Collapsing Opposites' Ryan McCormick

by Nathan Stafford





Local audio-art ensemble Collapsing Opposites is about to release a new album called ‘In Time’. The group’s sounds have evolved and grown since 2002’s ‘Demonstration’, but there has always been a strong visual element to the music. With ‘In Time’, the group’s first vinyl full-length, there’s a lot to sink one’s teeth into.

Here is the back-and-forth I had with Ryan, 2 weeks prior to the release of ‘In Time’:

Says Ryan: There is a strong visual / multimedia presence with this group; our audio art affects our visual art and our visual art affects our audio art. Our last album 'Inside Chance' was closely connected with an art installation I did called The Game of Life - the art show came after the album, but it was based on some of the same ideas and took them in different directions than the music could. More recently, at the same time as we were working on our new album 'In Time,' we were involved with an art project called Whose Museum, and ideas from the album and the museum became intertwined. Our forthcoming video for the song 'Diamond Mind' as well as the cover art for 'In Time' contain references to both the songs and the museum.

NS: Did Chriss-a-riffic play on this record? He’s played with you before, correct?

RM: Chris plays the Rhodes keyboard in the choruses of our song Diamond Mind. I believe I first met Chris at the Pic Pub in 2003, but got to know him a lot better during the 4 years we were bandmates in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. He is certainly one of our best friends, and we have worked with him a lot before. He was actually a member of our band briefly last year, as he came on tour across Canada with us, playing keyboard in Collapsing Opposites as well as doing his own Bible Belts set. Bible Belts and Collapsing Opposites released a split seven-inch record last year. We currently practice in Chris's garage - a place called The Shed.

NS: The new record has 2 sides: Songs About Living, and Songs About Rock. Could you explain those titles?

RM: What we have here, essentially, are the two primary archetypes of temporal existence: that which is living, and that which is dead.
On one side, there is the time that passes by in one's life, transitioning from birth to infancy to childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle age to the golden years to death. It includes such milestones as work, relationships, money, politics, sex, knowledge, and purpose.
On the other side, we have a much longer vision of time, where rocks slowly crumble into dust and join back together with a larger rock such as Earth. From time to time a rock becomes so massive that it ignites and becomes what we call a star, such as The Sun. Planets change, stars supernova, but matter cannot be created or destroyed. This is known as the First Law of Thermodynamics.
The two sides of this record explore these two aspects of time - the living and the rock. Of course we are ultimately interested in reaching a synthesis, and we hope that by providing some suggestive thoughts on the topic of time, our listeners will be able to formulate their own conclusions.

NS: Fascinating stuff. Hey, I really like the intro on the song ‘No One’. You play this ambient-noise stuff for almost 2 minutes, and then it gets really rockin’. Was it written that way, or did it just come out in the studio?

RM: We knew we wanted a long drawn-out intro, but no, we hadn't written anything out on paper. In the studio we sort of jammed on the song for about twenty minutes - as I recall, we actually played the rocking part first and then devolved into more abstract noise-y stuff. At home, we edited it and moved some pieces around and picked the best parts to use as our bed tracks. Keyboards and vocals were overdubbed later.

NS: So you’ve decided to release this album on vinyl. You’ve also released your music on cassette in the past. Why vinyl at this stage?

RM: We are very interested in using media with two sides. We know that truth is multi-faceted and it is an overly-simplistic view to say that there are only two sides to every issue, but the human mind is limited in capacity and it is often helpful to think in terms of the binary - even if there are several intersecting binaries operating at once. Two-sided media like records and tapes add a new layer of meaning to a work and an artist can use it to their advantage in reinforcing a binary concept. In our cassette it was 'Music' and 'Words', and in this new record it's 'Songs About Living' and 'Songs About Rock.'

NS: You’re going totally DIY with the distro of this record. What are the benefits and drawbacks of releasing this record yourself?

RM: This is a question I could talk a lot about, but for now I'll just say that it's incredibly liberating to think of a band or album as an art project rather than a career and to think of music as a community rather than an industry.

NS: Speaking of community, you are giving away your earlier recordings for free over at your website. How come?

RM: What we've been doing is making the recordings available for free after the physical copies have all been sold. Usually by the time that happens we have moved on to new things and don't want to spend money and time re-printing old stuff - but we also don't want it to be lost forever. It costs us nothing to put it online, so we do that. I would recommend it to anyone who sells out of a recording and doesn't plan on making any more. Why let your work get lost forever?

NS: Will you be hitting the road to promote ‘In Time’?

RM: We are doing a short Northwest US tour in February, and are planning a much longer cross-Canada and European tour for May-July. I'm sure there will be various Vancouver shows scattered in and amongst the tours, but we haven't got anything specific set up yet.

NS: Anything else you’d like to add?

RM: We've been heavily involved with a non-profit organization called the Safe Amplification Site Society - this is very relevant to the Vancouver music communities and I bet many of your readers would be interested. They can find out more at www.safeamp.org

NS: When is the new record available?

RM: The release party is Jan 29 at Little Mountain Gallery. We may have copies available sooner - possibly before xmas - but we don't have an exact date yet. If anyone wants to buy a copy before the release party they can email ryan@collapsingopposites.com to make the arrangements.

NS: And they can find out more about tour dates, music and Collapsing Opposites news over at www.collapsingopposites.com
Thanks for your time, Ryan! Best of luck with the new release!