| feedbackmonitor.com
www.feedbackmonitor.com
03. 2001
by I. Khider
Beef Terminal’s debut album 20 GOTO 10, released late last year on
Noise Factory Records, is one of the rawest and most impressive albums
to come out of Toronto in recent memory. This is the music of obscure
industrial buildings, of a close friend lost, of childhood revelry in
listening to forbidden music and disembodied nocturnal radio voices that
call out in the enshrouding darkness.
20 GOTO 10 is an album reviewers did not know how to categorize since
marketing terms have yet to catch up with the sound. But the album is
part of a growing trend in music, somewhat reminiscent of godspeed you
black emperor! or a darker Do Make Say Think, or even Stygian Vistas era
Soma. Layered guitar melodies, chintzy drum programming and sloppy editing
are generally the ingredients of a mediocre album, but in Beef Terminal’s
case these restrictions were turned to high virtues. Though the recording
lacks big budget finesse, it’s limitations were turned into assets.
Mike Matheson, the man behind Beef Terminal’s existence, is the quintessential
Torontonian: a cheery and enthusiastic conversationalist on the surface,
but lurking beneath is an edge, a dissatisfied and brooding personality
who expresses himself succinctly through his music. And in a way, the
music of Beef Terminal is representive of the city. By day, take away
the lush colors of summer and fall, and Toronto reveals itself as a worn,
tired, greedy prostitute perpetually fixed on fiscal gain. By night, in
the desolate evenings with tree branches swaying and the street lamps
solitarily aglow, 20 GOTO 10 is the soundtrack to the city’s most
remote and lonely corners.
Perhaps it would have therefore been appropriate to interview Matheson
amongst the cigarette-smoke haze of one of the more anonymous doughnut
shops situated throughout the city. Instead, we met in the immaculate
smoke-free environs of King’s Court Cafe in the heart of the Kensington
Market where we spoke over coffee and first rate tofu. And the first question
that was asked was where and how did he come across such an unconventional
name as Beef Terminal?
Matheson: "It’s the name of a building in the Jane and St. Clair
area of Toronto. I guess it’s a slaughter house. I saw it a long
time ago and I always thought if I ever have something that’s suitably
weird enough I’ll call it that."
Drawn to music since childhood, Matheson’s forays into playing began
over 12 years ago in high school when he acquired his first electric guitar.
It was also during his high school years that he picked up a four track
recorder - the very same one he used when recording 20 GOTO 10, although
it isn’t in the same condition that it used to be.
Matheson: "I keep (the recorder) on the floor of my studio. We have
a bit of a mouse problem in our apartment, and they’d gotten into
the box and were living in there. So they screwed it up pretty bad. I
fixed it, and it’s probably about 70% of what it used to be, but
it was in mint condition when I put it in that box, it was perfect."
Matheson was in and out of bands that embraced folk and rock styles throughout
high school and university. His last collaborative music project was with
a band called Kennel District, also on the Noise Factory label, that has
since disbanded. During all this time, the odd spare moment Matheson had
to himself went to recording Beef Terminal style tracks.
Matheson: "All during that time, from 1995 on, I was making these
Beef Terminal recordings and stuff like that on the side. When I was in
the band it was weird because I couldn’t (do solo work), I felt that
if I had an idea I had to give it to the band. So I couldn’t devote
my full time to it, Kennel District was my first priority."
While mediating musical directions between his fellow band members, perhaps
Beef Terminal was a manifestation of a musical direction he wanted to
explore yet never had a chance to.
Matheson: "There was always a lot of arguing because we were three
pretty strongly minded people. But it’s not like I was compromising
the style of music I wanted to play. I wanted to do rock at the time but
I (also) got a little bored with it. It’s not like wanted to make
Beef Terminal style music with this rock band I was playing in, it was
two different things."
When Kennel District disbanded it freed Matheson to fully realize his
musical direction, and he returned to solo playing with a more focused
vision. This indirectly provided the title for his album.
Matheson: "20 GOTO 10 is from an early computer scripting language,
it means ‘go back to the beginning’. I chose it because I thought
it was kinda cool, but also because it represented what I was doing. At
the end of my band’s existence, I was going back to the way I used
to do things for myself as opposed to other people. For a couple of months
it was just pure freedom to do exactly what I wanted to do. But it’s
very melancholy music and I’m not really sure why. It just comes
from a place inside me that’s a lonely melancholy place"
This melancholy is reflected in track titles like "You Will Pass
Away", "He Is Right Above Me", "Sick Love Under Toronto",
"I Will Not Share You" and "How We Ended Up Under The Wheels"
which seem bleak and clouded with an awareness of mortality.
Matheson: "The titles are kind of heavy." (He nods and grins.)
"Some of them I just made up and they don’t really mean anything,
but some of them do. ‘He Is Right Above Me’ - that’s my
friend Brian, he died four years ago. Some of the titles allude to that.
Without sounding to cosmic about it, he was sort of guiding me and the
things I do musically. ‘You Will Pass Away’..."
I interjected: "A recognition of your mortality?"
Matheson: "And your’s." (He laughs and I wince.) "‘I
Will Not Share You’, that’s a tip of the hat to The Smiths.
‘How We Ended Up Under The Wheels’ - that’s something I
thought of one day when I was on the streetcar. I was looking out the
window and I can’t even remember exactly what I was thinking, but
that phrase came into my mind and I thought it was a pretty good song
title. I kept that at the back of my mind, and when I did that track it
was the perfect because it’s sad and melancholy."
Disembodied voices who speak in English, Mandarin and Arabic haunt this
album, bringing the impression of listening in on fleeting ghosts passing
through your room on their way to judgment. These voices give the album
much of it’s haunting character.
Matheson: "I have a police scanner, just a little box you can get
Radio Shack. You can listen to the police, but one of the side benefits
is that people’s analogue cell phone conversations are caught. Anything
you hear was on as I was recording (the track), that I didn’t archive
things that I would tape record and use later. I’m violating people’s
privacy, so I tried use small snippets and make sure that there’s
nothing that was incriminating. Not that I’m justifying it in any
way."
This use of sounds stolen from the cell phone ether seemed somewhat related
to the influence of another form of air waves on Matheson and his music.
Matheson: "One of the things I love is the idea of air waves and
what happens at night. If you listen to the radio during the day, it’s
totally different from when you listen to it at night. Hearing someone’s
voice talking on the radio or when you’re listening to the scanner
in the middle of the night, it’s intimate or scary, almost spooky.
There’s a Pink Floyd song that has this one passage with dogs that
I used to hear when I was kid and it would just freak me out. It was a
really scary and cool kind of thing and when I would hear it, even at
a really young age, it was powerful to me. And then I realized that what
I was trying to do with this album was make songs that made me feel that
way. What I was trying to do (was) to creep myself with this music. Which
kind of worked."
Reading through the liner notes on 20 GOTO 10, one will see that the album
was recorded in something called a Kitchudio, a homemade word that Matheson
helpfully defines.
Matheson: "My studio is in my kitchen. I did have it in our bedroom
for a long time but I don’t go to bed until 4 in the morning, my
wife goes to bed at 11. So I moved the whole thing into the kitchen out
of necessity, which I like because I can record all night."
Making music in the loneliest hours of the night in a converted and cluttered
kitchen studio, it’s easy to picture Matheson working on his music
in complete solitude. In fact, in addition to the mice mentioned earlier,
Matheson actually has some company while he plays and records at night.
Matheson: "There’s a guy across from my window that sits and
works from his computer while I’m working and I’m obsessed with
this guy because he always seems to be working and it sort of drives me
to work myself. So I’ve never seen him do anything but work on his
computer. Recently I’ve looked out there, when I’ve been out
having a cigarette and I’ve seen him doing hard core kareoki in his
bedroom by himself with his head phones and he’s really getting into
it. So I’m starting to wonder if he’s going crazy."
(Visit www.beefterminal.com to check out first rate sounds, eerie photos,
David Lynch-like video clips and warped testimonials of this talented
artist. You can also find out why the Beef Terminal track "Christians"
was banned from being included on the album.)
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