"..the reform you've been waiting for.."
Ike Yard
Spurious Factory Sounds
Ike Yard Bio:
Although IKE YARD dissolved by the beginning of 1983, the band reformed as a three piece unit with original members Stuart Argabright, Kenneth Compton and Michael Diekmann. A career spanning compilation was released on the Acute label in 2006 (see below for details).
The name comes from Anthony Burgess's novel "A Clockwork Orange". You know the scene where Alex is in the record shop ...if you look on the wall there is a list of names, the Heaven 17 are there too
In NYC Spring 1980 Stuart Argabright, founder/drummer/vocalist of the FUTANTS, began sessions with Kenneth Compton on bass/vocals at Kristian Hoffman's rehearsal Studio on the edge of Chinatown. The group was completed when Fred Szymanski (synthesizers/ programming /treatments) and Michael Diekmann (guitar, synthesizer) joined in August 1980.
IKE YARD began with a lineup that included guitar, synthesizer, bass, drums and percussion. The additional percussion was often ‘found’ scrap metal: brake drums, sheet metal, and other debris from the streets and vacant lots of the Lower East Side. During 1982, with the guitar and finally bass being replaced fully by a four-piece synthesizer set up, IKE YARD’s sound transformed into a music bleached of flesh, reduced to a glistening skeleton – the music of machines haunted by ghosts.
The band’s modular analog synthesizer set up included gear by Korg (MS-20, MS-50, SQ-10, VC-10), Roland (TR-909, TR-606, TR 808, TB-303, MC-202, CSQ-600), Arp (Solus, Axxe), the EMS Synthi-AKS, and the Buchla Modular 112 keyboard controller.
In Spring 1981, IKE YARD recorded an EP for Belgium’s Crepuscule records (which was named single of the week in Melody Maker upon its release in November 1981). IKE YARD was the first US group to record for the Manchester UK’s Factory label; an album “A FACT A SECOND” was released on Factory America in September 1982. The band performed with NEW ORDER at Ukrainian National Home, SECTION 25 at Peppermint Lounge & Maxwell’s, SUICIDE and 13:13 (w/Lydia Lunch) at Chase Park, and with the DEL BZYZENTEENS (w/Jim Jarmusch) at CBGB’s and the Music for Millions festival. In addition, the band played at Danceteria, the Mudd Club, the Pyramid Club and Tier 3.
Hello, how are you?
Stuart Argabright: Pretty good. Busy and keeping it together for the most part. Sometimes a bit glazed from too much time on the screen and holding more then four things in mind at the same time.
Michael Diekmann: I'm doing all right. I just recently signed off on test pressings for both CD and Vinyl, as well as the art design, for an upcoming instrumental solo release under the name B Lan 3. The title is "Music for Hunting and Mapping" and its being released on Asthmatic Kitty's Library Catalog series around the start of 2011.
What are you currently listening to?
S A: Looking at 'recently played' on iTunes - Anbb , Jamie Vex'd , Erik Satie , The Doors , Roxy Music , Solar Bears , LV , Ramadanman
M D: In the past few weeks...Deer Hunter's "Halcyon Digest", "Extensions" by McCoy Tyner, "Triangulation" by Scuba, "First Thought Best Thought" by Arthur Russell, "Age of Adz" by Sufjan Stevens, oOoOO's new EP, Salem's "King Night", "Siwan" by Jon Balke, "Cyborg" by Klaus Schulze, Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride" conducted by Marc Minkowski, Britten’s “String Quartet no.2” by the Amadeus Quartet, Dylan's Whitmark Demos, the soundtrack to "Kamasutra" by Irmin Schmidt (actually a full Can recording), an Anne Briggs anthology, “Liege and Lief” by Fairport Convention, the last Super Furry Animals' CD, and a couple of home-made rock compilations from 1970 and 2009. I have wide-ranging tastes, and as a listening experience prefer CDs to my iPod.
I’m sure you’ve gotten this question before but, where does the name Ike Yard come from?
S A: Straight out of "A Clockwork Orange". Massive respect to Anthony Burgess for coming up with an invented language for that novel.
M D: Stuart covered that one. Of the names we were considering at the time, it was certainly the right choice.
During the whole “No Wave” scene were you trying to make art, music, or pay homage to something?
S A: By the time I got to NYC spring of '78 , much of what was 'No Wave' , the artistic moment, had probably passed. There were core groups ( Mars, DNA, The Contortions ) but the energy was here and there, it flared and then 'gone'. Lots of scrappy, desperate energy trying to get out, trying to express something .
Hyped and almost wordless. I did see some of the late No Wave-ish series at Max's, another time James Chance and Anya Phillips set upon Marcus Leatherdale and his date or friend on the dance floor of the Mudd Club. Kenneth Compton and I met in the clubs - or as he remembers, out behind one - The Palladium as PIL played inside and we ran around those clubs nightly until we found someone.
Ike Yard came from another place, probably a more cinematic ( this was post - "Taxi Driver" NYC, "Realm Of The Senses" by Nagisa Oshima International city ) sexy ( 'Night after night after night...' )
and sometimes dark place ( we saw people get robbed, mobbed, some with back pockets ripped open with a razor, edge city ) we felt in the character of the city at that time.
Art music from inside the city.
M D: Although I visited NYC a lot in the mid-70's, I didn't move here until the beginning of '79 - with the band I was playing with then, "Moon Maid & Theories of Exchange." We were from Providence, RI - and played original, politically savvy New Wave stuff (but we did also cover "I Wanna be Your Dog").
My friend Fred (eventually a member of Ike Yard in 1980-83) had moved here in '76 and found a job at the Strand Bookstore, where a few of the no wave musicians also worked. He introduced me to that music scene - which spoke to my creative interests much more directly that punk. I hunted down the recordings, and made trips down to NYC to see the bands play.
When my first band fell apart, Fred and I tried jamming with some other friends at the beginning of 1980 – sort of no wave meets Miles’ “Agharta” – synths, sax, wah wah guitars, crazy unmoored no wave drumming with a funk bass; in other words, a mess (and ultimately the Golden Palominos did that much better in 1983). One of those guys introduced by to Stuart during the summer (I’d caught his previous band, Futants, and dug them). He was playing drums with Ken on bass, and I pulled in Fred with his EMS synthizer to a rehearsal/jam – and everything fell immediately into place! With our interest in electronic music and processing, we were certainly a post-no wave band, and maybe even a post-rock band.I was making music and art: initially studying electronic music composition until '76 and soon picking up the guitar again when punk broke out, and as for art - making collages, altering newspaper photos, also did a few installations/performance pieces.
S A: Not adverse to the term, and can appreciate and dabbled in it as a style. Society had to go through 'machine' and 'industrial' as it tried to get grips with third wave change all around . I Did enjoy moving to things towards 'post industrial' with Black Rain by '89 -'90 !
M D: Hmmm...sometimes? If you think about it, the Russian composer Alexander Mosolov invented the genre in 1926 with "Iron Foundry" - so it’s been with us for a while; Einsturzende Neubauten weren't the first. Did Ike Yard use scrap metal in performances and recordings? Sure, but we didn't ever limit our sound sources and structures to mirroring the industrial triumph or breakdown of our culture. We always kept our sights on the horizon, looking forward.
I’m glad you guys decided to reform, can I ask.. What took so long?
S A: Never expected to reform. Never saw it in the cards as when the group began dissolving , it was partly due to lack of interest from labels. The cyclical nature of culture , combined with the web's easy access to information and music archive, brought certain people to discover the group. I say 'discover' because there were few fans and listeners first time around . Dozens - hundreds at most.
M D: Although we’ve been friends for many years, and Stuart and I have also worked together in the experimental hip hop project Death Comet Crew – initially from 1984-89 and then again since 2003 after the compilation “This is Rip Hop” was released - there was no consideration of reforming Ike Yard…until our compilation on Acute was released in 2006.
Have you guys fully embraced the new digital format of music or do you feel behind on the times?
S A: Well, 'digital' followed on from drum machines and MIDI which were firmly IY territory from inception to 1983 AD . For my part , I've dealt with digital in a few forms since it began. And with my Father working at The Pentagon when I was growing up outside DC, I may have gotten some idea what was being planned for the 'Monet' ( as the military insiders called it then ).
In 1984 it was CG and curiously working with artists like Gretchen Bender and Amber Denker who was involved with the research at NY Institute Of Technology. Next between 1985 -'90 was a whole wave of 'cyber' projects with William Gibson, Bruce Sterling , directors and artists that my partner William Barg and I embarked on.
M D: We have tried to move forward over the years, although it’s not easy keeping up with the latest versions of software. Our music, individually and as Ike Yard, has involved some sort of programming from 1981, initially with analog sequencing and then moving on to digital. I was doing sound processing and audiotape splicing since the mid ‘70’s, so it’s not as if we have had to adapt our basic approaches to music-making.
Ken, Stuart and I work with digital technologies on a regular basis - I also work with media in the context of my ‘day job’ which involves video and audio editing, and I have to handle media installations at a couple of galleries, so I keep up. True, we may not be working on the ‘cutting edge’ of this technology, but in our collaboration as Ike Yard, once we combine our aesthetics and whatever instruments or technologies we have on hand, we manage to come up with something unique and which stands on its own.
S A: Today, coming off of excellent collaborations with the likes of The Rammellzee ( RIP ) and Judy Nylon , I may have run through some wish list of collaborators I may have had. Too busy right now to think of hypothetical other artists and projects. So you have to watch this space as new things are always bubbling up.
M D: As Ike Yard, we’d like to collaborate on some remix projects – The Sistol (Vladislav Delay) remix we did titled “Nuomo” is out now. We’d be up for doing projects with, say, Autechre, maybe Scuba, Burial, or Aphex Twin? Also, it’d be interesting to work with Scott Walker.
You can only keep/listen to ONE album for the rest of your life ..which album would it be?
S A: Probably "Low" by David Bowie, followed closely by "The Idiot" by Iggy & Bowie
M D: Impossible to answer; perhaps Ignaz Biber’s “8 Violin Sonatas” from 1681, recorded by Romanesca, or Morton Feldman’s “Coptic Light” conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Are you living your dream?
S A: Yes. But I have to dream it every night and keep it going...
M D: I’m living my life, the only one I have.
Thanx Stuart & Michael!
Ike Yard is back, hopefully for good. Make sure to catch up on their library when you have a moment..
Ike Yard
Spurious Factory Sounds
Ike Yard Bio:
Although IKE YARD dissolved by the beginning of 1983, the band reformed as a three piece unit with original members Stuart Argabright, Kenneth Compton and Michael Diekmann. A career spanning compilation was released on the Acute label in 2006 (see below for details).
The name comes from Anthony Burgess's novel "A Clockwork Orange". You know the scene where Alex is in the record shop ...if you look on the wall there is a list of names, the Heaven 17 are there too
In NYC Spring 1980 Stuart Argabright, founder/drummer/vocalist of the FUTANTS, began sessions with Kenneth Compton on bass/vocals at Kristian Hoffman's rehearsal Studio on the edge of Chinatown. The group was completed when Fred Szymanski (synthesizers/ programming /treatments) and Michael Diekmann (guitar, synthesizer) joined in August 1980.
IKE YARD began with a lineup that included guitar, synthesizer, bass, drums and percussion. The additional percussion was often ‘found’ scrap metal: brake drums, sheet metal, and other debris from the streets and vacant lots of the Lower East Side. During 1982, with the guitar and finally bass being replaced fully by a four-piece synthesizer set up, IKE YARD’s sound transformed into a music bleached of flesh, reduced to a glistening skeleton – the music of machines haunted by ghosts.
The band’s modular analog synthesizer set up included gear by Korg (MS-20, MS-50, SQ-10, VC-10), Roland (TR-909, TR-606, TR 808, TB-303, MC-202, CSQ-600), Arp (Solus, Axxe), the EMS Synthi-AKS, and the Buchla Modular 112 keyboard controller.
In Spring 1981, IKE YARD recorded an EP for Belgium’s Crepuscule records (which was named single of the week in Melody Maker upon its release in November 1981). IKE YARD was the first US group to record for the Manchester UK’s Factory label; an album “A FACT A SECOND” was released on Factory America in September 1982. The band performed with NEW ORDER at Ukrainian National Home, SECTION 25 at Peppermint Lounge & Maxwell’s, SUICIDE and 13:13 (w/Lydia Lunch) at Chase Park, and with the DEL BZYZENTEENS (w/Jim Jarmusch) at CBGB’s and the Music for Millions festival. In addition, the band played at Danceteria, the Mudd Club, the Pyramid Club and Tier 3.
Hello, how are you?
Stuart Argabright: Pretty good. Busy and keeping it together for the most part. Sometimes a bit glazed from too much time on the screen and holding more then four things in mind at the same time.
Michael Diekmann: I'm doing all right. I just recently signed off on test pressings for both CD and Vinyl, as well as the art design, for an upcoming instrumental solo release under the name B Lan 3. The title is "Music for Hunting and Mapping" and its being released on Asthmatic Kitty's Library Catalog series around the start of 2011.
What are you currently listening to?
S A: Looking at 'recently played' on iTunes - Anbb , Jamie Vex'd , Erik Satie , The Doors , Roxy Music , Solar Bears , LV , Ramadanman
M D: In the past few weeks...Deer Hunter's "Halcyon Digest", "Extensions" by McCoy Tyner, "Triangulation" by Scuba, "First Thought Best Thought" by Arthur Russell, "Age of Adz" by Sufjan Stevens, oOoOO's new EP, Salem's "King Night", "Siwan" by Jon Balke, "Cyborg" by Klaus Schulze, Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride" conducted by Marc Minkowski, Britten’s “String Quartet no.2” by the Amadeus Quartet, Dylan's Whitmark Demos, the soundtrack to "Kamasutra" by Irmin Schmidt (actually a full Can recording), an Anne Briggs anthology, “Liege and Lief” by Fairport Convention, the last Super Furry Animals' CD, and a couple of home-made rock compilations from 1970 and 2009. I have wide-ranging tastes, and as a listening experience prefer CDs to my iPod.
I’m sure you’ve gotten this question before but, where does the name Ike Yard come from?
S A: Straight out of "A Clockwork Orange". Massive respect to Anthony Burgess for coming up with an invented language for that novel.
M D: Stuart covered that one. Of the names we were considering at the time, it was certainly the right choice.
During the whole “No Wave” scene were you trying to make art, music, or pay homage to something?
S A: By the time I got to NYC spring of '78 , much of what was 'No Wave' , the artistic moment, had probably passed. There were core groups ( Mars, DNA, The Contortions ) but the energy was here and there, it flared and then 'gone'. Lots of scrappy, desperate energy trying to get out, trying to express something .
Hyped and almost wordless. I did see some of the late No Wave-ish series at Max's, another time James Chance and Anya Phillips set upon Marcus Leatherdale and his date or friend on the dance floor of the Mudd Club. Kenneth Compton and I met in the clubs - or as he remembers, out behind one - The Palladium as PIL played inside and we ran around those clubs nightly until we found someone.
Ike Yard came from another place, probably a more cinematic ( this was post - "Taxi Driver" NYC, "Realm Of The Senses" by Nagisa Oshima International city ) sexy ( 'Night after night after night...' )
and sometimes dark place ( we saw people get robbed, mobbed, some with back pockets ripped open with a razor, edge city ) we felt in the character of the city at that time.
Art music from inside the city.
M D: Although I visited NYC a lot in the mid-70's, I didn't move here until the beginning of '79 - with the band I was playing with then, "Moon Maid & Theories of Exchange." We were from Providence, RI - and played original, politically savvy New Wave stuff (but we did also cover "I Wanna be Your Dog").
My friend Fred (eventually a member of Ike Yard in 1980-83) had moved here in '76 and found a job at the Strand Bookstore, where a few of the no wave musicians also worked. He introduced me to that music scene - which spoke to my creative interests much more directly that punk. I hunted down the recordings, and made trips down to NYC to see the bands play.
When my first band fell apart, Fred and I tried jamming with some other friends at the beginning of 1980 – sort of no wave meets Miles’ “Agharta” – synths, sax, wah wah guitars, crazy unmoored no wave drumming with a funk bass; in other words, a mess (and ultimately the Golden Palominos did that much better in 1983). One of those guys introduced by to Stuart during the summer (I’d caught his previous band, Futants, and dug them). He was playing drums with Ken on bass, and I pulled in Fred with his EMS synthizer to a rehearsal/jam – and everything fell immediately into place! With our interest in electronic music and processing, we were certainly a post-no wave band, and maybe even a post-rock band.I was making music and art: initially studying electronic music composition until '76 and soon picking up the guitar again when punk broke out, and as for art - making collages, altering newspaper photos, also did a few installations/performance pieces.
Do you guys consider yourselves “Industrial“?
S A: Not adverse to the term, and can appreciate and dabbled in it as a style. Society had to go through 'machine' and 'industrial' as it tried to get grips with third wave change all around . I Did enjoy moving to things towards 'post industrial' with Black Rain by '89 -'90 !
M D: Hmmm...sometimes? If you think about it, the Russian composer Alexander Mosolov invented the genre in 1926 with "Iron Foundry" - so it’s been with us for a while; Einsturzende Neubauten weren't the first. Did Ike Yard use scrap metal in performances and recordings? Sure, but we didn't ever limit our sound sources and structures to mirroring the industrial triumph or breakdown of our culture. We always kept our sights on the horizon, looking forward.
I’m glad you guys decided to reform, can I ask.. What took so long?
S A: Never expected to reform. Never saw it in the cards as when the group began dissolving , it was partly due to lack of interest from labels. The cyclical nature of culture , combined with the web's easy access to information and music archive, brought certain people to discover the group. I say 'discover' because there were few fans and listeners first time around . Dozens - hundreds at most.
M D: Although we’ve been friends for many years, and Stuart and I have also worked together in the experimental hip hop project Death Comet Crew – initially from 1984-89 and then again since 2003 after the compilation “This is Rip Hop” was released - there was no consideration of reforming Ike Yard…until our compilation on Acute was released in 2006.
Dan Selzer asked us if we’d be interested in playing some shows to support the CD, and we thought about it. Of course we wouldn’t attempt it if the music wasn’t happening, but after Stuart, Ken and I played together a couple of times, we could tell that, even after two decades, there was some real electricity there.
Have you guys fully embraced the new digital format of music or do you feel behind on the times?
S A: Well, 'digital' followed on from drum machines and MIDI which were firmly IY territory from inception to 1983 AD . For my part , I've dealt with digital in a few forms since it began. And with my Father working at The Pentagon when I was growing up outside DC, I may have gotten some idea what was being planned for the 'Monet' ( as the military insiders called it then ).
In 1984 it was CG and curiously working with artists like Gretchen Bender and Amber Denker who was involved with the research at NY Institute Of Technology. Next between 1985 -'90 was a whole wave of 'cyber' projects with William Gibson, Bruce Sterling , directors and artists that my partner William Barg and I embarked on.
M D: We have tried to move forward over the years, although it’s not easy keeping up with the latest versions of software. Our music, individually and as Ike Yard, has involved some sort of programming from 1981, initially with analog sequencing and then moving on to digital. I was doing sound processing and audiotape splicing since the mid ‘70’s, so it’s not as if we have had to adapt our basic approaches to music-making.
Ken, Stuart and I work with digital technologies on a regular basis - I also work with media in the context of my ‘day job’ which involves video and audio editing, and I have to handle media installations at a couple of galleries, so I keep up. True, we may not be working on the ‘cutting edge’ of this technology, but in our collaboration as Ike Yard, once we combine our aesthetics and whatever instruments or technologies we have on hand, we manage to come up with something unique and which stands on its own.
If you could collaborate with any artists both current and from the past what projects would you choose?
S A: Today, coming off of excellent collaborations with the likes of The Rammellzee ( RIP ) and Judy Nylon , I may have run through some wish list of collaborators I may have had. Too busy right now to think of hypothetical other artists and projects. So you have to watch this space as new things are always bubbling up.
M D: As Ike Yard, we’d like to collaborate on some remix projects – The Sistol (Vladislav Delay) remix we did titled “Nuomo” is out now. We’d be up for doing projects with, say, Autechre, maybe Scuba, Burial, or Aphex Twin? Also, it’d be interesting to work with Scott Walker.
You can only keep/listen to ONE album for the rest of your life ..which album would it be?
S A: Probably "Low" by David Bowie, followed closely by "The Idiot" by Iggy & Bowie
M D: Impossible to answer; perhaps Ignaz Biber’s “8 Violin Sonatas” from 1681, recorded by Romanesca, or Morton Feldman’s “Coptic Light” conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas.
Are you living your dream?
S A: Yes. But I have to dream it every night and keep it going...
M D: I’m living my life, the only one I have.
Thanx Stuart & Michael!
Ike Yard is back, hopefully for good. Make sure to catch up on their library when you have a moment..
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