STS9: Shock & Awe

By: Dennis Cook

STS9 by C. Taylor Crothers

As with most endeavors, the more one engages with their craft, the better one gets at it. A decade into Sound Tribe Sector 9‘s artistic caravan they remain a steadily evolving organism. There’s a seriousness and deep determination in the entire band to not repeat the past and to continually better every aspect. Endlessly restless, each new sound they coax into being elicits genuine pleasure in them, which they palpably communicate through their music.

“For us, music is just something we have to do. It’s a personal thing, a group thing, it’s something we all collectively want to do all the time, and we have a vision of how we want our creativity to feel. We’re always thinking about what’s coming next – the next song, the next project, whatever,” says guitarist Hunter Brown, a point man in STS9’s five-person instrumental phalanx with Jeffree Lerner (percussion), David Phipps (keyboards/laptop), Zach Velmer (drums) and David Murphy (bass). These days, everyone is also armed with laptops and various blinking doodadery to manhandle as the spirit moves them, which it often does. “We always want to be in the creative process. It comes naturally for us.”

There’s a primal fascination with sound itself in STS9.

“That’s a great way to put it,” grins Brown. “That sense of wonder and experimentation and freedom that comes with being in this band makes our clock tick. When we’re in that space – finding that sound, finding that feeling, finding that emotion – it feels real, and it feels like it’s what we should be doing. When you find that feeling you always want to keep doing it, and that’s where we are. We’re really blessed to have fans that allow us to do that and go along that journey with us. It’s absolutely a huge inspiration and it pushes us even further. It’s a great give-and-take relationship.”

Sector 9’s new album, Peaceblaster (released July 8 on the band’s own 1320 Records) goes a number of miles up the road, taking their mirror ball friendly ways and dusting them with beautiful, ancestral fog and a complex, shifting atmosphere that incorporates space, reflection and patience in fascinating new ways.

STS9 by Dave Vann

“Our maturity as a band makes it easier to complete our musical thoughts, as a group, now. This is our fourth studio effort and we’ve learned a lot about how to be studio musicians and how to make our music come across in that setting,” says David Murphy. “With Peaceblaster, we wanted to figure how to capture the live energy in the studio, and really add some of that fluidity that’s in our live show. We felt this was a good time to take a serious look at how we can make our art better by carrying through complete thoughts rather than just being happy with a new trick we learned in the studio. We took a step back from that and asked, ‘What’s best for this song?’ On Peaceblaster we tried to let each song be its own thing, rather than water things down or force things into the music because we think it’s cool or we’re feeling it in the moment. We tried to take a more holistic approach.”

STS9 has one of the most sincere, dedicated fan bases out there. But, it’s a double-edged sword, where folks attached to different portions of the journey aren’t always comfortable with changes. Each shift has its vocal critics, and those enamored by STS9’s early electro pile driving may struggle a bit with today’s more nuanced and frankly more musically robust work on Peaceblaster, which captures some of the pulsing energy of Herbie Hancock‘s Headhunters, Kruder & Dorfmeister, early Tangerine Dream, Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes and Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound, but does so without feeling like some retro mock-up. Like these ancestors, they’ve just learned to play really well, sans many biases or borders, and that greatly expands the possibilities available to them.

“We don’t think of any of that stuff, in terms of how or why we create. When we get into the studio, there’s a certain feeling that permeates our days leading up to the studio experience. Maybe there’s a thread of conversation that keeps coming up over a year or two as friends and bandmates, and you have to take all those things into account. And we want to be honest with each other and ourselves and with the band. We want to make creative decisions from a creative standpoint, not from worry over how people will react,” observes Brown. “We can’t think that. It’s not fair. We still take that into account too much probably [laughs]. But, at the end of the day, the arrow is pointed out and we’re looking for the next thing. That’s not to say we leave everything behind. Maybe one day we’ll find a sound we’ll stick with [laughs].”

Continue reading for more on STS9…

It’s inescapable right now as an artist to not reflect on the times we live in. They’re so serious and urgent that to shy away from things or pretend we exist in some other world just doesn’t do it anymore. To achieve the future we’re hoping to achieve it’s gonna take some reflection, some diggin’ deep and talking about hard things. –Hunter Brown

Photo of STS9 by C. Taylor Crothers

“It’s hard not to say, ‘Here’s my formula. Here’s how I do it,’ and layer that over everything,” adds Murphy. “That’s a hard thing to do, especially the older you get and while you get good reactions off your formula. If people genuinely like the way I play bass it gets harder to not trot out the same tricks versus backing off and saying, ‘This is a piece of art and I just need to put into the art what is needed instead of laying my ego over everything.’ I feel like that was the best growth we made with this record. There are a couple songs where I didn’t even do any bass and the song didn’t need it. Why put something on it just to have it? Why do it just because my ego says there has to be bass on every song?”

Beyond Right Now

Hunter Brown by Casey Flanigan

Peaceblaster is a provocative title, taking the language of combat and combining it with peace. One’s brain has to work on that tangle each time they see it or say it. The album hints at heavy concepts with titles like “The New Soma,” “Empires” and “The Last 50,000 Years.” A special Peaceblaster website is a hub of cool information about the state of the human condition and a rallying spot for likeminded individuals who want to follow the breadcrumbs STS9 is dropping today.

“It’s inescapable right now as an artist to not reflect on the times we live in. They’re so serious and urgent that to shy away from things or pretend we exist in some other world just doesn’t do it anymore. To achieve the future we’re hoping to achieve it’s gonna take some reflection, some diggin’ deep and talking about hard things. That’s the kind of stuff we’ve been getting into on the bus or just talking as friends. That’s where our minds are at,” comments Brown, who’s fully aware of the band’s added impediment of engaging this high ground without the aid of lyrics. “It’s our unique opportunity and challenge, and we really just feel blessed to do this thing, to get into these deeper conversations that go beyond music and partying. We’ve never been a preachy band but if you want to find out more about where we’re coming from the clues are absolutely there. Hey, Alice Coltrane never sang and she put it all across, right?”

“We were trying to not be so coy. We tried to leave obvious trails to what we’re into, if you want to find out. ‘Shock Doctrine,’ is a great example of that, since it’s a book [2007’s Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein – more info at the official website] they can dig into without us having to spell it out. But we also didn’t want to be so ambiguous that it all seems random,” says Murphy. “It’s a fine line to walk for artists that want to be socio-political in any way – entertaining people and preaching to them, which really we try not to do. Not being able to put messages across by just singing, we’ve had to find different ways to do it.”

In fairness, America in 2008 isn’t an environment that readily accepts complexity or notices subtlety, which creates further obstacles for a band like STS9 that wants to stimulate thought but not from a pulpit. Depth and nuance are tough sells in the current environment.

David Murphy by Casey Flanigan

“Yeah, we don’t handle that very well [laughs]. It can be forced upon us but as an artist that’s your job – not so much to challenge people but to paint an honest picture of society. We’re not setting the agenda for society. The artist’s job has always been to reflect the current state of society, and that was our goal on this new record,” offers Murphy. “This record is a lot like America; it’s a beautiful place but it has a dark side that rears its ugly head on numerous occasions. It’s important to recognize that as a citizen living in this country. That dynamic can rub some people the wrong way, some people are into it and some maybe just haven’t gotten to these ideas yet. However, to just be socio-political is very shortsighted. It’s good to be educated and concerned with what’s going on but there’s a bigger picture. We’re not going through anything now that hasn’t gone on before in the history of the Earth, and it’s not going to be the last time we go through this. It’s important to recognize that we’re just stewards of the planet and we can only do what we can do.”

That artistic reflection Murphy speaks of starts with Peaceblaster‘s jittery, agit-prop cover art, where striking black and white lines are cut by a bullhorn-headed girl and a bold red box with the title and track listing. Nowhere are the band member’s names listed, but their various website addresses are clustered on the back.

“We pulled from pop art and really the punk movement of the ’70s. It’s borderline propaganda looking, and we wanted to be that blatant. We wanted to remove some of the ambiguousness of our past,” Murphy says. “True mind control is a man at a podium with a megaphone. We, as a people, wherever you are in the world, listen to someone up on a soapbox with a microphone because we just assume that if this guy has risen to the position of having the microphone he must know what he’s talking about.”

Continue reading for more on STS9…

We’re not setting the agenda for society. The artist’s job has always been to reflect the current state of society, and that was our goal on this new record. This record is a lot like America; it’s a beautiful place but it has a dark side that rears its ugly head on numerous occasions. –David Murphy

Photo of STS9 by Casey Flanigan

Hidden Hand, Hidden Fist

Zach Velmer by Casey Flanigan

Unlike a lot of acts that toil in electronic music, there’s a sense of blood and muscle and humanity to STS9 that permeates even the drum ‘n’ bass-iest moments – switched on minds and hearts floating inside the wires and circuit boards.

“There wouldn’t be machines without the blood, sweat and humanity. That’s what it’s all about – humanity that speaks to our future and present. That’s what inspires us in the nuances of our lives together. We try not to think about it too much and just try to reflect what we’re feeling and not taint it too much with our thoughts, just let it kind of happen,” says Brown about their attempts to sidestep premeditation. “Anyone who opens themselves up to it will find it. It’s there for all of us.”

Their justifiably well-loved live shows also step outside of the traditional roles of artist/producer and audience/consumer.

“We’re just trying to get past any of those scripts and bring an honest experience to the stage, and we’re all involved with that,” says Brown. “The guy screaming in front of us is just as much a part of that as I am. We look at it that way, and that helps move things to the next level. We absolutely do this for the people. It wouldn’t be the same if it was just the five of us in the neighborhood jamming out all the time.”

Sector 9 is making clear choices these days, which is tough given the avalanche of options available in this atmosphere of near constant self-indulgence and distraction. It’s easier to maintain power if the general population are kept busy with trivial things – like say voting for American Idol in greater numbers than the presidential primaries – but real freedom isn’t just having the option of cheese or no cheese on your burger. The overemphasis on individual tastes and desires is a socially engineered dynamic designed to keep people from understanding and exercising their collective power.

STS9 by C. Taylor Crothers

“That’s been the policy of many Western nations – dumb down their people. The only way to hold onto their power is to dumb down the world. America in the last twenty years or more has set up its model to do that. Keep the people occupied with entertainment and things that don’t really matter, and then those in power can do what they please,” says Murphy. “People just continue to take it and be slapped around. I try to have faith that we will only allow this for so long. Hopefully, America will be the first country to have a real revolution without having to go to war with its leaders. Our government is there to be changed by us when the people see fit. It’s up to the people of America to wise up enough to say, ‘We’re not going to stand for this.’ Hopefully that happens. These were all the things we were talking about when we made Peaceblaster.”

“No one ever said, ‘I have too much power. You’re right, I’m wrong, so let me give you my power.’ That hasn’t happened in the history of the world without a fight. It’s a truism about the way power works. If I were given all the power in the world I’d probably be the same and wouldn’t give it up without a struggle. It’s a part of human nature that can be different but I understand why it isn’t [laughs]. I think in America it’s gonna be about figuring out a more balanced distribution of wealth and power. It’ll definitely get worse before it gets better,” continues Murphy. “We really hoped 9/11 would be a wake-up call for America. It wasn’t but people are reawakening to a healthy mistrust in the government like what happened after the Vietnam War. You shouldn’t put all the power in the hands of a few people. The power of America should be in the hands of the people. And the day we can’t put gas in our SUVs and watch television there will be a revolt in this country. When people can’t feed their families you’ll see a real discontent we haven’t seen before. We don’t trust our government the way we did during the Great Depression, and if you hit people with the same kind of economic hardship today it isn’t going to be the same.”

“Ultimately, we’re just trying to create our own authentic impression of the world. That’s what we’re doing; that’s what we’ll continue to do,” says Brown. “Some people will no doubt love AND hate what we do, but it’s really just what we do.”

You can download “Shock Doctrine” for free here.

Check out our exclusive video interview with STS9 on JamBaseTV.

STS9 will resume their tour on August 15 in San Francisco, dates available here.

STS9 “Open E”

STS9 “Tooth” From Langerado 2008

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