Baltimore City Paper: Noise: Q&A: White Suns On Brooklyn, Noise ...

Given the sulfuric dissonance, clamor, and strife present in White Suns' noise-punk tumult, it's hardly shocking that the Brooklyn trio count Sightings among their favorite bands. Performing and recording together, Kevin Barry, Rick Visser, and Dana Matthiessen blaze with a gunfire-stipled, sunspot intensity that befits their handle and recalls, at times, that acerbic outfit. (To sample the face-melt of "Don Mattingly," "Exposible Income," and other tracks, visit the White Suns' last.fm page .) And while the band have yet to record a full-length record--self-released 2008 debut The First EP and last summer's split with Shearing Pinx (on Isolated Now Waves) is all they have available so far--they maintain a strong touring schedule and appear on the bill at Saturday's MT6 Fest. In a later October e-mail interview, Barry, Visser, and Matthiessen discussed Brooklyn's experimental bent, the meanings of their song titles, baseball, side projects, and the defection of an early member who aspired to become Smokey the Bear.

City Paper: How and when did White Suns form?
Kevin Barry: A vestigial "White Suns" formed in 2004, in the rural Connecticut town we grew up in, when it became brutally clear that for us to be have any kind of emotional stability, we had to be making this type of music. Dana and I began with another human named Derek on electronics, but after a handful of disappointing shows, he fled to Yakima, Washington, and was replaced by Rick.

Dana Matthiessen: Derek's private dream of impersonating Smokey the Bear trumped being in a rock band. I also want to add that Kevin and I started playing music while I was in high school. The catalyst was my booking a set, without a band, at a benefit concert for a local church. I had wanted to come up with something that would suitably scathe the Christian ears in the audience, and I knew Kevin was in some way a fellow fan of noisy music. In retrospect, it was a dumb premise. I had a piece of a guard rail that I was using for percussion; I miss it sometimes. Anyway, Kevin and I continued collaborating whenever he was in town. As for Rick, he and I had been fucking around in our garages with one failed project or another for a long while before he entered the band. With Derek gone, asking him to join was a no-brainer.

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