Interview: Dave Brenner of GRIDFAILURE

Antihero Magazine had the opportunity recently to speak to Dave Brenner, one-half of the dynamic duo that makes up Earsplit PR, a media relations firm in which he shares duties with his partner and wife, Liz Ciavarella-Brenner. However, when Dave isn’t working on Earsplit business he pours his creative passions into Gridfailure, a project that fuses a myriad of influences into an experimental, avant-garde sonic experience that bursts with tension, decay and strife – a reflection of the turmoil and upheaval we currently witness in our global society.

Scott Martin: Tell me a little bit about the history of Gridfailure. How did it start?

David Brenner: It just happened as a freak sort of experiment or accident. One year ago, actually. February 2016. At the time, I was playing with Theologian and that was the first industrial or power electronics band or project I was ever involved in personally playing. It was a totally new experience from … Anything I’ve ever been in before was always rapid, high speed, street punk, hard core, grind core. Everything was always very rabid and even if it was chaotic it had to be planned. Verses, choruses, whatever.

This was my first real venture in to experimental music was Theologian. It was a lot of improv and everything else. I started trying to learn how to work with beats and rhythms and recording things on my own. That’s really it. I would be here in this bunker learning how to record things. I would just experiment with guitars or vocal experimentation. Just banging on garbage with contact mics. Just about anything. Recording fire. Anything. We were making these horror sound tracts and things at the time.

There’s a label Cadabra Records out of Upstate New York, out of Syracuse, it started a couple years ago. They take these HP Lovecraft and all these classic horror writers and readers, and they make these incredible vinyl packages with super audio file readings from literary horror scholars. I started handling press for them through Earsplit and I just happened to say, “I’ve been playing with this act Theologian and we kind of make this stuff you’re looking for, do you want to give it a shot?” So, I hooked us up with this series, and that’s what we were doing at the time, recording for HP Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear” and “Pickman’s Model” and a couple other random things.

I would record 10 and 20 minutes of just absolute experimental garbage through huge amplification. Not really knowing what I was doing and would end up with these huge long segments. Then within Theologian, maybe a 10 second loop of that would be cut out of a 10-minute track and used somewhere. And then they’d have these, just all this stuff, so I just kind of started layering it together on my own. Suddenly, things started aligning and making sense by accident. It was like, “Hey, this could actually be something else.” I just started shifting and creating and then named it. I don’t know, it was just a random name I had written down years ago. I had made a logo. I had done all this stuff for five different bands I was making up, that I was trying to start and never really had any ideas. Then this all fell in line. I needed something. It sounded like everything was breaking down and falling apart, because it kind of was, and Gridfailure just fell out of a notebook. I was like, “Done.” And then just started basically turning in to what became the first record. That was pretty much it. An absolute accident.

Scott Martin: I was listening to Gridfailure, and it gave me a cold chill. It felt like I was transported to a forest and it’s snowing, and it’s mysterious. The music is…it’s fun. I always thought this won’t be something that I’ll drive home from work and listen to. But, I found myself a couple days ago, I was driving home from work and I put it on. It’s very relaxing.

David Brenner: Which one were you driving to?

Scott Martin: The one that’s on Spotify.

David Brenner: Yeah. That’s the only I have as an actual CD release so far. I’ve listened to it a couple times driving around. I didn’t really know at all what I was doing, making that record was my experiment. That’s how Gridfailure became even a band, was just learning how to make music, in audacity basically. Taking layers of things and unifying them, and just making these soundscapes. It was just a complete experiment. The first thing I’ve ever made or recorded. I didn’t know what I was doing. When I look back at those files, the levels are completely blown out. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no training or anything.

It was just a full experiment. When I listened to that just recently, I was like, “I haven’t listened to this in a while“, and I put it in when I was doing the same thing, driving, and it was blowing my speakers out, some of the frequencies. And it wasn’t even parts that I was trying to do that. It was just because I didn’t know at all what I was doing with that record.

The whole thing happened as an experiment, as an accident, basically. Now it just carried from there. Now it can be anything. Now I can play virtually any … That paranoid vibe is the vibe of the band. Doesn’t really matter what genre or style, whatever I’m playing.

Further Layers Of Societal Collapse EP:

Scott Martin: Music’s very therapeutic to me. I have bouts of anxiety and I put that on, and I just sit back and it mellows me out. It’s weird. It’s not for everybody. Because a lot of people aren’t so open minded to sit down and listen to just something new.

I think you have a future in music scoring for movies.

David Brenner: That’s actually something I would really, really, really like to get in to. Like I said, I’m still only a year into recording and producing and whatever on my own. I work every day.

After Earsplit, after the house, after everything else, I’m in this little bunker every day working on something, learning something, just experimenting…reading Rock Guitar for Dummies, or looking up a drum video on YouTube, or just about anything. Buying any instrument I come across that I just feel inclined to try out. That’s what a lot of it is, just really trying things and experimenting for the first time and recording them with 40 pedals going. It’s just very random instrumentation. It’s not really created on the computer, it’s created on instruments, but I’m just doing this power electronics manipulation to everything. I’m not really using midi or anything else. I’m plugging keyboards and analog synthesizers in to 12 effects panels, and things like that. It’s recording an acoustic electric guitar with 14 bass pedals. It’s just very random and experimental.

I think what you said about the relaxing part of it, the people that I know that say that this stuff is somehow soothing or therapeutic, are people that are open minded. People I know that are in to all kinds of different music and everything else, and also have a lot of stress in their life or a lot of anxiety, or a lot anger, or anything like that. It kind of works in reverse effects. When I’m making something that I want the general listener to hear and want to dive out a window or go run in front of train, those of us that listen to experimental and more soundtrack, jazz and avant-garde stuff, and improv stuff, it is more of that realm. It’s definitely not meant to be therapeutic. It is angry and miserable. But I feel that same kinship. I don’t listen to happy music to feel happy. You know what I mean? When you’re feeling terrible, you want to hear the worst thing ever to have that get on par with how you feel. It neutralizes it, you know?

Scott Martin: What other projects you working on? You’re not just Gridfailure, you go by other monikers also?

David Brenner: No, no that’s not it. I don’t really consider Gridfailure my moniker. Gridfailure is just the act name. I don’t have a stage name or anything. I use my actual name. Pretty much after the first record, virtually everything else I’ve recorded to date has had other players on it. Not necessarily every song, and in no way in a live full band context. But I have people, friends and musicians all over the place that have been contributing to most of the other records.

While it’s my project, I’m the only member, it’s not really like, “I am Gridfailure“, this sort of elitist thing. It’s more like a platform to bring all these other people in and eventually, I would like to have multiple live lineups. Where it can be an interchangeable live set up, in different contexts. Go play a folk festival with this crew and then go play a metal festival with this crew. There’s so many different people that I’m working with and so many different kinds of backgrounds and music, that it’s kind of becoming this collective or something.

No, I don’t have any other current bands at all. This is pretty much it. After Earsplit for the day this is what I do. I make sure the house is not full falling apart, there’s something to eat, and then there’s Gridfailure. I pretty much work on lyrics, or vocals, or music, or ideas, or multiple angles of things, pretty much every day for several hours.

It’s different than, “Okay, every Tuesday and Thursday for three hours we have band practice” and you hammer out the set and make sure you don’t screw that song up like you did on the show last weekend. The typical band practice, it’s not like that all. I might be like, “I just bought a drum machine and I don’t really know how to use it, so let’s go plug in to a bunch of panels and hit record.” And then blow a bunch of shit up and things happen that you don’t expect. Maybe you get something cool out of it and maybe not. But otherwise I’ll just learn how to connect this to that.

Every day is learning a little bit of something. I have no training in this. I have no knowledge of how to do anything except for just see what works, see what doesn’t. Sometimes things that don’t work at first are the things “Now, I have to make it happen.” Then you have a goal to work on. It’s not all just complete random experimentation. Sometimes I’ll have an idea and try to aim for that, but most of it is really just very avant-garde approach to things. It’s more like art class than band practice.

Scott Martin: So, you would describe your music as avant-garde? Maybe experimental? How would you describe your music to somebody that hasn’t heard you before?

David Brenner: That’s pretty much it. I don’t really have a genre. People say that about their music. It’s not black metal, yeah but it’s fully double bass, and you’re wearing corpse pain and everything’s about the devil. If it’s not black metal, you make up a genre. I don’t really want to take that mission upon myself to create a genre for what it is. I think it’s pretty much just a mesh of genres and ideas and things that I’m in to.

If you listen to the first record, most of it would sound like grueling hardcore recorded at the wrong speed. Playing a 45 LP on 33, like it melted in the sun and grew tumors and you tried to play it again. Everything sounds broken and off. There’s definitely elements of hardcore and world music and metal and anything that I’m in to. There’s really no limits as to what I’ll maybe do with it. It has to have some kind of paranoid, horrifying vibe to it. I don’t really care if it’s a jazz song, if it’s a straight up country song.

Most of the stuff that’s now so far is all pretty brutal. I know I sent you some of the links to a lot of the things that we have in the works. The Teeth Collection album I’ve been working on for almost a year. That’s more of a tribal post six mass extinction rebuilding of human society where it’s like a mix of artificial intelligence and humans going back to rebuilding society and learning how to do things over. It’s very tribal and cannibalistic and dark and moody.

Then there’s Drought Stick which has huge 22-minute guitar and organ solos. It’s like a psychedelic, desert, meth binge, burying someone up to their head in the desert. Just weird spaghetti western soundtrack thing. That’s like a double disc. Everything’s kind of all over the place.

Scathed is a new thing I’m working on for a small noise label. That’s going to be the first fully solo recording I’ve done since the first album. There’ll be no collaborations or contributions from anybody else on it. That’s just something I’m blasting out at the fastest pace I can. It’s an endurance test. That’s going to be super harsh and more noise and beats. I don’t really have a way to classify it. It’s not in any kind of artistic or pretentious way, I just don’t know what to call it because it’s kind of everything.

My main influences are very experimental and very heavy and dark. It’s a lot of that. People that listen to things like Harvestman or Sunn O))) versus something more like Dark Funeral. It’s more on that abstract artist visions paintbrush. It’s hard to categorize in to something.

I want it all to be demoralizing and paranoid inducing. I want people to, rather than get in to a verse chorus and bob your head and know what’s coming, I want people … Say they make it to a second, or third, or fourth listen, I still want them to not really know what’s coming. It’s not very patterned.

That’s what I find to be more engaging. Jazz and rap and experimental folk music and things like that, rather than … I listen to plenty of punk, and hard core, and death metal, and everything else too. It’s not just like that. It’s more the angle with this band I guess.

Scott Martin: I listened to the first album, Ensuring the Bloodline Ends Here, on Spotify. Listened the heck out of that. Your other stuff since then, is it in the same vein? I’m wondering … Obviously, on the first album you didn’t use guitar, drums, and bass. Or did you?

David Brenner: I did use all those elements, but it’s not in a … There’s harmonica, violin, acoustic guitars. Playing violin bow on acoustic electric guitar plugged in to 15 effects. Setting up recording. Doing live vocals with all kinds of echo and feedback happening while I’m inside a huge cardboard box in the same room trying to isolate myself, and give a claustrophobic sound to things.

There’s all kinds of things. There’s digital percussion. Digital drums. A live drum set. An electronic drum set. Different kinds of drum programming and equipment, midi. Keyboard, synthesizers. So much, virtually anything.

The entire first record I recorded layers of things basically live on a huge … At a sound city 120 huge head that like an entire band in the ’70s could play through. And it’s in this tiny room with a 15 inch and a 4×10 cabinet. I was playing live through that and recording on, honestly, a little handheld digital recorder. Something like you might take to an interview and sit on the table and hit record.

It wasn’t a studio. I’m recording in my garage. Now I’m recording direct and doing all these other things. It’s virtually a live mix of me doing different instruments not even planned to be together most of the time. Sometimes something will happen by accident and then I’ll focus on that. Then I’ll layer on that and work on that idea. But it’s not like I want this sound to make this happen and this beat and then go make it. It’s normally learning restraint. How do I play guitar with four riffs a minute rather than hammering on my bass, burning picks down by the second like high speed fluttering. Just trying different tactics and techniques with instruments I might not even know how to play.

I’ve got a didgeridoo over here I’m learning to play. I don’t know how to do cycling breathing. My buddy Ben, I’ve been experimenting with a lot over here, his project Megalophobe, we have a fully collaborative record coming out very soon. That’s very ambient, and organic, and ghosty, and soft. There’s almost no abrasive, scathing, hard core metal angle to it at all. It’s very light, and nature store, and run fair. There’s a noise angle to it but it’s a lot subtler and ghostly. It’s not nearly dense like most of the Gridfailure stuff.

And most of that is because Ben’s main instrument is accordion. He’s got this old-school accordion and we’re playing it live, picking it up on condenser mics but then running it through effects chains. Playing it live while I’m playing in to the system on a keyboard through 15 effects pedals. It’s just very random. You’re taking this melted folk or polka traditional sound and melting it in to this odd landscape. It’s really fun. We didn’t really know what we were going to do with that. We just said, “hey, let’s get together and record some source material for something. Maybe we’ll do a record or something”. A couple hours, three, four hours in this little room we had the groundwork for what is becoming this record.

Everything happens at a rapid pace. I have a billion ideas always going, and I’m just fine with trying anything. And then I find friends and allies who are the same way. Then all the sudden all this work happens. It’s really easy to just make anything happen. Not anything. It’s still like a brand-new act, it’s a year old.

It’s a very productive act, I know that. It’s just me and a couple people around the world submitting.

Ensuring The Bloodline Ends Here

Scott Martin: I was wondering who influences you to play this music? What’s your favorite bands? Musicians? Just in general.

David Brenner: My all-time favorite … You mentioned Doyle before. I would say The Misfits are probably my all time … the original few years of the Misfits. That is probably my all-time favorite singular band. I would have said Anthrax was my favorite band all the way growing up. I got in to everything way young. Thrash metal, skate metal, punk, and hardcore. I’ve been in to heavy and just rock and heavy music my whole life. There’s just endless amounts of things.

As far as it goes for Gridfailure, I would say it’s stuff like … everything I say is my favorite band is Y2K stuff. It’s all like Neurosis, and Today Is The Day, and Integrity, and most of these bands we actually work with through Earsplit. It’s taken this full circle thing in that sense. I listen to just so much random experimental music. I guess it really comes from that. Those bands that maybe they’re called post metal or sludge, or whatever people refer to Neurosis as. They started out as a punk band, and as far as I’m concerned, they remained a punk band. Their sound changed but that’s how they still operate is like a punk band.

Integrity through all the years of how many different lineups and how many different albums. You look at Dwid’s whole catalog, it incorporates art and his own label, poetry. Everything is fully inclusive. That’s really my main influence for Gridfailure are people like that. Today Is The Day, Steve Austin goes up on stage with his amps and one pedal and he gets more of a manic and insane sound out of just a guitar and his voice than almost anybody can. There’s just certain people that can just makes things happen on their own. That’s what this is. It wasn’t like, “Hey let’s do the Dave project” and blah, blah, blah. No, let’s make this entity, this whatever it’s going to be. I don’t care if it’s me on stage or if it’s 15 people on stage. It can be the same thing. It can be just a painting of ideas.

If you listen to some of the records … You were asking about the other releases. That paranoid and melted sort of sound carries through but there’s a lot more clean and acoustic things going on. There’s a lot more experimental vocal things. Again, I’m trying to learn how to play drums. I can’t play drums for shit and I play drums on most of the songs now just trying things, and looping the part that sounds good. I could wait until I’m a good drummer to go record being a drummer or I could just play now and hope it works.

That’s kind of it. Eventually, Gridfailure I want to do a lot of cover songs and that’s where a lot of these influences and things will come out. I want to cover things like straight edge vegan hard core stuff I want to cover, like Earth Crisis. Apocalyptic metal. I want to cover Neurosis’ “Today Is The Day”.

I want to cover Hot Water Music.

Scott Martin: Wow, Hot Water Music.

David Brenner: The early records. Driving melodic punk and these beardos just screaming over each other. Just taking that to this dense dark place. Let’s do them up.

If you could be any sort of sound, or darkened vibe, can really be in this. That’s why it’s so hard to pin down some influence. Because I’ve listened to so much music for my whole life. This could really be any of it in here somewhere.

Scott Martin: Let’s say I was new to Gridfailure and I was to come in to it, of all your releases which album would you recommend to me? I want to learn about Gridfailure, I want to hear their best stuff. Whether it’s the first album or whatever. What album would you recommend?

David Brenner: That’s the only real album there is right now. I started this band by accident February last year. First album came out in May 2016. Further Layers of Societal Collapse EP that came out on Halloween. Also on Halloween, I did my friends Walking Bombs, it’s an experimental, punk, folk band. Up here above us in New York. They did an anti-Trump called Demagogue and they said “I want some additional Layers Of Societal Collapse on this song, do you want to add some noise to it?” And I said yeah. So, I ended collaborating on the entire song and backing their whole thing with this ‘anti-establishment, fuck this incoming system’ vibe to this weird punk song.

Then I did a split with Never Presence Forever which is a very ambient experimental act from Richmond. Another solo project. And I did a 16-minute noise song on there. It’s grating industrial noise with acoustic guitar on it. There’s that.

I got the Hostile Alchemy EP. That’s the promo I just sent out. That’s the new EP. That was supposed to be just a random noise EP while I’m working on these other records and it turned in to a big collection. I got Mark Deutrom, he was Bellringer, used to be in The Melvins, he’s on there. My buddy Jeff Wilson from Abigail Williams, and Wolvhammer, and Chrome Waves, he’s on it. Leila Abdul Rauf from Vastum and her own solo records and a lot of other projects. She did trumpets and vocals. It just became a whole new … it was supposed to be a very harsh political noise record and it ended up being this very sad melodic spacey noise record. I don’t really know what to call it. It became something it wasn’t even planned to be.

With all these other people taking part. I think that one is probably the one I’m most proud of so far. All these people that weren’t a part of the EP, it wasn’t really a thought to have all these people on it, I reached out and started to have people collaborate. They all took part right away and all started sending things for this record and it completely shifted. Everybody liked the idea of the angry political speaking out thing. You see people out there right now today rioting. Not even rioting, just protesting peacefully, and trying to point out that there’s something incredibly wrong with what’s going on. No matter what your political stance is there’s something incredibly wrong with what’s going on. Everybody that thinks that should be standing up and doing something about it. So, the fact that all these people I consider friends and colleagues just sort of jumped in and said I’m going to add this I’m going to add that. It just shifted the whole sound of the record at the last minute. I’m still getting used to how that record sounds.

It comes out in three weeks. I just finished it and I’m still getting used to it. I guess that’s what I’m most proud of so far. There’s five full albums that I’m working on at the moment and more. There’s probably going to be eight to ten releases at least from Gridfailure this year. Either just Gridfailure records or collaborative records. There’s just so much coming out. It’s really hard to say you should check out this record in my long catalog because most of it hasn’t come out yet. The whole thing was incepted a year ago. Everything is still to come really. This is just the start as far as I’m concerned. It’s going to be a live act. And there’s going to be so much other stuff. I would say right now, if I’m going to be the publicist of it, check out Hostile Alchemy.

“Lifecycles Decay” from the split with Never Presence Forever:

Scott Martin: Here’s a little bit off of the beaten path. I guess you’ve been following the Marduk situation?

David Brenner: Yes. There’s so many situations happening all over the place, not just with music. With our whole society shifting right now.

Scott Martin: Because they were supposed to play … I live out in the San Francisco Bay Area and they were supposed to play in Oakland a couple days ago. The show got canceled because of threats of violence and riots and stuff. I just think it’s ridiculous. There’s a lot of other bands out there, like Destroyer 666, who supposedly have ties to Nazi stuff.

David Brenner: There’s a lot of gray area when it comes to metal and art and everything else. It’s a really, really hard line to follow for people personally and ideologically, to be really true to it. You see a lot of people out there standing up for things and defending certain bands and certain thoughts, but then they defend other bands with similar or maybe even worse ideologies. People pick and choose. But with Marduk, you can be completely anti-racist, and anti-sexist, and anti- … Anything that people deem as taboo. But you can still listen to those bands artistically, is the way I see it. That fine line where people say, “I don’t believe in this but because someone else is saying this I have to go make sure they can’t do it.” Where do you draw the line between freedom of speech and art? Where do you draw the line that something is just wrong and doesn’t belong in society?

We’ve worked with Marduk, and known Marduk forever, and I’ve never seen anything like that. And I’m never going to stand up for anybody and say, “Hey, they don’t believe this,” because I’m not that person. I would never put words in somebody else’s mouth. But why should a band that’s been just fine … Marduk’s doesn’t come over and incite riots. There are real dangerous, dangerous people out there and dangerous acts that should be addressed. There are real dangerous ideas out there that should be addressed and attacked immediately. I think these people, even if they believe they’re doing right by shutting down a black metal show here and a festival there, I’m not going to say that their idea is wrong. Because that’s what they believe in and I think people should stand up for what they believe in. But I think there are always more dangerous things to approach. Like real root problems that need to be attacked. When that right wing, Breitbart speaker was going to speak out your way.

Scott Martin: Over in Berkeley, yeah.

David Brenner: And they shut that down, that got a little out of hand, because they said some of these people are just here to riot and just here to start shit, and just here to burn stuff. Think they’re being clever by tying a hankie over their nose. It was silly. But the people that were really there saying we don’t want you here. People were saying it’s freedom of speech, yeah there’s freedom of speech that’s great. Take it out to a VFW in the middle of nowhere and have your people go there. Don’t bring it to a college campus. Don’t bring it to one of the most progressive …

Scott Martin: And Berkeley of all campuses. Berkeley.

David Brenner: That’s what I’m saying, that wasn’t a targeted speech? Come on. I thought the fact that people showed up and even though it got a little out of hand – it was live and it was very tense and everything else, you saw by the end of that, people were singing and dancing.

There were people that lit things on fire and got semi-violent. Those news cameras wouldn’t have showed up there if something didn’t get a little violent to bring that attention to it. I’m glad it didn’t get out of hand. I’m glad there wasn’t riots and beatings and some standoff. It took care of itself, I guess. It got the cameras there and it got the attention there. I fully support anybody that believes that there’s something just fundamentally, completely wrong with what’s going on in the government right now. Everybody should be doing whatever they can. If it’s telling your one friend down the street a little bit about your ideas to get them to even check it. It’s not brainwashing people, it’s trying to get people to understand your point of view.

Sometimes … Look at the civil rights movements, they wouldn’t have happened without a little bit, not violent, but out right protests. You have to make yourself seen and heard to get any kind of attention put towards your platform.

I think people should focus on really important things. There’s always a more constructive way of attacking something. Okay, you shut down a Marduk show, what did that do for your cause? Honestly, what did that do to further whatever your cause was? As far as I can see, probably nothing.

Scott Martin: It kind of seems this whole controversy around Marduk is just going to make them bigger. More people are going to want to hear them, more people are going to want to see them.

David Brenner: That’s how it works in any way. You look at anything in the world. Any celebrity that says something wrong they get more attention than someone that says something right. Someone gets in trouble for … Mickey Rourke got more attention driving around on a moped, fighting with the cops than he did in movies until The Wrestler.

It’s just how society works. You hear someone died, and it’s like, “Oh how?” It’s not, “Oh that’s so sad.” It’s, “Oh, how?”

It’s that sort of thing. How many people are going to go check out Marduk. “Oh, I’ve heard the name before, but now I don’t know.” Nine out of ten newer metal fans that are into extreme metal but haven’t heard Marduk might go listen to something now because of this, yeah. Again, I don’t think Marduk has any kind of anti-Semitic attachments or anything.

Scott Martin: It’s just like Mayhem.

David Brenner: People see a band singing about WWII and automatically that makes them … I’m not trying to stand up for anything. I’m saying, again, the black metal scene, it is just like a lot of other scenes where there’s a lot of opinions and there’s a lot of backgrounds, and there’s a lot of different kinds of metal, and there’s a lot of different kinds of political ideologies with it. A lot of lines are blurred. A lot of bands are mysterious about an actual message that they do have.

People should research and understand what they’re listening to. Some people are going to be, “Oh, wow, I’ve got eight records from band X and I just found out that that guy was in a band that had a song that had a Nazi lyric 40 years ago.” And they go sell all these favorite records. To me that’s not really how it should work. You liked it as art. You liked it as music. Probably before you knew the lyrics to the song anyway. So, that’s the initial … So, what do you do? “This has a lyric that I don’t like, so therefor I have to ban it, I have to throw it away. I have to make a scene about it. I have to go on my Facebook page and make a social platform about it. And then I have to fuck with other people’s right to own it.“

That’s what people think. That’s just too far. That’s what people should be doing to some of these people that are being elected in to office. People that are being elected to run public schools who can’t spell. That’s just terrible. Don’t go fight Marduk. Go fight the Republican party.

Scott Martin: What’s the plans for the rest of the year with Gridfailure? I guess it’s still going to be recording, recording, recording.

David Brenner: Yup, yup. Like I said, we’re finishing up the Gridfailure Megalophobe collaboration record, we’re finishing that. It’s 99% done. I’m going to finish mixing that and the last little tweaks. That should be out in the next couple of weeks.

Hostile Alchemy comes out March 24th as just a digital release at first and then I’m going to do a tape or a CD. I haven’t figured it out yet.

Then this collaboration right behind that. Then I’m finishing the Teeth collection record finally. The Drought Stick record, double disc finally. Both of those have a ton of collaborations. A lot of bigger name … There’s a lot of people out there. I haven’t even really announced anything yet. It doesn’t really matter.

There’s more stuff with Mark D., Mark Deutrom from ex-Melvins, Bellringer, everything else. I got Brett Netson from Built To Spill, Caustic Resin, he’s playing on a bunch of tracks. We’ve got some really big names just that are going be coming out here in the next couple of weeks which I haven’t announced yet.

There’s just a lot coming in the next year. There’s going to be at least five or six full length albums, and several other releases and splits. Darker Days Ahead is a small noise label I have a comp track coming out on. There’s just so much. Like I said, probably 10 Gridfailure releases coming out in 2017. I’ve been making my own videos. I’ve got some more video stuff planned. Some more elaborate designs for some video shoots. Probably some freaky, out in the woods, sacrificial weirdo shit.

I don’t know, I’m going to go travel around and play with some people. We’re going to make it a live act this year. Me and my buddy in Megalophobe are probably going to make it a two-man vibe act and play some both of our stuff and collaborative stuff. I’m just going to take it as it comes. Really, I work on something every day.

Scott Martin: And when you do that, make sure you come out to the Bay Area, because I want to come check this out.

David Brenner: I think the Bay Area, probably outside of New York, because I’m out here, I think the Bay Area… I have more collaborators and people out there than anywhere else. And more people I’m going to be working with. I think that’s definitely a Gridfailure hotbed, for people.

Leila from Vastum, she’s on the new EP and she’s going to be doing some other stuff. We have some other things we’re working on now which we haven’t talked about yet.

Clayton Bartholomew who used to be in Secrets Of The Sky, and now has a new band, Mountaineer. He’s done some stuff with me that’s coming out, coming up.

There’s a lot of people out there that I have worked with, will be working with, and want to work with.

That’s easily one of my favorite places I’ve been in the country, is the Bay Area. I absolutely love it out there. So, yeah, that’ll probably be one of the very first places that isn’t somewhere right here in Brooklyn or Queens.

Scott Martin: How would someone find Gridfailure? Are you on social media? Twitter, Instagram?

David Brenner: Yeah, I would say, just like anybody finds anything. Get out your phone and Google it. Google “Gridfailure.” It’s one word. You get a lot of power grid reports and a lot of charts and a lot of other weird stuff. Gridfailure at Facebook and Twitter. Just @Gridfailure. Everything’s linked there. I got Bandcamp. I started Instagram. I’ve got three photos up on there.

I’m doing everything myself that’s why I would really like to expand and have more people actually in a band so I have more people helping out with all this other stuff. There’s a lot of stuff to do when you have a band. Normally, when there’s four or five people, you can kind of break things up.

Gridfailure at Facebook or Bandcamp, or any of that. Compound Records is our small label. That’s what the first record’s on. We released some other stuff on that, so there’s more there. Anybody that gets in touch through Facebook can find me there, or anywhere else.

“Hostile Alchemist” from the upcoming Hostile Alchemy EP:

Scott Martin: Is there anything else you would like to add before we get going?

David Brenner: This is your show, man. I’m absolutely, fully, 100% appreciative that you … This is how I feel about anything. This project is just lot of fun. It’s a way for me to get a lot of shit out of my system and it’s become something so much more communal and rewarding. And it’s because of things like this. People that actually care about it.

I don’t really have any expectations of fandom, or listenership, or coverage and it’s really exciting to see it making a reaction and to be working with friends.

It’s something very positive in what I see as a pretty shitty spot the world’s in right now. So, thank you for listening.