STS9: Soundscapes
In Sound Tribe Sector 9, there are no solos. “You could almost call it an Indian or Hindustani approach to music,” says keyboardist David Phipps. “We’re having a conversation with our instruments and in a conversation, there are no soliloquies. We really try to reinforce each other, encourage each other to keep going and keep talking. We finish each other’s musical statements.”
Sound Tribe Sector 9, or STS9, has been churning out its mixture of funk grooves, ambient electronica and progressive rock since the late ’90s. But Phipps, guitarist Hunter Brown, bass player Dave Murphy, percussionist Jeffree Lerner and drummer Zach Velmer have never thought about genres, classifications or labels. They’ve followed their passions and talents, exploring different soundscapes, instruments and musical philosophies. That curiosity inevitably led them to electronic samplers and software sequencers, which they used to create the album “Artifact” in 2005.
“Right now, everyone on the stage except the drummer has a PowerBook. They have really become live instruments for us, a way to do new things and improvise in ways we never thought possible before.”
When the band went on tour to promote the album, it added a new “instrument” to its lineup. “Right now, everyone on the stage except the drummer has a PowerBook,” says Phipps. “They have really become live instruments for us, a way to do new things and improvise in ways we never thought possible before.” Loaded with sound samples from the band and equipped with Ableton Live, the PowerBooks have become an essential part of every STS9 live performance.
Electronic Conducting
STS9 began its life as a funk jam band, playing in local clubs and bars near Atlanta, Georgia. The band started experimenting with Reason software on an old PC and the rig quickly became a valuable part of its ensemble
“This sticker-covered college PC became an instrument on our stage,” says Phipps. “The logical question was, ‘How can we make this computer smaller and get one that doesn’t crash in the middle of the shows?’ We got a few PowerBooks and we were off and running.”
The band members started running Reason, Pro Tools and Ableton Live on PowerBooks and Power Macs. They recorded samples of their own instruments and ambient sounds from their days on the road. Their latest album, “Artifact,” is jam-packed with those samples and some electronic wizardry that changed the way they approach their music. “It was a complete studio project,” says Phipps. “If there needed to be another guitar line or another layer of keyboards, we didn’t limit ourselves whatsoever. All of a sudden we had this album with several layers of keyboards and three guitar lines. When it was all done, we asked ourselves, ‘How are we going to do this live?’” The simple answer was, of course, bring the PowerBooks on stage.
”We took these huge layered songs and went back into the Pro Tools sessions and rendered just the sound effects or just a keyboard pad or just a guitar part and put them into Ableton Live as their own samples,” says Phipps. “Then they’re at our fingertips. I can just reach over and trigger the sample in my PowerBook and now I’m twice as thick.”
Rather than having one dedicated maestro conducting the samples from a single station, every band member has his own stash of samples on his own machine. All of the PowerBooks work independently of each other and function as extensions of the musicians’ instruments.
“None of the computers are networked together,” says Phipps. “We’re not sharing a clock across the stage. Everything is in real time, able to fall off or expand. At any time we can just keep playing. That’s really important to the integrity of our band. We didn’t want to come out with a new album and sound like we’re playing through a DAT tape on stage.”
