Here are some excerpts from Sick Signal live.  The actual pieces are really long, so I just pulled out the best bits as examples of what Sick Signal can be.

These photos were used in magazines to accompany reviews, interviews and that sort of thing.  They are courtesy of S. Higgins and William Davison.

These wonderful photos were taken by Laurel Daugherty-Seto at the Rivoli sometime in 2000.

This is a snippet of live video taken from a show at Clinton’s in Toronto, August 29th, 2001.  Click on the link for the video.  I think the conversion puts the audio out of sync.  I’ll repost once I get that figured out.

Clintons part 2

This is a snippet of live video taken from a show at Clinton’s in Toronto, August 29th, 2001.  Click on the link for the video.  I think the conversion puts the audio out of sync.  I’ll repost once I get that figured out.

Clintons part 1

Bitter Harvest is Canadian percussionist Scott Mackay, aka Scott Righteous. A former member of the Neo-ist collective Phycus. Mackay has abandoned the hard industrial electronics for more acoustic instrumentation and Eastern sounds. On this self-produced debut, Mackay has created a spiritual world that revolves around the rippling patterns of drums, tablas and finger bells. Underneath this spare, taut drumming, Mackay has layered ominous synths and Tibetan horn drones that weave in and out of the primary rhythms. Mackay has an obvious interest in the Eastern ideas of trance through meditative drones and repeating percussion patterns, but this is not another polite Fourth World record that gets by on soothing ambience and evanescence. There is a dark brooding, almost threatening mood that permeates the record. For Muslimgauze fans and lovers of experimental percussion.

RICHARD MOULE,,,EXCLAIM MAGAZINE.

Interview with Hank Erchief, Lip Magazine, January 2000.

(Hank) I just wanted to say that I loved your show the other night, and I wanted to start this interview with a quick lowdown of what you do live, since I was quite impressed. What exactly do you do live, and what sort of gear do you use?

(SR) Uh, Basically the show is entirely live, in that I don’t use a backing tape or a sequencer. What I do is, I bring prepared tape loops made on an eight-track reel to reel and I use these to perform with. These loops have been spliced with a basic rhythm on one or two tracks of the tape, cut at a precise tempo. When I use the loop live, I can record onto the other tracks of the tape as I go, and mix the different tracks however I want.

(Hank) So the tapes have stuff on them before you start playing?

(SR)Yes. Although the audience might not hear what is on the tape, depending on how I mix it. I have headphones on and I can monitor what is on the tape and what I am playing. I choose what I want to send out to the main mix for the audience to hear, and I like to hold back what is on the tape sometimes. I can hear a breakbeat for instance in my headphones, which is on the tape, I then start recording other rhythms to the tape loop, and build up new parts around the rhythm on the tape,,then later on I might unmute the breakbeat and of course it fits perfectly because it came first.

(Hank)I wondered about that, because sometimes you would drop a beat that was in sync and I thought you were using a click track or something, with a sampler.

(SR) Well the beat that I “dropped”, was in fact the click track itself in a sense, and the other rhythms were built around it, it’s just that I chose to keep it in my headphones until later in the song, in order to create that buildup.

(Hank) Do you plan ahead what you will play? or is it all improvised?

(SR) A bit of both. When I make the tape loops, I use stripped down rhythms from the songs on my CD. Then live, I might add in the missing parts, melodies or drones or whatever compleates the song. Initially I did set up my tape loops so that I could recreate the songs exactly as they are on the CD, but I found this to be a bit stupid. I had my feet playing midi pedals while playing dumbek with my hands, and trying to mix and record, and I realized that I was doing all this stuff to make it sound just like the album, which made performing a lot of work, not creative, just work, going through the motions like a slave, which is boring to me. So I improvise and go with the flow, but some basic elements are planned ahead.

(Hank) I noticed a lot of gear up on that stage, aside from all the percussion stuff you use. What else do you have other than the tape loop?

(SR) I have a mixer and a lot of outboard gear. Since I am recording onto the tape loop from my own mics on stage, I need compressors and footpedals and stuff. I have a lot of delays and effects so I can do mixing and dubbing, which I consider to be at least half of my show, and then I have like a synth or two but I don’t always bring everything to every show. It fills two cabs, so it gets to be a pain and I start questioning if I need more than one type of dumbek ‘and’ a djembe,, but I always bring more than enough so that I have choices on stage, but I often have things which I don’t use at all.

(Hank) Let’s move on to some other questions, but I want to ask you some specifics about your gear afterword. What style of music do you play? I mean what do you consider your music, industrial? ambient?

(SR) That’s always a tough one to talk about. I think that I have been heavily influenced by older industrial bands, but I don’t think that makes my music industrial. I noticed that a lot of techno guys who like my music call it ‘ambient’, but to me it’s all rhythm, and when I think of ambient, I think of it as music without rhythm, just floating soundscape stuff. But I guess there is an ambient element to my music. I always say tribal in there somewhere, because I use tribal instruments and the sound is trancey in a tribal way, not trancey in a techno way. I can tell you that I use elements of dub quite a bit, and there are breakbeats in there sometimes, but it isn’t really dub music, maybe “new dub” or tribal dub, oh I don’t know.

(Hank)Well, I’ve seen your CD at HMV in the Industrial section, but at Towers they put it under Electronica.

(SR)Yeah,, there are two terms that really have no clear definition. Electronica could mean anything really. Industrial,, well it used to sort of indicate a certain angle, but that has changed so much, that the term has mutated into something else. I certainly would agree that my music could be considered ‘Industrial’ and ‘Electronica’, but these terms do not do many bands any justice.

(Hank)Can you describe your music by comparing it to other bands? I mean who do you sound like? what bands influence you?

(SR)Uh, well that is tough too. Someone once said “Muslimgauze meets Scorn”, I can understand that, but I wouldn’t go too far with that comparison.

As far as what bands influence me, I would say that being influenced by a band does not mean you want to sound like them, but that they inspired you to create, or think about your own music differently. I can hear some bit of production on a pop song, and I might want to try something similar,, but my song is not going to sound poppy because of it.

Is that beating around the bush enough for you ?

(Hank)I guess no one wants to compare themselves to other bands, but it does on some level give people an idea of what your music sounds like.

One thing I noticed is that at your live show you used breakbeats, which puts your music into that dance-related territory, I could see comparisons to Scorn or Techno Animal. But when I listened to your album I didn’t hear any breakbeats, the music sounded more ethnic with eastern instruments, why have you chosen to add breakbeats to your live show?

(SR)Well, I don’t always use breakbeats live, but what you heard are newwer songs that will be on my next album. My live set is usually more new songs than older ones these days, and some of my new songs use breakbeats. The new album will definately sound less ethnic and more like my live shows have been, but since the backbone of my music is playing hand drums and percussion, it might still sound eastern flavored.

This whole thing sounds funny to me because I love using singing bowls, tibetan bells, doumbeks and other eastern instruments, but of course I am not playing anything traditional. I don’t play authentic eastern rhythms, and I don’t want to, I want to experiment and create my own rhythms without any restrictions. If you look at Muslimgauze, (there have been some comparisons to his music),he is playing traditional arab rhythms on traditional instruments. Now I use the instruments, but not the rhythms, so on the surface I understand the comparison, the ’sound’ can be similar, but the content is totally different. He does use a sampler and all that stuff as well, so that is a fair similarity.

(Hank)You really don’t like being compared to other bands do you?

(SR)No it isn’t that bad. I just like to clarify comparisons, because it’s all relative to your musical experience and personal angle on a band. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people compare one band to another, I do it all the time, but I hate straight unqualified comparisons showing up in a review, whether it’s a review of my album or anyones album.

It’s not that I dislike the bands that I get compared to either, not at all, I usually like them, and understand the comparison. It’s just that I hate simplifying things, and I hate to think that people will take comparisons too literally. I think that the music I am doing is unique and hard to pinpoint, therefore people will use comparisons to help describe it, but because it is so hard to pinpoint, these comparisons will fall a little flat if not qualified.

(Hank)I get it.

Well I think we have given people an idea of what Bitter Harvest is about and what your music is like. I do urge anyone who gets a chance, to go and see you play live. It really is refreshing to see someone doing anykind of electronic music and not just hiding behind a mixer. Oh yeah and it sounds cool too..

(SR)Thanks.

Interview by Greg Clow, Chart Magazine, October 1998.

A technohead I may now be, but deep down I still hold much reverence for the old-school industrialists. Oh yes, I fancied myself quite the little doom cookie in my younger years, and Einsturzende Neubauten, SPK, Skinny Puppy, Test Dept. and many more occupy a special place in the teenage angst-ridden core of my heart.

Scott Mackay — he who is Bitter Harvest — understands. For his debut CD release, Ritual Music For Broken Magick (Gaijin Silver/Outside), Mackay draws upon these same murky corners of the musical netherworld. “This album has really been something like ten years in the works,” he explains. “I started Bitter Harvest in the mid-’80s when I was working at CKDU, the college radio station in Halifax, where I met all these crazy freaks with massive album collections. I heard all the early industrial bands, and then I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. But I knew I didn’t have the money to do it, I didn’t have the equipment to do it, and I didn’t really have the technical skill to do it to my full satisfaction.”

These grand designs were then set aside while Mackay spent the following decade playing drums for various Halifax hardcore bands, multimedia noise terrorists Phycus, and the electronic lounge-pop trio Devoured. He also slapped the Bitter Harvest moniker on a variety of cassette releases that ran the gamut from pure noise to Depeche Mode styled synthpop. But through it all, he didn’t lose sight of his original vision, and when the opportunity came to finally press a CD he set aside his commercial aspirations to produce a more heartfelt work of brooding and mystic tribal ambiance.

As noted, Mackay is not without his influences. He cites albums such as SPK’s Zamia Lehmanni as providing a great deal of inspiration. But he is quick to note that “a lot of influences don’t show so obviously in terms of the sound of the album, it’s more in the ideas. Like the early ideas behind Coil and Psychic TV, and the feel and mood of a lot of that music. Sleep Chamber was another big influence, but you don’t really hear any Sleep Chamber in the album.”

And of course, in today’s musical climate of instant reference points, it’s been hard to avoid comparisons to established artists. “What often gets quoted is that it sounds like Muslimgauze, which is fair enough. But I think the difference is that he uses genuine Arabic rhythm patterns, whereas I’ll pick a rhythm and play with it, so my music is of no genuine ethnicity.”

“I also think that his songs are very unstructured and loose, while my songs are very structured. I’m a drummer, so it’s hard for me not to be structured. I find myself falling into structure even when I don’t want to. On the last track on the album, I sort of mapped it out, and said ‘O.K., this is where it’ll be structured, and this is where it’ll be loose’ — sort of planning the chaos.”

More evidence of Mackay’s industial roots can be seen in his use of the “magic with a k” terminology often associated with the grandpappy of industial, Genesis P-Orridge, and his projects Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. But what exactly is broken magick? Mackay explains that he practices “a form of broken magick in the same way that broken English is not real English, it’s a bastardization of English. P-Orridge’s idea ofmagick was to make everything public, to make it for everyone, whereas I think more like Peter Christopherson (former TG/PTV member who split with P-Orridge to form Coil) — magick is based on symbols that you have to build in yourself, and if you start seeing them everywhere, they’ll lose their value. So my broken magick is based on a lot of the ideas that were present in PTV and the Temple of Psychic Youth back then, but specifically, the things that I believe are not the same.”

BY GREG CLOW

When future music historians reflect upon the late 20th century it would surprise many if the consolidation of musical genres would not be considered as the hallmark of the nineties. Post-grunge electronic and pop acts such as Peter Gabriel, Beck, the Orb, the Beastie Boys, and the Chemical Brothers, popularised the amalgamation of international sounds with sampling and other technologies.

Toronto’s Bitter Harvest have observed the unfolding of this phenomena and are obviously taking note. Composing non-traditional music in a traditional manner, Scott Mackay,( a.k.a. Bitter Harvest) composes original material that employs little or no sampling technology. Modern keyboard synthesis creates a lush backdrop for Mackay to showcase his skills as a percussionist, breathing a breath of fresh air into a consistently rigid electronic genre. Bitter Harvest achieve a dense, highly rewarding musical experience through the use of traditional hand drums, bells, chimes, and other percussion instruments.

Elements of drone, chant, ambient, industrial, and electronic, all appear throughout Bitter Harvest’s music, often all combined in the mix to create a ‘new world’ sound.

“The ethnic sounding rhythms are not of a specific ethnic origin” Mackay informs me. “Some ethnic sources are borrowed from, but the style is all its own. I could not do justice to a formalised rhythmic language of some foreign culture. Nor would I want to”.

Bitter Harvest embrace another very nineties ideal, the D.I.Y. (do it yourself) ethic. With a studio located within his downtown Toronto apartment, Mackay has self-produced Ritual Music for Broken Magick,his debut CD released on the Gaijin Records imprint. Recorded quickly over six months, the album was certainly not rushed. “It took me ten years to get the equipment, money, and technical skills to pull it off to my satisfaction”, states Mackay.

Aside from some minimal chanting, RMFBM is vocally bare. When questioned why he chose the path of instrumental somewhat meditative music rather than pop, Mackay had this to say. “I find electronic music to be more emotional than traditional pop music. My initial attraction to early Industrial and Experimental music was that it captured emotions not found in pop music. I also find instrumental music to be able to reach subtler, complex emotions that lyrics may only blur”.

Mood is a large part of the Bitter Harvest sound. Whatever emotions you are trying to tap into, there are certainly enough moods throughout RMFBM’s 8 tracks. What is especially rewarding with this debut release is that it satisfies countless emotions while remaining listenable and constant through rhythm.

“The songs”, Mackay offers, “were written around rhythmic ideas. Melody is used. Noise gets used. But I would not say it’s principally a noisy or melodic album. It’s rhythmic”. Indeed.

Dave Binette …..Indie Nation mag,,,,,,,feb 98

I wanted to do something where the words came first and the music second.  This idea was really appealing because I find that so many lyrics out there are just afterthoughts.  Most of my own songs start as music, with the hopes that some of my existing lyrics will fit, but they almost never do, so I write new lyrics, which takes weeks because I want them to be able to stand on their own.

This brings me to the second seductive idea – I wanted faster results.  I wanted to do a project that would be quick and easy, that I would be able to finish in a few weeks.  I was sick of spending months on one song, which is my normal rate of output.  I wanted to take a break from my usual working methods and do a quick project, just for my ears, that would provide instant gratification.

It would be faster to use existing lyrics, so I dug into the boxes of stuff that I had written over the years.  However, the writing that I found most interesting was not all lyrical in nature.  There were transcriptions of dreams, diary type rough notes, observational stuff.  So, I figured I would make a spoken word album.  What could be faster than that?  Compose some interesting ambient music and read this stuff over top of it.  I also recognized that much of this writing had a theme to it, and that I could, with very little editing, make that theme more concrete.  So the writing came from various points in my past, the introduction was a piece written around 1993, and the rest was written between then and now.  Some of the writing that I felt would work in this project was rough and unfinished, so I took the time to finish it.  Sketches from 1995 were now deemed complete in 2009.

The nature of self observational writing, is that it makes for self indulgent art, something I try to steer clear of.  However this was only going to be for my ears, a break, a vanity project to clear my mind, so I wasn’t worried about it being too self centered.  In fact, seeing how far I could elaborate on my inner most quirks made the whole thing humorously interesting for me.  It’s all sincere, but you have to laugh at a song about snot dripping down the back of your throat!

In the end, the project consumed a year of my life.  So, the idea of instant gratification clearly got lost somewhere along the way.  Also lost, was was the idea of the project being entirely spoken word.  Songs evolved in various forms, some more traditional than others.  But one idea did last throughout the entire project.  In every case, the words were the first and foremost starting point, and the reason for these songs to exist.

This project was completed in August of 2009.  As a CD the tracks all flow into each other seamlessly, something these MP3’s won’t do.  This makes me want to post a disk image or something that will allow people to hear this music as it was meant to be heard.

(side one)                                                                 (side two)