Illusion Of Safety: Ecstatic Crisis
Navel-Gazers #67 is an interview with Dan Burke who is going to talk to us about Ecstatic Crisis. First released on cassette in 1986, it’s one of the earliest releases in a vast discography of music by Illusion Of Safety, Dan’s nom de plume over the decades as he and his cohorts have traversed the field of experimental sound across multiple idioms, as his website recounts. I’m drawn to voices in the mix on ‘Ecstatic Crisis’ which grab hold of my attention, seeming to suggest that this album would very much like to be discussed, that the work warrants some kind of a response. It’s as though I’ve permeated an lllusion Of Safety solar system somewhere in deep space, and among all the planets and satellites of various hues and shapes and sizes at which to marvel, I’ve spotted one with signs of an especially attentive, sentient kind of life, one I just might be able to communicate with. Illusion Of Safety hails from Chicago, and I’ve always appreciated the eclecticism of that region’s music from the 80s and 90s era. A few of those artists have appeared on Navel-Gazers: first it was Bablicon, then Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, then IOS-adjacent Cheer-Accident, who mentioned Dan a time or two… in my mind this could just be the missing piece of a Windy City underground music jigsaw puzzle. Let’s revel in the illusion…!
AC: Thanks for joining me on Navel-Gazers! First could you briefly tell us who you are, and who or what (and why) is Illusion Of Safety, and since when?
Ended up with a degree in psychology/philosophy that I made very little use of (other than perhaps filtering into my creative work). It was always difficult for me to make a commitment to do or follow anything with conviction. My orbit was altered in the late sixties into early 70’s first when I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey which I think really set the tone for my life in many ways. Then other experimental forms caught my eye and ear, I always gravitated to the obtuse and perplexing. Psychedelics and space/synthesizer music really cemented my interest in pursuing electronic music & the void.
Discovering Industrial music and the brave new wave as some called it & then seeing the final 2 performances of Throbbing Gristle (1981) sealed the deal and I knew what kind of ideas, visuals, & sounds I wanted to work with. I worked with my friend Mitch Enderle (Dead Tech) for a few years toward this end.
Then when I met Thymme Jones (member of Dot Dot Dot and later CHEER-ACCIDENT) at University we began to make other kind of experimental improv music together. Dot Dot Dot (Thymme, Ross Feller, Chris Block, Jef Bek) and I had 3 performances 1983/84 and they were calling it the Dan Burke Project but I came up with the name Illusion of Safety, which immediately spoke volumes to me and the kinds of ideas in my head I wanted to express. I kept working with Mitch in the meantime and then in 1985 Mitch and I started working with new friends (Mark Sorensen and Mark Klein) who were also more industrial music inclined than the Dot Dot Dot contingent and the 4 of us became the “Main Core” through about 1989 (completing the first 7 or 8 IOS tapes, the first 2 vinyl releases, as well as doing most of the performances and the first tour outside Chicago to Colorado 1988).
This project was a way of connecting with people as well as expressing things that were always difficult to put into words, fears, doubts, altered states, examinations of reality, ego, social constructs, hypocrisy, & the ridiculous facade of everyday normal society. A good opportunity through personal creativity to be the provocative iconoclast I needed to be, having fun working with others, meeting like minded friends, and expressing myself while poking people and conventions that might need it.
AC: The early Illusion Of Safety releases were cassettes on your own label, Complacency. How were the cassettes themselves manufactured and distributed? How commercially available were they? Was ‘Ecstatic Crisis’ the first album or was It’s A Dead Dog?
Dan Burke: Thymme & I started Complacency to release our own music(s). We had little or no distribution that I can recall so not commercially available. Maybe the only distro was with Ron Lessard and RRRecords. He also co-funded/released our first LP More Violence and Geography, included us on his Testament compilation album and Video releases which helped get the music out there. Thymme may have had some distro for CHEER-ACCIDENT with Cuneiform.
For me it was mainly trading tapes as the cassette networking underground was a way to get your music out there & make like minded friends and hear what they were up to. Also I submitting them to the sources that were available in the late 80’s for reviews. Having a label identity seemed like a fun thing to do, another “tradition” to play with.
CPC-9 My Mind is Killing Me was recorded before the others but I issued it later as I wanted the more “main core” current group efforts to come out first. Its A Dead Dog was the first release. (title references Genesis P-Orridge and his start of the show when we saw them for their original final performance at Kezar Pavillion in San Francisco 1981, possibly as heard on Mission of Dead Souls)
Dan Burke: By this time (~1985) I had a Tascam 244 4-track cassette recorder so we could multitrack. Many of our pieces over the years have been live improvisations, or at times working with structures with room for chance occurrence, but recorded in the early days direct to cassette, and released as a document of the moment. The ability to multitrack opened up lots of possibilities.
This track Ceraunoscopy by Mark Klein, Mark Sorensen, and myself is multitracked. I am not sure about the panning but think it is how we routed it when we recorded, perhaps one of us on the left, one on the right & some variations of centered plus the outputs of the delays were likely hard panned. Many of these delay units even if not stereo have one output that is dry signal (passing the audio with no effect) and a wet signal (the audio with effect applied), so a stereo image is possible. There may be manual panning in the mixdown but I can’t be sure. This track sounds like we were triggering our loops/samples and layered that.
At the time primary instrumentation was Moog synth, guitars, Tape manipulations, radio, recordings (via cassette, found sound, records, then DAT tape by 1991) of anything as source (voice, nature field recordings, machines, scrapings, human activity, rumblings…musique concrète) various pedal and rack effects (delays, flange, phasers, reverbs, distortions), the Digitech 3.6 then 7.6 rack mount delay was used extensively as our primitive sampler/looper fed by our radioshack variable speed cassette players (we all had these), until we obtained real samplers in the late 80’s.
AC: I’d like to ask about a few other specific passages.
At 17:13 of Side A (track ‘Confusion’) there is some metallic clanging, do you recall the source of these sounds?
Dan Burke: Did this track with Chris Block, he played bass. Was one of the original incarnation members of IOS as he was in Dot Dot Dot and we did the first 2 shows as IOS. The clanging was sampled into a delay pedal and triggered, some random piece of metal, we had a bunch of them back in the day, and I still have a few of the original pieces. That is also the sound of my first rhythm machine a Boss Dr. Rhythm.
AC: At 19:53 of Side A (track ‘Flowering Blossom to the Full Moon’) there’s a guy saying “I know that I’m not perfect…”, it actually reminds me of this specific voice from the Monkees “Head” - to the point where I questioned whether not-perfect guy was from the same source. Any idea where that came from?
Dan Burke: I loved that movie. But no this is actually a woman, and the interview is with mental health patients, not sure of thew source but television for sure. I used much of this over the years. Again parts of that can be heard on Helen Your Brain Forever Since About Breakfast on the Distraction CD (one of my favorite IOS releases and parts of that along with selections from Historical and Inside agitator might be coming out as a 12” vinyl release on Nihilist).
Dan Burke: Synth tones and then what you might think is a drill is a personal vibrator against a contact mic.
AC: At 10:39 of Side B (track ‘Castrated Anxiety’) is a memorable sequence where a voice is talking, while low- and high-pitched versions of the talking are heard hovering around it. How was this produced? I particularly noticed that the voices aren’t slowed-down or sped-up.
Dan Burke: Its my first Harmonizer, an Ibanez HD-1000 & I think the voice is mine.
AC: At 22:00 of Side B (track ‘Mother’), the voice saying “mother” is incredibly freaky. What’s the source?
Dan Burke: That tape voice was brought in by member Mark Sorensen & is obviously from a film, I asked him but didn’t hear back. I can only guess that the movie might have been called Mother.
AC: One Navel-Gazers alumnus Thymme Jones was a regular presence in Illusion Of Safety but here is credited on just one track: ‘Toneline 3’ (12:35 of Side B). He’s credited for “lower vari-screech”. What does that mean and what on earth is happening on this track? It’s harrowing!
Dan Burke: Early on we (IOS Main Core version: Myself, Mitch Enderle, Mark Sorensen, Mark Klein 1984-88) started doing this piece Toneline at every live action. Directly influenced by Whitehouse’s M.O. without the rant, it was quite simple as 4 pure tones, mostly high, but sometimes low end. This version is just me and Thymme. My source for the highs was usually the Casio VL tone on the flute setting. This piece got us in trouble a few times. It was quite piercing at volume, as it should have been. Prompting at times the sound guy to pull volume back and on one occasion caused a confrontation with me, but as for how that turned out I’m not sure if our volume was restored.
AC: ‘Ecstatic Crisis’ is included on IIOS40 which is a collection of the earliest albums by Illusion Of Safety, from 1986 to 1991. It was a physical boxset and is also the only official digital release of this music. Tell us how and why you produced ‘IOS40’. How do you think ‘Ecstatic Crisis’ fits into this discography, is it a high point? low point? transitional? pivotal? similar to the others? different to the others?
Dan Burke: I had considered the project retired after the release of Surrender on No Part Of It in 2014, and a final performance with original member Mitch Enderle (R.I.P) in 2015. But IOS 40 came into existence, like IOS’ resurrection in 2020 and the release of the IOS/ZE’V collaboration mostly because of the insistence/prodding of my friend Arvo Zylo running the no part of it label and wanting to release these things. Also responsible was Philippe Petit of the Modularisme Platform, as I had completed a Buchla Eurorack composition for him as Soundoferror, my synth project but he was persuasive to release it as IOS in 2020.
So between that and Arvo wanting to do the ZE’V record IOS was reborn and I found besides a huge backlog of old great recordings there was new construction waiting to happen for this project. And it’s been great to work on this material again as well as a lot of touring in the past few years, seeing old friends, collaborations, lots of great experiences.&
Only 3 of the tapes from the original 10 tape releases 1986-1991 on our label Complacency were issued on our Bandcamp. It just took some prodding from Arvo to get the others released. The material I thought was quite good but there were so many releases to populate the Bandcamp page that these just got put aside until Arvo found the cool 10 tape box and suggested the reissue of these tapes as a boxset with bonus materials both audio and visual. It was a collaboration with personal archives, had built and duplicated.
The next few releases went back to conceptual mostly composed work, Violence and Geography, Repairs, In 70 Countries, as we were working as the “main core’ (myself, Mitch, Mark Klein, Mark Sorensen) mostly at this time so there was some consistency in sound and vision. This is also when we started working with video.
One of the best tapes is the final tape release on Complacency from 1991 RVE (Robol Verification Exercise), a lot of material on this one from Jim O’Rourke and I, and it will be reissued as a remastered CD on Tribe Tapes this year. In regard to videos I am releasing 1 video every month now on our youtube, new abstract work, old & new live actions, and by now many of the early videos not seen since the live shows in the early to mid 90’s.
AC: It’s impressive how you’ve managed to keep Illusion Of Safety going all this time, and especially how you’ve resuscitated it in recent years. What do you think is the future of the project? What are you working on next? Any additional comments or parting thoughts for our readers?
Dan Burke: World events have worn my illusion of safety down to microns, more wafer thin than ever. Having good friends participating through the years has always helped to keep going or sure. At this point I see no likelihood of going on any extended tours which is unfortunate as the tours of 2023 & 24 were really great in every way possible. Things in the world are too precarious at the moment. Honestly it has been difficult now to pursue anything other than being in the moment, but making music and painting again is saving me on a daily basis. There is much more music as IOS and other projects to share.
Also as mentioned, adding a new video to our IOS youtube every month, either old material (early original videos unseen since the live performances of the early ’90's), new live performances, or edited constructions.
I have just released on Complacency an 8" Lathe Cut edition of 25 of a new 18 minute construction called The Braindead Ep, (not available online anywhere) as a companion to the Braindead Companion release on Bandcamp.
Other upcoming physical release events for IOS this year include a remastered reissue of the well loved RVE cassette on Tribe Tapes.
There is a remastered edited version of our dark ambient 1994 CD Cancer coming out as an LP on Aufabwegen.
I have compiled the decomposition structured sample based songs of my favorite IOS period (1994ish) taking pieces from Inside Agitator, Historical, Rules of the Game, and Distraction, and had them remastered by Andrew Weathers for an LP on Andy Ortmann’s Nihilist Records as a 12” vinyl release. Finally there is a new 40 minute Acousmatic composition slated to be issued on "Through Pain, Awareness" a split CD with Tam Quam Tabula Rasa on Luce Sia label in Switzerland.
As I love to edit video and collage moving materials so I continue to make music videos for other projects by commission including many for CHEER-ACCIDENT on the the soundoferror youtube site.
I am excited about my new experiential ambient project Twilight Furniture where I play with meditative states, entrancement, soothing introspection & repetition through electronic synthesis, kosmische, acoustic chamber, drone, minimalist compositions, ambient, experimental, post-classical & improvisational methods. I did a few performances since last year and a few more coming up as well as a few releases. This is the new first full length.
Thank you Andrew for the opportunity to share my process and musical output.
