EXTREME MAGIC

Michael Yonkers makes some of the greatest music you will ever hear. Seriously, the guy’s a genius. Since he started playing guitar in 1962, he’s consistently been making some of the strangest and most amazing rock n roll, noise and experimental music ever put to tape. And we’re lucky to even be hearing it—not just cause it’s great but also because a series of bullshit prevented much of the music Yonkers has made over the past 40 years from being widely released until early this decade.

Why? Long story. But here’s a short version: Yonkers and his band recorded an extraordinary album, Microminiature Love, in 1967. Sire was set to release it until the shit went down, as it does, between him and the label and it was shelved for 35 years. The band broke up and Yonkers spent a few years making music on his own and self-releasing his recordings on a small scale. In 1971, Yonkers broke his back in a factory accident, when 2000 pounds of computers fell on him. Experimental surgery resulted in a condition called arachnoiditis, which is extremely painful and makes playing live a rare occurrence.

Yonkers kept making and recording music but until Clint Simonson of the awesome label De Stijl tracked him down and released Microminiature Love on vinyl (with Sub Pop following with a CD release) no one really got to hear it. Now another side of Yonkers has been revealed. A bit softer but no less amazing, and odd, is his album Grimwood, which has just been released on CD for the first time since it was recorded back in 1969. Vice decided to see what Yonkers is up to and how he feels about all the fuss.

Vice: Grimwood’s a magical record. How does it sound to you thirty years after recording it?

Michael Yonkers: It sounds magical to me, also. The most magical part is that I’m listening to it on a CD, after recording it 40 years ago. That is a difficult feeling to explain.

Was Grimwood recorded at home or in a studio?

Grimwood was recorded in my parent’s basement. I had purchased a couple of reel to reel recorders. I was very disturbed by what I saw going on in the world. I found comfort in being able to do this music all by myself. It was an escape. It was also an opportunity to use some of the effects that I was starting to experiment with. The drone you hear on the song “162” was significant. I had found that a toy being sold then had a solid-state tone generator circuit in it. I purchased some of these toys, removed the tone generator, added some switches and controls and made a primitive synthesiser.

How come you started making your own effects?

I started experimenting with different ways to make sounds on my own, because there was almost nothing like that available. It’s hard to believe now days but when I started playing, the only available guitar effects were ‘reverb’, ‘echo’ and ‘tremolo’. And these were normally built into the amps. I was listening to a lot of old blues and tried to imitate some of the inherent distortion of the early small, electronic amplifiers by cutting slits in speakers with a razor blade. As time went on, I developed electronic ways to make the sounds.

What music are you making these days? You’ve just done a Blind Shake CD?

Over the last few years I have recorded with (the new) Michael Yonkers band. The purpose of this band was mainly to record a CD named Unbroken, which we did. We also got to do some wonderful live shows. I just finished a project with a musician named GR, who lives in France. We did the project by sending music files back and forth through the Internet. The CD is named The High Speed Recording Complex. Also, just released is an electronica LP named Circling the Drain.

There is a ‘surprise’ recording in the process but after that is done I will only be doing projects on my own, again. Doing collaborations and studio type recordings are way too difficult for me now. That’s fine though. I’m looking forward to getting back to my ‘loner’ approach.


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