Milwaukee's Mark G.E. and Kansas City's Jim Skeel have been making music for years and as the electronic / ambient / experimental rock duo Cyberchump, the pair has issued at least eight discs of explorational, genre-defying music.

Often instrumental, sometimes not, often with dance-y beats, sometimes not, Cyberchump is the poppiest experimental group you're likely to find. But it's also among one of the most "out-there" rock outfits you'll hear, too. This led legendary U.K. rock critic Paul Morley to tab the band in one of his books as a must-hear act.

The group's latest disc, "Our Wizards of Earth," is the perfect example of Cyberchump's ever-evolving style and on the occasion of its release, we asked Skeel and G.E. about Cyberchump's process and its philosophy.

OnMilwaukee.com: Can you give us some insight into your process? How do you write and record a Cyberchump record?

Jim Skeel: We coined a term, "Aural Sculpture," to describe the Cyberchump recording process. We both do a lot of the editing and tweaking and consider the studio to be our main instrument. We like to manipulate the recorded sound in various ways such as slowing a recorded part down or having the computer play the sound many octaves lower than it was originally recorded. We tend to start out with many layers of music and then take parts out until we have the musical form we want.

Mark GE: We each play a number of instruments and we overlap a lot. Over the years, we have melded what we do to the point that we find it hard to remember who played what. In general, Jim tends to play the guitar and I tend to play bass and keyboards but that seems to be drifting to where one might take the part of the other.

Jim lives in Kansas City and I live in Milwaukee. Because of this we have two ways of working. When we work separately, which is most of the time, one of us will start by creating an interesting keyboard or guitar part and set up a groove to send to the other. We ping-pong the files back and forth through the internet, adding, manipulating, tweaking, eliminating, until we feel that we have the final form for the song. The one issue we are continually wrestling with is trying not to have too much going on in the first pass so as to leave plenty of space for the other to complete the process.

We also get together once or twice a year. During these five-day visits, we lock ourselves in the studio during the day. Over the years these sessions have changed as to how we approach the recording process. Currently we will set up a group of possible effects. Jim might set up a chain of effects for the guitar that will allow him to loop, delay and control numerous sonic options. I might midi-connect a drum machine to trip a keyboard and then go through a chain of effects boxes in order to create an odd rhythm or set up a keyboard with numerous delays and distortions. We then set up a groove. It may be a repeater sound or a drum loop.

Each of us will start playing around with sounds and melodic phrasing. When we find something interesting to work with, we hit record. We like to jam for about 10 minutes to give plenty of time for ideas to surface. Later, we will edit the tracks down to a more cohesive piece. We have received a lot of nice surprises from this process. These in-person sessions have yielded the basis for songs such as New Skin and Storm's A Comin'.

JS: On "Our Wizards of Earth" We wanted the album to have a live band feel, which we felt would be an interesting mash up with the electronica and down tempo chill we have been doing. We actually started the jamming process a full year before we started the "Sankhara" CD but our overall goals were different between "Sankhara" and "Our Wizards."

We used some jams as a starting point for Sankhara but the end goal was not to have a live feel for the songs so much as to have a basis for a song itself. We deconstructed these jams to their ambient parts to suggest a starting point.

With "Our Wizards" we took jamming in a different direction, actually attempting to have the end product sound live. This process was realized by leaving the jams pretty much intact but sculpted then down to the essence of the final arrangement; our goal in this case was to keep the natural spontaneous interplay between us intact.

In some cases we felt that we needed real drums to create a live feel, so we asked Tim Higgins to add parts to some of the songs. To confuse the issue further, Mark realized that a track of Jason Loveall's Violin (The Danglers) from an earlier recording seem to work with the "Sometimes Cool" Guitar part. He laid it into the song and sent it on. I then "Sculpted" the arrangement of the violin to give it a jammed out feel, playing it off of the guitar riff.

MGE: In the end, the mixing process is as important to the Cyberchump sound as the recording process itself. We spend about as much time mixing a release as we do recording the music. Jim starts the process and I add my ears and it goes back and forth until we feel it is as good as it is going to get.

OMC: Does Cyberchump live kind of on the boundaries of genres? "Our
Wizards" is as traditional rock / pop as any ambient or electronic
outfit I've heard. Yet, it's definitely not traditional rock / pop.

JS: We probably don't fit in any genre. We always have tried to avoid consciously playing to a genre with the exception of the "Abstract Air" and "Sankhara" CDs. Those two albums are essentially beatless and are truly ambient in their presentation.

MGE: "Our Wizards of Earth" debuted in the top 25 on the New Age charts, but it is hard to see how what we are doing on this disc has anything to do with new age. I think that atmospheric instrumentals might just get lumped into that category.

We suspect if you like Brian Eno, David Sylvain, or one of the three heads --Talking Heads, Portishead or Radiohead -- you might like what we do. As far as helping garner attention, the boundary area probably is a strange way to get people to listen to our music. In the end though, we are uncertain whether working the boundaries of song style is a help or a hindrance for acceptance with a wider audience.

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Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by FunkyBrewster on Oct. 13, 2008 at 8:23 p.m. (report)

NICE!!!!

Posted by LeeAutumn on Oct. 6, 2008 at 11:03 p.m. (report)

These guys are great! I like to listen to Cyberchump when I am driving or when I need a boost of energy at work. Each album that I have heard is completely different. I wish these guys continued success.