It’s an eerie style, all ghostly and charged with noises that sound like they’ve been recorded underwater. Yet this is the world the Grassy Knoll inhabits all squealing saxophones and classic rock guitar riffs, hip hop beat samples and the funk of ages.
It’s hard to put a finger on what emotions these songs evoke. They may seem like stereotypical spy music, the edginess capturing the paranoia and jitters of a secret agent trying to make it back into what was formerly West Berlin, but there’s more to them.
There’s something darker and more unsettling, perhaps alluded to in the band’s very name, which is a veiled reference to John F. Kennedy’s assassination familiar to most conspiracy theorists. Yet Grassy Knoll mastermind Bob Green doesn’t plan any of this out.
“It’s incidental,” he said. “It’s just what I respond to. I sit in my room and I write these songs and that’s how it comes out. Nothing’s planned, it just happens.”
Ironically, the new album is titled “Positive,” a word which works in opposition to the album’s content.
“It was an open ended suggestion,” Green said. “Anybody can take out of it what they want. It’s like everything I try to do. I try to not give answers but ask questions. Is the term positive in reference to the music since I feel the music has kind of a dark edge to it? To name the record ‘Positive’ is kind of a play on the word. To play on the word itself, if you said ‘positive’ in 1950, it meant something different than if you say somebody’s positive today. It’s not a reference to any one thing.”
Composed of various musical styles, the Grassy Knoll’s work isn’t easy to describe, entirely apart from the feelings it elicits. Consisting of jazz, samples, hip hop, ambient music and 70s cock rock allusions to bands like the James Gang on songs like “Slow Steady Salvation.”
“That’s just me playing a line which sounds similar to ‘Funk 49,'” Green said. “It just makes perfect sense to me. We live in an age of postmodern art and deconstruction and it seems so logical to me.”
Part of this deconstruction includes finding samples and using them to enhance the music, such as the drum loop from Led Zeppelin’s “When The Levee Breaks” on “Black Helicopters.” Green starts writing his songs with a sampler, sequencer and a keyboard. He starts with the drum track, moves on to a bass loop and then builds from there.
“There are sample CDs out and it’s actually the beat of ‘When The Levee Breaks,'” Green said. “It’s hip hop territory now. It’s on all these hip hop breakbeat discs that you can get and as a matter of fact, if you listen to the new Hurricane record on Grand Royal, he uses that same beat on one of the songs.”
Combining these styles is something which is integral to the Grassy Knoll’s music.
“I do think this is kind of important, talking about fusing a bunch of musical influences together,” Green said. “I really think it’s nothing that any musician hasn’t done. If you look at Miles Davis or the Beatles, they’re always taking from other stuff to make it their own. Really, the process is no different.”
In the end, Green doesn’t approach his music with preconceptions and doesn’t go into the studio knowing what he wants to do. Instead, he lets his muse guide him through the process and pursues his instincts.
“(It’s) following my whims and seeing how far I can take it,” Green said. “And ‘take it’ meaning I’m now thinking about the third record and how far I can push the envelope. Where can I go now? That’s the exciting part for me.”
