Captain Credible

English born, Norwegian based Daniel Lacey-McDermott aka Captain Credible states coffee among his influences (that and “other music”), and it isn’t hard imagining massive caffeine overdoses being a driving force in his weird and chaotic, yet cohesive and utterly entertaining Atari-electronica, created on homemade sound generators with apt names like Darth Fader, Weird Sound Generator and Epileptic Bird Synth.

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- AllScandinavian.com

The credible captain came out of nothing last year with his zombiefied alien electronica. Ripping electronica that is, with elements of Nintendo sounds, spaced out vocals and quite a bit of attitude. Making his upcoming EP one to watch out for in 2009.

He might be as known for his hazy interviews as for his music, but we figured we’d give it a shot.

So, a lot on your plate these days — finalist for this year’s Urørt, selected for by:Larm and EP release coming up. Are we forgetting anything?

Captain Credible: Yes, that nicely sums up my current status. Huge flaming goats of sheer excitement await me in the near future. In addition to all that I will be playing a large number of concerts around the country, to inform the general public of my presence and force them to enjoy my very factual documents of sound. Because that’s what they are, factual!

Yes, factual. How bout that. So, new EP coming out. When and where?

CC: Yes I have a debut EP carefully handwoven by a selection of tiny little polar bears (specially trained to operate industrial audio machinery), gently brewing in my secret underground studio. And in all honesty I’m hoping to perhaps broaden at least Norway’s musical horizon a little with it. The release is planned to coincide with by:Larm and hopefully it will be released here there and everywhere. I very much like the idea of doing stuff myself as I have so far built almost all the equipment I use to play concerts myself, and it’s fitting to have a similar approach to the release. However How Is Annie Records is interested, and they’re a nice bunch so it may fall on them.

We like honesty here at Nö Music. So, honestly; How do you expect to “broaden Norway’s musical horizon”?

CC: Honesty is the one of the most direct routes to sheer awesomeness, and I too value it highly. I hope to expand the spectre of music that is commonly accepted in this beautiful country, and perhaps the universe — starting by traveling around, presenting my music to its inhabitants in such a way that will make them understand the underlying meaning of all those wibbly wobbly tones and seemingly continuous drum breaks, and become acquainted with the nature of mental electromechanical epileptica. Also I might use trained lions to do it.

Let’s help them a bit on their way. What is the underlying meaning of your music?

CC: I was thinking more about the meaning of the individual tones and sounds, they are meant to surprise, excite and sometimes confuse you as a listener. The underlying meaning of the music as a whole is a to convey emotions, mainly frustration and excitement, and through these emotions tell your ears magical little tales derived from 100% factual documentation of my escapades into and beyond the known universe. That and raising enough money to construct a giant cannon that me and my ancestors will utilize in exploding the moon! But beneath all that lies an intense urge to express myself beyond the act of vomiting language at people.

We hate the moon now?

CC: Hate is not a strong enough word to convey the feelings “we” have about the moon. It is the source of all evil and by destroying it we will cause massive enviromental disasters that will claim millions of lives and as we all know murdering innocent people is the only way to a peaceful tomorrow, which the current conflict in “Isreal” (sic?) and just about the entire history of the United States and United Kingdom so convincingly shows us.

I think you are thinking about the Death Star, and it’s already been destroyed. So, any plans outside of Norway in the near future?

CC: I would very much like to but haven’t got anything on the agenda just yet. I cant wait.

No sea lions to help you book a tour?

CC: This once, I was really, really drunk and my face was on fire and I had broken both my legs, when suddenly I saw a sea lion who did in fact promise me to do just that But upon closer inspection the sea lion turned out to be a shopping trolley and it wasn’t really talking to me. It was just kind of standing there… completely still… it looked sad.

So I pledged one day to avenge him by playing a concert abroad, that’s when i started making music, in Windows Movie Maker.

You did in fact start to make music in Windows Movie Maker? Tell us some more about that.

CC: It is a slow and very tedious process but but due to the vastly superior sound compression algorithms everything comes out sounding absolutely awesome. I then get my little army of tiny little children fueled on massive amounts of sugar and a little bit of tofu to knit the music onto plastic disks known as ‘CD-R’s. That is my secret process. Nowadays though, I use more modern equipment like my 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System with a magical cassette (”midines” available here) that allows me to access the very dark soul of my NES via MIDI, and then program it to do my bidding in the studio and on stage. I also build small pieces of Audio Machinery that I use during the recording process in Windows Movie Maker and also live, and sell from this page. On top of all this I still use a computer because I like the freedom making music on a computer gives you, and I tell myself that this will prevent my music being shaped by the tools I use although I know I’m wrong. Still it gives me a lot more freedom than a guitar or a violin would.

It seems to me like the NES generation is starting to create music these days. How come you decided to use NES sounds in your music? Did you try out the PS2 and SNES first?

CC: The reason I make electronic music in the first place, as opposed to using a piano or an oboe or a band, is that I want to be able to make my music do exactly what I want it to do, as quickly as I want and however impossible the notation might be on any earthly physical instrument. The idea being that the more freedom I have, the less the music is shaped by the tools I’m using, the more it is shaped by me.

However, when I get fed up with that I like to try the opposite approach. I’ve always been impressed by how much quality a lot of the music made for the old NES games have. But the freedom you have to work with when composing music on a Nintendo is minuscule. Of course I also enjoy the gritty nostalgic sound of the onboard synth chip that was so cleverly made to be as cheap as possible while still being good enough to pound that addictive 8-bit happiness into the innocent ear canals of children across the globe. Then again I enjoy the creativity that comes from working around the limitations and adapting to the capabilities of such a basic system.

To answer to your second question, I didn’t try any later consoles simply because they where neither old enough to be as limited and nostalgically pleasing as the NES, nor new, or good enough, to be of any interest otherwise. A very important thing here though, is artifacts. Like the crackle of an old vinyl or the crunchy distorted sound of an old video game voice. In in time even the horrible squilchy squalchy artifacts of bad mp3 compression will be considered pleasing.

We are looking forward to your crowd pleaser coming out on How is Annie, or maybe some other label. Be sure to ship us a copy, and thanks for your explanatory answers! - Nömusic.com