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Change The Station.
A ZZIV Exclusive Zim Zum interview by Babs
Posted: July 16, 2009

You have lived your childhood in the 70ies; clearly, many of the musicians that you love are from the late 60ies or 70ies (David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd), not to mention TPCS also played a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s classic “For what it’s worth”, that was first recorded in 1967. Keeping those years as reference, do you think that, at that time, playing a kind of music that we could call experimental or simply not merely commercial was easier than today?
Yes. I have a true respect and love for the music I grew up listening to. It was pure and genuine and it had something to say where as today's top "artists" project themselves as above the listener in every way. It's all about how much money they make, how many albums they can sell, what they are wearing, what cars they are driving, who they are dating, what the inside of their house looks like but nothing is about the music. When the music sales fall off they try acting. When the acting falls off they release a "fragrance"
It's so stupid that I for one welcome the separation it causes, the separation between that kind of "performer" and real artists, between those performers and that sect of consumer that supports mind numbing idiocy and true artists and those that reject conformity. If you can’t find the music you are looking for at one of the major chain stores, don't ask them to order it, just don't shop there. Don't believe what the major distributors of online music downloads tell you as it's the same as corporate controlled radio. 99% of those places are already doing the same thing as the old record label industry did. It's all about fleecing the public by selling a product and that product has nothing to do with music, or art. Buy the music directly from the artist whenever possible and when that isn't possible buy from the outlets that they suggest.
Do you think that the audience was more open minded to experimentation?
I think they understood what art was.
For your explicit admission, your writing is clearly cinematic, and honestly, I can feel a cinematic influence on Pleistoscene’s music too, though it’s an instrumental project... in the past you also played on some movies’ soundtracks (“Private parts”, “Dead man on campus”, “A walk on the moon”)... is there a movie or a movie director that you feel particularly close to your music or that you would simply like to write a soundtrack for?
From as far back as I can remember I was someone who spent a lot of time in my own head. Conversations with myself lead to music, music outside my head lead to music inside my head. There is a soundtrack playing in my head and I simply try to get as much of it out as I can. I'm sound tracking something. I don't know if I've figured out what it is yet.
On TPCS myspace profile there’s a blog titled “silence = death”, and your opinion about the freedom of speech, just like any other kind of freedom, is definitely clear... during your whole musical career has censorship ever tried to get control over you and what you were doing?
It's always been there. But being a musician doesn't mean I am subject to being censored more than anyone else or censorship is any less personal when it's put upon my art. I am one person but there are millions, every single second of every single day, that are censored.
No one is free.
Do you think that censorship still has an explicit control over music and art in general? To me sometimes it feels like nowadays censorship is a kind of sneaky mental control, more disguised than in the past and for this reason, maybe, more dangerous.
These days are more dangerous than ever but not because of what you are being shown, but because of what you are not being shown. Censorship is so far beyond a word or a combination of words. What you look like is censored. Where you come from is censored. What you believe is censored. The truth is censored.
You censor yourself when you conform.
In “The ignorance”, Milan Kundera says: “If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time ‘regardless whether we want to hear it.’ Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forward, and any resistance is hopeless”. What’s your opinion about it?
There are very few, if any commercial radio stations that are not corporately controlled. It's one big commercial.
Change the station.
As musician, how do you approach technology? Do you think that technology only turned music into noise, acoustic over stimulation and interferences?
Technology has taken the emotion and power out of music. It's a crutch and has sp waned "performers" that have watered everything down so much that the general public thinks that is all there is and it should be free. Those shit performers should be free, but of course they charge more than anyone for what they sell while true artists have to give music away to be heard. Music is over produced, over edited, super manipulated, auto tuned product. If you hear anything that resembles individual character, emotion or human inaccuracy then it needs to be "fixed"
I feel that real bands should do everything themselves. Don't let anyone outside the band into the process if they don't get exactly what you are going for. Don't be fooled by the people who have worked with more famous people bullshit as they are only there to fleece the money you already owe someone else.
No one knows your music better than you. Put out what you feel best represents how you feel and don't back down.

I know you started playing the guitar when you were 13, but when did you first start writing songs lyrics? Do you still remember the first song you have ever wrote?
Writing music was almost instantaneous to my picking up a guitar for the first time. I can remember the first time I ever picked up a guitar and what the guitar was and I can also remember the first sounds that came from that guitar. I have all of the recordings I have ever made. It's always been the same for me. I would record into a pocket recorder. Hours and hours and hours of ideas. When I immediately started doing the same things I do to this day. Putting as many of the sounds in my head onto a pseudo physical format.
Words were always there as I have never written words as something to work within a melody (lyrics) but rather emotions that I simply felt needed to be expressed with a specific musical accompaniment.
Do you ever listen to classical music? Who’s your favorite composer?
Yes. Beethoven.
Would you ever let another band to play a cover of one of your songs?
It depends on the band.
If the aliens kidnapped you tomorrow, how would you describe them the world we live in?
Though with each day it gets harder to see or feel, there are still and always will be good people doing great things.
You are a vegetarian and you look very involved in everything that concerns animal rights or ecological problems... we live in a planet that’s literally suffocating because of overcrowding, not to mention the glaciers are tragically melting and millions of animal species are literally fading away... do you believe that the mankind, that is killing this planet destroying ecosystems and hopes, can find a remedy for all this?
The remedy already exists but until big business/Governments can find a way to profit from repairing the ecosystem life in this planet will continue to die.
I have been a vegetarian for more than 20 years. When I became a vegetarian the general consensus was that I (and every other vegetarian) would die due lack of proteins/nutrients, etc. 20 years later I am in the best shape of my life and completely aware of what it is that I choose to put into my body.
There is a better way and I am proof as are all of the people that choose the road that isn't easy but it is right.
What’s your idea of the Universe? There’s a theory that says that our universe is just an infinitesimal atomic part of a blade of grass... that would mean there are billions of different solar systems, and that everything around us teems with life... what’s your opinion about it?
I hope one of them reaches out to save us...
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Zim Zum for taking the time to answer Babs' questions. Thank you to Babs for conducting this interview with Zim Zum for ZZIV!
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