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Pheobee Geebee
Hunky Girl Pheobee Geebee coughs up the gunk on Black Lung, Alternahunk
and Snog.
'My
real name is Pheobee Geebee!' ...says Pheobee, defensively as we start
the interview.
I've always envied Pheobee's DJ name, now I'm even more jealous. Pheobee is someone who I have known about for a long time. Her name appeared on a Clan Analogue poster which used to be above my bed and her memory remains rigid in my mind from the time that Snog played at the Big Day Out in Australia. Pheobee isn't a member of Snog or a member of Black Lung but has stood in, in both these bands when touring around Australia. These projects were excellent but only a small representation of her programming ability.
When I last spoke with Pheobee her main project was Alternahunk. An all girl band who appealed to a variety of people including those at rock venues, raves and Clan type things. I'm not so sure if she is involved in this anymore but I know she is working with a Japanese girl in a group called Super Cute. Last year they released a mini CD.
About Alternahunk though, 'there's a bass player and she plays really heavy kind of death metal, meets dub, meets grind core, bass lines and there's a singer as well so there's songs. I do all the drum machines and synthesisers and stuff, so it's coming from quite a few different areas. It can appeal to a lot of people so we can play to a varied crowd.'
'If were going to do a full on rave show, we make it more fast and dance orientated. We've done a few ambient shows because I'm really into ambient stuff. I'm really into tones and environment sound. I used to do quite a lot of dub stuff in a band, I used to play in called the Family. We were on a Clan record.'
'I
often do a lot of work on my own because I'm really into drum programming.
I really love doing that. I do drum programming and then bring that into
the band and we'll turn that into a song. It's kind of like working on
your own because you're starting from scratch and building something up.'
Pheobee's music is also featured in the avant garde high art noise scene. At these festivals she tends to work more with samples. At the time of the interview she told me about an up and coming gig and the idea she had at the time.'
'I've got an idea in my brain and a lot of sounds in my head that I want to make. I'm gong to start off doing just tonal minimal frequency stuff and then build it up into something rhythmic. I don't want to use any drum sounds.'
'I just want to use found sounds because I've done a lot of field recording work. So I've got a big sound library which I've just recorded out and about. I'm going to sample them all and make some funny rhythmic thing out of found sounds.' Pheobee played in Brisbane at a Market Day as part of Black Lung with David Thrussel. It was an outdoor gig in a tent and boy did this pair stir up the dust.
'I just work in it live. Dave does all the music himself solo. He'd been doing it for quite a while and he hadn't done any solo shows. People wanted him to do solo shows but it's a bit nerdy being a one many techno band, so he asked me to come and play.'
'It's really fun, I can just do whatever. He knows that whatever I do is cool, so he just says go for it. I just take along whatever I feel like, like a couple of synths and I always take a drum machine and play. It's really good, it's just pumping and fast.'
'So
I'm doing a lot of drums, playing live typewriter style drums over the
top plucking and panning. I've got this great drum machine where you can
play the filters live. The good thing about Black Lung is that it's easy.
We don't lug much gear around and it's kind of a low stress thing.'
'You know I've played in band and your lugging 12 pieces of gear and so many effects, your patching and it takes ages to set it up and pull it down. I mean it sounds fuckin unreal and fun to play but it's a big hassle and Dave's totally lazy when it come to it. He likes doing it the easy way, which is totally cool.'
'This really great guy in Brisbane Andy loaned us gear to play. Dave met him because Andy's from a band Pure Bunk and they were signed to Machinery for a while, which is a label in Germany which put out all the first couple of Snog records. David has had contact with him before and he works in a music shop.'
'Going into his studio was fantastic, I could just walk in and go, I'll have one of those and one of those. I borrowed a synth off him. I don't have one of the ones I borrowed but I've played hundreds of Analogue synthesisers. They are all basically the same and it's got a good external signal processor. I really like picking a synthesiser with an external signal processor in Black Lung because I can take the loops off, and take the kick drum off what Dave's doing on the main Black Lung track and use that to trigger the synth, so it's squelching in time.'
'I like to borrow gear as when I went down to Melbourne with Alternahunk, I took these synths down and since I got back they don't make any of the same sounds they used to. With Alternahunk we're a rock band really, compared to all the other stuff I do which is much more electronic.'
'It's really stimulating to be able to just borrow gear off someone and rock up on stage. I spend five or ten minutes getting an initial first sound that I like and then just go for it. It could be a machine that you've never touched before in your life, and each of these machines are totally their own. No machine makes totally the same sound, it's really exciting.'
'The woman in Snog, her name is Julia Burk she does all the videos and stuff. She's really great, she didn't want to do the Big Day Out tour last year and they needed someone. So I said ooh yeah I'll go on a Big Day Out holiday and play in a rock band.' Pheobee said.
'I don't nearly have as much free rain in that band as I do in Black Lung because there's songs and there's chords and stuff like that. Often I'd play sounds that are in the song and stuff, so I'm using a full tune. I can play the piano so I can play normal keyboard.'
'I started playing piano when I was really little. I learnt piano as a kid for ages and I learnt drums for a while, to understand the techno thing you need rhythm. I gave that up though, as sitting in front of a drum kit for half an hour and playing the same thing...'
'I used to do quite a bit of DJing work but I stopped for a really depressing reason. I've been unemployed for the last year. Since then I haven't bought any records so I haven't really been DJing. That's the only reason I haven't been doing it. I haven't been buying new records.'
'I want to get back into it again, it gives you an excuse to buy good records and I have a really wide variety of taste, I don't just like one style. I used to like DJing at things where you didn't necessarily have to make people dance, you know in an experimental party environment.'
'I have some friends in Sydney who put on a night called Theater of Sonics, they're an experimental sound collective and they put on nights with a wide variety of acts like some sorts of sound insulation things. I used to mix all the bands and be a sound technician on those nights and DJ between things which is really great. Some full, full on noise band would be going kzzzzzzk for 10 minutes and you would go cool. What song of you want to follow this up with? It's really great. I really like doing that DJing on nights where there's live music.'
`I do Skid Row, I have a show with five other girlfriends so there's six of us, it's called Examining the Entrails and it's on 88.9 Sydney between 6 and 9 Tuesday mornings. (That's why we only do it once every 6 weeks.) In winter it's dark and in the middle of nowhere. Generally first thing in the morning I play really mellow stuff because I'm feeling seedy because it's so early. I like weird electro stuff, I like crunchy heavy techno. The kind of techno I like is big and crunchy and meaty. I like things slow as well, kind of sexy, and I like quite a lot of melodic stuff.'
'Pop sounds degrading but funny, old melodic 60's stuff so I'll play anything and everything. I like Sepultura, I'll play whatever I'm listening to at the time, no specific genre. I play a lot of local stuff because a lot of my friends make music, I take in tapes. Skid Row is totally low tech and dodge core, it's a shame. Horray for Pheobee Geebee. Vanessa
FreakQuency issue 1 pages 16 & 17
