K: Many reasons. There were far too many ties to the past in Circle of Dust. I had changed musically. It’s just a progression. My mindset has changed, where I’m at with my life. I’m at a different point in my life, and I just did not want to carry on the band I was so associated with any longer. So, I kind of had a clean plate coming out with Celldweller. Anyone that was a true Circle of Dust fan probably would have recognized the Celldweller name just based on the fact that I had already been using it as a producer’s pseudonym. There is still a big part of Circle of Dust that I really hold on to.

CN: Immortal was full on thrash, and then the first Circle of Dust was like a combo, it was a progression, and I could see one of the records got progressively more and more electronic in depth and layered.

K: The early Circle of Dust stuff was very much myself discovering a brand new style of music. I had been into it for years, but I didn’t know how to create it. When I heard my first Skinny Puppy track or my first Front 242 track, all that early stuff, it opened up a brand new world to me. It’s like, “Man, I can do this myself,” and I can basically write a song from front to back all by myself, and that’s really how I like to work. It was perfect. I love electronic music and always felt there was room for the movement of electronics and electronic music to be combined with rock music. I really feel there’s energy that both have that, if you blend them the right way and capture those energies together in one track or multiple tracks--there’s not too many artists that are doing that, but that’s not even why I’m doing it. I’m not doing it because other people aren’t doing it. I’m doing it because it’s what I love. It’s what I love to hear. I’m just combining influences, and things that are coming from my own background.

CN: Yeah, you have some stuff on this record that’s really trance dance, and then you have some stuff that sounds like you could be on tour with Slayer with it.

K: Yeah, and, once again, it totally runs the gamut. I, in my daily listening life, as far as music is concerned, will go from disco to death metal. It doesn’t matter. It’s like whatever I’m in the mood for, I’ll listen to it. And it’s like, there’s no reason for me, and again this comes back to my freedom as an independent artist, there’s no reason why I can’t do that. If I want to create something, I can create it. There’s no research into the rules that tell me I can’t. So I just made what I like, and what I like to listen to. Usually, there are a lot of times the record’s done, and I don’t ever want to hear it again because I’m on to something else, but at the moment I’m creating it, it’s exactly what I want to do.

CN: How long does it take you to do one song then, if it’s just you, and you’re doing all this layering?

K:There’s no real way to determine it. I’ve written some songs really fast, like the one Jarrod Montague from Taproot plays drums on.

CN: Yeah?

KS: But I wrote that song in two days, which is uncommon for me. It used to take me a lot longer. That song was written in two days, and then I have songs like “Switchback” that I’ve probably worked on for almost three years — revising, redoing, re-recording, writing, over and over again. So just the process, there’s any length of time. There’s no way to put a definitive time on how long it takes to create a track. It’s done when I think it’s done or somebody tells me it has to be done.

CN: I can understand that. So you’ve done some work with Tommy Victor from Prong.

K: Absolutely.

CN: How do you guys know each other?

K: It’s kind of the type of deal where we had mutual friends at MTV that worked at MTV. We just started talking through our friends at MTV, and eventually he plays the Limelight, and I went up to see him, and I met him for the first time, and we started talking about maybe collaborating and doing some stuff and the rest is history. Mutual fans of each other’s work pretty much.

CN: That’s a cool way to do it though. I think a lot more musicians should work together that way. Too many times somebody will be working in one genre and they get totally stuck. They listen to only that genre. They play only that genre and everything gets so boring and stale at that point.

K: Well here is a classic example of what you just told me about your own son, that his two favorite artists are Eminem and Linkin Park. And you’ve got complete hip hop and electronic music on one end and then you’ve got rock with some electronics, or whatever you want to call it, on the other end. It’s like things are changing. It’s difficult these days for kids growing up to sit there and say I only listen to this style of music because things are so crossbred already whether you want them to be or not. That’s why I feel like I have the liberty to do what I do, and people will actually understand it whereas, years ago, I think this was probably a little too ahead of the curve. I don’t think people got it. But, you know, there are no rules. There are no restrictions and it’s like the combination of all these different styles, it’s like you said, you can’t just say, “this is what I like” and that’s it. If you do you’re going to find yourself in a place where you’re left behind, you know.

CN: Yeah. How did you get to work on the stuff for Criss Angel’s shows?

K: Uh, he approached me many years ago about producing some tracks for him. He’s heard some of my music and contacted me while I was on tour, and when I came home I met with him, and, quite honestly, I needed a gig at that point. I was having issues with my record label, so I took the gig on, and we wrote some music, and that was that.

CN: Yeah he has a very intriguing stage show. I think your music works well with it.

K: Good, thanks.

CN: You also do a lot of stuff on video games and soundtracks.

K: Yep.

CN: How did that come up for you?

K: Um, I think part of it is because of the fact that the music I make lends itself to the theatrics of movies and as a background for formats like video games, things like that. So my manager has landed quite a bit of these things by simply soliciting the film industry. It’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s how it is in a nutshell. Once they become familiar with you as an artist, they’re always looking for more music, so you just end up getting more and more and more. So we most recently had the Spiderman 2 movie trailer with “Switchback” in it, which is the first song on the disc.

CN: Cool.

K: The Punisher had “Switchback” in it, which is the first song on the disc. There’s an upcoming Keanu Reeves movie called Constantine; it’s gonna have “Frozen” in it. We got a request for some other big summer movies for the trailers so and I’m not going to mention those until we know for sure those are happening, but it’s not a bad thing. [“Switchback” is currently being heard in the Doom movie trailer. –ed.]

CN: It goes, (singing) ’bup-boop, bup-boop, boop, boop, boop’

K: That’s the one!

CN: Yep! [laughs]

K: Isaac Hayes. I didn’t know that until just now.

CN: That’s a great album.

K: I hate to sound incredibly uneducated about it, but, yeah, that is the track.

CN: That was a great album.

K: Is that what it is? I’m going to write that down right now.

CN: My dad had that one too, on eight-track.

K: That’s the one. You’re the first person I ever talked to that ever knew what that song was.

CN: That’s because I’m old, and I’m a veritable plethora of useless musical knowledge.

K: That’s great.

CN: [laughs] That’s why I’m a music journalist, because I can remember all that obscure stuff no matter how inebriated I am.

K: Well there you go. That goes way back. I remember shortly thereafter hearing “Mr. Roboto” by Styx.

CN: Wow.

K: I was entranced by that robotic sound, and I remember when I first started creating music, it’s like I always thought about how to find out how that effect was ever made. When somebody finally revealed to me there was an instrument called a vocoder and what it had done, I put the two pieces together, and that was the end of it for me.

CN: [laughs]

K: Found the first vocoder I could find and abused it severely.

CN: Were you in music classes at school or not.

K: No, you know what, I took trombone for a couple years in like, second and third grade, I think. That was it. All my musical ability is pretty much self-taught, and a lot of it is…it’s like I’ve never taken lessons or anything. A lot of it is just practice and watching other people and learning. Asking a lot of questions and being a pain in a lot of people’s asses, that’s how I’ve always learned. If I want something, I’ll go get it. I’m not going to sit around waiting for someone to come give it to me because it’ll never happen.

CN: Isn’t that the truth.

K: So just learning the computer and learning the software, learning how to play instruments, all that kind of stuff, it’s just digging for information then experimenting and kind of working through it. A lot of my musical recordings, as far as I’m concerned, were just experimentations. A lot of times I’ll create tracks when I’m learning a new program, or some new software, or a new piece of hardware, and I don’t totally know what I’m doing. Sometimes, that’s the beauty of it. You kind of make some happy accidents, and you come up with something unexpected.

CN: Yeah. Did you ever have vocal training?

K: No, never have.

CN: You just scream on key pretty good, huh?

K: [laughs] I guess. I mean, it’s all just a matter of practice. I tend to be very focused on what it is that I want as an end result. Unfortunately for me I don’t always end up with what I want, but I always know what I want. So it’s like, if there’s something I’m hearing, I will work at it until I get it. So that’s with vocals, or guitar, or drums, or whatever instrument I’m playing at the time. And again, as you go on and you tour and everything else, the more experience you have playing those instruments or singing, the natural order of things is that you are going to get better at that function. So hopefully that’s what happens.

CN: Who do you usually tour with of that genre?

K: There is none. We tour with whoever we can get shows with or whoever offers us some tour or a lot of the time, we’ll do our own headlining gig. It’s kind of a mix and match.

CN: Now, you still have that basement studio? Still spending time underground?

K: My whole career pretty much, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen daylight while I’ve worked. I’ve generally been underground. The only other places that I’ve ever had was the studios I put in basements in the places that I’ve lived, so that’s kind of really where I’ve been. I don’t really accredit that to the fact that I write that music or anything like that. That’s more a reflection of my internal nature. I can imagine having a studio overlooking an ocean in Hawaii or something. That probably inspires you to do different things than write dark and depressing music, but I don’t know. I’ve never been in that situation. So yeah, pretty much every one of my own studios has been pretty much underground.

CN: What kind of gear do you have in it?

K: God, an assortment of synths--Juno 106, Juno 60--I’ve got two Sequential Circuits. The crust of everything I use, as far as software goes for putting everything together, is Pro Tools. Mainly, I record my instruments there. I use Logic Audio for sequencing and programming and a lot of the software synthesizer work I do there. You know, standard Mac 24-channel board, nothing special. At this point, I do a lot of my demos at home then take it to a studio to finish it up.

CN: The type of music you do has a lot of different emotions in it, like the vulnerability of “Stay with Me.” That one is just like splatting your heart out onto the tape.

K: My only catharsis is, well, I don’t talk to many people. I’m not really a social guy and it’s like a lot of what I have to say comes out through my lyrics, although there are times that I try to encrypt the meaning of something that I’m saying sort of, so that people don’t know what I say. Then there are people who interpret it, and it makes sense to them, which is totally great. But yeah, it goes without saying that any lyrics on the record are not contrived. It’s pretty much my life. It’s real life stuff and that’s really between me, myself, and I ? the three of us that’s all I really care about. I don’t write my lyrics for anybody else, or if nobody gets them, I’m not really concerned about that, but if you do understand that, then that’s a benefit.

CN: It’s not only the lyric itself, it’s the way that you combine it with the dynamics of the manner that you sing those lyrics that really bring through the emotion.

K: Well I feel that the music is an extremely powerful tool, obviously. It has absolutely affected my life. I can go down to certain songs, certain albums that I can associate with big chunks of my life. I feel that for me trying to convey certain feelings that I have or whatever I’m saying in my lyrics, obviously the music has to be fitting in that way. I’m sure I have done many demos that have sucked, but my end result should be something that reflects what I feel the song is trying to say and what not. So hopefully that works, and if you think so, then that’s a bonus.

CN: I think that your music has a lot more emotional dynamics than most of this genre does.

K: Just a curiosity from me, who else do you consider to be in this genre?

CN: Well it ranges anywhere from you know, Kraftwerk, all the way through the popular stuff like Nine Inch Nails. A lot of them do good screaming and they do angry pretty well, but they don’t do tenderness or vulnerability or sadness very well.

K: I think that I have the ability to, and I probably will, eventually do a completely — I don’t want to call it mellow — almost a lullaby album or something. Just songs like “Under My Feet” or something of the like, that are more vulnerable. I have countless demos of moments like that and really, my demos are moments in time for me. A melody will pop in my head, or a lyric or something, and I’ll go archive it. I’ll go and record, and so I have so many tracks like that. It would be very easy for me to create a record that would encompass that type of material. Again, that was part of the process in making this record, I had to go through all of that. I didn’t want too many songs like this and I didn’t want too many songs like that, so I had to pick and choose, and I’m still able to pull off making a record that, as you had said before, goes from one style to the next, hopefully seamlessly, and again, that was never my design at the time. I wasn’t too concerned about it. I was just making a record that I wanted to make, and that is what I will always do. Just in retrospect, based on a lot of people’s reviews and opinions, that has been the overwhelming opinion.

CN: I was thinking about it this morning when I was listening to it again. I had a thought when I was in the kitchen, how the hell did he figure out the sequencing of the songs on this record? How many times did you switch them around before you got it just the way you wanted it?

K: Many times. I even venture to say that I don’t even know if I was really happy with the sequencing when it was said and done. But it’s almost like that with everything else that I do. I’m never really sure, but you know, it has to be finished, so this is it, go get it manufactured. I can tell you that I did know that I wanted “Switchback” to be the first song on the record and it was the last song that I finished. A few days before I left to go master the CD I was still re-writing the song. And here it is, me knowing that I wanted it to be the first song on the record, and not even feeling that it was a good enough song yet. That put me in a very scary situation. So the pressure was on, and I had to finish it and make it something that I could live with, and a few things came together at the last minute.

CN: Tell me about the person who did all this cool airbrush on your torso for the photos.

K: Her name is Nelly Recchia. She is an artist out in L.A. and she does a lot of this kind of work. She has worked on a bunch of videos and things like that. Again, through mutual friends we knew of each other, and we talked a lot. I went out to L.A., and we talked about artwork for the CD. And this is kind of something she came up with, drew up, and I sat in a chair for eleven hours while she airbrushed my body for the photos.

CN: Wow, eleven hours? I don’t know if this was her idea or not, but after listening to your music and getting the whole concept you know--Celldweller, a person who is in this studio that never comes out that has all these thoughts and emotions and makes this record--it’s very intriguing that it’s like your skin is unlacing and underneath it’s very dark.

K: That is, in fact, how she came up with the idea as well is by listening to the record. It was something that was inspired by the record, and we talked about it and it was an idea that she presented to me. I’m very opinionated about my art, so if someone gives me an idea that I don’t like, I’ll absolutely say it, I’ll speak up about it. But I love the idea because it mixes everything you just said with a certain sadness. I’m not just about being pissed off, because I am pissed off a lot of the time, but I was a lot more pissed off when I was younger and these days it’s just a general sadness for whatever. You know how certain people can’t particularly identify why they are the way that they are? You just have to get to a point where you accept that’s the way you are, and that is who I am. So I was just glad that it wasn’t me covered in blood, you know, some overdriven testosterone-type imagery. I wanted something that represented really what the album was about. It’s a multifaceted record and I think that image says a lot of different things as well.

CN: Yeah, it’s like, underneath the skin there’s darkness there, but it’s also the skin is unraveling like a person’s unraveling, so it really made it powerful. Unfortunately the images are very tiny [laughs].

K: They are tiny but we have a ton of options going on. We have posters.

CN: It’s pretty awesome.

K: Thanks.

CN: I guess I’m also one of those people who lives life in the minor keys. I’m not a happy major key person, so when I hear those who have the same affinity. I kind of perk up and go “Hmm.”

K: Right. I never gravitated towards pop music or pop culture. It was never anything that was forced on me, it was just a natural inclination to music, visual arts, movies, and things like that. I was never into the things that everyone else was, but at the same time, I was never really a popular kid. I was pretty much an outcast and that was totally fine. I lived in my own world then, and I pretty much live in my own world now, so nothing has really changed. I suppose that makes me who I am.

CN: Are you in New York now?

K: No, I’m no longer in New York. I’ve moved to just outside of Detroit.

CN: Why?

K: A couple reasons. I’ve been doing a lot of work out here in my friend’s studio, and that’s where I did a bulk of my record. I think I needed a change. I needed to get away from New York, I needed to get away from the people I knew. I needed to get away from the mentality, and so I left. I needed to change, just in general, so I just left and got my own place here in the middle of nowhere, and it’s just cool. I don’t really leave anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. I don’t see anyone.

CN: Well, when you do, are you inspired at all by the bleakness of Detroit?

K: Well, I was inspired this weekend. I just went to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival that they hold every year here, and I’ve been here the last three years. I’ve actually driven here from New York the past two years to be here. So yeah, that’s inspiring. I think, in a roundabout way, that is answering your question, because a lot of the Detroit techno derives from the bleakness of Detroit, and I’m in the heart of it. There are lots of abandoned buildings; this is a very blue-collar area, and there are a lot of people with really nothing specific to do and looking for direction. I think earlier on, twenty years ago, I was pummeled into the electronic music scene. Really that’s what drives me. I could really care less about metal or rock, that’s not what I’m into. Unfortunately my record is primarily about that, and I’ve always found it easier to write on guitar and rock based instruments, and I probably will continue to do that, but that’s not really at all what I listen to. So it is inspiring to me, my being here, although there is a definite void in rock and other culture that I miss not being in New York. But you know, it’s a big world and there’s time. I’ll be moving from here. I’m not going to stay here for long, but I’ll be here for a little bit.

CN: So when you come to the city to play, you’re only playing for one show?

K: Yeah, I think we’re going to be playing CB’s. I think we’re probably going to be playing a few shows in New York. Probably also Rochester and we may play on Long Island somewhere, we’ll be playing CB’s. I don’t know, that’s being nailed down, I pretty much told the booking agent and my manager and tour manager just to tell me where I need to be, I don’t really…

CN: [laughs] Long Island has a very popular electronic, darkwave, EBM scene going out there.

K: Oh really? I mean, when I left there wasn’t a whole lot going on. It was kind of a dead scene, but then, you know, again, I was never one to really subscribe to a scene. I’ve never really been out hanging out at clubs. I’ll go out once in a while and want to listen to some good music, but more times I’ll be disappointed. But that’s good to hear. At least something is happening.

CN: It’s good. The creative process—as a writer/photographer/artist, this is stuff that I can’t help but do—even if I didn’t get paid, I’d have to do it. If it’s what you’re meant to be, you just can’t do anything else. Even if you didn’t get paid for it, even if you didn’t record it you’d probably just sit in your room and still do it, right?

K: There is no way for me to separate the creative process from who I am anymore; maybe when I was younger, when I was 13 years old or 14, when I first started playing my first instrument and things like that, maybe, but there was a certain point--and by the time I was 18 or 19 that’s all I did and pretty much what I thought about, the whole creative process of writing music, writing lyrics, samples, programming, and learning about gear--and that’s what I’ve become. And that’s great. I’m totally fine with it.

CN: But that kind of obsessiveness creates greatness. You have two types, you have people who obsessively want knowledge or just collect things to horde it, and then you have people who obsessively collect and learn, intake it and then regurgitate and make something better out of it. The ones who do the second are the ones who become the great performers.

K: I hope I’m a part of that class, and you’re right about all that, but I guess time will tell.

CN: Well you’re getting a lot of exposure especially from all these movies. That means that they’re on the soundtrack as well or just in the movie as background?

K: Soundtracks are a whole different animal. Soundtracks are a whole lot politically driven.

CN: Oh totally. Have you noticed who’s on the soundtracks lately? The same 10 bands.

K: The ones that are signed to labels that are putting out the soundtracks pretty much. They don’t leave much room for anybody else other than their own artists because they want to obviously sell their own artist’s s albums as well.

CN: Who’s your management again?

K: Position Management in L.A. There should be contact information on the CD.

CN: Yeah, it’s on the CD. I just don’t have it in front of me. I didn’t know if you had somebody to rep you as a producer.

K: No. I’m not really looking to do much production work anyway. I mean, if I did I’d put the word out, but I have spent most of the early parts of my career getting involved in projects and using pseudonyms and doing production work, and it’s like you don’t spend a lot of time creating an identity for yourself as an artist. So right now I am in full-on one hundred percent Celldweller mode. I mean there’s so many opportunities for me right now, that I can’t even take, that I don’t really have to go out and get; they’re kind of coming to me at this point…

CN: That’s good.

K: Um, we’re in the middle of making a video for “Switchback” and right now, that’s occupying all my time. [It has since been finished and can be seen on the celdweller.comwebsite. –ed.]

CN: Who’s directing it?

K: Uh, I do. I directed it and produced it, and I am in the process of editing it myself as well. Pretty much the type of thing where —

CN: Klay, do you have control issues, dude?

K: Um, I think I do. That’s what I’ve been told, so…

CN: [laughs]

K: Must be true…

CN: Must be. I’m telling you, you can’t follow people, because half the time the people that try to lead you can’t lead.

K: Well it’s different. When you work with people that are on a higher level than you, are in a different style of art or even in the same style of art it brings other things to the table. You know, it’s iron sharpens iron. If it’s like, you’re working with somebody who’s of the same caliber as you, you’re going to, hopefully, create better art. If you’re working with people where you have to teach them what to do, or kind of direct them to do everything that you want, you might as well just do it yourself cuz you’re gonna get what you want. My problem is that I get behind the eight ball technically because there’s so many things to learn in a short amount of time about video editing. I mean, I finally got to the point where I’m editing all the video for our live show, and we run a full blown video production behind us when we play that’s totally synchronized with the music and what we’re doing on stage.

CN: That’s cool.

K: A lot of the new footage that we shot for the video is stuff that’s gonna be incorporated into the live stuff as well which has been my ultimate vision, so there’s a lot of work to do, so I’m not just writing music. I’m editing video. I’m rehearsing band members, and I’m pretty much doing a little of everything that has to be done. It’s just part of being an independent artist.