Jester: Can you elaborate in detail about having your gearstolen over a year ago?
Jason: Sure. We were on tour with Noxious Emotion. We madeit to Texas a bit early, so we decided to check into a hotel. We didn't noticethat it wasn't such a nice part of the city at the time. When we woke up in themorning our trailer, which contained all our gear, was nowhere to be seen.Needless to say, it was a sad day for both bands and anyone who wanted to comeout and see us that tour.
Jester: Have you been able to recover/replace most of it?
Jason: Oh yeah. We upgraded all our stuff after that. SMPnow records in their own studio. My credit card companies love me.
Jester: I noticed that while you are no longer signed toRe-Constriction Records, yet you still appear on their specialty compilations and label samplers. Why is that?
Jason: Yeah, one of the biggest misconceptions about SMP isthat we are still signed with Re-Constriction. Chase tells me people still ask him whenour next CD is going to come out. Normally, Chase's specialty compilationscontain songs from artists other than just the Re-Constriction roster, so that's prettystandard. I have no idea why he wanted us on the CMJ sampler, he just liked oursong I guess. Lately, I've done some remix work for some Re-Constriction bands too,Collide & Hexedene.
Jester: Why did you choose to cover Public Enemy's 'Prophetof Rage' for "Operation Beatbox"?
Jason: Our first choice was 'Approach to Danger' by NWA,which I wish we would have done instead because NWA should have beenrepresented on that disc. And there were two Public Enemy songs on thecompilation too. We liked 'Prophets of Rage' because of the delayed vocals in it.We did the delays with backing vocals instead of effects and it turned outpretty cool.
Jester: Why did you choose to cover 'Metro' by Berlin for"Nod's Tacklebox of Fun"?
Jason: We just liked the song and we thought we could makethat song sound good, SMP-style. Plus it's cool to do a cover of femalevocals. It's a love song too, so that was different for SMP. It was fun to puttogether.
Jester: Did you know that San Francisco based Gridlock hadalready done before?
Jason: No. The Metro cover is years old. Re-constriction has been sitting on the Metro recording for close to a year. SMP was doing a show inSacramento with Scar Tissue when the DJ played Gridlock's version of Metro. Iactually hadn't ever heard of Gridlock before either. It doesn't really botherme that the song has been covered before, as long as the SMP version is better,that is.
Jester: How did you approach writing lyrics for the VampireRodents 'Revisioned' track from "Clockseed"?
Jason: Very quickly. Sean and I slam-dunked the lyrics tothat song unfortunately. It's not our favorite song. I'd like to do somethingwith Daniel again sometime though.
Jester: You also have appeared on a fair number ofindependent compilations recently. Have you done this in a continued effort toget noticed by other labels?
Jason: More importantly we do these compilations in acontinued effort to get noticed by Industrial fans. The reason we didn't dothem before is they weren't really around when we first started up. Now thateveryone and their brother is on-line it's easier to network and the cost of CDmanufacturing has gotten cheaper as well. All it takes is ambition andpersistence to release your own CD. It's cool because it gives the recordcompanies less control over what is heard and what is not.
Jester: What lead to Sean Setterberg leaving SMP and theaddition of two new band members?
Jason: Sean started SMP with me. I've known him forever. Wewent to high school together and played in many bands together. He just wasn'thaving a good time with SMP anymore. Maybe he was burned out on SMP, I don'tknow. Christ Analogue asked him to join their band and he accepted. It wasn'tany knock down fight or anything like that.
After Sean left the band I needed more musicians. We auditioned drummers andMatt was one of the first we auditioned and we liked him, as well as his playing,so we asked him to join the band. Guitarist Rick Aguilar, who performed on twoSMP songs, was replaced later by a drummer named XianDi.
Jester: Do the two new members contribute to the writingprocess of new material?
Jason: Matt has contributed programming to two songs on theUltimatum CD. Also, SMP's music isn't just created in a computer from start tofinish. It starts in the computer then goes to the practice studio where wework on it and talk about what should be done with it. XianDi and Matt alsowill be playing the drums on the CD.
Jester: I noticed that your live shows contain almostexclusively new material with only a single older track. Why is that?
Jason: We just got sick of playing our old material.Sometimes I forget that other people want to hear that old stuff. It boggles mymind when I hear about bands touring on the same material for years. TheSeattle crowd has heard our older stuff a lot as well. When we tour this summerwe will definitely be playing some of the "Stalemate" stuff for people whohaven't had the chance to see us live.
Jester: Now that you have completed the "Ultimatum" demo,how have labels been responding to it?
Jason: After talking with several labels we decided torelease the 17 song CD on Catastrophe Records located here in Seattle.
Jester: How did you first get involved with writing andcomposing music?
Jason: I started out playing the drums in various bands,I've played Rock/Wave/Goth and Punk. In the last band I was in, before SMP, theway we approached writing songs would be to program them on the keyboard andhave everyone learn from the sequences. I always wanted to write music and Ihad ideas for songs but was never able to write since I could only play thedrums, so I jumped at the chance to start programming. I started singing whenSMP was formed.
Jester: Have any members of SMP ever had any type of formalmusical training?
Jason: I've been playing the drums since the 4th grade soI've had some lessons through school. Matt went to the Seattle Drum School tolearn to play as an adult and XianDi went to some drum school down inCalifornia to learn as an adult. Matt & XianDi have played in various rock-typebands and I've done some jazz as well.
Jester: What does the future hold for SMP?
Jason: Well we have a CD coming out in May. A tour will bescheduled for this summer. After that who knows?
Jester: Is there anything you would like to add that I havenot covered?
Jason: Yeah. One of the other big misconceptions about SMP.What the HELL does SMP stand for! Last night, after opening for Mentallo & TheFixer, some guy told me he heard it stood for Smoke More Pot. I've heard a fewpretty funny ones. SMP is the name of our product.