Monday, 5/19/97 Tuatara pushes rock’s envelope MUSIC: Seattle
group adds jazz, ethnic flavors to instrumental tunes
By Kristin Fiore Daily Bruin Senior Staff A lot of rock
musicians spend their precious hours off sleeping in, shooting up
or brushing up on their golf swing. But Tuatara’s members take time
off from their regular gigs (in Screaming Trees, Luna, R.E.M. and
Critters Buggin) to splice together sounds from all over the world
that don’t fall into the realm of rock. They’ve just finished a
string of gigs in Los Angeles with Mark Eitzel and Minus 5, proving
to be one of the most engaging live acts around. But that was not
the plan when the group of Seattle residents got together a few
years ago. "The Tuatara project started as a soundtrack demo to
show what we could do instrumentally to try to get some soundtrack
work, and it just evolved into making a record," says Barrett
Martin, Tuatara’s percussionist (among other things) and principal
songwriter along with Justin Harwood of Luna. Much of their music
does have a cinematic quality, creating landscapes and moods
through layers of sound and strategic silences – which makes sense,
considering that film music is among Martin’s and the band’s
favorite kinds of music. "That’s what I listen to a lot of,
actually. I’ve also always been interested in world music and
ethnic folk music and jazz – and rock ‘n’ roll, of course. But
lately, because there just haven’t been very many good rock ‘n’
roll bands – at least not new ones – I’ve been listening to a lot
of old rhythm and blues and soul and things like that," Martin
says. "There’s a pretty big market for that kind of thing now. I
find that kind of music to be much more inspiring; it’s more
spiritual. The reason behind the music is an expression of the
soul, the human spirit; it’s not propagated by selling records.
It’s not built around the record industry. These people make music
simply to make the music," Martin says. But don’t a lot of bands?
You would think with the small number of success stories that bands
would make records in spite of the financial prospects, not because
of them. "I’d like to think that," Martin says. "I know that there
are a lot of bands that do start that way – with their certain
ethic, but it really doesn’t last very long, especially if you just
jump right into the sea of major record labels and the music
business. I think it’s important for bands to make independent
records and tour in a van and see the country or the world by doing
it themselves and really learning the value of their own
musicianship, their own songwriting abilities," he says. "I know a
lot of bands just get signed to major record labels and go on to
make mediocre albums that cost a huge amount of money; they’re
incredibly in debt. They’ve never done it before, so they just get
devoured by the very mechanism that’s supposed to sell their
music," Martin says. His concerns and complaints about the rock
industry echo those of many artists fed up with the assembly-line
attitude of labels that go through bands like tissues. "I think
that rock ‘n’ roll is getting very stale. There’s a precious few
good rock bands right now, and I think it’s largely because the
industry has devoured (its) own market. They sign too many bands on
a wave, thinking that they’ll find the next Nirvana or the next
whatever, and just a lot of shit got put out there. And so I think
it’s making everybody rethink things. It should be harder to get a
record deal than it is. It should be a much more focused, special
thing, and the (artist and repertoire) departments should be more
discerning in what they decide to put out, because it’s made
everybody suffer," Martin says. It is this sea of mediocrity that
has turned Martin’s and the band’s eyes elsewhere, looking for
fresh sounds and untapped talent that the record industry ignores
in search of radio gold. They have found inspiration in a host of
non-Western sounds – Lebanese, Turkish, Chinese, Egyptian – as well
as Latin and traditional folk music. While these commercially
ignored genres may be harder to find, it is worth the effort,
according to Martin. "This is something that I feel very strongly
about. Any kind of (world) music that you go buy, you’ll almost
always get something that will be cool, as opposed to rock records
right now where it’s really hard to find a good one. The good one
is usually the one that falls through the cracks," he says.
Hopefully, that won’t happen with Tuatara’s debut, "Breaking the
Ethers," whose unusual influences may alienate the unadventurous
rock crowd. The record emphasizes one positive element of the
recent music industry – the collapsing of genres and mixing of
styles that have spawned such names as trip-hop, ambient jazz and
power-punk. "I think that we’re in a transitional period of music
right now where anything goes," Martin says. "Just today we were
listening to a trip-hop remix of ‘Dark State of Mind,’ which is the
second song on the album, a beautiful, almost traditional jazz
arrangement. But the way these remixers did it, it’s trip-hop. It’s
really weird, psychedelic sounds, but the basic elements of the
song are still in it." The band enjoys this freedom to incorporate
all sorts of styles, which is harder to do with their other bands.
"We’ll use a little bit with the Screaming Trees, but it’s minimal,
because we’re a guitar, bass, drum (and) vocal band, a classic rock
band. But with this band, definitely, I’m able to do a lot more,
which is why I wanted to do it in the first place," Martin says.
The different instruments the band uses, aside from changing the
sound, change the songwriting process as well. Instead of centering
a song around a chord progression and vocals, many of Tuatara’s
songs are based on a simple melody, drum beat or sound, layered
with instruments to create an atmosphere. "We have songs that are
simple melodies, chord progressions and arrangements, but it’s the
way in which it’s played that makes a difference. ‘Desert Sky’ is
basically three chords, and ‘Smoke Rings’ is just a C scale
arranged a certain way," Martin says. This method of writing has
worked so well that the band already has a lot of new material.
"We’re working on another album already that’s going to use a lot
more exotic instrumentation – things like a sitar, dulcimer,
mandolin, some Japanese string instruments," he says. Despite this
conglomeration of instruments, styles and musicians, the band
hasn’t argued over differing opinions when writing or recording.
"Actually, there hasn’t been any head-butting. Everybody just lets
it go where it’s naturally supposed to go. We all have very vast
musical influences, but we have a lot of common things, as well. I
mean, we’re all rock musicians, but … I’m like the world music
person, Skerik (Tuatara’s sax player) is more the jazz guy and
Peter is the folk guy, and Justin is everything – the common sense
of the group. Then we have these other people, like Steve Berlin
from Los Lobos, who is an incredible musical talent to play with,"
Martin says. With all of the instrumental harmony and chaos,
Tuatara doesn’t miss a vocalist one bit. Martin even feels that
they can be intrusive and detract from the power of the music. "I
think one of the advantages of instrumental music, particularly
when you have a really wide variety of instrumentation like we
have, is that there’s always different things in the mix that you
can latch onto and see where it goes. Or you can and let it all go
through and filter through your mind," Martin says. "It has a
cinematic quality, so you can just allow it to become something
that your own mind develops rather than having a vocalist with
lyrics saying a certain thing and sending it in a certain
direction," he says. "A lot of the songs could definitely have
vocals on them, but for us, the enticement of it was to do
something that we could just play – to compose this music and just
try all these different instruments out." Epic Records (from left)
Barrett Martin, Skerik, Justin Harwood and Peter Buck formed
Tuatara to experiment with musical styles that don’t fit into a
rock format. Related Links: Tuatara Homepage