Do You Believe in Black Magic?

“There’s a lot of black magic floating around out there. Music is a
great harness for it,” says Jason Smothers, half of the Seattle group
Are you a cat? with Josh Welbel. The statement belies the duo’s cutesy
name. Are you a cat? create music that crackles with demonic intensity.
The bulk of the material that they’ve culled from multiple hard drives’
worth of music and slapped onto CD-Rs occupies a rarefied realm of
experimental abstract electronica that’s mainly been the domain of mad
geniuses like Conrad Schnitzler, Biota, and the Residents. Other
touchstones include Gil Mellé’s disturbingly microbial
soundtrack for The Andromeda Strain and Bebe and Louis Barron’s
forlornly bleepy score for Forbidden Planet.

Remarkably, Are you a cat? claim not to be very familiar with any of
these artists. They happened upon this bizarre sound through frequent
sessions with their cheap gear, most of which they confess to not
really knowing how to use. The result—as heard on releases like
Beach Volleyball, Pregnant Questionnaire, and Droid
Angel Pookah Field—is a kind of devil-may-care
improvisational expression that arises when two cats (ha) with
exceptional musical taste vibe incredibly well with each other.

“We expand each other’s brains a lot,” Smothers relates. “After we
play, I walk away and [he shudders] God…” That situation is
very common, but very rarely does it produce amazing music. There are
people like Smothers and Welbel all over the country, dedicated
hobbyists making music because it’s a good release or simply fun. But
you, reader, can lead a fulfilling life without ever hearing it. You
need to hear Are you a cat?.

The Are you a cat? universe encompasses much more than the
aforementioned surreal symphonies on analog synths and contorted Linn
Drum programming. They hold free-jazz sessions every other Sunday as
the Sunshine Jazz Club with Noggin violinist Eric Ostrowski, they’ve
been commissioned by Michelle Pannell of the band Ubik to contribute a
track to a doom compilation that will benefit the local Subcultural
Awakening collective, they intend to shimmy their way into dance music
with a slick project (using a to-be-determined production name) in
which they hope to enlist cult L.A. vocalist Naomi Elizabeth. Their
vast range and the twisted sensibilities they bring to each style they
tackle make Are you a cat? among this city’s most interesting
bands.

Smothers and Welbel—who are both in their mid 30s—met in
Chicago in 1997 and moved to Seattle at different times. They started
recording in their Columbia City studio in 2007 under the moniker Baby
Man, but discovered that a gent fond of diapers had dibs on the name,
so they switched to Are you a cat? By now, they should be much higher
up in the music-­biz ecosphere, but their art has proven to be too
uncategorizable and malleable to gain traction with the area’s
tastemakers. Welbel and Smothers have connections with ethnodelic
heavies Master Musicians of Bukkake (both played with that band’s Milky
Burgess in Chicago), but so far they haven’t been able to capitalize on
them.

Instead, Are you a cat? are resigned to playing friends’ house
parties rather than conventional music venues. Their one experience
with the Comet earlier this year was disastrous and convinced Are you a
cat? that they’re better off not dealing with clubs for the time being.
Other shows at off-the-beaten-­path spaces have been marred by
promoters leaving their name out of ads or listing the wrong dates for
gigs. Even nature conspires against Are you a cat?; they had to cancel
three shows during Snowpocalypse ’09.

If Are you a cat? seem to be cursed, it hasn’t deterred their
prodigious recording output. In recent months, they’ve given me six
CD-Rs of music and say that these discs represent not even 20 percent
of everything they’ve done. And the quality of these discs has remained
consistently excellent.

Amid all the mind-fucking strangeness in the group’s catalog,
Octopus Release is Are you a cat?’s stab at structured
songwriting. Done on a dare from Bukkake’s Jim Davis and mastered by
renowned local engineer Mell Dettmer, the five-track album includes
some lubricious, James Pants–like party funk with suave vocals,
clap-enhanced 4/4 beats, and everything. Also present are a percolating
­prog-pop song about a suicidal ranch hand and an off-kilter
electro-rock cut with fascinating metallic percussion and tricky
rhythms. Octopus concludes with a surprising dip into gently
uplifting, gregarious reggae titled “Rose of Fire,” which quotes both
Toto’s “Rosanna” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” Of course, Are you a
cat?’s flirtation with accessibility still veers into some spaced-out
excursions. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be too outrageous to hear these
songs on KEXP.

Much of Are you a cat?’s music possesses a relentless, demonic
quality. They can’t resist pouring on weirdness upon weirdness, all the
while seeming like such nice, well-adjusted people.

“People like Roland Kirk, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Sun Ra, and John
Lennon have tapped into [supernatural] things that can be interpreted
through music,” Smothers says. “We’ve opened ourselves up to a lot of
it through our chemistry as musicians and from [Chicago’s avant-jazz]
scene. So if you want to call it voodoo or whatever, it’s something
that [gets incorporated] into some of our jams.” Welbel simply calls it
“evil chemistry.”

Smothers describes a weird experience to illustrate this. “One of
the most intense days of playing we ever had, our amps started doing
their own thing. We went to turn the amps off and they stayed on, even
though they were turned off; the music was still pouring through, the
electricity’s off. Some very strange phenomena have taken place in our
studio.” Welbel adds, “There are moments when we get spooked by the
music.”

“I think the demonic aspect comes from us growing up with all this
metal around us and listening to all this harsh music,” Smothers
continues. “When you try to make yourself sound like a certain kind of
band, you start getting a blend of all the stuff that you like. We
listen to a lot of different music, so it might just be a total
overload.”

 Discussing their prodigious recording output, Smothers
elaborates that Are you a cat? “condense material so it’s enough for
people to listen to without getting bored, but for the most part, all
of that stuff is uncut. It’s the experience of us messing with new
instruments. It usually seems like our best music is when we first use
instruments. Those are the killer sessions.”

Despite being deeply obscure to most in the local scene, Are you a
cat? harbor lofty ambitions. They plan to shop upcoming demos to DFA
and venerable jazz imprints like Okka Disk and Atavistic—and to
Thrill Jockey. “We need Thurston Moore to put out our records,” Welbel
quips.

Silly name notwithstanding, Smothers claims, “We’re trying to be
serious about even the goofy stuff—like a Werner Herzog
mockumentary. We want it so you don’t know if we’re fucking with you or
not.”

“The jokes are the most serious part of it, actually,” Welbel says.
“When you’re open to the funny shit and the scary shit, that’s when the
best music comes through.”