Diminished Men are a Seattle-based instrumental three-piece that merge surf rock, space jazz, and psychedelia into soundtrack noir. They are expert players amalgamating a spaghetti-kung-fu/horror film-score sound. Sections and tangents in their songs shift tightly. Dynamics change on a dime. Bashed grooves fall into Japanese koto whispers then hairpin into squared Mingus runs. It's music for the scene where Bruce Lee steps into the air lock on a space station haunted by the ghost of King Tut, lights a match off the stubble of his beard, and then battles an alien Komodo dragon to death. Diminished Men drummer Dave Abramson spoke. No Komodos were harmed.

Where does your sound come from? Obviously, you're into some Dick Dale. But are you all into kung fu? Or wrestling large animals? Film noir? LSD?

Our guitarist, Steve Schmitt, grew up admiring Adrian Belew, Django Reinhardt, Jimmy Page, and dub music. He loves driving, heavy rhythms and natural guitar tones. Our sound is based around his guitar. I'd say we're a perversion and bastardization of Les Paul, the Cramps, samurai-film soundtracks, Angelo Badalamenti, the Shadows, the Pyramids, Italian horror and western film scores. Also surf music, jass music, and all things American noir, music and non-music related. I like to spell and pronounce jazz "j-a-s-s." Don't print that!

Have you ever wrestled a large animal? Or taken LSD and wrestled a large animal while thinking you were in a noir samurai film?

No. Well... no.

How did you all form as a band?

I actually answered a Stranger classified ad that mentioned reverb, Fender amps, and juvenile delinquency. That's how I met Steve Schmitt. We were both into fat Fender tones drenched in reverb and we discovered a mutual tendency toward minor and dissonant rock. Our first pieces of music were unorthodox surf and spaghetti-western tunes.

Is Simon Henneman playing a guitar with a bass string? What is he playing? How does he do what he does?

Simon plays a Fender Jaguar Baritone, which was originally issued as the Fender Bass VI. It has six strings, tuned E-E, but is a full octave lower than a regular guitar. It was originally released in 1961 following Danelectro's "six sting bass" that first came out in 1956. Simon is a badass and I'd take a bullet for him. Unless it was gonna hit me.

What was it like working with producer Randall Dunn (Sun City Girls, Kinski, Earth, Jesse Sykes, Sunn O))), Eyvind Kang)? Talk about your song "Pantomime Magpie."

This song is a piece of melodramatic thirds and meandering, noiresque-flavored guitar and Farfisa organ off our latest LP, Shadow Instrumentals. It hints at Henry Mancini and a little Max Steiner, 1950s-era crime jazz. These ideas were not contrived in the beginning, but as a song goes from being written to played and then finds itself in the studio, it may acquire some unique character along the way. An Electro-Harmonix HOG and a Japanese Guyatone distortion pedal with a standard Fender Stratocaster through a Blackface '65 Super Reverb amp are what we used for the verse line and the lead. The big chords that start off the piece and come in throughout are super-compressed. That's a very overcompressed guitar through a Fender Champ turned all the way up. It's probably compressed on Steve's end with a pedal and then compressed again like crazy with the LA-2A. The drums are, of course, thick and burly, 'cause Randall Dunn produced this record. This tune has a track of drum kit with sticks and an overdub of drum kit with brushes, which creates a broad and textural dimension. There is trombone tucked in there as well, but after a healthy dose of reverb and how it's placed in the mix, it sounds almost like a synth. Randall's unique production is a perfect complement to our sound. He knows what our influences are better than we do. He's an extremely creative and hardworking producer and musician. Ideas just seep out of him.

Your songs peak and valley, climax and recede, and you all are so tight with your changes. I wanted to get you to talk about dynamics. You all do it so well, coming down in those quieter parts. How are you able to do that? Do you rehearse a ton? When you're writing material, how do you know when to bring it down or shoot it back up?

Most of the music that influences the Diminished Men isn't rock music, but sounds that are sparse. Folk music, soundtrack orchestrations, incidental film music, and jazz are predominantly written and arranged by composers or musicians who have a great command of timbre and dynamics. Even with a small jazz combo or a chamber quartet you can compress and expand the group in such a way that the music appears to collapse and explode. We are just a three-piece, so we try to implement dynamics in timbre and volume throughout our tunes. Simon and I aren't jazz musicians, per se, but we are heavily influenced by jazz rhythm sections and their ability to constantly adjust themselves to the mood of the tune or how it's being played that evening.

Diminished Men play Thurs Aug 5 at Can Can with Blue Light Curtain and Corespondents.