By Keith Walsh
Martin Bisi just released a video for his powerful tune “A Storm Called Ida”  from the upcoming album Feral Myths and has a lot to say about the punk rock influences on his music.

“Punk was incredibly influential,” Bisi told me. “That’s really what it comes down to – it was culturally influential. And also the values of punk are influential. So really, there’s like decades of stuff after that. That’s really kind of the outgrowth and people somehow philosophically trace back in a way to the essence of punk and the essence maybe of like hardcore some of the attitudes of hardcore without necessarily being either of those things. And it’s also because it was this weird filtering of indie rock, which was sort of — I mean indie-rock really was before grunge. It was before Seattle  — it was sort of like ‘okay we’re going to do something that’s more poppy.'”

Bisi continues: “The whole thing with post-punk is interesting because first of all it’s hard to even define punk let alone post-punk, and it just seems like it’s something that takes that energy, takes that attitude, and takes those kinds of textures.”

“A Storm Called Ida” is poppy, punk, and post punk in its own way, but it’s also art rock. You decide. For the single from Feral Myths, Bisi told me that he often tracks the song with guitar, but then deletes the guitar in favor of additional tracks. “Yeah, I start always compositionally with guitar, definitely and that’s what I play live. It is true that once the song starts getting filled out, I do selectively simplify the guitar or have it play less because there might be some rhythmic things, once I actually hear the drums, maybe I realize, I don’t need to play that rhythm. I can just let a chord hang for instance. So I definitely simplify the guitar. And there’s are moments where, maybe I’m like, ‘well actually, I don’t need the guitar anymore because there’s a keyboard playing the same thing or something.”

Despite getting epic sounds in his BC Studio, where parts of Brian Eno’s On Land was recorded in the studio’s early days, Bisi keeps his guitar rig simple. “In some ways. I’m a classic shoe gazer that in that in that the pedals are more important to me than the guitar. I just I just use an Epiphone SG and that’s what I use for my recording and that’s what I use live.” Bisi said he also uses a Digitech multi-effect module to get distorted sounds, running into his Fender Twin amp, which he cherishes for its clean sound.

Bisi’s BC Studio has hosted Sonic Youth, Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” Swans, Bill Laswell, White Zombie, Violent Femmes, and countless others.

Feral Myths will release Dec 2.

Martin Bisi On Bandcamp
Martin Bisi dot com
BC Studio

finis