague sensuality, maybe. I am not sure. That's up to you, really. ....
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Is there anything special you want to express through your music and lyrics?....
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I want to put beautiful pieces of confusion in unassuming packages and have enough to go around for everyone to enjoy on the coldest winter mornings and evenings of the year. ....
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Is there, in your opinion, one song on the new album that contains the message of “Baby Teeth” in essence?....
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"She Hides Disease" and "Is Heaven All That You Hear", I feel compliment one another and embody the nature of the album like a pair of bookends. ....
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I just read an entry in your Myspace-Blog in which you thanked your fans who attended one of your concerts. How important is it for you to get personally in touch with those people who like your music and not only “collect” 50.000 “friends” on internet-platforms?....
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It is very important, I think, for us to connect with as many listeners on a personal level as possible. In this world of over-saturation in the entertainment industry, and this sort of idea that people should just abandon their daily necessities and obligations just to listen to you, is ludicrous. ....
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With the standard and the cost of living being so criminally high right now, paired with a global economy that has taken a nose-dive, I find it very flattering that anyone would spare a few minutes out of their day and sometimes a few dollars from their pocket to show their appreciation for the group, that it is important to let them know that they are appreciated. I am humbled to no end every day when I wake up and get to work on music, animation, literature, or whatever it is that I am working on that day and see that I have emails from all over the world from people just wanting to say hello or to thank me for offering some nugget of satisfaction to them in this world. ....
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To think that you are so great and so VERY talented that people should just fawn over you based on the fact that you have some talent and that they should just send you their praise and their hard-earned money just because of your very existence, is absurd. ....
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From working in this community of music and film, I hear these presumptuous conversations from "artists" all of the time about how no one understands them, and that the rest of the world is just too stupid to appreciate them, when the truth is that their talent really lies in that they put a lot more hours than your average person into learning how to use Pro Tools or some other such thing. Don't be presumptuous. Be honest, humble, and prolific. Be a decent human-being. There aren't many left. ....
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What are future plans of FEEDING FINGERS?....
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We are working with Stickfigure Records (USA) and NetManagement Musik Verlag (....Germany....) on a lot of European promotion to help establish enough of a following for the group to leave the ....USA.... for a few European tour dates to promote both albums. There are a lot of CD release parties in ..Europe.. and ..Asia.. that are lasting from March through May to help build more awareness for Feeding Fingers there. ....
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The truth is that nearly 90% of our listeners live in ..Europe... ....America.... is something of a deaf ear for this genre right now. ..Europe.. is a different story for us. The restraining factor is finances to get the group overseas. But, we're working very closely and diligently to push our way into your backyard. ....
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I am working on a feature-length stop-motion animated film titled "TICKS" right now. But, there is a soundtrack being made along with it, which is a Feeding Fingers project. The film is due for release toward the end of 2010. "TICKS" will be toured through several film festival circuits and Feeding Fingers will tour with the film and will perform the soundtrack live as the film is screened. The soundtrack will be released ....
as an album unto itself on CD as well. ....
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Also, there will be a third non-soundtrack Feeding Fingers album which may come out at the same time as the "TICKS" soundtrack. I am not sure yet. I can tell you that the third album will be a little bit of a tonal departure from the previous two. ....
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