Interview with Topper Anthony of Unit Psychosis
Zin : Do you want to tell me a little about how you started to make
music?
Top : I’m not quit sure, music’s been in my life my whole life. Since I
can remember,
I think I started making it before I started playing
it.
Zin : Where you in any bands before you were with Stigma?
Top : I had Unit Psychosis, and that has been going for almost 10 years
now.
But before Stigma I was in a band called Liquid Pulse.
Zin : oh, ok what did you do in that?
Top : I played some guitar, that’s about it.
Zin : Can you tell me about some of the instruments that you played in
Stigma?
Top : I played mostly guitar and some backing vocals, syth and some
percussion.
Zin : What prompted you to start the solo project that you have…ten years
ago?
Top : It solo because, its extremely hard to gather family because its
hard to find some one who has a clue…its solo here right here right now in the
moment, but I will have members when a version of Unit Psychosis plays
live.
Zin : Has anyone worked with you in the past on it?
Top : Yeah, a bunch of people, I was recording during…I started to record
due to unhappiness with Stigma, and when a certain fourth of Stigma didn’t want
to open up and broaden the horizon with the band, and let certain people do
certain things, it led me astray. So recording the project started first with
me but then I hooked up with some people at Mutation Research Technology. Mister Brian Green did programming with me and
he got Unit Psychosis sound as close as possible electronically then its ever
gotten. It also led to my diction and also made me see my unhappiness with
Stigma.
Zin : Could you tell me a little about Mutation because I have seen the
van driving around uptown and what not.
Top : It is Mister Brian Green’s creation, it is his little studio, his
cyber studio, ummm with
a circle of mutants now run it, including me. That’s his
bus, that’s his tour bus, he’s in High Blue Star with his girl friend. So they
tour…the two song sampler, that was from there, in the time frame that we had to
work with.
Zin : How many songs have you recorded?
Top : Ohh, go to the site it’s crazy, I've done sound scope, two sound
scope albums.
Some disclosed solo stuff that I have done…that’s a good question
maybe 20 or 25 songs.
Zin : Ok, cool, so you are happy with what you are creating right now
electronic
wise at least right?
Top : Well electronic wise, well right now I have a partner, but it will
be all me again and it will be a lot heavier electronic, and even more inhuman
then the sample.
Zin : Can you tell me about some of the instruments that you use
recording?
Top : I can not…but it is an array of...its actually very terrible. I have
a problem with click art, I have a problem with how easy it is for people with
just a click of the mouse. It’s a non
feeling even though I'm touched by electronics and even though there is
something about synthesizers in electronic music that touches me deep, I can’t
explain it, because it is inhuman. Right now it’s all raw, from going to Stigma
from playing with 2 drums, now I have my own drum set, war drums, I feel that
it is closer to industrial. There might be a solo set that I will be playing at
pagan pride on September 11. It looks right now that I will be structuring a
set. I guess there is going to be 1,000 people who are to show up, that will be
the biggest show that I have done with this, auditorium wise, state wise. It has usually been very intimate live
performances.
Zin : Have you read any good books lately?
Top : No, its really hard to get interested, and it takes some time to
really open up and get interested, and I have my time really tied up right now
with some other things…sad but true…the last one that I have really paged threw
was the owner of Magus books, Rogers last book.
Zin : So if you had three wishes what would they be?
Top : Misquote spray…no I take that back…the humans are starting to get
iritic, I wish they could all get along...so one of them could make peace. I am
not a full on Christian, so I believe there is more then one god. Possible male
or female, non sex but defiantly not one. I think the internal life and
experienced what we have experienced here on the planet possibly again and again.
I guess I am for reincarnation. Having a memory log I guess, and not really a
physical being, and that might happen anyways so…that would be two, I guess
three would be wishing for three more wishes.
Zin : So do you prefer living in the cities over the
wilderness?
Top : I do, even though I leave the cities , hear we are (out in a
forest/park) it’s a little bite quiter, drearier and wetter which normally you
don’t find in the city, but obviously we found it. I’m a city boy, but not in
New York. There are defiantly
boundaries that I don’t want the city to
consume me. And if you can handle it and spit it back out in artistic form
that’s great, but a lot of people can’t.
Zin : What music have you been listing to lately?
Top : In the car, in transit, mainly 770. At home rapaciously it’s
:wupscut, the actual something funky like a guitar, because I am a guitar player
mainly. Hearing and feeling the tones of the guitar makes your head kind of
wobble here and back, makes you kind of move. Im going towards a lot of
electronics but I go back and forth from terrible and neurosis. I really like
jimmy from the band our, I just acquired the live album after their performance
here. I am big on Dead Can Dance, Delerium, Front Line Assembly.
Zin : Do you have there new cd Civilization?
Top : Boy I don’t know, I get out like once every six weeks because I’m
board and broke, I may have it, I may not.
Zin : Is there any questions that you wish an interviewer would ask you,
but they never do?
Top : I guess nothing comes to mind, I have never giving myself an interview, the
only thing I ask myself is why I’m such a slave to it. Because if you are in
it for any other reason other then soul, you're sadly misguided. So I fight back
and forth, because it s a lot of soul searching asking myself these questions,
but ultimately it’s a part of me, so I don’t mind being a slave to
it...music…it’s a part of me.
Zin : I heard that you stopped drinking, would you like to tell me about
that?
Top : I stopped drinking at a latter stage after wanting to do it for so
long. Its when I was able to do it for the past 13 years and a week. I realized
that I wasted about 9 or 10 years every on every weekend by having a best friend
that was a demon that took away certain productive and creative aspects that I
didn’t know until I got rid of it, or asked it to leave, some times I say hi
when it is across the room. Some times it tapes me and I smirk at it. First
after I quit I started my own business and I started my own music
professionally, and not hobist -a-dickly you know. Me in particular that’s what
happened with me, some people can make it professionally with it, but not me, I
am sure that I would have died if I would have kept going at the rate that I was
going. June 13, 1991 I just quit, so last week we bought a bottle of wine, and I
was thinking well I got 13 on my head it’s the 13th year, of course
its going to be June 13…I thought maybe I’ll have a red wine, but I didn’t. But
I can make a promise that if I go back that I will not return in the place that
I was, it will be a ritual in a different way, it will not be such a conception
in a negative way. I have had torments
since then , I have gone through chaos, I lost a house, I have lost relationships,
not with ohh I need a drink, but just how I felt about it afterwards. Kids
should go through it, every one should go through it, and they should come to the
line of making a choice, and the feeling of overcoming something so consuming…if
I’m happy I may have a wine if I don’t I don’t. whatever, I stayed true to my 13
on my head. I overcome that demon, not all, but that one I did.
