http://thecitrusreport.com/story/sonny_kay_1449Sonny Kay
The LA-based artist and Art Director of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Productions sheds light on art, owning a record label, his boys The Mars Volta, and all this swine flu bullshit.
by Evan La Ruffa May 25, 2009
Very few people have quite as diverse a resume as Sonny Kay... lead vocalist, record label owner, art director, and up-and-coming digital collage artist, are all stops on his personal roadmap. When he's not creating the imagery for an upcoming album, he's probably meshing henna-tattooed hands, bird beaks, gorilla heads, and ice worlds to push us into the most surreal of digital habitats. His pieces are exactly that - living, breathing, tripped-out nether-places, silently inviting us to come along. His art is an unabashed testament to cultural juxtaposition - a jarring, yet friendly jab to our collective third eye. Before heading to Geneva, Switzerland for a DJ gig supporting The Joy Division, I was able to catch up with Sonny to find out more about his personal background, his artistic influences, and how the hell he conjures up these bizarre panoramas. —Evan La Ruffa
1) You're in LA these days, but where are you from originally?
I grew up in L.A., actually. I was born in London, and traveled around the world quite a bit for the first few years of my life. My Dad was a film director so we bounced around a lot - Barcelona, Johannesburg, back to England. I moved to L.A. when I was 7 and then we moved to Colorado when I was 15. I moved back to California as soon as I finished college - first Berkeley, then Oakland, then San Diego, and eventually L.A. A lot of places feel like "home".
2) You founded GSL (Gold Standard Laboratories) while at college, how the hell did you pull that off? What inspired you to own and run your own record label? Based on my college experience, I can't imagine being so productive!
Ha, well, college wasn't exactly productive for me in an academic sense. I got a lot done in terms of playing in bands, touring, "networking" with a fairly large amount of people, etc. But my school work, particularly art, really suffered. I squeezed by. I was totally preoccupied with music. I was the singer in bands (Savalas '90-'92, Angel Hair '93-'95, The VSS '95-'97), and I also booked and managed the campus rock club in Boulder which was operated, as far as I was concerned, very much in a punk/DIY persuasion. I'd booked punk shows for a few years beginning in 1990/'91 or so, and GSL really just grew out of that world. Bands I was in had done records with little labels here and there and the culture of the whole underground scene at the time made starting and distributing a label fairly easy, not to mention even a little glamorous, relatively speaking. There were labels like Gravity and Sympathy for the Record Industry that had virtual cults spring up around them, at least it seemed that way at the time. Those labels in particular were a huge inspiration on me. But GSL was essentially just a hobby until I got done with school a couple of years later, and moved to the Bay Area. In the early days there was no label to speak of - just me recruiting a few people to help stuff sleeves every now and then. It began as this kind of organic, experimental art project and in many way stayed true to that ideal, if you want to call it that, for 14 years. It fulfilled the contribution I felt like I wanted to make to the world of underground music, and satisfied what I suppose was my artistic drive at the time. But I spent so much time at the club or playing shows somewhere that my grades suffered and I came fairly close to not graduating. I did manage to do really well in a few elective courses that held my attention - anthropology, primate biology, that sort of thing. Stuff I still spend a lot of time dwelling on.
3) I hate to bring it up, but for those of us who spent time devouring the GSL roster, the end of the label was a sad thing. Que paso?
The label came to an end because, basically, we put out too many records and were in far too much debt to ever recover. Like I said, it was an art project. But when some of the bands started being genuinely successful, I think we missed the opportunity to redefine what it was, or could have been, about. Different decisions should have started taking place, but didn't. Eventually it just stopped being fun, but the numbers really made the decision to stop for us. It'd run its course. Looking back on it all now, there are plenty of things I would have done differently, but that's life.
4) In the past, you've done album art for Omar Rodriguez, your own band Year Future, Triclops! and more......how does that usually work? Does a band see something of yours and say " Hey, we need that for our record!"? Do you conceptualize collaboratively ever?
Every project works differently, and the relationship with every band or artist is unique. Year Future was my own band, I wrote the lyrics and the visuals were just a natural progression of the imagery I was trying to project. Nowadays, I create "sketches", rough sort of "doodle" type collages, and try to have 10 or 15 of them going at any one time, just trying to sort of flesh out new ideas that come to me. Sometimes, a band will bring me a specific idea and I will just try to create a visual representation of that for them. Other times, I'm able to pass on some of the recent sketches and something might click, so I'll spend some time finishing that idea or adapting it. The guys in RX Bandits saw a print of Menagerie and pretty much decided on the spot that they wanted to use it for their new album, "Mandala". So I created a whole layout around that cover image, sort of supporting the image as well as working-in elements to support the title. Omar's always been very open to my ideas and given me a lot of freedom to take things where I feel they should go. In a sense, I think sometimes the visuals help to solidify aspects of particular recordings for him, at least in a conceptual or narrative kind of sense. For example, I try and have working titles for all the pieces I show him. "Old Money" and "Megaritual" were in fact working titles of collages that were subsequently used as titles for albums. Sometimes I think we help focus one another, I don't know if he'd agree or not. He definitely helps me focus and sometimes uncover the essence of a particular piece.
5) You've been boys with The Mars Volta, more specifically Omar Rodriguez-Lopez for a while, how'd that relationship begin? How has it evolved?
We had a mutual friend who split his time between Denver and El Paso, and I met Omar while he was visiting this guy once, sometime in '94 I think. We'd bump into each other here and there over the years, The VSS were touring around the time At the Drive-In was starting to pick up momentum, '97 or so. I was running a record distribution company in Oakland at the end of the 90's called Bottlenekk. We distributed the De Facto "How Do You Dub?" 12" and Omar was impressed that this company that specialized in punk and hardcore records would be willing to get behind an instrumental dub band. So we really kind of bonded over a mutual love of dub reggae, not to mention East Bay punk of the early 90's. Next thing I knew, The Locust (whom I tour managed at the time, by default) were supporting At the Drive-In in Japan. I offered to release a De Facto album and things just sort of snowballed from there. Omar became a partner in GSL around that time. As with any long-term relationship, there's been plenty of ups and downs. We argue a lot but never really about what we do creatively. ... just everything else. We're very similar in many ways, and total opposites in others. It's been a long, slow process of learning what makes each other tick, punctuated by profoundly inspiring and fulfilling milestones along the way. We're pretty patient with one another nowadays. I feel very lucky to work so closely and prolifically with him. His motivation is contagious.
6) What's your role with ORLP?
My official capacity at RLP is art director - I create album and CD packaging, visual web content, and help out where it's needed in terms of production management, that sort of thing. I work in other capacities depending on the project - Omar is up to all sorts of stuff these days. I created title cards for one of his as yet unreleased film projects and will hopefully be doing more of that in the future. I do the layout for the Volta albums utilizing the original art created for them by Jeff Jordan. I also collaborate with Cedric on a lot of the merchandise designs, something that's been the routine, if you want to call it that, from the very beginning of The Mars Volta. Cedric very much takes the lead with that stuff, so it's interesting sort of switching of gears for me.
7) Nice nice. Now earlier you had a show at Han Cholo Gallery in Echo Park, CA, how'd it go? Would you do anything differently in the future?
The Han Cholo show went great. It was a good start, considering I didn't really know what I was doing. In the future, I'd prefer to use the space available a little more efficiently. We had a very short amount of time to hang the show and work out any logistical problems, so we wound up using existing nails that we knew were symmetrical for the really big pieces. A lot of them were hung a little too high up for most people. Han Cholo, which has since moved out of that location, is a jewelry store by day, and contending with the glass cases did make things a little cluttered. But overall it was great. A lot of friends turned up for the opening which was amazing.
8) How do you create these bizarre universes man!? Sometimes the various aspects of your collages are so disparate! What's the process of forming these 'weirdscapes' as I affectionately refer to them?
Sometimes I start out with an image or an idea in mind, but more often than not, I let the available materials dictate the path a composition might follow. I'm constantly collecting pictures which I file away into categories so I can find them again easily. If I've stumbled across a particularly large, useful image of say, a barren landscape, then I will try and work with that and see what other images I have saved that will work within it. The quality of the resolution of the image is of supreme importance - in other words, I don't get attached to the idea of using elements that might be visually stunning or "perfect" if they're simply too small and will compromise the effect by getting too pixelated, or blurry. So, the collage aspect in some sense dictates itself. I generally have a theme in mind, but I often let the elements fall into place as randomly as possible. The random aspect creates wonderful associations that a viewer may then read into, but would have never been possible had I actually sat and thought about exactly what 2 elements to marry. A really powerful determining factor in bringing elements together is the light source in any given image. If an element works particularly well within a certain background - that is, if the relationship of one piece to another is believable based on the light sources - then I take that as a sign of something being "meant to be", and develop it from there. I usually try and find a few really powerful, convincing elements where the light just seems to "work" - from there, everything else just kind of falls into place. Some of them take a really long time to "click". Of course, occasionally I do set out to create a specific image, and I search for elements to make that possible. But I find the accidental stuff a lot more intriguing and entertaining.
9) Would you say you're more concerned with conveying an aesthetic, or delivering a certain message in your work?
That's hard to say. The message of each piece is important to me, but at the same time, I realize that it may well be disguised, if not completely absent, to a viewer. I suppose the aesthetic is sort of a by-product. I enjoy the idea of trying to trick peoples' perception, but I enjoy challenging their beliefs more.
10) Do you still paint at all?
I don't paint. I own paints, and from time to time I might get the itch to break them out and attempt something, but I'm easily discouraged. It's been nearly 2 years since I last tried it. I'd like to think it's something I'll eventually get around to doing with any degree of confidence.
11) I might be instigating here a bit, but would you be willing to elaborate on your intentions as far as your recent piece, "Trippin" which you featured at Echo Park? You did exhibit it at echo, right?
You're gonna lure me up onto my soapbox! Yes, I showed "Trippin" at Han Cholo. I was surprised by how little attention it got. Not that I included it to stir anything up, it's just that I really anticipated some negative fallout from it and almost didn't include it for that reason. It's a tongue-in-cheek suggestion of a page of blotter paper, complete with phony perforations. What it means to me is this: Obama, Yes We Can, Yes We Did, all of this is smoke and mirrors. Anyone who believes "change" is inherent to the presence of this man - or anyone, for that matter - in the White House is tripping. Tripping balls as everyone seems so fond of saying. High on their own misperceptions, hallucinating something they want very badly to believe in but are too scared as a species of their own reflections to see the process of making it real through to actualization. So they're settling for the McVersion given to them by corporations and they have no idea what they're in for. I think a lot of people agree with me but it's not a "politically correct" opinion, so it essentially doesn't exist, it's not open for discussion. People are so fearful of the true nature of reality they spend their lives subconsciously denying it out of existence with CNN, and facebook, and presidents. Every aspect of our lives and culture is manipulated, and nothing about how we live in the "first world" is real or connected to the planet we occupy, least of all the Obama administration, which is nothing more than the same old U.S. Government in blackface. That image is Obama, but it could just as easily have been the Pope, or the Lakers, or Miley Cyrus.
12) Historically, who are your favorite artists? Anyone you're especially moved by or fond of?
In terms of classical artists, I've always had a soft spot for Hieronymus Bosch, Dali, sort of the "standards" of the surreal and disturbing. I consider Alex Grey part of that upper echelon as well. As far as direct influences on the kind of work I do, there's no minimizing the impact of people like Storm Thorgerson (during and after Hipgnosis), Winston Smith, Peter Saville, Gee Vaucher. To me, these people are like the Supreme Court of record design. The WW2-era collagist John Heartfield was a definite inspiration. Jeff Jordan never ceases to impress me.
13) What time of day, or what conditions do you work under? Tunes while you work? I often find that creative people feel more apt at different points in the day or with certain stimuli.....
These days, rather than at home I'm working in the RLP office, which is basically a part of the Sargent House office in Echo Park. It makes me more productive and helps me budget my time a little more realistically, not to mention I think it's a lot healthier for my state of mind to be around other people. Having said that, I find I'm far more inspired late at night, and tend to get most of my intensive, concentration-heavy work done then, at home. I'm not really sure why that is but I think the silence of the city around me is compelling, and I find it reassuring to know most other people are asleep. If I'm working at home, I'll usually run youtube videos on my spare monitor. I watch or listen to a lot of lectures by people like Terence McKenna, things to do with spirituality, the occult, shamanism, that sort of thing. When I'm working at the office I tend to go with itunes radio, a lot of dubstep and hip hop. It's good to kinda of zone out on that stuff, it gets me in the right headspace.
14) The coolest place you've ever traveled to and why?
I'd probably have to go with Japan, it's never anything less than total sensory overload. I think it's the most evolved example of western civilization, although it's not without its faults. I'm fascinated by the culture and the tradition and the endless attention to aesthetic. Not to mention, I've had some of the best times of my life there and I just associate it with feeling great.
15) Any guilty pleasures?
English comedies. My favorites are The League of Gentleman, Ali G, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and more recently The Mighty Boosh and Nathan Barley. Even the more mainstream stuff like Extras. They're all genius. English comedies and Jeopardy!, my 2 TV vices. I don't actually watch much TV, I don't have cable. My sister records Jeopardy! and we'll sit and watch 6 or 8 episodes in a row, that'll fix me for a few weeks.
16) Any artists, bands, writers you've been into lately that our readers should know about?
As far as artists go, it seems like every week I discover someone else who blows my mind. I spend a good amount of time on ffffound!.com and it's scary how much amazing work shows up on there. My current favorite is Josh Keyes, his paintings are really something special. I feel a lot of connection to his work. Culturally-speaking, I think Ian Svenonius can do no wrong. I'm disappointed I'm missing his new band play in L.A. this weekend. Health are my favorite band in Los Angeles, but they're hardly a secret anymore. Everyone should read the book The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby.
17) Remember that swine flu shit? Seems like a few years ago now, did you buy masks and gallons of purel or what?
Don't even get me started. I was really impressed by what Omar had to say about it on the NME site this week - it's cultural terrorism against Mexico. As is all the hype about drug cartels and bodies piling up. I've been to Mexico three times this year, border cities included. This is the U.S. trying to turn world opinion against Mexico and destroy its economy by ruining tourism. They want Mexico on its knees so it has no choice but to accept the "Amero" and be turned into a sweatshop once and for all.
18) What's up next for Sonny Kay? Where can people procure your work?
Well, I've been involved in a project for the past year or so called Optional Body. We've done some recording but haven't played out yet, and I'm not really sure whether we ever will or not. I've also been fronting a for-charity hardcore covers band (we only play the Dischord compilation "Flex Your Head", in its entirety) for about a year as well, but my last show with them is at the end of this month. Not sure really what the future holds for me and playing/performing. I'm more focused on art these days, for the time being anyway. But who knows........I'm going outta town tomorrow morning (5/20) for a week - got invited to DJ some crazy Factory/Joy Division retro thing by my buddy in Geneva! Fleshing it out with a detour through Paris, although I just found out Thursday and Friday are holidays in France. Looks like I'll never make it to the Louvre! I (also) may be part of a group show here in L.A. in July at a place called Showcave with some local people like Owleyes and Dan Danger. If not then, sooner or later. The RX Bandits "Mandala" album comes out in July and we're going to do an "RX" edition of Menagerie prints for mailorder to coincide with that. I'm in the process of getting a bunch of prints done of work from the past couple of years. Hopefully there'll be a functioning shopping cart up shortly, we're almost there. I'm very grateful for all the interest there's been lately in prints, it's really exciting.
Check it out..........www.sonnykay.com ,
www.rodriguezlopezproductions.comTo purchase Sonny's work, contact
[email protected] - Sargent House
http://sargenthouse.com/ 
