Midwestern tour planned as musician unveils latest ethereal work, ‘Inferior Planets’
By Aaron Bolton/Murphy News Service
Duluth-based noise musician Tim Kaiser rolled out dates last week for a nine-day, small-venue Midwest tour that will showcase his innovative double 7-inch recording project “Inferior Planets.” The tour will kick off in DeKalb, Illinois, on June 4.
You might be wondering why a double 7-inch record is necessary for the four tracks the will be included. Why not just press it as it as an LP? Kaiser’s answer is the unique layering aspect on which “Inferior Planets” depends. The 54-year-old veteran local musician is giving the power to the listener with each track’s ability to be played simultaneously with another track on the project. Listeners can layer an array of unique sounds and loops just like Kaiser — granted you have two turntables.
“Inferior Planets”‘ ability to let the listener find what Kaiser calls the “ghost sound,” a technique of combining sounds to create new tones that otherwise would not exist, pushes Kaiser’s music on the project in a more structured direction. He said the idea came to him at a show he played at a planetarium, a place that’s ironically fitting for his music.
“They had their old star projector out in the lobby and I was looking at it,” Kaiser said. “There was this big black knob on it, and it said inferior planets. It struck me as kind of funny,” he said.
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“There was this big black knob on it, and it said inferior planets. It struck me as kind of funny.” Noise musician Tim Kaiser shown here at work in his studio. Photos courtesy of tim-kaiser.org
In contemplating the origin of the term, Kaiser discovered that planets Mercury and Venus are referred to as inferior or lesser due to having the smallest orbits in the solar system. “After learning about it, I thought ‘Boy, that makes sense in the terms of how I make music,’” he said. “You can think of the loops as orbits.”
Kaiser’s orbits are layered until he achieves his invisible harmonics, or “ghost sound,” but as strange as his music is, he started his long convoluted musical journey in a very typical fashion.
Kaiser and his four brothers would take turns learning to play on their grandfather’s Swedish tenor guitar. In college he shared a swing-jazz duo with his brother Trevor rightfully named Brothers, and he formed the punk band Floating Rocks in 1977. It was here that he started to veer from popular music.
“When you’re in a punk-rock band your equipment is really crappy because you’re broke all the time,” Kaiser said. “I was always having to fix things and fix things slowly evolved into building things, making things.”
After two years of being his band’s handyman he took his first steps on the experimental path that landed him where he is today. Kaiser decided to continue on his experimental path when he realized how much he would have to give up to be satisfied with his guitar playing.
“My younger brother is a phenomenal guitarist,” Kaiser said. “One day it kind of dawned on me that I would have to give up everything in my life to focus on guitar to get half as good as him, or go down a different path,” he said.
It’s a good thing Kaiser took the alternate route because “Inferior Planets” is nearly here, and it’s some of his most intriguing work. The four tracks “Helios,” “Earth,” “Venus” and “Mercury” all seem stripped down compared to songs on “City of Angels“ and “Holy Water“. The stripped down style can be exciting once you start to create a more complex piece yourself. “Helios” and “Earth” are particularly fun to play together.
So far Kaiser has released only a small piece of “Helios,” but he is hoping to have the album ready for the tour starting in June.
Reporter Aaron Bolton is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.
TIM KAISER’S ‘INFERIOR PLANETS’ TOUR DATES
| DATE | CITY | VENUE |
| June 4 | DeKalb, IL | Visit with Austin |
| June 5 | Columbus, OH | Frequency Fridays |
| June 6 | Grand Rapids, MI | Mexicains sans Frontieres |
| June 7 | Chicago, IL | Experimental Garage Sale |
| June 8 | Louisville, KY | Modern Cult Records |
| June 9 | Nashville, TN | NoaNoa (tentative) |
| June 10 | Huntsville, AL | Flying Monkey Arts Center |
| June 11 | Cincinnati, OH | something good |
| June 12 | Ann Arbor, MI | Far House |
| June 13 | Chicago, IL | Space Oddities |