Unable to relate to Eugene, Ore.’s jam-band scene, teenager Gary Zon discovered industrial music and turned inward. That isolation lit the fuse for Dismantled, Zon’s dark nihilistic project that’s a direct descendant of artists like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.
“It was about finding a niche of my own that no one else had heard of in that community,” says Zon, now 26 and based in San Diego. “But at this point, I think everything’s been done by someone else. It’s just a matter of how you make a combination that’s unique to yourself.”
Zon’s Dismantled material has focused on narcotic throb, such as “Social Animal” from 2008’s “Standard Issue” or the title track from the 2005 EP “Breed To Death.” There have been detours to cinematic piano balladry (“Under The Flood” from 2007’s “When I’m Dead”) and noir ambience (“The Swarm” on 2004’s “Post Nuclear”).
But listen closely to Dismantled’s earworm choruses and you can tell Zon is also a big fan of radio pop. “I didn’t find out about industrial music until about ’99,” he says, “Before that I would just listen to the radio a lot, Paula Abdul and whatever was out at the time. Then I got into alternative rock, like Smashing Pumpkins. When I got into industrial it was really mechanical but it had these big choruses I’d heard in pop music before, and realized you could do that with a darker sound as well.”
Dismantled is opening shows for Combichrist. How do you reconfigure your set to work in a 30-minute slot? On this tour we’re just doing our harder stuff. There’s a song from every album, and it’s a really compact, intense experience.
You’ve been playing a new tune on this tour, “The Whore Inside Me.” What’s that one like? It sounds more indie than most stuff I’ve written, but at the same time it’s very early Nine Inch Nails.
What’s the San Diego music scene like these days? After the first album I went into more of a rock direction. When I moved to San Diego, it was a big industrial scene compared to most cities I’ve been to. But ultimately the way I make music is more based on isolation than community.
You mention Nine Inch Nails earlier. What draws you to that band? Whatever (Trent Reznor’s) done it’s something that stands the test of time. You always kind of go back to what he’s done and understand what he’s been through.
Dismantled has a lot of European fans. Do think you living in Russia as a child helps you tune in with them in some weird way? Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a different mentality in Europe. I spent a lot of time on intricate melodies and really working stuff out, and think the European audiences listen to the detail more, whereas American audiences respond more to direct messages and some image. Maybe I’m not as exposed to American audiences more because of that. But saying that there’s been fans coming up to us at the shows and telling us they’ve appreciated what I’ve done. American audiences are awesome as well.
There are a lot of interesting, gritty synth sounds on The Dismantled tracks. Got any cool, obscure keyboards? On a lot of the stuff I use an Alesis QS7 which is an older keyboard I got back in ’99. It’s something nobody really used. It doesn’t have great lead patches but has dark ambient patches you can put together. It’s really undiscovered in the scene right now.
You make all Dismantled’s musical decisions. What’s the up and downside of that? Seeing how the world works and putting it in a song is such a powerful feeling to me. But at the same time the music business, it’s kind of like a lottery. You have to keep putting stuff out and you never know if it’s going to resonate.
Dismantled opens for Combichrist July 2 at Ground Zero.Tickets are $15-$20. For more information on Dismantled, check out www.dismantled.org.
