Name: fling ii
Members: Brad Gowland (drums, modular synthesis), Richard Murphy (six string guitar, a backpack of guitar pedals), Adam Narimatsu (Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer), Justin Reed (four string bass), Dave Van Dusen (six string guitar, pedal steel)
Interviewee: Brad Gowland
Nationality: American
Current release: fling ii's 2 is out via Content Depot.
Kraut Recommendations: In more old school krautrock stuff, I’ve been really into Harald Grosskopf lately, especially Oceanheart. Something newer I’ve been spinning is In E by Water Damage, which is a grungier, sludgier take on jammy live kraut tunes.

If you enjoyed this fling ii interview and would like to know more about his music, visit the band on bandcamp.



How would you describe your personal relationship with Krautrock? When and how did it start?

Starting with this one because I 100% remember the moment - Richard Murphy, who plays guitars in the band, and I have been friends since we were in high school, and he played “Hallogallo” for me, I was just floored.

I think before that track I’d been getting my first taste of minimal music hearing about things like Music for 18 Musicians and even some of the the xx’s earlier stuff, which I loved.



I’ve played drums since I was pretty young, maybe 7 or 8, and when you grow up playing drums a lot of like, drum instructors or my dad’s friends would be like “oh you gotta hear this Rush CD” or telling me about John Bonham and Keith Moon - some of that really is awesome stuff but it’s very maximal.

I was fascinated by the idea of music where there was so much less happening - and “Hallogallo” kind of bridged that rock n’ roll upbringing I got as a kid with a drumset over to this minimalism I’d started to find online as a teenager.



[Read our Neu!'s Michael Rother interview]

And that was kind of a gateway for me to start drawing other lines to Kraut, like I was big into the Talking Heads (I think the first CD I ever bought was Stop Making Sense at a mid Michigan Barnes and Noble) and I found Harmonia through Brian Eno.

I’m also pretty sure I first found "Archangels Thunderbird" from a skate video on YouTube (which at the time I probably watched on the family computer), which I have a very distinct memory of but I can’t dig up the video.



[Read our Brian Eno interview about climate change]
[Read our Harmonia's Rodelius interview]
 
Kraut drew inspiration from a lot of influences. Which of these would you say were most prominent?

It’s funny - I feel like I have a really annoying answer for this one. But to get after it anyway - I guess what I would call “krautrock” is in some ways the first successful result of some strands of music that I find conceptually really interesting, but really dreadful to listen to and sort of intellectually really heavy and soggy.

Like I remember being in a music history lecture at the University of Michigan, where I studied in my undergrad, and we had this lecture on Stockhausen, who I knew nothing about. And the preface they gave was like,

“Imagine you’re a German kid, coming of age in the 50s or 60s, and you’re looking at the artistic landscape of Germany. Everything you see around you, this proud and rich artistic history, of German opera and romanticism and Schumann and Wagner and Beethoven - the apotheosis of all of this, it’s the greatest humanitarian horror the world has ever seen.”

And then these kids, they’re left to be like “what now?” and Stockhausen has this conceptualization of a new music, totally divorced from history for a new human, a new artform - and I was like “man this rules, I cannot WAIT to go home and listen!”. And then, I’m sorry, I think it sucks! It’s just too divorced from what I can recognize in music, I just get lost and bored.

Maybe this is going a bit far - but I feel like krautrock (or what I think of as krautrock) kind found a way to take these interests in sound experimentation, textural elements, and spatialization that came out of Stockhausen, or Schoenberg, or even Schaeffer and drape it all over the structure of rock or psych, which gave it the kind of shape and familiarity I needed to approach music like that.

So instead of just “here’s 45 minutes of textural experimentation in quadrature” you get something along the lines of digging into one measure of a 13th Floor Elevators track until it really sinks in on you. Which gives you something you feel like you can kind of grip about the music, then you can get to the experimental stuff a bit more comfortably.

[Read our Jean-Michel Jarre interview about Pierre Schaeffer and musique concrete]
 
Tell me about the albums and artists that stand our for you?

The big one for me that I know every little groove of is Harmonia Live 74, which I’m lucky to have a vinyl copy of.

Feels also worth mentioning that our name was tangentially inspired by Amon Düül II - we had talked about naming the band after this Magic the Gathering card called Fling because it has this incredible artwork of a goblin hurtling through the air that we thought looked like an Oh Sees cover or something.

There’s sadly a ton of bands out there on the internet already called Fling though, so I was like, “…well, what about we do the Amon Düül thing? And we’ll be… Fling II”.
 
What, to you, are the main elements that make something “Kraut?” What are the practises of the musicians from the 70s that inspire your own practise today?

I think something we really nailed as a group is how we run our recording sessions - which is definitely cribbed from what I’ve read about groups like Can, Harmonia, Neu, Amon Düül II, you know.

I like to start from handwritten patch notes I take while I jam with my modular setup at home, then I wire that up in the studio, we talk a little, then launch into some long, long takes. We’ll probably play for 20 - 40 minutes at a time, then talk again. And when we talk it out, the rules are basically you gotta be positive to each other, and you can’t be too prescriptive. So stuff like “I like how minimal Adam was on that last one. Maybe we could all try that.” Or like, “let’s play more perfect intervals and see what that openness feels like.” We never do stuff like “let’s track that bridge and really nail it” or “who wants to punch in a solo”.

I’ll probably only cull 6-8 minutes from literally hours of tape for every track, but I think that’s what keeps the energy good and the ideas flowing in the studio. You’re never worried about messing up when you’re like “whatever, we have all day to lay back until something cool happens”.

I wish I could say we were like Can locking ourselves up in a castle recording for days and days - we actually all live in different cities and just get together to record. But we all grew up together, and all we did when we were kids was jam, so I think that kinda gets us in that almost telepathic headspace you have with a tight band.
 
When did you start making use of Kraut elements in your music?
 
I’ve been an avid listener for a lot longer - but I really only got into playing kraut stuff and had the idea of making a record during 2020 when I was stuck in my house during COVID.

I’m a drummer, which rules and I love drums, but they’re not exactly the best instrument to play alone for months or weeks on end. I was lucky enough to study at NYU in the Steinhardt for my masters, and they have a ton of unreal synthesizers there - like a Buchla Skylab, a Moog Model D, some old Oberheim gear. It’s amazing. I sort of learned how to use that gear in school (I didn’t study composition, I would just go to the studio when it was free), and I bought a Moog Mother-32 from a used music store in Manhattan.

So anyway, during COVID I had this little semi-modular Moog and a drumset in my basement, so I would punch in a sequence on the Moog and drum along with it. With a synth like that you can wire up LFOs (basically really slow changes) to happen to the sound of the synth over time, so it felt a little bit more like jamming with someone than say, a loop from a guitar pedal.

But that got me really into playing drums with a focus on minimalism (like I’m gaga for the drums in “It’s a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl” by Faust, which I think are deceptively challenging).



I had a really bad breakup at the time too, totally warped my mind just like sitting inside thinking about it. So I said “I’m gonna book some studio time and call my best buddies to come record a track or two”. And at that time, from playing drums with my (growing) modular setup during COVID, I was in that mindset of really locking down and exploring small patterns and meditative or trancey textures, which I think is kind of the kraut mindset.

My hope was that we’d get one or two tracks out of it (the plan was to record “glint” and “misk”, the first two tracks of our self titled record). But there was so much positive energy, and I think the emphasis on minimalism instead of like “we have to nail this tricky passage” generated a ton of great tape from a pretty short session, and we got the 7 track record

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your own Kraut-leaning pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

"gliss" was a really fun one, how it came together.



I was actually trying to get Richard to play a very specific guitar part, there were two amps set up and we were standing facing each other and I was like “play this - play exactly this”, and I was getting kind of frustrated because he was kind of close but he wasn’t really getting it.

The mics were live while this happened, and after the session when I was picking apart the tape I just looped this moment and panned the two slightly different guitar parts way out wide, and it was just beautiful. The way it’s cut, one of them is in 6/8 and the other is 4/4 (can’t remember which is which now!), and the drifting overlap kind of hypnotized me.

And I had this other idea when I was in northern Michigan listening to tree frogs peeping in a swamp in the spring like “oh those sound like resonant filter pings” - so I layered them up with a randomly pinged filter and it made this great, weird drone. When I showed the whole track to our bass player, Justin Reed, I remember being like “I know this isn’t quite right - but do you see what I’m going for?” and he was like, “No. Do not touch it. It’s done.”
 
I got into Kraut via Tangerine Dream and early Ash Ra and to me, the motoric beat was never quite as important. Today, it seems as though it's the most important defining element. Are you interested in it? Are you making use if it? What makes it special to you?

Haha, well as a drummer I absolutely love the motorik - I love how it feels to play like that and get lost in that physical repetition, and our band definitely leans on it.



Something I like about the motorik is that when I just jam with other buddies, not with the band, I definitely do a lot of busy playing that I reflect on and I think “well, that’s really fun to play, but I’m not sure if I’d want all that action as a listener”. I like that the motorik kind of focuses me in on something, trims the fat out of my playing.

But also I’d agree it doesn’t need to be the dogmatic marker of the genre - like Jaki’s gotta be up there as my favorite drummer of all time (with like, Bert Purdie) and I think his “doubles” patterns (think, the 6/8 bridge in “paperhouse” ...



... or the slapback delay in “dizzy dizzy” are almost as iconic in my mind as a krautrock sound.
 


It would seem that to some, the prominent inclusion of synthesizers is somewhat of an exclusion criterion for Krautrock. Interestingly, today, they are a signature element. What role do they play for your own view of Kraut and your own music?

So I think in an odd way synthesizers are both ideal and totally at odds with different elements of what I’d call a kraut mentality or sound.

I think the exclusionary view of synthesizers from the idea of the genre would be focused on the community and human aspects of what krautrock is - for me, it’s a genre fundamentally about jamming and exploring. I don’t think you’d want to let electronics or getting too “grid” in “in the box” with a DAW get in the way of that organic, heady kind of magic.

But for me what wins out is that synthesizers (which for me is modular synthesis, I honestly can barely play a keyboard) give you an infinite palette for discovering new sounds, and they’re great at the kind of slow evolution that I think characterizes some of the best longform kraut tracks. As a drummer, I love the full physical engagement of playing a kit - but also, you need to focus and stay involved. Synthesis is a totally curiosity based activity, which I think is totally a kraut-attitude to approaching music.

So I guess for me it’s a balance - wanting that type of infinitely flexible, evolving sound of the synthesizer, without letting it kill the feel of jamming out a huge take.
 
Do you own any paraphernalia from the era?

Really just records - I’m lucky to live near a record store that has a secret drawer full of great kraut stuff, and they know I’ll buy literally any Tangerine Dream record they can find.

I just picked up Tangram there a couple weeks ago so I’ve been spinning that a lot while I do chores and stuff.
 


There are quite a few fantastic compilations of modern Kraut-oriented music. I am wondering, however, if the approaches of this time may have survived more subtly. Do you see the influence of Krautrock in any contemporary styles, approaches or scenes which bear no obvious similarities with Kraut?

It’s funny, our guitar player Richard has a solo metal project called Sif that I do all the production and drum programming for.



Metal was never really my thing before this, I’m not really into aggression or agony as a voluntary space to enter haha. But I had to kind of immerse myself into some of this music so I could get my head on straight to produce these records for Richard - when I do the kraut stuff for Fling II I know exactly what I want, the references I want to hit, the shape I want a track to have. But I guess you could say I had to study a bit to figure the metal thing out, and I think there’s some super cool overlap there with some of the more jammy stoner and drone metal.

I think there’s some spiritual similarity between say, the droning of Neu’s “Im Gluck” and the drone metal of Earth or Sun O)) and maybe, I’d say, some of our more ambient stuff! Or there are more overt connections, like Elder’s Silver & Gold Sessions, or Blood Incantation’s Timewave Zero.
 


And not to be too self aggrandizing - but I think our new record, 2, has kind of a cool Americana twang to it. It just happened that there was a broken pedal steel in the studio when we were there, and our guitarist Dave Van Dusen is a great steel player. He fixed it up and we were like, “This is destiny. We have to use it.”

And while it’s definitely not in the kraut palette - I think that’s kind of the sprit of the music, less about achieving a particular sound than saying “let’s explore this tone and see what we can wring out of it”.