If you’re a fan of over-the-top Prog-Metal, chances are likely that you have one of Ron Jarzombek’s many musical projects sitting in your collection. Whether it’s his influential late 80’s band, Watchtower, or his mind-bending work with the all-instrumental project, Spastic Ink, the innovative guitarist has left an indelible mark on the Progressive music scene. Not content with staying in one musical place for too long, Jarzombek has put together a new outfit called Blotted Science. Joining in him in this new endeavor is none other than Cannibal Corpse veteran, Alex Webster on bass and drum wizard, Charlie Zeleny who also plays in the like-minded troop, Behold... The Arctopus.
Though the members all live scattered throughout different parts of the United States, they still managed to record one of the most thrilling albums in the current Metal and Prog scenes today.
The Machinations Of Dementia is a technical Metal tour-de-force!
Webster and
Zeleny bob and weave with every maze-like guitar figure
Jarzombek throws in their direction with the kind of ease only an elite group of musicians could ever reach. Though the album is an all-instrumental affair, the dizzying, unrelenting, and forward-thinking arrangements will engage you on so many levels, you won’t miss the vocals! Ultimate-Guitar’s
Carlos Ramirez spoke with
Jarzombek about his career in Prog-Metal, the Blotted Science project, and some of his guitar heroes.
Check out their Ultimate-Guitar band profile to hear 2 tracks from their album.
Ultimate Guitar: The first and most obvious question is, with the geographic issues, how the hell did you pull this off?
Ron Jarzombek: It sounds crazier than it is really. Not to mention that after doing much of the second Spastic Ink album via the Internet nothing could faze me anymore. Ink Compatible was actually a much bigger headache because it involved many more players and took longer to complete. With Blotted Science it was just Alex Webster and I sending mp3 files and sheet music back and forth via e-mail and working on each other’s ideas. Alex uses a program called PowerTab and I use Encore for writing / sequencing, so we both had the program on our computers and just transferred tunes back and forth. And we both have our home studio setups where we can record whenever so not ever being in the same room during the making of The Machinations of Dementia was not that big of an obstacle to overcome. The key to making it work via the Internet is working with people who can read music or at the very least are well versed when it comes to communicating long distance. Both Alex and Charlie Z are good that way and I think the result speaks for itself.
Watchtower had such over-the-top vocals from Jason and Alan, was Spastic Ink all-instrumental style a reaction to that?
I think that goes back to the Happy Kitties project that Bobby and I did where we wrote a few tunes and couldn’t find a singer. When Spastic Ink came around years later, we didn’t want to fart around with it. Also, that was right when I had fixed my hand after having multiple surgeries and I wanted to do some serious writing and playing and didn’t want to back off for vocal sections. The ideas for songs that Bobby and I had were all musical, so it ended up being all-instrumental. For Blotted Science, I was open to doing a vocal album but Alex and Chris Adler from Lamb of God, who was the drummer at the time, were pretty adamant about keeping it all-instrumental. Ultimately, I’m glad we didn’t use vocals because vocals are a make-it or-break thing for a lot of people. Had we had death metal vocals it would’ve turned off those who can’t deal with harsh vocals. I can totally appreciate the musicianship in death metal musicians, but still can’t really get into cookie monster vocals. Had we gone the other route and involved a more traditional vocalist people into extreme vocals only would’ve complained. By keeping it instrumental you’re not offending anybody – except those who insist on having vocals in their music. As the saying goes, “you can’t please all of the people all of the time” so we just pleased ourselves.
Can you talk about Spastic Ink's "A Wild Hare" and what inspired it? People have been posting it on YouTube along with the footage from Bambi.
Basically, I’m a huge fan of cartoons like ‘Bugs Bunny’ and cartoon music. I grew up on Kiss, UFO, Judas Priest as well as 70’s Prog like Rush, UK, Yes and Al DiMeola, and cartoon music was just sort of the next step on the progressive ladder for me. Once I got a bit older I realized just how musically advanced those cartoon soundtracks are and I started to get into Carl Stalling’s stuff heavily and began to study and dissect it. I started to write pieces with a pronounced musical narrative as far back as ‘Ants On My Windshield’, which is this 10-minute horror mini-suite I recorded even before I joined Watchtower. ‘Oh No, Mr. Kitty’, which consists of both dialogue and cartoon-ish music, is another one. Both those songs are on my PHHHP! album which is a collection of early demos. When Bobby and I decided to do Spastic Ink, I wanted to do something based on a cartoon or animation flick. I transcribed all of Thumper’s dialogue, timed it all out, and then we took all music themes in the movie where Thumper appeared and made them “metal”. Years later, when I was capable of splicing video together, I finally put together the animation shorts that are now on YouTube. Bobby and I got a real kick out of that. It was a hell of a lot of work but it was fun to do. It’s cool that all these years later people all around the world have a chance to see it on the Internet via YouTube and what not. The drag about everything was the people at Disney were such asses and wouldn’t let me inform people what the song was about on the CD liner notes. The song was originally called “The Thumper Impersonation,” but the Disney people said I couldn’t use then name “Thumper” or “Bambi” anywhere on the liners of the CD booklet.
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| "We came up with the sleep concept at first, which evolved into the brain disorders." |
When the idea of doing the Blotted Science project came to you, did you consciously intend for it to be heavier than your more recent material?
Going into a heavier direction was definitely a conscious decision on my part, even before I started writing for The Machinations of Dementia. I had been part of the whole ‘progressive metal’ scene but what it has become today is so far from what I’m about. It has turned into what I call cheesy ‘keyboard metal’. Not that I have anything against keys at all (with Planet X, Yes, and UK being favorite bands of mine), it’s just the way they are used in current ‘Prog Metal’. I actually put together a short list of people who I thought I could do such a project with. A lot of the stuff I wrote early on was with Chris Adler’s drumming style in mind because he was the first guy on board. I definitely immersed myself in Lamb of God’s music as well as Cannibal Corpse once Alex had agreed to do it. I wanted to absorb where they were coming from musically and then mix it up with what comes naturally to me, which is the Prog/tech-type stuff I’ve been doing basically all my life. The Machinations of Dementia is very much a product of those influences.
The more straight forward sections, like in "Night Terror," sound like they could have been written by Alex (Webster) in their ferocity. How involved was he in the arrangements?
I wrote all of ‘Night Terror’ but Alex had a lot of influence even on the songs he didn’t write. Just him being who he is and the influences he brings to the table helped shape the direction of the album from the ground up. We definitely influenced each other during the writing process as we were working on each other’s parts. I think we both pushed each other in new ways and that’s one of the cool things that have come out of doing Blotted Science. Alex has always been a hugely respected bass player in death metal circles but I’m not sure the Prog community would’ve picked up on it if it wasn’t for ‘Machinations.’ And my audience has expanded and new people are finding out about my music through Blotted Science. So it’s been very positive all around.
How did Charlie get on your radar? His playing is out of control on the album!
Yeah, Charlie’s out of control – in a good way! Basically I got turned on to him via the Dysrhythmia guys whose drummer, Jeff Eber, played on one track on the second Spastic Ink album. They’re friends with and have toured with Charlie’s main band, Behold…The Arctopus and recommended him. Losing Chris Adler and then Derek Roddy and basically wasting a whole year was highly frustrating and seemed to be like déjà vu all over again because ‘Ink Compatible’ was a similar pain in the ass for me drummer-wise. After Roddy bailed we contacted all sorts of people, from Morgan Agren to George Kollias, without being able to get a commitment. So Charlie coming into the picture and him not only being into the idea of doing the drums but also able to deliver all the tracks within a reasonable amount of time was a big relief. Obviously he didn’t have any influence on the writing because the songs were completely done by the time he joined but hopefully that’ll change on the second album.
Can you walk us through a typical writing session for you? Do you usually start off with a riff or some kind of rhythmic structure you want to go in?
Well, that all depends on a few things. First off, I usually don’t have a guitar in my hand when writing. I mostly think tunes out, then somewhat know what it will sound like before I pick up an instrument or handle a computer mouse. For the Blotted CD, most of the songs we used a writing system called ‘The Circle of 12 Tones’. It’s a system where all 12 tones are arranged on a ‘clock’, and then patterns are shaped from that leaving you certain note configurations to write tunes with. Each Blotted song has a different ‘key’ (note arrangement on the clock) and the tunes that you can come with are pretty much endless. I came up with lots of note combinations that I never would have come up with without using the system. I’m a big fan of any 12-tone system. I’ve done my own variations ‘multiple 12 tone sets’, ‘modulating 12 tone sets’, etc., all of which will appear on my upcoming instructional DVDs. Of course the idea to write with all 12 tones came from Schoenberg (and the composers from that era), but I have never used his system of retrograde, inversion, etc. Basically what I do when I write is take normal writing systems and abuse them. That even applies to traditional ‘diatonic’ systems using major and minor scales, triads, extensions, and so on. I think that’s the whole point of writing. Find things that work, but make them your own. As far as timing goes, that’s all a matter of thinking of numbers. It’s all math. Beats are chopped up into subdivisions; measures numbers change sometimes at random, sometimes relaying a phone number, IP address, social security number, basically anything involving numbers. I honestly think the key to writing is learning theory and how to apply it. We all have the same 12 tones and numbers to use, so go for it.
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| "I honestly think the key to writing is learning theory and how to apply it." |
There is definite theme to the song titles on The Machinations of Dementia. What inspired that?
Well, for starters, I’ve always been into concepts going back to Rush and 2112 which was a life-changing album for me growing up. Alex and I started to toss around a few ideas what to base the album on and we came up with the sleep concept at first, which evolved into the brain disorders. We needed a concept that was brutal yet scientific, and the brain disorders seemed to cover both aspects well. For the more brutal stuff we have ‘Laser Lobotomy’, ‘Night Terror’, ‘Bleeding In The Brain’, the scientific side with ‘Brain Fingerprinting’, ‘EEG Tracings’, the ‘Adenosines’; and we have the atmospheric side too with ‘Narcolepsy’ and ‘The Insomniac’, and all of the dream/nightmare sequences in ‘Activation Synthesis Theory.’ We then found two guys, Derek Vizzi and Steve Connelly, who had the scientific background and put the liner notes together for us so everything is pretty much explained in the booklet.
What's the status of Watchtower? I remember hearing that there was a planned album in the works?
Watchtower is on indefinite hiatus. We actually do have enough material for another album. I was really pushing for ‘Mathematics’ to get done for a long time, particularly after we got back together for a few shows in 2000 and 2004 and had some momentum going again. Unfortunately, things fizzled out mostly because people just have different priorities in life with jobs and families. Jason and I do music for a living in one way or another – Rick and Doug do not. I’m only one person in the band and there is only so much I can do to get things done. I’ve moved on at this point and to be quite honest the songs we have for ‘Mathematics’ don’t really thrill me anymore for the most part. Some of that stuff goes back to 1990 and it’s so old now that it’s kind of pointless to release anyway. An album is like a ‘snapshot in time’ - ‘Mathematics’ would be more like a long, drawn out, disconnected stop-n-go puzzle where the people and pieces don’t really fit anymore.
What kind of guitars did you play on the Blotted Science record and what was your complete rig?
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I use my main guitar, the purple and yellow strat, on most of my recordings. I also used my 'Ink' guitar (the one painted with the Spastic Ink - 'Ink Complete' album cover) tuned A E A D G B for the lower tuned stuff. Since recording 'Machinations' I've actually built a 7 string guitar which I just inaugurated a couple of weeks ago when I met up with Alex and Charlie for the first ever Blotted Science rehearsals and plan on using for possible gigs. All of the Blotted Science songs are tuned A E A D G B E. As for recording gear - I used my old trusty Johnson J-Station pod f (which is what I've used since my solo album, Solitarily Speaking of Theoretical Confinement), then ran the signal in to my computer totally dry. I record on computer with Sound Forge, and also employ the program to add FX.  I currently use ProTools for multi-tracking but am looking for something a bit more PC friendly. I don't use any outside effects at all for my guitar sound - it is all added later on computer. And I am still using my 20-year old Mesa Boogie SimulClass 295 power amp, which I've had since the early WatchTower days.
If you could point out one album for a younger guitarist reading this to really dig into, what would it be?
To pick only one would be incredibly difficult. How about two? First up would be the first Yngwie Malmsteen solo album, Rising Force. I remember the first time I heard Yngwie I was actually with a really hot chick (I’m not making this up!) and we were kinda going at it when ‘Island In The Sun’ off ‘No Parole From Rock’n’Roll’came on the radio. I told her, “hey, hang on - I need to listen to this!” I’m serious. LOL. It didn’t matter. We broke up a bit after that. But, I picked up that Alcatrazz record, and soon after that came ‘Rising Force’. That album was the beginning of a whole new trend, which everybody and their mom copied somewhere down the line. And then there’s Vai’s Flex-Able album. That record showed to me that character plays a huge part in being a musician. Of course, Steve’s playing was top notch but there was so much humor and that had a HUGE influence on me. If there was a third choice, it would be Fredrik Thordendal’s Sol Niger Within. A prime example of doing something totally off the wall, against the grain, and making it work like a motherfucker. Â
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Your style is so unorthodox, I hear some Zappa in there but which guitarists helped inform your style when you were coming up?
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Even though Yngwie was a huge influence on me, I think Steve Vai, Zappa's most famous disciple, has had the most effect on my playing of any guitarist. Zappa and Vai had an incredible sense of timing, all of his uses of chopping up of beats, septuplets, fitting 5 notes into the place of where two would be in a quintuplet, etc. - all that stuff just blew my mind. But what's probably made my style 'unorthodox', to use your description, is my love for cartoon music and film scores, which I talked about earlier. When you start to study in-depth and dissect what's going on in those compositions it almost forces you to re-wire your rock brain as a guitar player and it's only natural for your approach to change. You're always influenced by what you're exposed to and I exposed myself to a lot of music that wasn't straight up rock and metal, and it seeped into my playing probably around the mid-80’s and is most pronounced on stuff like 'Ants On My Windshield', 'Oh No, Mr. Kitty', ‘A Morning with Squeakie’, ‘A Wild Hare,’ and also ‘The Cereal Mouse’ off the Ink Compatible album.
Interview by Carlos Ramirez
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