Tim Koh Discusses His Debut Solo Album on O Genesis, Growing Up in L.A., Working With Ariel Pink, and More

Tim Koh has long been a significant figure here at WMF, though certainly not because of any self-promotion on his part. On the contrary – and despite an illustrious track record that includes work with Ariel Pink, John Wiese, Gang Gang Dance, Kirin J Callinan, Prince Rama, and others – Tim Koh’s important and long-standing presence in the experimental music scene has been an unassuming one, characterized by a level of modesty rarely encountered in the performing arts.  

Consequently, news of a 2020 debut Tim Koh solo album was as surprising as it was welcome. “Fall Into Your Dream” is the first single from Tim’s forthcoming album (due for September release via O Genesis), and deservedly commands a place atop our list of favorite releases this year. That track, in addition to the other material we’ve heard from the upcoming LP, easily make this one of the most-anticipated albums of the year here at WMF, and we were eager to touch base to learn more about this unprecedented album. Tim graciously spoke with us not only about his solo album, but also his inspirations, past collaborations, involvement with Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, and more. It is a distinct honor and pleasure to share our conversation with you here. The new and exclusive photos included here are taken by Douglas Lee, who also did the and illustrations for classic Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti album Before Today.

Bobby Weirdo: It’s great talking to you over the phone like this. It’s been nice staying in touch with people, and talking music with artists like you remotely during the pandemic. Wayne Coyne was somebody else I connected with recently. You must have spent some time with him at some point when Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti was on tour with Flaming Lips, right?

Tim Koh: We hung a bit  – mostly with Wayne [Coyne], Steven [Drozd], Kliph [Scurlock] and the crew. We didn’t hang out a lot, but I think The Flaming Lips really love Ariel and it was cool to get to know those guys, they’re great. Steven would play with us on “Round and Round” sometimes, and Wayne made our video for “Round and Round”. I was not so familiar with their music prior. I feel like we learned a lot, playing those kind of venues and watching their spectacle of a show, [which is] insane. They’re really good guys.

BW: What is it that you learned? Was it adding something about the live component to your own shows?

TK: I don’t know about the other guys, but I wasn’t so familiar with the Flaming Lips music. I hadn’t really listened to them before and I didn’t know about their live show. But after watching them every night, I realized they were really good at making these huge places small. It was almost like the music didn’t matter. There was all this other stuff – the ball that [Wayne] is in, the laser hands, the confetti, etc.. and it was really loud. It was such a presentation, and I loved that. I had not seen a live show like that before. I found that with Pulp too when we played with them. It was extremely loud, and I realized that if you had [the music] really loud, trembling your body with some flashy lights the music didn’t matter in a way because it’s not about the music anymore. 

BW: The last time I saw you was at HM157 in L.A., when Ariel Pink and Mitchell Brown were playing with Sensations’ Fix. 

TK: Right – I just happened to be visiting L.A. when that happened. That was really special. I didn’t know that place existed. 

BW: You mention that you were visiting L.A., but you’re from here originally. What part of the city did you grow up in?

TK: I was born in Culver City. I grew up in different parts of south L.A. County, cities like Bell, South Gate, Downey, twenty minutes south of Downtown L.A. So I was there for junior high & high school, but I hung out in Downtown and Hollywood everyday. I also grew up being in K-Town most of my life since I was little. My mom worked at the Bonaventure Hotel when I was young and my dad worked doing produce at Grand Central Market, so as I child I would take the bus with my mom and while she worked I just hung out in the hotel, and all around downtown and K-Town. I left L.A. when I was almost forty because I got married to a Dutch woman named Iekeliene and she lived in Amsterdam, so I moved there with her, but I have lived in L.A. my whole life. 

Tim Koh in Berlin, 2020. Credit: Douglas Lee

BW: Back when you were taking the bus and exploring Hollywood, was that around the hair metal era?

TK: This was earlier for me  – early 80’s. I was super young, like elementary school. I was really into rap because of KDAY and later got into stuff that I’d hear on KNAC, metal and rock stuff. I was obsessed with my little boombox and radio. The hair metal thing wasn’t apparent to me until later in high school. 

I remember going with some friends from school to Gazarri’s – a nightclub in Hollywood. My friends had a band in high school [that] played [there], and I tagged along a few times. I was underage then but was able to get in.  There was Gazarri’s, The Troubadour, The Coconut Teaszer, Club Lingerie… places like that. I never liked it but I found it amusing. I used to go to the 18+ clubs like Peanuts and A Club with No Name on Highland a lot. There was a lot of pay-to-play type of stuff going on then. I would hang out on Melrose, at Rene’s. They had records and skateboards and I was pretty into skateboarding. I worked at Middle Earth Records in Downey at that time. I think it was one of the best record stores in L.A.

BW: Were you yourself playing music at that time?

TK: I was never in a band. I was playing guitar a little bit, but not much. When I was really little, I had a fucked up guitar with just one string. It was my mom’s acoustic and I threw it a lot and broke it so I was down to just the one string. I would listen to the radio and play all the lines of the song just on the one string, so it was kind of a pre-cursor to playing the bass. 

My first instrument was actually a drum set my parents got me when they went to Vegas. It was a Muppets drum set. I didn’t really start playing guitar until 10th grade. A friend of mine was in a band, and he taught me to play guitar. That was my main instrument, and I was trying to be a guitar player. 

I always wanted to play the bass, though. The first time I played bass on something was for the pro skater Ray Barbee who is a friend of mine and he is a great guitar player. He was recording a song for a video part and I got to do the bass. I remember feeling so comfortable on the bass, [and] I slowly started to transition from guitar to bass after that moment. 

Tim Koh in Berlin, 2020. Credit: Douglas Lee

BW: So by the time of college, did you consider yourself a bass player?

TK: Not really – I was still just kind of playing guitar but just at home the same way I was when I was little, just listening to the radio and playing along to stuff. I never really considered myself a musician or that that would be my profession. I had no interest to play in a band then because I thought it was too normative and was not interested in dominant culture – I always aligned myself with the subculture. I was very more into the avant-garde and I made noise music as a way to stand outside of culture. It was not considered “music” at the time, and I liked that it was a way to make a statement against any popular modality.

I was more interested in art, and viewed myself as an artist. I didn’t play in a band until I was twenty-nine because I was too shy. Art was more solitary and was something I could do alone. It didn’t require being in front of an audience, so I focused on that more as a possible means to maybe have a career in some creative field and communicate in a more subversive way. 

Tim Koh in Berlin, 2020. Credit: Douglas Lee

BW: You’ve mentioned to me that you were too shy to play live shows during your earlier days of playing music. How so?

TK: I was too shy to play live and to be around people in general, but at home I was playing a lot, trying to be really good at my instrument…not to be some kind of virtuoso but more so I could play along better to the stuff I was listening to. My girlfriend Jennifer had a 71’ SG and she gave it to me. I was secretly OK, but no one really knew my skills as a musician – I kept it pretty under wraps. 

It wasn’t until the first time we went to Europe, touring with Ariel, [and] I didn’t know if I should write “artist” or “musician” on my visa for my occupation. I think Ariel said, “Just write musician,” and at that point I thought, “Oh, OK. I guess I’m a musician!” I still don’t consider myself one, in a way. I don’t read music; I don’t know much theory. I just have good muscle memory, and learn it all by ear. In a way, that’s how I’m able to learn Ariel’s music. Especially on the bass, it’s almost like one long solo that I just have to memorize. The parts don’t repeat the way they do in other bands’ songs. It’s so challenging, but I like that and I have a strong work ethic, so I spent many hours a day learning his stuff.

BW: During the Tim’s Twitter Listening Party for Before Today, you wrote that the bass part for those sessions were like another voice singing. 

TK: Sort of. [The bass] was so melodic that I almost thought of it as another voice. I see it as lead bass, or singing. Ariel’s bass playing is unlike any other bass player’s I know. He is my favorite and biggest inspiration on the bass guitar. 

BW: You were a graphic design major at CalArts, right? 

TK: I was in the Art program (photo) initially. I wanted to study with Allen Sekula, and then I switched to graphic design because I didn’t like the program. So I was technically in Design, and that’s how I was trained, but I still always roamed around the Art classes, and was pretty involved with Fine Art. I also knew Morton Subotnick was teaching there and tried to get into some of his classes, but it was only for masters students. I got take a few classes but got kicked out eventually. 

Most of my friends who I hung out with were in the art world, so I gravitated to that a bit more, but I liked the anonymity of graphic design and its way of communicating to the world. It was more direct and less exclusive, less institutionalized, more for the masses. I thought it was a better way to be subversive with communicating to the world, and no one would ever know what little secret things I’d put into the designs.

BW: You were there at the same time as Ariel and John Maus, among others. Did it feel like there was something special going on at CalArts at the time, or did you just think of it as school?

TK: CalArts felt like a special place, I’m glad I went there. I liked the conceptual aspect of the school, whereas ArtCenter felt more like they’re just getting you ready for the corporate workplace. John Maus was there, but I didn’t really know him until later. He was living with Ariel in Los Feliz. I also loved John’s music so much then. He gave me a CD-r and it also blew me away. 

I didn’t really know Ariel until after CalArts, [but] I saw him around in my early classes and in the hallways. I recognized him from when I worked at Aron’s Records. He was one of the main customers who would come in a lot and was recognizable. Not so many people bought the kind of stuff that he was buying, like Italian prog and kraut stuff, and I helped him a few times, so he stood out to me. Ariel was in Art, but I didn’t really know what he did. Then I saw one of his shows in a gallery one time. It was a video, and you could hear his music. I remember tripping out because I’d never really heard anything like that. That’s when I knew he was quite immersed in music, and I saw Bianca a few times, a band he had at CalArts.

BW: So what was going in the years between this CalArts era, and you being a professional musician at twenty-nine?

TK: I was working as a designer/illustrator. I did some work for Semiotext(e) with Chris Kraus and Sylvere Lotringer. I worked at my friend’s motion graphics company and did a lot of design and illustration for television. I worked with Mike Mills and Roman Coppola at The Directors Bureau doing illustrations and design, and some sound design stuff for television occasionally. 

When I got to CalArts, I got pretty into more experimental music. I was involved with really extreme, harsh noise music scene with John Wiese, who was in my class. I wasn’t interested in being in a band or that kind of dominant music culture. I was more interested in reacting against it. So that was my focus in music, and I wasn’t interested in being in a band unless it was with my friends. I tried out for few bands here and there in L.A., but it felt kind of weird. I didn’t like the music [they played] that much. I just thought it would be cool to see what it would be like [to be in a band]. I played a lot doing noise gigs but also grew tired of performing it live because I easily get bored and wanted to get back to playing my guitar and bass. 

I didn’t play in a band until I met Farmer Dave [Scher]. I’d seen Jimi Hey at Amoeba because I was into collecting records, and he knew I was friends with Ariel. I remember Jimi mentioned that I’d like an Armand Schaubroeck record and recommended it to me. Ariel had introduced me to Armand Schaubroeck when we first started hanging out. Jimi and I first started talking at Amoeba because of that record. 

I met Ariel through Eddie Ruscha, who I hung out a lot with. I saw All Night Radio and it was just the two of them, [though] I think Ariel was actually the bass player before I got the gig. I’m not sure why he didn’t [keep doing] it, but I think [Farmer Dave] said Ariel’s music was too special, and that he needed to do his own thing. 

I thought it would be much better with a bass player, and so I [told] Jimi one day at The Troubadour [that] if they ever needed a bass player, I’d be up for trying. I ended up playing in All Night Radio, and it was pretty great live for the brief moment it existed. We did one tour, and then it ended. That was when I switched to playing bass more, and have continued to do so. Right after All Night Radio ended, I started playing guitar with Ariel. I was a fan of his music and we were friends. I thought if I could ever be in a band, it would be playing his music. 

BW: You mentioned Eddie Ruscha. Where did you meet him?

TK: I met Eddie at Aron’s Records; he was a frequent customer. We had a mutual friend who said we should meet because we would get along. We did, and then we hung out like every day. He’s the one that introduced me to Ariel at Dub Club. Ariel gave me a House Arrest CD that night and we started hanging a lot after that. 

Tim Koh in Berlin, 2020. Credit: Douglas Lee

BW: Your debut album is coming out in September on O Genesis. In addition to the first official single, “Fall Into Your Dream”, I’ve heard – and absolutely love – your recent tracks “The Stomach” and “DNA Spray”. Will those now be officially released, and part of this album? How did the album’s material come together?

TK: Yeah – those are on there. I had put those on my Soundcloud for a short moment because I had to get some gigs, and promoters needed to hear some music. I never really imagined doing [this] alone. I don’t like playing alone, and I’ve never written much of my own music in this modality because I felt satisfied just playing with Ariel. If I ever did make my own music, then it was usually quite noise/experimentally driven.

When I moved to Amsterdam, I was broke. I thought I could just play [music] around a bit, [but that] didn’t work. I got divorced from Iekeliene, my wife at the time. I went back home to L.A. and crashed around for a long time and stayed with Jack Name for many months and he helped me get back on my feet.  Then I did a tour with Chris Cohen in Europe that ended in Amsterdam. I met a girl who offered me a cheap place to live, and I tried to stay [in Amsterdam] one last time. 

I had just enough money to last a month, and had written a couple song sketches just for fun with my roommate Carlijn [Fransen]. Then, a couple weeks before I was about to run out of money, Mac Demarco asked me to open some of his shows in Europe. So I spent a week or two writing some songs really fast, and did the shows, which were huge. I didn’t even know the lyrics at the first show in Copenhagen, nor could I play them on the instrument.

Then, [after] I did the shows, I thought that was it. I didn’t plan on doing them again, but more people kept asking me to play. I did some tours with Cate Le Bon, Deerhunter, HOMESHAKE, Kero Kero Bonito, and a handful of others. I had about thirty-five minutes worth of music, and I did that [live] for about a year. 

Then I decided to make a record, but got my laptop stolen while I was on tour with Ariel. I bought another laptop and wrote more songs because I couldn’t remember the other ones, [and then] that laptop was stolen. I decided to give up and get a job, but recently I had some troubles with some things in my personal life and I spent that time making music and writing a bunch of songs just to get out of thinking about my situation. I never imagined doing this – I’m not a singer and don’t see myself as a front man. I think I do well supporting [and] playing with other people, but I’m enjoying [this] at the moment. I’ve learned a lot being in the band with Ariel, and [I’ve been] applying that to my own thing. 

BW: Considering tracks like “Fall Into Your Dream”, “The Stomach”, and “DNA Spray”, I think what is so exciting about them is that they capture the entire spectrum of the music you’ve been involved with. There’s the experimental/noise side of your history with John Wiese and others, represented in past work on Frankenstein and Dracula Girls Tokyo Headlock, for instance. But now there’s also the pop side of what you do represented as well with these new songs. My feeling about this new music is that the experimental world makes an appearance, but in subtle ways. So it’s has the spirit of pop, but with left turns all over the place that make it special.

TK:I hope so, because a lot of the stuff I do is not like this. I like making music that annoys people or maybe they’ll just hate, but I thought I’d give it a try as an exercise of sorts. There’s so much music out these days, but I’m not so interested in what’s going on at the moment in dominant culture. I find it disgusting to be honest. I think my songs are not so complicated or weird, but I do think it’s not like the things I hear so much right now. 

I do like throwing some kind of weird sound in there just to try and fuck it up and add to the little narrative I have created. My friends helped me write the lyrics and I wanted a kind of Pet Sounds break up kind of thing. I think people think the songs are about me and my personal life, but they are not autobiographical  – it’s fake. It’s just a tool to draw them in to listening to my music because everyone relates things to the self and love etc.,  and attach it to their personal emotions. So its just a tool to keep them listening rather than skipping to the next channel. 

Tim Koh in Berlin, 2020. Credit: Douglas Lee

BW: I still get messages from people, asking about your health. How are you feeling?

TK: After I got sick, I was pretty careful about not getting sick again, because that was scary. I still had a lot of complications, and the care in the Netherlands was so bad that it made my condition worse. I was struggling for the last year and a half, but recently, it started getting better. Now I spend a lot of time being scared, and any time I have a little pain, I think I might die. It affected a lot of things, like relationships and how I’ve lived. 

In the last month, it’s gotten kind of bad again, so I need to take care of that. But at the moment, I think it’s manageable. I’m on a lot of meds. It’s something people probably think is fine, because I’m doing all this stuff, and am not so public about my personal life, but it’s a struggle. I’m grateful so many people reached out, because I had spent so many years completely alone, not talking to anyone. 

Also, I’m far away from my friends and family. I lost contact with most people and fell into a depression, constantly missing home. L.A. is so expensive now because of all the New Yorkers who moved there, and I got kind of pushed out because I could not afford it anymore. I was shocked that so many people reached out. I’m very grateful for that, and it really helped me. 

BW: Do those feelings connected to precarious health and mortality influence not only your life, but also your work? I wonder if you’re not living more in the present because of this experience.  

TK: Yeah, in a way. But there are moments where I can’t really do anything, because I can’t work if I’m in pain, not feeling well, or depressed. A lot of people get off on that and feel creative, but I have to feel happy [to make music]. People often say my music sounds happy or sounds very “California sunny” – whatever that means. I don’t intentionally do that; it just comes out that way. There’s enough depressing shit out there – [we] don’t need more.

 The doctor told me I only had a few hours to live, but I did live. When something like that happens, a sense of mortality lingers in the back of my mind and hovers over me. So I do try to live in the present tense more than before, just in case. 

BW: Is “The Stomach” a direct reference to your health challenges and this experience you’re describing?

TK: In a way. Of course it’s a reference to that, but the song’s not about that. After I’d spent all that time alone, I met someone, and was seeing her for about a year. It was quite serious to me, but we broke up. When we were together, I was not feeling well with my health, so that was an issue. My friend has a project called The Stomach, and I invited him to play with me at the last show [of my tour]. 

I went home, was jamming around, and started writing that song. I think I just had the “stomach” part [at first], and I wrote the lyrics around that. I started with the bass line. It wasn’t intentional, because when I write lyrics, I don’t always know what I’m going to talk about. I had planned a little bit – I thought maybe I’d have some reference to food and the body, I don’t know... but it came more of out of my split with my partner, I guess. 

BW: Jorge Elbrecht mixed “Fall Into Your Dream”. Did he mix any of the album’s other tracks?

TK: He’s mixed all of it so far. Maybe there will be one that he won’t [mix], but he’s been helping me a lot. I don’t talk to many people, but I talk to Jorge a lot. We are close friends. I like to send my stuff around when I’m writing it and see how people react, so we send each other music. If I’m writing stuff, I’ll send it to him in a rough state, he’ll give me comments, and I do the same for him. He’s working on a record at the moment too that is so good. I can’t wait for his album to come out. 

BW: So you recorded these tracks at home in the Netherlands, and Jorge mixed it.

TK: I did it all at home in my room in Amsterdam, and Jorge helped mix, and helped with writing some parts. My close friend Abel [Nabengast] – who owns Redlight Records – and I did the lyrics together. And Carline Fransen wrote some lyrics too. I like to collaborate, am open to what people suggest, and I’ll use it even if I don’t totally like it. 

BW: You engineered the Prince Rama album Top Ten Hits of the End of the World, and I was wondering what those sessions were like, and how that came together.

TK: I played with them. I met them at All Tomorrow’s Parties and really liked their music. Around 2010 they posted that they were looking for a bass player, so I applied online and got it. We did a tour and became really close, [and] they asked me to help them with their record. When Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti did Mature Themes, we built our own studio downtown called Trion, so we recorded [the Prince Rama album] there. 
It was hard. I had a certain idea of how I thought it should sound, and I think they were attached to their demo. It was a weird time, and they ended up leaving and mixing it with Scott Colburn. So in the end, it’s not how I wanted it to sound, but I’m still close to them. I play on Taraka’s new record that I’m really proud of, and we collaborate a lot. I love PR, and Taraka is one of my besties. 

BW: Your album will be coming out on O Genesis, which is the label of Tim Burgess. How did you meet him originally? Was that while you were touring with Ariel’s band?

TK: I sort of met him in the 90s at Three Clubs, because I used to go there a lot, but I don’t think he’d remember that. But yeah – I met him on the last tour with Ariel. Then I sent my music to him. I didn’t ask for him to put it out. I just wanted for him to hear it, but he wrote back and said he’d put it out. He’s such a sweet guy. 

BW: You live in Berlin right now. Planning is difficult and tentative because of the current pandemic, of course, but do you think you will you be doing live shows with this material?

TK: I make my money playing live, [but] I have no idea. I had touring planned, but now none of that is going on. I do have one show in September in Amsterdam, but other than that, nothing else is booked. Everything is up in the air at the moment. If I do get to play, yes, I’ll be doing this stuff if I am in the mood for it. My last show in London was a straight up noise show and I don’t think people were expecting that, but I don’t really care what people expect from me. I like to just do what I feel. 

BW: Will your album be out on vinyl?

TK: It will, and there will be special little promo things with it, so I’m looking forward.

BW: Again, I’m really excited about this. I think that as interesting and unusual as your music is, it’s also really accessible, so you found the sweet spot. 

TK: Yeah, I wanted to make it accessible. I play alone and can’t afford to have a band. I can’t get people to commit the way I did to Ariel, so it’s hard. The earlier [songs I wrote] were really simple so that anyone could play them. These songs may be a little different, but my initial plan was for everything to be two chords, and really simple. I wanted something accessible for the world. I really dislike the music industry and popular/mass culture, but this is what I do at the moment. This is the world I live in, so I have to engage in it somehow and make it enjoyable. 

I have two other albums I’m almost done with that are completely different and not as accessible, but I wanted to make one that is fun, silly, and for everyone in a way. I like music, working, and being part of my little [Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti] family.

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 O Genesis releases Tim Koh’s debut album on September 11, 2020