Interview: Free Moral Agents

Free Moral Agents “Underwater Reverb”

by Paul Richter

Free Moral Agents is Ikey Owens (master pianist of Mars Volta, member of past groups like De Facto, Long Beach Dub Allstars and Sublime) mostly on his own, aside from help via J, Mendee Ichikawa and Jeff Harris. Although there is a Mars Volta sample on the album, don’t expect this to resemble that band at all. Instead, Ikey takes his proven approach at music, creating an avant guard jazz hip hop sound that is more passive than active. After a vinyl split and an EP, the Free Moral Agents spawned their debut album, “Everybody’s Favorite Weapon”, off of fellow Mars Volta band mate Omar Rodriguez’s label, Gold Standard Laboratories. An amazing, but short album (just under 50 minutes – long for most bands but you’ll want more). After a few months of constant listens, I became curious…

Can you give some background on how Free Moral Agents came together?
There was a time, before I put the record out, that I wasn’t playing in Mars Volta anymore, and I had just bought a bunch of recording instruments. See, in my entire career, I’d always wanted to my own record but never had, so [Free Moral Agents] really started with just me. I knew J, who was actually my girlfriend at the time’s brother-in-law, who did poetry and sang and stuff, so I got together with him. This is before the vinyl. I was working at this record store and started talking to my friend Jeff Harris, who it turns out, was really good with ProTools, so I added him to the group. He’s really a producer and doesn’t really play with us live, but he’s very much responsible for the sound of the record. I knew Mendee [Ichikawa] for several years, and we had worked on and off, but I knew we needed a female element to the group, so that’s basically what Free Moral Agents is right there. As far as the music goes, it started as my project, and I needed people to help get what was going on in my head…

…and translate that to music?
Exactly. Their personalities and their talents all figure into the equation of Free Moral Agents, even though, yeah, it’s my pet project, but these people who I know I can trust, really bring it together.

So where or how did you derive the name Free Moral Agents?
It’s kind of a theological term. God created us all in free will, so we’re all robots with free will… people who are lawyers and act like evil lawyers chose that path.

Interestingly, I found a reference to a ‘free moral agent’ on the web as a racial label remover – i.e. removing the label or stereotype off of someone invokes them to be equal, or, a ‘free moral agent’.
Huh, I’ve never heard that. That’s really interesting though.

There are some pretty abstract tracks on “Everybody’s Favorite Weapon”. How do write songs? What’s the process?
Basically, I start with a break beat record and just kept putting in keyboard after keyboard until I was happy. When the audio is finished, J and/or Mendee come in with vocals, and then Jeff takes it and tunes the song up. I overdub the keyboard until I feel we have something that works.

Vocalists seem more like guests on the Free Moral Agents album. It feels like you could have gone ahead and inserted vocals into each track, but didn’t. Why?
It might change in the future, but I don’t see vocals as another instrument. I didn’t set out to make a vocal record… sounds funny, but I didn’t, which is different then most records. As far as this record is concerned, that’s how it was meant to be.

Any news on De Facto? Will there be any more material released?
Well, since Jeremy (Michael Ward, who passed away) was so much a part of it, as far as playing live, I don’t think we’ll ever get play again. They were always recording, we always recorded every time we played, so there is material, but it’s up to Omar. Maybe sometime in the future, they’ll be another album with that material. It’s up to him though.

Cool. Anything else you have going on?
I’ve been working with [DJ] Dangermouse, so that’s a trip. Doing some stuff with Shapeshifters, Busdriver, hip hop that I love. Free Moral Agents have a bunch of shows coming up and we’ve got a new record that will hopefully be done by the end of the year.

The obligatory question: are you voting?
No, I don’t think so.

Have you ever?
No, never. It’s really actually tempting this year. I don’t not vote because I don’t care, I just don’t follow politics close. You can call it pathetic, but I just don’t see either of those choices as the solution. One’s better then the other, don’t get me wrong, which is why if I was ever going to vote, I would, but I just don’t have…

…inspiration?
Not that, I just don’t have really, any belief in our political process. Neither one of them will make things better. I think someone should really be informed when they vote, and I think a lot of people aren’t informed when they vote. There are certain issues where I feel strongly saying yes or no to, but I haven’t researched them enough to feel strongly enough to cast a vote for. People vote for stuff that sounds good on the surface, but then don’t read the fine print.

2004 “Everybody’s Favorite Weapon” (GSL)