Doramaar

Three Dunedin improvisers who happen to be female, Doramaar, in their short lifespan, established themselves as a true force in the contemporary nonsense music scene. Formed at some point in 1994 as a foursome - Kim Pieters, Adria Morgan, Sara Stephenson, and Andre Richardson - they recorded the Copula CD, released by Corpus Hermeticum. Thereafter they trimmed down to a trio of Pieters (who also plays in Rain and Flies Inside The Sun - for more info see Flies/Rain interview in issue #3), Morgan and Stephenson, and recorded the Terra Incognita LP, released by American label Fusetron in March 1996. They split up a few months afterwards, their volatile mixture of personalities (which had sparked them to head further and deeper into time- and structure-abandon) seemingly proving the catalyst. Their recordings - the two full-lengthers and a couple of comp tracks - spoke volumes and belie the relatively short lifespan of their creators. This interview was conducted by Nick Cain in early January 1996 with Kim and Adria; the then-holidaying Sara added her thoughts at a later date.

O: Why did you want to form an all-women band?

Kim: I'd been reading a lot of feminist theory. It's a big question, [laughs] it's a really big question, there are so many issues. I think it's a different dynamic. I was interested in the issue of women playing free noise. A lot of things have happened in the time since Doramaar formed, a lot of issues have come up, which we didn't think about in the first place. I didn't think about issues of representation, for instance.

O: At the start, what were the issues for you?

Kim: I just wanted to have fun and play music. I think it was because of reading feminist stuff and thinking, "Why am I always dealing with men? Is there something wrong with me?" [laughs] And I was really interested in women doing music, and what would come out. Especially women doing freeform music. The people I asked, I said, "This is the sort of music I want to do, I want to do freeform music. Do you want to do it?" We went from there. We had a bit of a hiccup along the way.

O: What was that?

Kim: [whispers theatrically] Andre. There were four of us at the beginning, for about a year, but that wasn't my intention, and it didn't work out. But the thing is, Andre's a really big part of Copula.

O: How long had you known the members of Doramaar before you formed the band?

Adria: You knew me through painting.

Kim: Yeah, and I knew that you played guitar. Sara hadn't played much but she was interested, and Sara has a determination which has paid off, she's amazing. There's a whole lot of shit that goes down about being a good musician. I was interested in people who didn't come from music backgrounds.

O: So you were 'unskilled' musicians when you started - have you 'improved'?

Kim: [laughs] Yes.

O: How has that changed the music?

Sara: I suppose we became more specialised, in an unorthodox sense, favouring a particular instrument. there was less swapping and interchanging of instruments.

Kim: It's better. I suppose after playing freeform music together for about a year, you just build up a rapport. We're very pleased with Terra Incognita, whereas Copula is...

Adria: Early Doramaar.

O: For me, improvised or freeform music has a bit of a stigma of being slightly academic or intellectual, with the musician needing to be well-trained or professional or something.

Kim: It doesn't have those connotations for me. To me, it's more a philosophy of freedom, away from too much learning. It's possibly a matter of a more sophisticated understanding of music. But for me, I'm a freeform painter, and I'm really interested in random positions and things like that. When I first started playing in Dadamah, with Peter [Stapleton], because he's a songwriter, we started off playing songs. But I was far more comfortable with random music. As time has gone on, the transition has happened, and now we play totally freeform music. I'm very happy with that.

O: Why?

Kim: There's all sorts of things about it that I really like. I really dislike structure, structure for me represents oppression, though I know lots of other people get pleasure out of it.

O: Why does it represent oppression?

Kim: It's a coding. It's a rule which restricts you from doing certain things. But even in freeform or improvised music there are structures, they're just different structures that people aren't accustomed to. There's a playful element where the listener has to develop their own structure, it's not preconditioned and it's not positioned in the traditional code. That's what interests me. Especially as a woman.

Adria: Where I came from, Bruce and Alastair would just get together and play, that was early Handful Of Dust, and I never thought of it as requiring learning or being academic. It's more of a let's-see-what-happens thing. Whatever happens, happens.

Kim: I think you can get stuck if you listen to too many rules. You can break out, or you can deconstruct the code. There is the problem of the amazing guitarist, who knows all these codes, and all these forms of music, but all he can do is deconstruct these codes. He can't play freely, he finds it really difficult to play freely. And there's such fun in playing free music, the challenge of it is so interesting. Your personality is allowed to come out, whereas you can disguise your personality under structures. A lot of people say personality comes through structures - different conductors interpret the same piece of music differently because of their personalities, for example. But with freeform, you don't have to go through that conduit to bring sensibility out. That's perceived as a very arrogant position.

Sara: I think free noise has been regarded as being somewhat indulgent. To begin with, the sounds elicited were purely accidental. gradually, we've become more knowledgeable and have been able to recognise, and know how to emit, desired sounds. But I can see that it can become contrived and set and too familiar and therefore less interesting.

Adria: It really bugs me when people spend six hours a day locked in their bedrooms with their guitar getting it right.

Kim: We're total improvisation, we have no idea how it's going to happen. It's a real challenge, and what comes out really depends on how you're focusing and how you're feeling. Some of the stuff doesn't work - that depends on how you're feeling at the time. AMM talked about that problem. But I think you can focus your attitude and work on yourself.

O: Does that turn into a form of planning?

Kim: You don't know what's going to happen, but you can develop an attitude that allows anything to happen. Or you could have an attitude that's going to stop you from doing stuff. It's really important to be receptive, to tune into what other people are doing and respond to it.

O: How has all this changed as time has gone on?

Kim: I s'pose we've got better at our instruments, and more able to express different things and put space in.

Adria: We're more comfortable with what we're doing.

Kim: We're not as tentative.

O: What do you see as the advantages of playing with people you're familiar with vis-a-vis playing with new people?

Kim: It's not only being familiar with them but liking them as well. [laughter] If you don't feel comfortable with them, that can restrict you.

O: But personalities aside...

Kim: I think if you've been playing with the same group of people for a long time, you can really push limits, whereas when you're playing with people for the first time, you're just exploring each other, and so it's tentative. It can be a lot of fun and really interesting, because it pushes you into different dynamics. But I enjoy pushing the dynamics with a familiar group, because you've got over that exploration, and you're moving into other areas, and all these moods can come out.

Sara: I find there's more of a rapport between people whom you're familiar with. When playing with people not so familiar there's a tendency to play separately. Everyone goes off into their own tangent. But a different dynamic can be positive.

O: Do you ever worry that you're getting too familiar?

Adria: No.

Kim: Not with improvised music, because each time it's really different, and you don't know what's going to happen. It's only familiar in that we know each other, but we don't even know what mood we're going to be in that day.

Sara: It does depend on how you're feeling.

O: As you became better players, how did the music change? Did it become more 'focused'?

Kim: Did we become better players?

Adria: I think we became more comfortable with what we were doing.

Kim: I think because we've played the instruments a lot, we have more language to deal with and more to call on.

O: Have you gotten a bit more expanded time-wise?

Kim: How did Copula come across to you as a piece of music?

O: I think that because it was divided into shorter pieces of music, it was a little bit more palatable. I understand that it originally had a 20-minute piece on it?

Sara: Yes, the She gave up photography after the war and turned her attention to cooking track was originally a lot longer.

Kim: Terra Incognita is different. It's 20 minutes straight each side. It's very assured.

Adria: It's fantastic, thank you.

Kim: No, there's quite a bit of space in it.

O: How much theory is involved in what you're doing?

Kim: Theory's coming after the fact quite a lot, but I think it's really interesting, women playing freeform. Women are often more interested in playing songs. When women enter culture, they often work in a really orthodox area, because it's hard enough for them to enter culture let alone be innovative in it. A lot of the time, women are actually quite conservative when they enter a field, like painting, music or whatever. We get quite a lot of hostility from women, possibly because it's regarded as intellectual.

O: When you play, does one person dominate? Is there a centre to it?

Kim: No, it shifts around.

Adria: That gets back to the idea of how you're feeling on the day.

Kim: Spaces are forming now, because more and more we're listening to each other.

O: How much of it is call-and-respond?

Kim: Not too much at the moment, but that's probably the way it's developing. The mood is placed, and you just have to work with it.

O: You can't change it?

Kim: You can try, [laughs] it just depends on who's the strength that day.

O: What kinds of music do different moods produce?

Kim: Extreme and less extreme.

O: Depending on how sunny it is outside?

Adria: Kim and I have done stuff that's been pretty sad, deeply sad.

Kim: Do I jolly you along? [laughs]

Adria: No.

O: How do you fit into the general Dunedin scene?

Kim: People don't know where to place us yet. We have a few fans.

O: One hand or two hands?

Kim: One. There's a bit of interest, but people are quite cautious and hostile, because of the two camps in Dunedin - the free noise people and the song people. Incompatible power structures.

O: You'll have to explain this for the benefit of our overseas readers. And our Christchurch readers.

Kim: You mean it doesn't happen in Christchurch? Bullshit. The Christchurch scene is far more bitter than the Dunedin one, it was when I was there. It was really nasty, they wouldn't help, whereas in Dunedin, the freeform camp does occasionally lend equipment. Some of the song group actually participate in freeform things. There is a bit of crossover.

Adria: You don't think about that much, though.

Kim: No, but it's a reality. People often think that if somebody's different to them, then it's automatically a hostile position, rather than just allowing difference.

O: Is that caused by hostility that already exists?

Kim: No, that's a musical thing. Maybe it's a personality thing, too, because the different types of music attract different types of people. I won't put any hierarchies on it. [laughs] We're just different.

O: As an all-woman band, how are you received within both camps?

Kim: Copula's only been out for about two months, and Terra Incognita has only just been released in the States, so it takes a while for feedback to come back. We don't know.

Adria: and don't care.

Kim: No, we just want to play music. But we do care.

Adria: I don't.

Kim: I'm interested in it as a psychological experiment - that whole issue of when you go public and how you're represented in the public sphere. I'll be very interested to see how Doramaar are taken on. Peter has been saying he reckons there's a bit of a silence about Doramaar, because we don't fit in with all the preconceived ideas about women, and also about women doing freeform music. Not in the European or even American tradition of freeform music. In a way, a new language will have to be made up - I'm interested to see whether we will be given a new language, or whether we will be pushed into a preconceived, old idea of what women do in culture. There are very few women in the area of freeform music, in comparison.

O: Zeena Parkins, Marilyn Crispell and Ladonna Smith are the only ones I can think of right now.

Kim: That's interesting, isn't it. Why don't we know about these people? They certainly do exist.

O: It is kind of male-oriented.

Kim: Tell us about it. [laughs]

O: So do you see yourself as oppositional to the dominant male culture, or subverting it from within?

Kim: Subverting it from within. I don't think you can go outside it, though some people do take that position. It's developing strategies, within and beyond. I will use the patriarchal code, but I'll say something different with it. I'll use the master's tools, [laughs] to subvert his house. I want to decorate it differently. [laughter]

Adria: You're speaking for you, aren't you, Kim?

Kim: Yeah, I'm speaking for me, but Doramaar's part of my master plan. [laughs] How do you feel about being part of my master plan, Adria?

Adria: Well, if I don't like something, I'm sure I'll tell you about it. [laughter]

Sara: We have our differences. I feel we all play an equal part and that our agendas differ a little. Adria and I are not so overtly political. Most of our music is affected by the mood and we often don't intend to impose a specific meaning. I feel that collective input is important rather than the music being a tool for one's individual thinking.

Kim: It's sort of an ongoing process of negotiating issues as they come up., and working them out. I'm sure we will make mistakes.

Adria: What's an issue for Kim may not be an issue for Sara or I.

O: So it's a democracy?

Kim: Yeah. But what would you call a democracy?

O: An autocracy, with Kim as benevolent dictator.

Kim: [laughs] No, no, no, no.

O: When you play live, how do you deal with issues of visual image, etc?

Kim: Just by playing down our appearance, and being pretty straight. We try and play in the dark, with the light really low, as much as possible. I'd like to develop that, so the emphasis is on the sound.

Adria: That never seems to be enough for an audience, they want to know what they've spent their money on.

O: Someone told me that when Tony Conrad toured America recently, he played behind a big white sheet. He filmed himself while playing and then projected the image onto the sheet. You should film the audience and project it onto the sheet.

Kim: That's a great idea. Do you think they'll like it?

O: Who cares? [laughter] How much does the audience's presence come into it?

Kim: It changes the way you play, it puts more pressure on you, so you're more intense musically about it. But I have a tendency to be very slack. I react in the opposite way.

O: Do you want to be popular and liked?

Kim: A lot of motivation in music is to be liked, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with us.

O: Really? I don't believe you. Why not?

Adria: It's not that we don't want to be liked, but it's not about being liked.

Kim: We're not going to change in order to be liked. That seems to be a consideration for a lot of people, but we're more concerned with making good music, making something work between us.

Adria: But allowing space for the unknown to happen, and other things to come in.

Kim: That kind of play is an emphasis. It's much better than worrying about reception. If you play like that, then it's really great to watch.

O: Apart from the obvious things, how is playing live different from practising?

Kim: The sound is completely different, and that's important if you're improvising. Once you get used to that, each tie you play live, you're ready.

O: How much press have you had so far, and how has it been?

Kim: It's been good. The first time we played live, we were very hard to listen to, apparently it was very very loud. The reviewers of that show, one said that the noise was so extreme that they had to leave. They came back, and it was still the same, they said it was "ugly noise". We thought that was pretty cool. Then Bruce did another review, of course he really liked it, he thought it was great.

Sara: And a recent review in The Wire which missed the point but was favourable overall. It referred to Copula as being like a forbidden, slightly shameful act, and likened the CD to Live Skull or Ut on tagliatelle.

Kim: Then there was your review, in your magazine, O...

O: Opium.

Kim: Which was quite muted, it seemed like you weren't that interested.

O: I was just being polite. Any other release plans?

Adria: We'll put a CD out maybe this year, on Metonymic, which is Peter Stapleton's new label.

Kim: Metonymic is an interesting title, because one of its meanings is taking the code but shifting it around so it gives it different meaning. Which I think is really appropriate for freeform music. Peter's putting out the Rain CD, Sediment, and possibly the Doramaar CD will be done at the end of the year. But I think there's been too many Doramaar releases. I think what we'll do is concentrate on just playing for a while and maybe do some live things. Then we'll select from stuff for a CD. I'm curious about how it will all go. There's the private thing: you make music privately, sometimes you play live, which becomes a public thing, as is putting a record out. It's people's business what they think of it.

Adria: Once it leaves us, it has a life of its own. Whatever happens, happens.

Kim: But that's the debate, how much control you have over reception.

O: But you don't care what people think of you anyway, do you?

Kim: I s'pose so where politics is concerned. I don't want to be represented badly.

Adria: But there are things that happen to you that you have no control over.

Kim: I have noticed that if you put out a certain idea of yourself, that you want to be seen as, it gets repeated over and over again. If you don't say certain things, they'll be said for you, and as the culture is mainly male, they'll be said in a male way., and you'll be branded in a way that I'm personally offended by. I don't want to be part of it, and I'll do everything in my power to stop that. But no doubt we'll be branded, for example, that slip of Bruce's [reference to Doramaar as Dunedin's No Wave answer to the Go-Gos in Hermescorp ad in Opprobrium #1]. But there's been quite a few reviews that don't mention our gender, which is great- they're talking about the music and not gender.

O: What exactly is a 'copula'?

Kim: 'Copula' is Latin for 'couple'.

O: What's the picture on the CD sleeve?

Adria: It's a bit of metal that had been photocopied. It was found on the road.

O: So there's no fascinating story behind it.

Adria: It looks kind of Colombian, kind of Aztec-y.

Kim: There's a lot of stuff in the songtitles. We chose them from a big list I had from my notes.

O: In terms of control over representation, is there some baggage attached to being on Hermescorp?

Kim: Definitely. Corpus Hermeticum has not so much an image as a position, but it does depend who you talk to. Some people don't think it's very cool, [laughs] but other people do.

Adria: We have a good marriage with Bruce.

Kim: We negotiate. We know what it means to be on Corpus Hermeticum.

O: Did you think about these issues when you decided to do a record with Fusetron?

Kim: We didn't know much about them beforehand, but...

Adria: We knew they were only interested in releasing freeform music. They've been really good to deal with.

Kim: They've done it really fast. But we have to talk about how prolific we want to be.

Adria: And I don't know about being so productive all the time.

Kim: We want to do other things. We want to have a good life.

Discography

• Excuse me, what do you think of his hair? on Various Skin CD [with Skin, Otago University Students' Association 1995 literary review]
• I Will Not Disappear Into You 7" [no label]
• Copula CD [Corpus Hermeticum]
• Terra Incognita LP [Fusetron]
• ? on Le Jazz Non CD [Corpus Hermeticum]

© Nick Cain, 1997