Soul-Junk: Making a Lot of Joyful Noise
By Russell Bartholomee


Glen Galloway is a busy man.  Using the name Glen Galaxy, he fronts Soul-Junk, a San Diego-based band that has been making some of the most innovative music you’re likely to hear anywhere.  In addition to Soul-Junk, he has two other bands, Methuselah and Thank You (not to mention occasionally playing gigs with seminal indie-noise band Trumans Water); And when he’s not creating music for Soul-Junk, he runs Singing Serpent, a music production company that specializes in creating original music for radio and TV commercials.  Their music has been used in ads for Bombay Sapphire Gin, Subway, Citibank, Mercedes, and Levi’s (you can watch some of the spots by clicking here). 

While it’s likely that you’ve heard some of Galaxy’s music in one of the commercial spots mentioned above, the irony is that his best work is with the decidedly un-commercial Soul-Junk, a moniker he’s used since 1993.  Completely fearless in their willingness to experiment with sound, Soul-Junk has turned out eight mind-blowing records and roughly a dozen EPs and mini-albums on a continually rotating roster of labels (including cred-oozing Sub Pop).  To say that no two releases sound alike is a gross understatement.  A Soul-Junk record is just as likely to feature free jazz, folk rock, fuzz bass, or drum 'n’ bass grooves as it is abstract hip-hop, turntables or video game sound effects.  They don’t just push the envelope; they slap the snot out of it. 

Their live shows are legendary; the band is regularly rated as one of the best live acts in San Diego.  Not only are they musically tight and incredibly energetic, but on a good night, Glen might just show up in a frog suit.  They also have an impressive pedigree; front man Glen Galaxy was a member of seminal indie noise band Trumans Water until he started Soul-Junk as an outlet for his solo recordings.  Galaxy has collaborated on his records with artists as impressive and varied as rapper Pigeon John, Rocket from the Crypt’s JC2000, Sufjan Stevens, and members of Danielson Famile and Blackheart Procession.  They’ve received rave reviews from the music press, including CMJ and Alternative Press.  Beck and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore are fans (Beck even covered “Aroma of Gina Arnold,” a Trumans Water song), and while it’s safe to say that Glen Galaxy has listened to a few Sonic Youth and Beck records as well, Soul-Junk is one of the few bands that it’s safe to say doesn’t really sound like anyone else.  They have the distinction of having made a couple of the best underground hip-hop albums of all time and a couple of the best noise-rock albums of all time—within the same decade. 

So why haven’t you heard of them?

It could be because no one really knows how to market Soul-Junk.  They’re not very commercial (though their album 1956 is irresistibly catchy), but there’s a decent-sized audience for non-commercial music.  So that’s not it.  They’re not wholly hip-hop, nor are they really rock.  And some lame label like “alternative rock” doesn’t cut it either.  But that doesn’t stop people from buying Beck records.  So that’s not it either.  What it very well might be is that Soul-Junk is an unabashedly, bluntly, and completely spiritual undertaking.  They’re all about God.  And not in the we-would-like-to-thank-God-in-the-liner-notes-cliché kind of way.  Soul-Junk doesn’t put God in the liner notes.  They put God in the notes.  In fact, the lyrics to a good many Soul-Junk songs (especially on earlier albums) are direct quotes from extended passages of scripture. 

Now some of you are considering not reading any further because you’ve already written Soul-Junk off as “one of those Christian bands.”  And that rush to label and dismiss is part of the problem.  Because the truth is that Soul-Junk doesn’t sound anything like what is commonly called Contemporary Christian Music.  This isn’t Amy Grant or Third Day, or one of the myriad of bands that emulate and then get marketed as the Christian version of some secular group.  In fact, a lot of their lyrics are very critical of the modern religious system, as in this excerpt from “3PO Soul”:

“Just got kicked off the lectern at a worship song summit / My hymns all plummet 'cause church lady still can’t hum it / But the Kingdom of God, yo I’m from it / Man’s religion gave me a fake red light so I’ma have to run it.”

Which leads us to Soul-Junk’s other problem: Christians are just about as baffled by them as non-Christians.  Aside from the criticism of organized religion, when Soul-Junk plays live, it’s just as likely to be at a bar or night club as a more traditional setting for music overtly about God.  Regular radio stations don’t play their music because the lyrical content is so explicitly Christian.  Christian radio stations don’t play Soul-Junk because the lyrics are often critical of the religious system.  And in the ever-narrowing world of radio programming, the music is too weird for both of them. 

And that’s a shame because you’re unlikely to hear much music this original anywhere.  As one of the critics for New Music Today (who happens not to be a Christian) wrote in his review of 1956, “Some of you will reject this disc out of hand because it’s Christian-based, others may buy it just for that reason, but both groups miss the point—listen to the music.”

If people will follow that advice, they’re in for a revelatory musical experience, regardless of their belief system. And if you think about it, there’s actually a long tradition of deeply religious artists appealing to non-religious listeners.  Consider universally lauded spiritual works by composers like Bach and Handel or John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme for starters.  Millions of non-Rastafarians sing along with Bob Marley, who praised Jah with nearly every song.  Unenlightened heads regularly bob to the Beastie Boys’ Buddhist philosophy-imbued beats.  Hasidic dancehall artist Matisyahu wows crowds with his amazing lyrical prowess and beatbox chops—unless it’s the Sabbath, which he strictly observes.  And as anyone who’s seen Al Green — excuse me, the Reverend Al Green—can attest to the fact that his very God-centered shows are a religious experience.

Whether the music-buying public (religious or not) will warm to Soul-Junk’s infectious grooves remains to be seen.  One way or the other, Glen Galaxy (or Galaxalag as he is sometimes known) shows no signs of stopping any time soon.  He was however kind enough to slow down to answer a few questions for Being There.

Being There: What does the name “Soul-Junk” mean?

Glen Galaxy: The soul part is not ironic, it’s naked; it’s pure.  Junk means not raw, not worried about how it fits into people’s ideas of organization.

BT: You used to be a member of the indie noise band Trumans Water, which had achieved critical success and a loyal following.  What prompted you to leave that group and start Soul-Junk?

GG: It was ’93 and God made it very clear I’d gone as far as I was supposed to go in that band, that I needed to be in a place where it was all for him.

BT: Has faith always been a part of your life?

GG: Jesus got a hold of me for real when I was 21, and that was just the beginning.

BT: You’re from San Diego.  What’s the San Diego music scene like right now?  What’s good that we should be listening to?

GG: So much hearable in this day.  I spend most of my listening time trying to find online college stations playing out-sounding stuff I’ve never heard of and then making mix tapes of small snippets of it.  San Diego’s bustling but I’m not a scene guy.

BT: On your records, you’re billed as Glen Galloway, Glen Galaxy, and Galaxalag.  What name are you using these days?  Where did the stage names come from?

GG: Glen Galloway came from my parents.  Glen Galaxy sounds like Glen Galloway.  Galaxalag is a [palindrome] that reminds me of Galaxian or Galloway.

BT: Each Soul-Junk release has a year for its title, starting with (I believe) 1938.  Your most recent album is 1958.  And there’s either an EP or an LP for every year in between.  What made you decide to use this system for your album titles?

GG: It’s the right combination of being arbitrary but feeling like there’s a story or a history.  I picked 1950 as the starting point.  Full-length albums go up from 1950, EPs, remixes, joint-releases go down.

BT: How many members have you had over the years? And why is the roster changing all the time?

GG: Probably about 12 or 13 different peoples in the band, all of them amazing.  The roster’s changed because the band has changed so much and so drastically.  One moment we’re rocking, next it’s crazed drum-n-bass noise, then it’s abstract hip hop.  We’re touring a lot, then we’re not, then we’re playing all the time, then we’re not.  Some of that is because I’ve never wanted something predictable – the only consistency is supposed to be that take-off point where God had me start the band, in the freedom of the Spirit of God.  Sometimes I’ve gotten clear personal direction from God as to where to take the band.  For whatever reason there’ve been so many shifts, I’ve gotten so I enjoy working with people for as long as they feel as they feel the same fire on it as I do.  I don’t set up any formal “you’re in” or “you’re out”….

BT: Are there any permanent members, aside from you?  Or is Soul-Junk basically you?

GG: For now I’ve been focusing on worship in church, so my Soul-Junk recordings the past 18 months have been me.

BT: You’ve done some work with Danielson Famile?  What is your take on their stuff?

GG: Yes, many, many projects and tours.  They are family.  Daniel is incredibly gifted and has a deep love for the Lord.  The new record he’s working on will blow many people away.

BT: I know you’ve had guest appearances on some of your records by people like Pigeon John and JC2000 from Rocket from the Crypt.  What other musicians have helped you on Soul-Junk projects?  Are most of them also based in San Diego?

GG: People have come from all over.  1958 had contributions from Daniel Carter and Greg Kelley (experimental east coast jazz and noise men), DJ Mizzicah (from Denver), Bizzart (from LA), and KidNastyPup.  Pup, where are you these days – Scranton?  1956 had Pall from Blackheart Procession on saw and JC2000 from Rocket on trumpet.  1937 is a remix CD – a host of radical sound melders listed on Sounds Are Active’s site.  [Current Soul-Junk member] Slo-Ro was the mastermind behind most of the collaborations.

BT: What instruments do the various members play?  And how much of your sound is reproducible live?

GG: Good question.  We’ve had rock rhythm sections, and we’ve also played over turntables or beats.  We usually have somebody bringing noise via real-time plug-ins or Kaos pads or effects boxes.  I think the people I’ve played with are more conscientious about that than me.  I’ve come from such an improv background that I get half-way through trying to get our live sound to sound like the record and all of a sudden something catches my ear, and I want to take that and run somewhere else with it.

BT: Have you ever used a Theremin for your sound effects? If not, how do you get those spacey sound effects that are in so many of your songs?

GG: My brother Jon built a Theremin for when we were doing all the tours after 1953 and during the recording of 1955.  It looked better than it sounded.  A lot of what sounds like Theremin on our records are effect pedals that let you bend pitch – I’m a sucker for those.

BT: What are your live shows like these days?

GG: Last show was in Norway with me and my friend Stratejikal MC-ing and a fine longstanding friend and rocker Emil from Oslo on drums.  I’ve also got a band called Methuselah that’s 3 double necks and drums and all, and a band called Thank You that’s all raw acoustic and more on the old “Sweet to My Soul” or 1950 worship tip.  With Soul-Junk being all pure word over beats, I’m looking at all 3 bands playing a single set.

BT: What kind of reaction do you get from people who’ve never seen you live before?

GG: All sorts.  It’s definitely not anything anybody’s expecting, either musically or spiritually.  For the most part we’re pretty intense in our praise and delivery, and if people are that worked up about it they usually just leave.  The peoples who stay around either plug in pretty hard to what we’re doing or just kind of laugh and shake heads.

BT: What do you think your most accessible record is for people who have never heard you before?

GG: Rocker peoples like 1953.  Beat peoples like 1956.  Indie rockers like 1950 and 1951.

BT: I don’t think any two of your records explore the same style or sound.  Is that on purpose, or does it just sort of happen?

GG: Just happens.  I push myself on my listening, not on record concepts.  It gets to the point where I can’t not make a certain album, and then I do it.

BT: What drives the evolution of your sound?

GG: Evolving musically has mainly been a matter of hearing different ways to accomplish things in a song and not paying any attention to genres.  It’s fairly eclectic at this point.  There’s been an obvious shift from rock rhythm to more abstract hip hop beats.  A lot of that is because constructing a hodge-podge rhythm section makes for a more diverse record…and leaves more space for other sounds.  Rock production doesn’t leave as much room.

BT: How do you approach writing music and lyrics?  Do you collaborate with others, or is it all you?

GG: Depends who I'm working with.  I do a lot on my own, but I usually don't start playing with people unless there's something that I want to collaborate with them on.  Ron Easterbrooks [former member] and I wrote a ton of 1952 and 1953 songs together.  [My brother] Jon and I made all sorts of ridiculous beats together for 1955. Abe de Leon [of Jupiter Crash] and Mia [Abe’s wife] and me spent many afternoons improv-ing stuff that turned into songs.  Chuck P and I stayed up till 2 or 3 in his radio studio making feedback for 1955.  Every drummer I worked with (Nathan Poage, Brian Cantrell, Kirk, Abe de Leon) got roped into more improv than they knew was possible.  With [current main collaborator] Slo-Ro we got an amazing ping pong system going for messing each other's tracks up and doing early morning concept jams.

BT: Do you have to work at writing songs, or does inspiration just come to you?


GG: Comes to me.  I just have to keep a micro cassette recorder nearby.

BT: The lyrics to several of your songs, especially earlier, were taken pretty much verbatim from Bible verses.  What was the rationale behind quoting directly as opposed to writing new lyrics on those records?

GG: Keeping it pure.  I really didn’t enjoy writing the lyrics for the third Trumans Water record and I wanted to break out of crafting words to sit on top of the music I felt so strongly about. God’s words resonate stronger in me than things I can make up.

BT: Some of your stuff is pretty noisy (which I like just fine).  How do you decide how far to push the envelope on a song?  Do you ever listen and think, “Better reel that one in a bit”?

GG: No, that’s the funny thing.  I love a good melody, but I love pushing stuff out of bounds.  As I’m putting a song together I’ll go with whatever I feel serving the song best.  “Non-Linear” doesn’t have a hint of melody but that noisy hook got me from the second I put it together.  It’s not a pop song so there’s no point pulling it back.  But on songs like “As the Rain” on 1955 or “Zion” on 1953, the tune was pulling harder on me than anything, so I didn’t make any effort to mess them up.  That’s why there’s such a range of Soul-Junk music, I always push the thing towards its strength.  And I push myself not to not get lazy or formulaic.

BT: On many of your songs, you level some criticism at what I’ll call organized religion.  In “Pumpfake” (from the album 1956), for example, you lament the modern church where “religion reigns supreme and the Spirit’s second fiddle.”   There seems to be a growing trend of leaving traditional church services behind for more intimate, unstructured gatherings of believers—more house churches with less clergy and stuff like that.  Why do you think that is?

GG: I really, really love the Church.  I know tradition and dead ritual are huge obstacles to the operation of God in his people.  I get so thirsty to see the church as God wants it and sees it.  It’s not like structure is the enemy – it’s just a question of whose structure.  Whether it’s 200 year old sleepwalking liturgy or trying to come off like a coffeehouse or playing Top 40 songs with Christianized lyrics, anything man tries to orchestrate or structure in the church is equally limp.  The structure of the Holy Spirit is incredibly dynamic and full of life and divine love.  It just scares most religious people to death to think that God could actually take total control of a meeting.  There will come a time in the very near future where the life and purity and power of Christ will be seen like it’s never been seen before in his body, the Church.  It has everything to do with individual believers completely giving themselves over to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

BT: 1956 saw your first full-fledged foray into hip-hop, though the record isn’t exactly a hip-hop record.  How did you decide to incorporate rapping and hip-hop beats into your music?

GG: Through drum-n-bass and turntablism records.  In the early-mid 90s there was enough unexpected noise craft in those places to catch my ear.  Pretty soon I started recognizing MCs and hearing everybody MC about the same stuff and I started writing my own rhymes.

BT: Pigeon John (of LA Symphony) makes an appearance on that disc.  How did you hook up with him?

BT: Aaron James was at 5 Minute Walk when we did 1956, and he booked a week of shows for both LA Symphony and us.

BT: Toby Mac (of DC Talk) covered “Ill-M-I” on his new release, Diverse City.  How did that come about?  What do you think of his version of the song?

GG: Toby told me early on that he loved that song.  He called and asked to use the hook.   I said yes.  Then the CD came out and the whole song got covered.  It was funny to me since I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a hip-hop song covered.  Back when I was first listening to scads of jungle and hip-hop, I really loved the concept of tweaking on existing songs and phrases.  It’s a sample culture, and the idea is to one-up what you’re borrowing while at the same time rooting it deeper in the culture.  It’s just funny hearing a pop song that popped out of you redone through somebody else’s ears.

BT: With 1957 and 1958, you’ve retained some of the hip-hop elements, but the overall sound of both seems to be more experimental—less instantly accessible.  Did you make a conscious decision to go further out on the limb with those (excellent) discs?

GG: Yeah, actually 1956 was a huge pop stretch for me.  Hooking up with Rafter on production made it a good time.  We both were trying all sorts of pop tactics that we’d stayed very far from before that.  I’ve listened to a lot of pop so every now and then I get the itch to see what I can write that a lot of people will actually want to listen to.  I actually thought 1950 was a pop album when I was recording it.  1953 and 1956 were a little more obviously pop.  I think 1956 was such a stretch that it felt really good to just record what sounded good to me for a couple records.



BT: So what is Soul-Junk up to right now?  What can fans expect from 1959?

GG: Whole books of the bible.  Singing and MC-ing entire chapters at a single bound. 1959 should be the first 17 chapters of Genesis.

BT: It seems like there are some really good underground hip-hop groups, much more exciting to me personally than what is in the mainstream.  Do you think the experimental and edgy hip-hop will make its way into the mainstream?

GG: Sure, it’s happened for jazz and rock.  Mainstream culture dips its foot seriously in the experimental pond every 10 years or so, and whoever happens to be swimming there at that time becomes legend.  As for the experimenters, they’re either around long enough that they catch the next cycle, or they’re ridiculously compelling and speed the cycle up.  Like Hendrix or Coltrane.  Hip-hop’s had a fairly good share of oddball hits for as long as it’s been around.

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