Dynamic damage

>> Ghettonuns unleash a heinous new album

OMNIPATHIC: Ghettonuns

by JACK OATMON

To spend a few minutes talking to Nate Munn and Philip Karneef of Ghettonuns is to know that they’re not the sort of lads that are prone to orthodoxy in their endeavours. Whether it’s bringing the Unpop Festival to the city or breaking bones in onstage freakouts, Munn is no stranger to chaos. Add Karneef’s electronic composition, manipulating MIDI signals to produce all manner of distortion and sonic interference, and you’ve got a duo whose tunes come like a baseball bat to the grill, and whose rogue attitude toward the music industry might ironically be in conformity with the future of the business. The Mirror spoke with the pair about the aggressively independent production of their new album Omnipath City Distort.

Philip Karneef: Why bother to work to get money to pay somebody to do it when you can just do it? We already know how to do a lot of stuff ourselves. And anything that’s half developed, we make sure to take that opportunity to learn more about it.

Nate Munn: That’s the way it is in this day and age. The majors are fuckin’ sunk. MySpace has evened out the playing field for everybody in so many ways, and that’s just one aspect of it. The entire digital format lends itself to that. It’s the age of the independent. You’re gonna see a lot less Shania Twains and Justin Timberlakes over the next 20 years. You’re gonna see local communities supporting their own artists and actual fans coming out because now it’s up to people, ya know what I mean? They have the choice whether they support an artist or not.

Mirror: Is there a connection between that attitude towards multitasking in production and the kind of sound you guys have, which is really mashing a lot of different influences together?

PK: Now, with the compositional process involved with electronic music making, you’re really using your production tools as compositional tools. You’re using the idea of dynamic manipulation as a musical tool. You’re using specialization, reverb and delays to create something that isn’t there. The advantage of doing that is that you don’t have to work with an engineer, you don’t have to appease anybody. And releasing our own stuff, there are no restrictions on what we can do. When we sat down and started to work shit out, it became evident, in the same way that Brian Wilson was using the studio as a compositional tool, putting pieces together, doing things in a more modular fashion.

M: In an album like that, where you’re trying to keep this artistic continuity through all stages, from composing to distribution, it seems like there must be an emergent theme for you guys. What’s the concept of this album?

NM: It’s all about Montreal, man. I think it attracts the best, man. Where else do you see such a vibrant, artistic—I wouldn’t even say community, there are communities within it, but there are so many individuals doing their thing. There is space here for individuals to express themselves and do things exactly as they want.

PK: To see people gelling the way that they do sometimes and to see everybody moving together, it’s a big trickery to feel so inspired by that and have faith in humanity because of it. Because, obviously, it’s such a localized occurrence. We’re super lucky to be here.

CD launch at Zoobizarre on
Sunday, June 10, 9 p.m., $6