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To fans the world over, Aaron Dilloway’s name is synonymous with eerie, manipulated tape loops, visceral live performances, and the prolific world of industrial Midwestern noise music from which he emerged in the 1990s. To the uninitiated, the former Wolf Eyes member has his own explanation.
“Lots of times, I'll just say I make electronic music," Dilloway told WAMC. "If they asked what kind, I'll say like, you know, imagine the weirder parts of Pink Floyd, but take away the musical part.”
Dilloway’s work is defined by process. Using recordings collected from across the world, he feeds raw material into actively decaying gear to tease out otherworldly sounds hidden in plain sight.
“I use usually two different 8-track players, like 8-track cartridges from the 60s, 70s that I break open the cartridges and put my own tape loops inside them- Usually very short, so I can make use them for rhythmic purposes," he explained. "And then I run those through a couple of tape echoes, which are also loops of tape, and I'll add sounds onto the tape. And then I will cover up the erase heads so that the sounds keep looping and don't erase, and add sounds to it. And I can control the speeds. But yeah, everything's a bit finicky, especially the older gear, the 8-track players. Everything sounds a little bit different every time.”
Dilloway’s aesthetics embrace the terrifying and absurd in equal measure. Albums like 2012’s “Modern Jester” and 2017’s “The Gag File” explore the tension and release dynamic that both comedy and horror rely on in equal measure.
“I like stuff that works both ways," he told WAMC. "I grew up watching horror movies, and as you know, a lot of them can be scary, but can also be very comical, either in how they're made, or just, they also have comedic elements in them. But I like stuff that kind of freaks me out, and I guess I try to put that into my music as well in a sort of playful sort of way.”
Despite the avant-garde nature of his work, Dilloway maintains that at heart, he’s a rocker – and that the worlds of rock’n’roll and sound art are closer than is commonly accepted.
“Maybe for the ridiculousness of a lot of it," Dilloway reflected. "There's things, I think, that like someone like Philip Corner does, where it's a recording of someone tearing a piano apart, someone sitting on the microphone while it's being recorded. I love that sort of ridiculousness. That's kind of the same to me as just some over the top rock and roll- Angus Young banging his head for an hour and a half, jumping around. I used to find a lot of similarities between someone like Manowar and a noise band like Whitehouse. They seemed like the same band almost to me in the way that, in the way that what I got from listening or seeing either of them.”
Dilloway, who also runs independent record store and label Hanson Records out of Oberlin, Ohio, will perform at the Clark’s Manton Research Center Sunday at 5 p.m. The event is a collaboration between the museum and North Adams’ Belltower Records. Keyboardist and improviser Liz Durette will open the show.
“I've never been to this venue, so we'll see what happens when I when I plug in for soundcheck," Dilloway told WAMC. "And yeah, it might be a while until I get back out on the East Coast, so this might be the last time to see me play. I'm going to try to concentrate more on recording and kind of piecing together recordings, really, for at least the beginning of next year. So yeah, excited to be out there.”
