Update / Interview with the Panther Caps

Hey y'all!  Silvis Records may seem quiet, but we've been super active with music and working in concert with other labels. We'll now admit that Unorganized Borough of Alaska is our doing; they've been releasing via Lux Aura Records of NYC, and independently via Bandcamp. Another new project is The Panther Camps, working with The Swamp Records out of Las Vegas. Check their sick videos!

And speaking of the Panther Camps, we have a special interview with frontman J. Panther to share in anticipation of their upcoming LP "Graven Images," scheduled for release on Thanksgiving.  Here you go!

AN INTERVIEW WITH J. PANTHER OF THE PANTHER CAPS

The Panther Caps are a psychedelic doom metal band with in-your-face 70s riffs recalling Pentagram, mixed up with a post-hardcore intensity. Their seething vocals somehow conjure a Bermuda Triangle of old school Norwegian black metal, early Soundgarden, and David Yow of Jesus Lizard fame. Their music and art has a clearly-apparent nostalgic bent to it, and is overflowing with occultism, black magic, creepy new age babes, and a Hammer Films on mushrooms sort of atmosphere.

The band recently joined up with The Swamp Records of Las Vegas (theswamprecords.bandcamp.com). While they list their location as “Seattle” to make themselves more comprehensible to search engines, they hail from Douglas Island, Alaska – right across the water from the capital city of Juneau.

Fuzzy Cracklins of The Swamp Records sat down with frontman J. Panther to pick his brain and figure out what is going on. He’s basically a well-hydrated loner metal dude in tight cross country ski pants instead of leather pants.

Fuzzy: Where does the name The Panther Caps come from?

J. Panther: Panther caps are a particularly gnarly psychoactive amanita mushroom that grows where I live in southeast Alaska - the part that hangs down next to Canada like a moose dewlap. They’re similar to Amanita muscaria but significantly more toxic with extremely notorious dissociative effects. They cause synesthesia (where your senses get mixed up together), memory loss, and life-changingly horrific trips. This is not meant to be an advertisement, by the way.

Fuzzy: Suggest a few bands for us to check out that we might not have heard of?

J. Panther: In my 20s I used to live in Zambia, near the border of Angola.  A lot of my thought patterns were changed by people chanting and hammering out drum beats on plastic gas cans incessantly for days on end. There’s a legendary Zambian psychedelic band I’d recommend called W.I.T.C.H. that had an unexpected comeback recently and toured outside of Africa. There’s also a double album compilation I love called “Soul of Angola” that’s astonishingly good – it’s a mix of psychedelia, Portuguese-style ballads, and traditional African jams… all run through the same wah-wah pedal that must have been a key feature of the recording studio, and soaked with the sorrow of the Angolan revolution in the 70s.

I would highly recommend An Albatross – they started as a warped hardcore punk band but became sort-of like a black metal psychedelic surrealist act. Their recordings are totally great, but their early live shows were a life-changing experience. I love Racebannon’s early albums – they’re an experimental noise/punk/metal outfit with a furious live show that used to tour and perform on the post-hardcore circuit. The guy’s vocals are sort-of like if you had Captain Beefheart imitate Antioch Arrow. Try their LP “In the Grips of the Light.” I like the black metal band “Summoning” way more than I probably should. It’s Tolkien-influenced black metal using really cheesy ROMpler synths, which sounds like it would be the corniest thing in the world, but which is unparalleled in terms of generating an atmosphere of complete escapism. I’m a long-running fan of Lord Infamous, the Memphis rapper; his phrasing and sense of rhythmic organization is amazing, and his music has an utter darkness to it. My favorite album of all time is Lycia’s “Ionia” – it’s a masterpiece of dark atmosphere, all recorded in the early 90s on a four-track with super cheap gear. I’ve listened to “Ionia” far more than any other album – hundreds and hundreds of listens. It’s maybe the greatest incarnation of dark, romantic atmosphere ever recorded.

Welcome the Plague Year’s LP is one of my favorite heavy music albums of all time; it’s brilliant, and weirdly prophetic. They were a short-lived dark post-hardcore super-group of musicians from the scene I grew up in, with male/female vocals.

While not a band, I am an avid devotee of Diana Deutsch, who is a researcher specializing in musical illusions, paradoxes, and memory. When it comes to understanding the psychedelic potential and capabilities of music, her work is tremendously insightful and inspiring.

Fuzzy: Unpack your Bandcamp bio a little bit for us -- that's a lot of influences!

J. Panther:  It’s hard to give a clear explanation of where I come from musically because it’s a big mess. I grew up on the east coast of the US immersed in what we called the “hardcore scene,” which was really a jumble of kids doing hardcore punk, original screamo (“skramz” and “emo violence”), post-hardcore, early 90s emo. Everyone just called it “hardcore,” though. Hanging around that scene gave me a strong DIY ethos, a pride of being productive making music on your own terms and not expecting to become a big-headed rockstar with a lot of money and privilege. When I was about 16, I saw Converge play in the mid-90s for about 50 people in a Girl’s Inc. building and that basically epitomized everything I thought music should be – furious energy, complete DIY, uncompromising dedication to a unique vision, and a focused chaos.

Back in the day, I was in a chaotic post-hardcore band with synths, and we played some crazy shows – we played with Baroness in a basement once, and another time opened for My Chemical Romance when they were just starting out. There were less than 20 people there and more than half left after we finished playing.

I’ve been into black metal for a long time. I remember first being exposed to it in middle school in the mid-90s by a guitar magazine that had some article called something like “the world’s most evil guitar music” – and I was hooked basically on the descriptions alone, without even hearing it! I’ve made black metal stuff for years. In a lot of ways, when it comes to music, I feel like I’m a black metal dude first and foremost. I default to the screeching darkness.

I was first exposed to stoner/doom stuff by the cooler older guys who worked at the local record store (back in the days when we had them) in the late 90s. Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Sleep, and Pentagram were the kings back then. I didn’t start playing it until later on, initially as a sort-of black metal crossover. I truly love the atmosphere, and there’s a sense of nostalgic longing within it.

I moved to rural Zambia and lived there in my early/mid 20s. Being there that time of life really changed me as a person. The poverty and everyday challenges were tremendous. And every day was like Halloween . The number of bats was unbelievable - I’d literally be hit in the face with a bat every other day. Sometimes in my own house. There were diverse snakes that could kill you with a single bite (no antivenom around), a five foot spitting cobra spat venom all over my legs, the countryside would be on fire for weeks at a time due to slash and burn farming, and children burning the grasslands to roast and eat mice and insects, there was continuous horrific witchcraft stuff - both people persecuting and torturing alleged witches, as well as messed up stuff being done by witches and witch-doctors. A lot of the rhythm, sounds, experiences there completely changed how I think, feel, and operate forever.

Fuzzy: Great album art and video!! Tell us about it. 

J. Panther: I am a huge art nerd. I don’t like having to furnish explanations of art, but in case you need a reference point, the approach is kinda like Jacques Monory (my fave painter) meets Hammer Films, and heavy on the nostalgia. I feel like doom metal is an extremely nostalgic genre, looking back to the 60s and 70s, and filled with longing for something that never quite existed the way you imagine.

I’m a real nostalgia addict. I was trained as an art historian and had a job as a silent film researcher for a couple years. I would literally just watch silent movies – full time – and then have to write research papers on them. I would love to crawl into a Hammer Films horror movie and be trapped forever. Or even better, the 1960s/70s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. Dark Shadows has had an immense impact on my brain – how I think about and enjoy time, nostalgia, ideas of reincarnation, the occult, and importantly how to create and organize a gigantic volume of creative work. Putting in effort every day on a huge magnum opus. I could watch and ponder Dark Shadows endlessly. I’d also like to crawl into a pre-WWI silent film and remain suspended within that part of history indefinitely. Or be an early filmmaker. A music video is basically a silent film.

Fuzzy: What’s the message The Panther Caps is trying to send?

J. Panther:  Rock out and live on your own terms. It’s your life, and it’s all you get. Although perhaps we can hope to be reincarnated as something cool.

Fuzzy: Over on the Mr. Doom Youtube channel there were a couple reactions to your early videos accusing your music of being AI. Give us your thoughts on that.

J. Panther: Obviously the images in the video are AI, but I’d like to think it’s thoughtfully put together. Time, effort, and attention to detail goes into getting the right atmosphere and look. The music is all me. I’ve always been extremely prolific when it comes to making music, and Panther Caps is no exception; I guess that adds to the risk that people might think I’m just cranking it out with AI.

There’s a natural human desire to create, and a satisfaction that you can only get through self-expression. Using AI doesn’t satisfy that need and isn’t a substitute for making music yourself, directly. I think that AI is a very powerful tool, and people will find ways to use it that augment what they do to be creative and help them be more productive. If it’s not used thoughtfully, it won’t be enjoyable.

It reminds me of DJing – sort-of being a curator. There’s definitely an art to using it, and it absolutely requires human oversight to provide results that are worthy of someone else’s time.

Fear of technology is not new in the world of music. There were backlashes against recorded music, drum machines, digital production, disco music, DJs, electric guitars, etc. People thought musicians were going to be disenfranchised and the world was going to end. But really, the technology became new tools, and over time a standard part of musicians’ workflow. Technological changes can definitely make losers, though. I think with AI, the biggest losers are going to be the beat-makers and the highly commercial pop musicians that make music with the intent to sell it to the most people possible.

Just because it exists and is convenient and revolutionary doesn’t mean you have to use it. Like, I don’t Ableton. I’m still recording guitars with mics. I do try to understand the new technology as it comes out. The amp modelers that let you scan distortion pedals seem amazing.

You also have to remember that despite technological changes, vinyl and cassettes remain as popular as ever, fetching enormous prices. I don’t think AI is going to uproot everything that exists – it’s just another tool. A tool that takes time and effort to use well.

Fuzzy: You mention the Satanic Panic in association with your music. How does that fit in?

J. Panther:  I remember growing up during the “Satanic Panic” and people in America genuinely believing there were all these hidden satanic activities and messages in everything – tunnels under preschools, people practicing human sacrifice, Dungeons and Dragons misleading you into demon worship, music with wicked messages about drugs. It was on the news, TV – everyone was telling one another these were real concerns. I was fascinated by the concept that music could have secret messages, backwards content, steganographic dynamics. I’d always try to spot signs of hidden things. As I grew up, I got really into the idea of putting hidden messages into music and using music to promote an expansion or opening of consciousness.

Fuzzy: What's the music scene like in Alaska? 

J. Panther:  Two words – “lone wolf.”

Alaska is mind-bendingly massive – way bigger than it looks on maps - and there’s huge variety between communities. For context, I literally live on an island with around 3,000 people, across from the capital city of Juneau, which only has about 30,000 people. Juneau is on the North American continent but is cut off and isolated by a 1,500 square mile icefield with 34 outlet glaciers. There’s no road access from Juneau to the rest of the continent – or other communities – unless you take a ferry or ship your vehicle on a barge. Travel through the region is expensive, and may involve ferry, float plane, or small aircraft. So touring isn’t really a viable option.

Generic folk music seems to be the common denominator that a lot of people huddle around, but I struggle to get into that stuff. I’m a huge fan of the Incredible String Band, but there’s no one thinking about anything like that here.

Alaska is a great place to be a lone wolf, though. You can live in an isolated dream world and follow your own esoteric musical path beyond the ends of the universe, with minimal external distractions. You’re islanded, cut off – both intellectually and physically.

The cool thing about Alaskans and music is that they are hard-up for entertainment and will support just about anything that comes their way. I was living in Ketchikan (on a different island) a few years back when the news came out that Juice Newton was coming to town – the woman who sang “Queen of Hearts” in the early 80s. Everyone basically lost their shit for a few weeks. It was like “Waiting for Godot” or something, except with everyone waiting for Juice Newton. Juice Newton was on the radio, there were Juice Newton posters all over the place, everyone was talking about her… and then when she arrived they practically gave her the keys to City Hall.

As another example, there was a friend of mine who I knew growing up on the east coast who moved up to Alaska to live in my spare bedroom and work a seasonal job. He had been working as a wildland firefighter in Arizona and playing western-tinged folk music at open mic nights. When he got to Alaska he started doing the same thing - playing the local open mic nights, still wearing his western clothing from Arizona every day because that’s what he had. Within a couple weeks he was a literal celebrity – everyone was stunned by the fact that this western singer guy had unexpectedly moved to town and was doing something different. It was like the stories you’d hear about when Hank Williams came to some tiny town to play – people truly lost their shit. I recorded a couple of his songs and almost immediately they were playing them on the radio, daily.

The craziest musician I encountered in Alaska was a doctor who played a demented sort of “medical jazz.” He was a paranoid-schizophrenic, knew gazillions of jazz chords, and had written a vast number of short songs that sounded like math rock elevator music. He’s dead now. Before each song he would do a spoken explanation of the music, and those would all be additional tracks on his album. There was one song about someone he accidentally killed via malpractice, a blues song about a guy who was driving down the highway with an urgent need to urinate who couldn’t find a restroom, philosophical stuff with details about how he conducts surgeries, sleeping tips, commentary about the film “Titanic” – an insane mix. But literal insanity. He had all sorts of eccentric preferences for the recording process - he made the session drummer turn all his drums 90 degrees and play them on their side – Captain Beefheart kinda stuff. There was one session where he left the studio at 2am to go to an all-night restaurant to “buy oil and vinegar” to smear on his lips – he was convinced that would stop them from smacking together. He came back with all these little containers of oil and all these little containers of vinegar and then smeared one substance on his lower lip, and one on his upper lip, over and over, and then read his introductory monologues repeatedly, trying to get rid of this lip-smacking sound that only he could hear. It was really dark because some of the songs were about really consequential things, like people he had actually killed while practicing medicine, and he had this completely nonchalant attitude about it.

When we were mixing his music, he began shifting from manic to depressive and became convinced he could “see” secret flaws by zooming into the waveforms the maximum amount possible and examining them. He’d want me to look through all the waveforms for these flaws, for hours. Every waveform, zoomed in to the maximum extent. It got out of hand and I tried to cut him off from working in the studio, but he doubled what he was paying me, so I put up with it for a little while longer. Eventually I did cut him off, giving him all the raw tracks and also mixing his stuff down for him for free so that he’d have a nice memento of his effort. There were over 40 tracks. He ended up suing me for not wanting to record him anymore. It actually went to court. He brought along a video tape showing “Secrets of the Bee Gees’ Recording Techniques” and told the judge that he had independently invented all the same techniques in the video and wanted the judge to watch it as evidence. This was to establish his credibility. Then he began his testimony. At one point he explained to the judge “yea, I had to fly all the way to Indiana to re-record my whole entire album.” The judge said “wait – you just finished recording your album here two months ago. Do you mean to say you re-recorded the whole thing – more than 40 songs – already? In Indiana?” He said “yes. I had to. There were these hidden flaws in the waveforms.” His lawsuit ended up being dismissed.

But that’s not even the craziest thing about this guy. The craziest thing happened when we were recording a song about a lonely cowboy that was a thinly veiled metaphor for his career experience as a doctor. He had this old Stella acoustic guitar and wanted me to mic a very specific spot near the bottom and rear of the instrument, from a very specific distance. I put the mic where he demanded I put it, which was not far away from his posterior. During the recording, the guy farted audibly – like a weird squishing sound. When we finished the take, he was like “alright – that’s the take. That take is perfect.” I was like “um, are you sure? There was this extra sound…” And he was like “no, that’s fine.” I said “here – listen to it.” He listened and nodded. “That’s fine. We’re leaving it in. Everything else was perfect.” I said “are you sure?” He was insistent. I suggested we at least try to EQ the fart out, but he didn’t want to do anything that might change his guitar tone. So I left it in. And every time you listen to the song, you hear a fart. But like I said, he’s dead now, so I don’t think anyone is listening to his music anymore. I’ll pull it out every couple years or so.

So anyway, that’s a little taste of what the Alaska musician scene is like.

Fuzzy: Speaking of recording, where do you record?

J. Panther: I do all the recording out of my own studio. I learned how to record back in the 90s by hanging out at studios with older cooler dudes who were all recording on ADAT and reel-to-reel. Back then, hanging out was the only way to learn – you couldn’t just look up how to record on the internet like you can nowadays. Or just tell AI to do it, I guess? The old school approach is still very much my workflow. I have a computer but basically use it like a giant tape machine. I have a boatload of gear I’ve collected over the year. I had been living on the mainland for a bit but moved about a year ago because my neighborhood was devastated by a jokulhaup, which is an Icelandic word for “glacial outburst flooding.” Basically a gigantic dam made out of ice broke and a massive amount of water came pouring out of an alpine lake behind it, devastating my old neighborhood. And now the outburst flooding happens every year. I moved to Douglas Island, out of reach of glaciers and avalanches, and then totally redid my studio. The Panther Caps stuff has been the first recordings to come out of there.

Fuzzy: You’ve recorded a ton of material in a short period of time. What’s going on with that?

J. Panther: It’s like Jerry Reed sang – “when you’re hot, you’re hot, and when you’re not, you’re not.” When I find something I like that really works, I jump all over it and will do it to the maximum extent possible in marathon sessions. I can always release it slowly over time if I want. Leave the gear plugged in, leave the mics set up, leave the guitars nearby – and keep coming back and doing it up while you’re on a roll. A lot of the best Sabbath stuff happened within a period of around 3 years. Paranoid and Master of Reality were recorded 10 months apart and released just 4 months apart. There’s no rule saying you can’t be ultra productive or put out a lot of content.

You look at stuff like Father Yod and the Source Family cult or Sun Ra and how many albums those cats released – truly intellectually dense stuff, too – and by comparison, I feel like I could be more productive, and my workflow could be a lot more efficient.

When I was a kid, I was really into Wagner, and I would watch VHS tapes of this one YV Metropolitan Opera production of Ring of the Nibelung over and over. The idea that a single piece of music could be 15 hours long, all kinda in the same vein, always made perfect sense to me. So when I go to create, I always overdo it. I’ll sit down, start riffing… then just find one song after another.

Fuzzy: So you’re saying Wagner is an influence, too? Come on, man!

J. Panther:  Wagner is probably the ultimate stoner music. I mean, a 15 hour slow-burn opera? With Valkyries, an evil dwarf, water nymph babes, destruction of the gods, human immolation? I used to be a real nut about Wagner!

At one point I decided I would set a goal of going to the Beyreuth Festival to see the Ring cycle in person, where and how it’s supposed to be seen. I found out the process of getting tickets requires years of waiting, but I felt undaunted… until I learned that they physically lock the doors of the theater and prevent you from going to the bathroom during the performance. That made it a “hard no” kinda thing for me. Imagine sitting there for hours, listening to some dude singing about forging a sword when you have to pee. That’s first-rate horror, for me. Just thinking about it makes me almost piss my jeans.

Fuzzy: So what do you get up to in Alaska besides music?

J. Panther: Winter sports are a top priority. My main passion is figure skating, which I took up as an adult. I’ve gotten to study with some big names and Olympic badasses. I do a lot of cross-country skiing when I can, and when I can’t, I ride a gravel bike. I eat fish every day – it’s so easy to get. I used to love going out and hunting but stopped because I don’t eat red meat of any type anymore.

Fuzzy: What scares you?

J. Panther: Aside from being locked in a theater with a Wagner opera in progress and no opportunity to use the bathroom? I’m genuinely scared of hoarding, dementia, and unhealthy eating. I want to be like Aragorn and live for a couple hundred years, so I try to take care of myself.

Fuzzy: Any other words of wisdom?

J. Panther: Respect the placebo effect. If wearing crystal beads or praying to a plastic Skeletor action figure every night makes you feel empowered and healthier, do it. Make sure to get outside and do something in nature every day. Always drink more water than you think you need – like, twice as much as you think.