issue 3: Container

I drove with Ren Schofield from Washington, DC to Providence, Rhode Island at around one in the morning. We agreed to split the driving duties. I took the first shift, but I only made it about an hour before my eyes started to glaze over. Schofield drove the remaining five or six hours on a single cup of coffee as his travel companions slept curled up in my Oldsmobile. I opened one eye to the sun rising over Manhattan, noticing the anonymous dub cassette in the tape player flipping for the 9th time. I offered groggily to put on some different music. “Oh, I didn’t notice,” Ren replied, somehow doing about 90 mph through NY rush hour in a state of lazer focus.

Personally, the Providence-born, UK-based musician presents as casual and even laid back, but his artistic output is marked by a type of calculated madness not unlike his movements behind the wheel. Over the years, Schofield has performed in groups like Form A Log, Gang Wizard, Dynasty, and Pool, as well under the solo aliases God Willing and, most recently, Container. He’s honed a signature balance of playful abandon and meticulous control.

Container may be largely responsible for the overwhelming wave of noise-infused dance music of the past 10 years. Whether to blame or thank Schofield for this is unclear. To his credit, the music has remained consistently ahead of the idiom’s curve. In recent years, Container’s saturated minimal techno has merged with the abrupt, jerky rhythms of Ren’s noise-rock past, its rhythms contorting into something still propulsive but strange and unique, confusing noisers and European clubgoers alike.

In his blog The Touring Days, Ren presents hilarious travel anecdotes using a near-photographic memory and a sharp, persistent sense of humor. Here, as in his music, he balances an eye and ear for oddity with surgical precision. A friend once referred to him in passing as “Zen Schofield,” a nickname I doubt Schofield himself would enjoy, but which does contain some truth. Ren often finds himself flirting with chaos and absurdity, musically and personally, but remains there at the brink, grinning and unscathed.

Discussed: Touring, blogging, British partying, Random Gear Fest, the Elektron Digitakt, raves, food writing, Doctor’s Orders, walking around, immune health, Providence, dipping."

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What’s going on there? There are some new COVID restrictions in place?

Yeah, they keep getting worse. We just went into a new level the other day. I t’s basically like it was when it first happened, so the trains are running less frequently and everything’s closed. The regular food stores are open and stuff like that, but nothing else is going on.

Is that actually any different for you? You still work and stuff, right?

Yeah, I still go to work. I kinda don’t want to though. I was working the other day, and some guy I work with was like, “Oh yeah, I had COVID last week.” [laughs] I was like, “Last week, really?? How’d you get that?” He’s like, “Oh, I went to a rave.”

Jesus. What is your job there? A juice thing?

Yeah. It’s this juice company, and they do juice cleanses. People order for a one-day or two-day cleanse or whatever, and it gets mailed to them, or dropped off at their house if they live in London. So it’s nice in a way that you don’t have to deal with any customers or anything. You’re just in a warehouse making juice, and bottling it and packing it up. A lot of people order every day, too, which is kind of insane. And the health and safety standards are extremely low.

Is it pretty easy to get around where you live by walking?

Yeah, so easy. I sometimes think about the distances I’ll walk here and how far they would be, by comparison, in Providence. Just to go to a shop I’ll walk what would be all the way across the city in Providence and not even think about it here. The scale is so different.

I’m in a suburban setting right now. It’s so strange to walk here. There aren’t sidewalks, so sometimes it’s treacherous just to get to a sidewalk in the first place. And people look at you like you’re crazy.

Walking around in America is kind of dangerous. In Providence I didn’t have a car for a while, I was just walking around. And there were a lot of close calls. Because if you’re walking around in Providence, everyone else you see who’s walking is crazy. When you encounter another pedestrian you have to think fast about what kind of defense you’re gonna put up. One time I was walking and I saw this guy with a bag of trash crossing the street kinda fast. There was someone running behind him, and the guy behind him just took out a gun, and was holding it on the guy. It was the middle of the day, and kind of a busy street, too. And the guy kind of... Don’t do it man, don’t do it! He was trembling with the trash. I went into this McDonald’s that was there, just hiding out in case anything happened. After that I was like, yeah, I gotta get a car.

That reminds me of the time you were in Oakland...

Oh yeah, that guy was messing with you. That was weird. I forgot about that.

I think four or five of us were going to get bahn mi or something, and this stranger started sizing me up. It was the middle of the day.

He was like, “Hey, you stole my bag.” And you had a Suzy Poling screen printed bag.

Yeah, a pretty specific item. Full of weird objects and stuff.

And we all kind of got around him like, “What’s up?” And he didn’t really back down or anything.

Yeah, and his hand was concealed somehow, like maybe he had a knife or something. Middle of the day.

That was bizarre. I wonder what he’s up to. You don’t really get that shit here so much.

Not at all?

There are so many people out walking around all the time, normal people going about their business, it’s unlikely you’d be accosted by some freak like that. Not that they’re not out there. But the chances of you being cornered by them are less likely, because so many people are out. But the flip side is that, in pre-COVID times, I might’ve accidentally gone out not knowing there was a soccer game on or some- thing, and suddenly you’re surrounded by all these jackasses chanting sports songs and wanting to start a fight. Whereas in America those people would get in their cars after the game and drive home, and you’d never encounter them. A good thing about America’s reliance on cars is that it cuts down on sports-related violence.

You’re used to traveling a lot. What’s it been like being posted up in one place for a long time?

It’s interesting. In some ways it’s been kind of a welcome break, because I hate flying. It terrifies me. So it’s been nice not to have the impending doom and dread of upcoming flights to worry about, and having to make the journey to the airport and the journey back home. But I have missed the adventure of going places and playing shows. I’m learning that having shows coming up was quite a big drive to work on new stuff—a goal to work towards. Without that I’ve had a bit of a hard time finishing things.

I found myself missing funny parts of traveling. I was looking at a schedule for a tour I got offered to go on a few years ago that I’d declined. It was opening for a band on a US tour, and I would’ve been driving by myself on all these long drives, going to weird cities where I didn’t know anybody. It was just after I’d done some other touring, and I was like, I don’t wanna do that. But I found myself looking at the schedule and fantasizing about how it would’ve been nice to have a night off in Kansas and stay in weird hotel by myself. Shit that had sounded really terrible at the time was suddenly sounding really appealing, like playing in Boise and shit like that.

I did play one show in September, in Germany.

What was that like?

It was funny. When all that shit first happened, everybody was thinking that shows would come back in a month or two. One by one, all the shows I had were getting cancelled, and then I got offered this show in September. September seemed so far away at the time that I was like, Oh, everything’s gonna be fine by then. As time went on I figured it was probably gonna be cancelled, too. But I would get emails from the people every now and then, and each time I’d be like, This is the one where they say it’s cancelled. I’d open the email, and it’d be like, “Yep! Everything’s on.” I kinda couldn’t believe it. I figured the day before it would be cancelled, and it never was, so I went. It was real.

At the airport there were all these restrictions having everybody stand far apart in the security line. In the waiting area every other seat was roped off. But then on the plane everybody was just crammed in like normal. [laughs] The show was in this arts center type of building, a multi-purpose building. You’d go through the lobby, and everyone had to wear masks in the lobby, but once you went to the show space there were no masks, or they were optional, so no one was really wearing them. There were dots on the floor you were supposed to stand on to keep distant. Everyone was kind of doing that at first, but as time went on everyone sort of forgot and was just at the front. By the end it just felt like a normal show that there weren’t a lot of people at, because they couldn’t sell a lot of tickets. But it was a lot of fun; it was great.

People were probably pretty hungry for a live music experience.

Yeah. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it at that point, and then sound checking was a pretty nice experience. I was like, “This fucking rules.”

I played one show the week before they issued the shelter in place order in San Francisco. I think of it so fondly now, even though at the time I was grumbling about it. Dave [a mutual friend] booked it. It was so many bands, very chaotic. Now I look at it as the last show ever. It’s like he crammed every show experience into one.

Thank God he did that. [laughs]

Yeah. There were murmurs that night of everything shutting down, and it happened shortly after.

I played a show in London at the beginning of March, right as everything was beginning to shut down, and that was pretty excellent. It was this punk festival that’s a big deal here. I t’s a few days long. It was after the main punk show, like an afterparty thing. They’d accidentally sold twice as many tickets as they were supposed to, and everyone was absolutely crammed, packed. At that time all you could hear in the news was how everyone was dying in Italy, and meanwhile there’s flights coming in from Milan every hour. I remember being there and thinking, man, this is probably not very good. [laughs] But it was super fun. Even though that Germany show happened, I kind of think of this as the last real show.

You’ve done at least one virtual show, right? What was that like?

Yeah, I did one right when all the madness was just starting to happen. It was alright. It was fun actually, because I just played my set at home, looking at the computer as it was filming me. It was a bit awkward in that way, but I had fun with it, and was eating cheese and crackers and making drinks while it was going on and stuff like that. At-home style. But I’m not into the vibe of it anymore, or I don’t welcome it as an alternative to actual live shows. To be honest, I haven’t watched any live streaming things. A big reason is just the time zone difference, because most of the American ones are happening when I’m fast asleep. But yeah, I’m not really that into the idea of it. I guess it’s something to do, and if you’re into it, that’s cool. But it’s not the way I wanna have that experience. I had sort of an internal debate about whether it was different than watching a YouTube video of someone’s set. But then I realized a big part of what I like about those is seeing what the audience and the gig were like.

Normally I wouldn’t mind this kind of thing, but it seems anti-climactic that these streaming events start on time, right into the music. There’s no loitering, no hanging out.

Definitely not. I guess I know some people who would be excited about being able to go in and just see the music and get out of there. But not me.

You’ve started a new touring blog. I also vaguely remember you doing some food writing.

Yeah, I started doing some food writing when I lived in Philly. I was working at this job Magic Touch, which was like a beach souvenir and head shop supply warehouse that a bunch of Philly people have all worked at. I started taking long lunch breaks, and I wanted to eat at every restaurant that was within a 20 minute walk of the place for lunch. I was having some interesting experiences going to them, and I started writing reviews of the local restaurants in the area. I had a lot of fun doing that. Took a break for a while for whatever reason; I just wasn’t feeling inspired to do it. Probably because I’d moved out of Philly, and it’s easier to get into interesting situations there than in a lot of other cities. Just going to a pizza place there can be a real trip. But then I did a few more in the last couple years when I had particularly notable dining experiences. [laughs] Ones where I thought, I should probably write this down.

I’d thought for a while that it would be nice to write some stories about tour, but I could never really figure out a way that would be nice to present it, or that didn’t seem too corny. I was kind of grappling with that for a long time. I would try to write some of the stories, but then I’d get confused about how much backstory needed to be given about the characters or the timelines and that kind of stuff. I eventually just decided they’d be better off as individual blog posts that didn’t necessarily have to connect. Some of it would have to be implied, and you’d pick up on certain things. So I started doing that a few months ago.

When did you start writing in general?

I guess it was probably when I was doing the food blog in Philly, which would’ve been 10 or 12 years ago. I’m doing it more now than most other things, because it takes a while to get it right. One of the blog stories takes a couple weeks. It’s kind of an involved process, but it feels really good.

Yeah, it’s great. It seems like a particularly good time for it, too, because I think everyone’s longing to have a weird pointless travel experience these days.

Yeah, I guess when I started missing the mundane parts of touring, like craving being alone in a hotel in Kansas, or playing a terrible show somewhere, that’s when I started thinking, “I should prob get on writing those tour stories. Now’s a time when people would probably enjoy reading it.” It just felt like it was right.

Do you have those sort of in-between experiences in the UK or Europe, or is it a lot more streamlined?

What do you mean “in-between” ?

The equivalent of a Kansas hotel, for instance.

Oh yeah, even more so over here. Massive amounts of time off. [laughs] Before I moved over here I’d have to come for a month or something to make it worthwhile financially. You’re looking at four or five days off sometimes, which...is weird. [laughs] Especially when it’s some strange country where you don’t know anybody. I haven’t really enjoyed having massive amounts of time off that much. I did one in rural France for like five days. I got to stay in kind of a nice house by myself, but after a couple days it was kinda weird.

What do you do in those scenarios?

Explore the town extensively. Got to know everything about the town. Then did shit that I would do at home normally— cooked some stuff and goofed off on the internet and watched movies. But during the day, mostly just walking around checking stuff out.

In England once I had four or five days off between two shows. And I was like, man, what the hell am I gonna do? I just looked up and found the cheapest hotel that I could find basically anywhere. I found one that was 20 pounds a night, so I just booked it for four nights and went to it. It was in the outskirts of the city on this kind of American suburban-style street right next to the highway. I just lived there for four days, and that was pretty depressing. There was a bowling alley, and I went bowling a couple times which was nice. But even that was sort of strange, because they were like '“Who is this random American guy who comes in alone every night?” [laughs]

Would you ever pull your gear out and play or anything?

I would, because it felt like I should be doing that, but I’ve never really been one to work with headphones. I find it hard to get in the zone. But I’ve tried to force myself to, and I would, but it never really resulted in anything that I used or was that into. I was happier to just kind of wander around.

There was also another place in France, St. Ettiene. The guys who set up my show there said I could stay with them for all these days off that I had, and I ended up staying there for over a week—nine days I think. That was pretty intense, too. [laughs] I basically just became this one guy’s roommate, and his English really wasn’t that good, so it was hard to communicate what we were doing. The guy who was pretty good at English, he was really partying super hard, so he wasn’t waking up til like five in the evening. [laughs] So I’d see him every day, but not until 10 at night, and then we’d hang out for a while. That was a bizarre routine. It was kind of dark, actually.

Do you end up in a lot of rave type situations alone?

There was a period where I did. Not constantly, but once in a while it happens, yeah.

Like playing in the wee hours of the morning?

Oh, all the time. Well, not for a year now, thank God.

Yeah. Playing at like seven in the morning or some- thing crazy. [laughs] Yeah, it was pretty tough.

People in that part of the world have a lot of endurance for that kind of stuff, huh?

Yeah, much different than America. I was really surprised at first, because I was used to the American noise show style, where as soon as the show’s over everybody just kind of goes. Maybe three or four crazy people hang out and keep partying, but the vast majority of people go home. [laughs]

The partying style is different in Europe, and in England, too. Not even talking about like shows or anything, but if people are hanging out and they’re gonna party in London, it’s a thing where you don’t go to sleep. In America if it’s Friday night and you’re partying and it starts to be like four, you really start considering going to bed. Four, that’s pushing it. But in London, it gets to be four, there’s no end in sight. People keep going until like two in the afternoon the next day. And maybe even stay up all day and power through that, and party Saturday night, too.

That’s wild.

Yeah, it is pretty wild. The couple times I’ve tried it I’ve fallen asleep. Woke up in a park. [laughs] And the crew of people I’d been hanging out with when I’d passed out had sort of changed. When I woke up there was a couple people I was with before that were there, but a whole lot of new people. It was also the middle of the afternoon, and there were families out, and strollers, and I was just surrounded by empty beers waking up in a park.

Do people expect you to play for a really long time ?

Generally people are expected to play for an hour, and a lot of people do. I don’t though. My booking guy tells people that I’m gonna play for 35 minutes, which is generally what I play for. Sometimes that’s kind of lost in the communications and emails of the shows being set up, and I show up and I’m supposed to play for an hour, but I just don’t. And it’s rarely led to any conflict...

What’s it like when that leads to conflict?

Normally I would say, “I’m not gonna play for an hour,” and people are like, “Oh ok, we’ll adjust it.” But when I first started playing those kind of shows, for one of them I was just like, “Alright, I’ll make it last an hour.” I was stretching everything out a bit, throwing in some other parts, and then I was done, I didn’t have anything else I could play. I looked at the time and there were still 15 minutes left. Ah, fuck. So I tried playing one other thing that I’d been working on, one beat I could mess around with a bit, but I was like, “I can’t really mess around with this for 15 minutes.” The guy who was going to DJ after me was there, and I was like, “Hey man, you ready to go?” He’s like, “No, you got 15 minutes.” I’m like, “Yeah but I’m done man, you can play.” And he’s like, “No, you got 15 minutes.” People don’t understand that you would run out, or that you couldn’t fill the time or something.

Or you might not want to keep going.

Yeah, or you might not want to. [laughs] So I was like yeah, well, I think I’ve done all I can do, and this guy doesn’t seem to be getting it. So I just stopped.

They don’t like that.

No, that was not cool. And I found out that day. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but it was. The promoter was really upset. He kind of chastised me afterward and was like, “Oh my god, you were switching BPMs, we couldn’t follow, and there were parts without beats, and we didn’t know what was going on, then you stopped 15 minutes early"!” I was like, “Yeah, sorry man.” I learned it’s better to tell them that you’re not gonna play that long.

The rhythms in your music have gotten more abrupt, and the changes have gotten stranger over time. Has that garnered any controversy among dance music crowds?

Well, I stopped being booked for more traditional club things, which is a blessing, I think. No loss there. So I feel like generally it goes over well and people like it, because I’m playing more shows that I’m interested in playing, as opposed to some random thing. Or I’m playing more things where people would be open to hearing stuff like that.