Tone Glow 236: Barn Sour

An interview with the Canadian artist Pat Klassen about trading noise tapes, disliking live shows, and how Viennese Actionism and pre-algorithmic YouTube inspired the Barn Sour sound

Barn Sour

Photo courtesy of the artist

Barn Sour is the artist name for Pat Klassen (b. 1989), a musician and painter from Winnipeg. Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, Klassen made harsh noise and dense textural collages under a variety of monikers, including Sleep and Fresh Water Girls. It wasn’t until he made music as Barn Sour that he started to gain wider recognition in the underground experimental music scene, his relative success kickstarted by Careful Catalog’s release of Horses Fucked Over the Head With Bricks (2019), one of the great 7-inches of the past decade. From there, he’d release more albums via Penultimate Press and Staighre, and eventually conclude the project with the quasi-compilation album Soap & Glue (2023). Surprisingly, the inimitable tape label Regional Bears dropped a new collaborative project between Barn Sour and Duncan Harrison earlier this year. While not a Barn Sour album proper, it brings together recordings of their live performances. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Barn Sour on August 19th, 2026 via Zoom to discuss the album that got him into noise music, the evolution of his many projects’ sounds, and how pre-algorithmic YouTube inspired his compositional approach.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: Were you born in Winnipeg or did you just spend most of your life there?

Barn Sour: I was born here and never left. I’ve been here my whole life.

When you think about growing up in Winnipeg, what sort of things define the city for you?

Winnipeg gets crazy cold in the winter and quite hot in the summer. The actual fluctuation from winter to summer is pretty insane. From late October to April, you don’t see that many people—they stay inside and it gets dark early, at 5PM. You just go to school or work and then hunker down for the evening. Having grown up here in the 1990s, there’s not anything that makes this place stand out as Winnipeg—it’s probably the same as any other Canadian prairie city. And there wasn’t a lot going on culturally that I was interested in.

Were your parents interested in the arts or was this all more of a solo venture for you?

My family on both sides don’t have much of an arts background. My mom’s side is all farmers besides her. All of her siblings stayed out in the country and still farm. For my dad’s side, my grandfather started a carpentry business and then my dad worked there and I also worked there for a while. My dad recently sold it. He did design stuff, but it was mostly layouts for kitchens and bathrooms—it was more function over design.

Did you spend much time on the farm?

We would go out to the farm a couple times a year. Our uncles would take us on the combines. We never worked there, but it was a nice place because they had a lot of land and a lot of tractors. It was cool as a kid. For my dad’s shop, I would go there sometimes when I was sick and he had to go to work. I’d see the guys driving the forklifts around.

Do you have siblings? Are they interested in the arts?

I have one older brother and he lives in Edmonton. Our interests divided pretty early. We both played hockey growing up, and that was all we really did together. We don’t have that much in common. I love him and we’ll text each other here and there, but we’re not calling daily or anything like that.

Did you play a lot of hockey throughout your childhood? Was it a short stint?

I’ve played since I was around 5, so it’s been 30+ years. I still really enjoy it and I’ve always liked it. I played it in high school and got kind of good, but not good enough to go anywhere with it. It’s good exercise and fun to hang out with friends, but it’s not competitive right now; it’s just a beer league.

What were the formative experiences you had with art?

I was a visual artist before any sound stuff came around. I did art when I was in junior high, and then I got to high school where you could choose either band or art. I didn’t know how to read music so I just chose art, and I went to university for art as well. I started university with some generic classes and my GPA was so poor that they told me that I had been removed from the university. I was stressed because my parents were gonna find out that I got kicked out for being dumb, but then I got another letter saying that I didn’t have enough credit hours for that to actually happen, so I got an extra chance. I decided to just go into art school. I didn’t really care about it or want to learn it, but I thought there might be some cool people there.

I know you’re a painter. What’s meaningful to you about that practice?

I don’t know… I just think it’s fun. Maybe it’s cathartic just based on it being fun to do, but I don’t think about it after it’s done. I don’t even really think about it while I’m doing it. Like, if I never painted again I’d probably be okay. There’s nothing that really draws me to it other than the fact that it’s fun. It doesn’t mean that much to me. I like looking at paintings, but that doesn’t really translate to my practice. Even in high school, I didn’t know anything about art history or contemporary artists, so most of the stuff I learned was happening in university with professors namedropping people. I was always a big Cy Twombly fan. For a more contemporary painter, I liked David Ostrowski. Back then I was into abstract works, or stuff that looks shitty on purpose but has a quality that you can’t put your finger on.

When does your interest in music come into play then? Did it overlap with your interest in painting at all?

In junior high and early high school, I listened to a lot of classic rock and prog. Then later in high school I got into garage and psych stuff, which got really noisy and messy because there were a lot of teenagers making music in the ’60s. Neil Young’s guitar stuff actually made me interested in stuff beyond structured music. In late high school and early university, I’d just be on blogs reading about music. I had never heard noise music before beyond Wolf Eyes and Hair Police—and I liked them but it was still more musical—and then eventually at a record store, there was something from The Rita that was traded in. I had seen the name around. I brought it home and skipped around on the record and it was just, like, the same shit on the whole side. I was like… this is so dumb. But then later that day, I was like, I kind of wanna listen to this again. I got really into harsh noise around 2006 and 2007 and I was into it for a while. And I still like it.

What was the name of the record store? And which Rita album was it?

Into The Music, which was the biggest record store in Winnipeg at the time. There were only like two stores, and I was usually going there to buy Yes or Rush records. The Rita album was The Tortured Ghosts of Creeks and Rivers (2006), and another reason I bought it was because it was wrapped in chicken wire, which I thought was cool. I don’t even know if it’s a good one—I haven’t listened to it in a long time—but it’s what got me into this.

So were you just looking up harsh noise albums online after that?

Yeah. The internet used to be way cooler in that time. You could go to blogs or just type in any album and type in “mediafire” or “zip” at the end of it on Google and find free rips everywhere. I downloaded so many albums and I’d go to any noise blog, download everything, and see if it was worthwhile.

When did you attend your first noise show? The Rita is Canadian, though not from Winnipeg obviously, but I’m curious when you eventually went to go see performances.

We have this annual festival called Send + Receive and it’s one of the longest-running Canadian festivals. I probably started going to that around 2007. I don’t remember who was playing, but it used to have more improv stuff. It wasn’t really that noisy, but I would go to those shows. Otherwise, there weren’t a lot of one-off shows happening. There were some local guys doing stuff, but there were almost no live shows.

Did you befriend these local guys?

I’d buy tapes from them. There was a guy named Chris [Jacques] who ran Prairie Fire Tapes, and then Fletcher Pratt, who lives in California now, who had a label called Midori Records. That was an American Tapes-style label. If there was a show, I’d see them there, buy a couple tapes, and chat. They put tapes out for me with some of my earlier projects.

I did want to ask about some of your early music. If you’re getting into noise music in 2007, were you also making music back then? When did you first start making music on your own?

It was about 2007-ish. I played guitar and bass. I was in a high school garage band that was a lil trio and we’d just jam in our friend’s basement. My interests went a little weirder, and I eventually picked up a couple pedals and did the same shit that everyone else did. I was doing no-input for a while, figuring out what kind of sounds I could get out of limited equipment. And then I’d get more pedals and microphones. My first tape, which isn’t on Discogs, was called Diabetes Foot. It was cut-up collage stuff and it was put out on Midori.

Were there specific artists you were trying to emulate early on?

There was a label out of Toronto called Beniffer Editions, and I’d be buying tapes from Canada or the States from these Blogspot distros. You could buy tapes for two or three bucks, which meant you could buy 10 tapes and not worry about it. There’d be stuff in there I’d find interesting. I don’t remember the specific projects, but there was stuff on Beniffer that was cut-up noise. It wasn’t harsh noise; it was like fart sounds and goofy stuff. That’s what I tried to emulate. And then I went into harsh noise where you can just try and sound like whoever.

I wanted to ask about the early Sleep stuff because all those releases were limited to like 10 CD-Rs. And then there’s the Lungwash split that says it comes with a human rib fragment (laughter). Were the limited editions merely an economic decision or did you intentionally want them to be in small quantities?

It’s partially economic because I usually don’t charge people for tapes. I’ll do a trade with somebody, but sometimes if I don’t want anything from them, I’ll just mail the tape. I’d just be eating the cost of the whole thing. But it’s like… who wants these things? I’d be on forums trading tapes and it was like, is this something that anybody would actually want to have?

What forums were you on?

The Chondritic Sound one. There was an invite-only harsh noise wall one too, and that one was pretty dumb (laughter). I was on like all of the forums; I didn’t post on them, but I’d always check what was going on.

Can you talk about Fresh Water Girls? That’s your first significant project and it went on for a few years. Even on the VAT split (2012), you were already considering the density of your sounds. I like all the bits of metallic puttering you can hear underneath the noise. And then on the self-titled release (2012), some of the tracks feel both menacing and lonely. Was there a specific thought process you had with this project?

So Sleep was my dumb harsh noise wall project. It was just blocks of noise. And then I got into more textural, precise sounds. I was probably listening to the Second Sleep, Lettera 22-type stuff. It feels like it’s more composed, and I was trying to emulate something like that. I would compile a bunch of different textured sounds, throw them on the computer, and then mix and match. I’d try to make actual compositions instead of just making a sound for 20 minutes. I had contact mics, distortion pedals, and a reel-to-reel player that didn’t work, but the gain was super crisp so I could get some good sounds with metal or glass without having to fight the feedback. I haven’t listened to that music in a long time. About three or four years ago, someone approached me about reissuing a CD compilation of all that stuff, and I said I’d listen to it and let them know. When I did, I couldn’t remember making any of that shit. I think a lot of it was just happy accidents.

Were you performing at all during the early 2010s?

I did two or three local performances, and I performed once in Texas as Sleep because I wanted to go down to the fest. But I’ve never been happy with what I’m able to bring live, unfortunately—I’m just not cut out for it. The Sleep one in Texas was actually really good, though. Richard Ramirez had a fest going on and the PA was so loud that it didn’t matter what you were playing, it just felt good. But yeah, I’ve never been a strong live performer, so I’m glad I don’t play live very often.

What makes someone a strong live performer and what do you feel like you weren’t able to do?

That’s a good question. I actually dislike a lot of performances I go to watch (laughter). It’s just too long. I don’t wanna go to a noise show and see someone perform for 40 minutes. There are some good ones but I’m just not into that. The live shows are different for the harsh noise stuff and the Barn Sour stuff. I don’t think I could ever properly do Barn Sour live with instrumentation and everything. There’s so much prep that I feel like I’m just playing an iPod up there, and that kind of makes me feel like a dickhead. With the harsh noise stuff, you’re faking doing stuff or you are doing stuff, whether or not you can control what it sounds like. But I felt really bad doing the Barn Sour stuff live because I have to bring most of the set with me instead of it happening organically.

How many Barn Sour shows have you played?

I did a collab set with Duncan [Harrison] in Amsterdam, so it wasn’t really Barn Sour, but both of us played. I did two in Belgium, two in the UK a couple years ago, and then one locally. And I’m doing another one in October here.

What’s your approach then for this October show given that you don’t like performing live?

I try to do physical comedy, almost. I’ll never be happy with what the sound is, so I try to make it funny, which is kind of embarrassing, but then there’ll be a reason for people to like it for reasons other than the sound.

During lockdown, I asked you to do a live show [Editor’s Note: Joshua Minsoo Kim slotted Barn Sour into the “Duos” concert even though Barn Sour is not a duo]. I think you requested that it not appear online afterwards on YouTube, so it’s lost to history I guess. Well, I guess it’s on my computer somewhere. What I remember is that you had a pre-recorded video that you made in your home and you’re lifting weights or something?

I think I taped some chicken breasts to my arms and did some weightlifting (laughter).

I loved that, and I remember that it was under 10 minutes.

Yeah, most of my live sets are 5-10 minutes. I really like the “7-inch in person”-type thing.

Where does this performance aspect come from? Were there other artists you saw do these things, or was it coming from performance art?

In university, I came across the Viennese Actionists and their videos. Barn Sour is like a phony, poser Actionism. I’m not standing for anything, I’m not doing anything for a reason, I just like the grotesque nature of some guy barfing on himself. And the live version isn’t Actionism; it’s pratfalls and slapstick-type stuff. That’s what a lot of the Barn Sour music is inspired by. I’ve sampled a lot of that stuff, too. For my first live performance, I was too scared, so I just stood there and did my thing, but lately I’ve been getting looser with it.

So are you sampling the Kurt Kren films?

Yeah, like that whole crew. A lot of the videos are silent, but there are some that do have sound and it’s so good. The audio is just horrible from what they’re doing, and it’s so good to grab some clips here and there.

You’ve talked about the evolution from Sleep to Fresh Water Girls. And then there’s Dogon Lock and other stuff like Zika Boys. And then you eventually do Barn Sour. What does the sequence look like in terms of how you approached your music from these transitional projects to Barn Sour?

I feel like I get hyperfixated on something and I’ll make one or two releases, and then I’ll just move on to the next thing. Zika Boys was with another guy—the guy who ran Korea Undok Group. We were pals and I said we should do something. With Barn Sour, I’ve only made more because people were into it. The music is really fun to make, but it got to a point where it was the same formula over and over and I was like, okay, I need to stop putting these things out. Dogon Lock was really tape-y sounds. I moved on from that, but I was also stressed about being culturally appropriative of the Dogon people and using their stuff as an aesthetic. I had a couple releases that I don’t think ever made it online, too, and it was on a tape label I had. I think I only did three tapes on the label, and one was like a black metal-type tape.

Tell me about the first Barn Sour releases. You had One (2018) and then Two (2018). It’s different from the previous stuff, though you can see it as a continuation of the tape music stuff. Even back then, these early releases were unsettling and mysterious. There’s ambience and then there’s this textured component. What was the thing you were fixated on with these first tapes?

It was probably some Graham Lambkin-esque shit: field recordings with some musical elements mixed in. I didn’t really have a vision for the project. I just bought some 22-minute tapes and I made two 11-minute sides that were cohesive. I didn’t expect Barn Sour to be my [main artist] name (laughter). It’s a dumb name.

Really? I think it’s such a beautiful turn of phrase though. I love that there’s a phrase for horses who don’t want to leave their barn.

I thought it was cool that it’s just like an introverted horse, or like a horse that just wants to stay at home. But the combo of words is… well, it’s just maybe not the best name I’ve had (laughs). So it was field recordings mixed with music, and then I made a C10, which had two five-minute sides. That was Horses Fucked Over the Head With Bricks (2019). There were only a handful of copies, like 10 or less. I sent them to my friends, and one of them was Dan Gilmore in New York. He said it’d be crazy if it were a 7-inch, and he was like, “Should I do it?” “It’s your funeral, man.” (laughter). He really exploded my exposure.

Yeah, Dan is huge for me, both his music and his label. He’s the reason this newer iteration of Tone Glow started, really. He was the first interview I ever did, though it was before I even knew I could do interviews, so everything was via email, which I hate. But yeah, that 7-inch is incredible, I always tell everyone it’s my favorite of the entire 2010s along with Graham Lambkin’s Abersayne (2013). I love the weird, menacing laughter on the A-side of Horses Fucked. That’s a sample, then?

The more I talk about Barn Sour, the less people are gonna be impressed by me, probably (laughter). There’s a lot of sampling. I’m basically a DJ; I just reassemble pieces, though I do record some stuff myself. So that sound is a Paul McCarthy performance where he’s pouring oil onto a book and laughing [Ma Bell (1971)]. YouTube used to be way better back in the day, and it wasn’t algorithm-based. I used to be able to type in something crazy and look for the oldest video, and it might be something that was uploaded 13 years ago with 12 views. There’s so much great stuff you could find. I was looking up that Paul McCarthy performance and I couldn’t find it, but there was a woman who did it for art school, and I just ripped that from YouTube. [Editor’s note: This is likely the video, which as of this writing has 31 views].

The Paul McCarthy connection makes so much sense given what you were saying earlier about things being grotesque. Painter (1995) is an all-timer. So that was someone you learned about in art school?

Yeah, I would’ve learned about him around the same time as the Actionists. He was kind of the American version. It’s a different concept and type of art, but I was really drawn to it. It was grotesque. Even his paintings and drawings are good.

The B-side of the 7-inch also has these people making weird sounds. I’m wondering if you could tell me how you approached making these collages. Did you consider your earlier work in Barn Sour to be grotesque or do you think that only really started with this 7-inch?

I think that was the turning point. I don’t think the previous Barn Sour stuff was made in a way where I thought it’d be gross or sticky. The way I made that 7-inch is that I would basically find a loop—a piano or any other instrument—and just loop it forever in the background while going on YouTube and clicking through videos. I would just find stuff that fit in nicely and layer it. That one was kind of unintentional, though. I had a loop going and when that YouTube video played, the laughing came on with the piano and I thought it was so good. I didn’t think it was like the previous releases, but it sounded perfect together. That’s how I make most music. I’ll make a track and then I’ll just have it playing in my recording on GarageBand or whatever, and then I’ll go through my iTunes, with all of my previous other recordings, until stuff matches up.

I love this because it’s similar to when you have multiple tabs open on your internet browser and you’ll have two sound sources interact in a way that’s serendipitously beautiful. And sometimes you won’t even realize that there are two videos playing at once.

It’s the same exact thing. When it’s a loop it doesn’t matter so much, but when it’s an actual recorded piece of music with structure, when you hit something, I have to quickly check what minute it is. There’s no way I could redo it if I didn’t have the timestamps. But yeah, I think it’s the best way to make music: just have multiple tabs open and make stuff.

I like that it’s also really embracing the “happy accident” idea.

That’s 100% what most of my stuff is, like… it just happened to work out that day (laughter).

I imagine after Dan releases this 7-inch that Mark Harwood at Penultimate Press reaches out to you for Belgian Gelding (2021)?

Yeah, that was roughly around then. The 7-inch made it to a couple good distros.

Oh yeah, there’s the Penultimate Press distro, I used to look at that all the time.

There were a decent amount of release offers, but also just a decent amount of feedback. I had never had that before. Strangers would DM me like, “Hey, I really love this 7-inch.” To actually have strangers message me was new. I think Mark asked me to do a record, and I think I overanalyzed it or overworked it. That’s not one of my strongest records and I was like, okay, don’t blow your load on this… maybe just tapes are fine.

That one was made in 2020. Our first child was just born and we were home and sleep-deprived. It was just a weird time. I knew that this could potentially be a record, and I’d never really been part of a full-length record before, but I think I spent too long on it. For a release, if I can’t make it within three or four days, it’s bad. That one was probably made over a couple weeks. But I think I was really tired and I just sent it to Mark to see if he’d be into it as a tape.

Do you have a specific relationship to horses? Did you have them around the farm?

I rode them a couple times at day camp but I find them kind of scary. I don’t dislike horses, but I just liked the concept of the barn-sour horse. A lot of the artwork is like me abusing horses (laughter), but I don’t hate horses and I don’t hate animals. I’m not a psychopath (laughter).

Can you talk to me about One Trick Pony (2022)? And I’m wondering if you already felt that Belgian Gelding (2021) was overworked by the time it was released, or if that’s something you only came to realize later on.

Mark liked it, but he gave me a couple pointers. I asked about pacing and he said I could shorten a couple things. At that point I was like, okay, this probably sucks (laughter). If I listen to it now there are probably some good moments, but it’s not one of my best. For One Trick Pony, Matt Sullivan reached out and asked if I wanted to do a tape. I was really stoked on the label [Staighre], and I bought the first batch. I loved his music and the whole crew with Sean McCann and Alex Twomey, that California composer crew. That tape came together way smoother and it was one of my better releases.

It’s interesting because I think when that album came out in that specific context, it really recontextualized some of your music as being pretty in this beguiling way, on top of all the other strange feelings that were part of the Barn Sour sound. Do you mind talking about how you approach sampling and using vocals? That album has this one song that’s pitched down, and there’s all these other mouth sounds throughout, too.

I listen to a fair amount of music that’s all over the board. I’ll hear a moment in a song and I’ll think it’d be good looped. For Barn Sour, I always wanted there to be a vocal portion to it, so I had to search stuff out. Some of it is me recording myself. I have this program called sforzando that’s essentially a giant sample keyboard and you can plug in whatever you want into it. For the B-side of the Horses Fucked 7-inch, I just found a vocal thing, and then you can put a sustain pedal on the piano and turn on the looper so it doesn’t stop playing. And then I’d play it at a couple different speeds at the same time, and you can do it infinitely.

A lot of my music is processed through that. I’ll find a classical song that has a passage I like and I’ll slow it down alongside a slightly faster version and they’ll intermix. That program is honestly what gives Barn Sour most of its sound. I have thousands of recordings because I’ll just record ten minutes of vocals, but then I’ll do it ten times because I’ll do a different mixture of different speeds, so I have so much stuff to pull from in my inventory. I don’t really have compositions in my head, though I might have some sort of subconscious idea where I’ll need a piano, a deep string, and some dumb vocals or somebody barfing, and then I’ll have to locate those three things and find the mixture where they work together.

Were you still viewing your work in Barn Sour as being derived from Viennese Actionism at this point?

Yeah, I’d say so. That was my inspiration for that kind of thing. I try to make beautiful sounding music. I know there are body sounds that can turn people off, but in my head I was trying to make borderline classical music. I’m not trying to be an edgelord or make people uncomfortable on purpose. For me, when I make the music, I just think it sounds good. Or at least, at the time I think it really does—later on I get sick of my stuff.

Are there other points of reference that you were thinking about with your music?

Probably just downer folk stuff or private press, weird music. Like, the song itself might not even be depressing, but it’ll sound sad. I like the melancholy aspect. I would always aim for my music to be on the darker, sadder side and the vocals would be whatever that worked.

You said earlier that you’re a fan of the shorter form, but then you released Soap & Glue (2023), which is a sort of final compilation and remix of all your previous Barn Sour material. How were you approaching that?

Mark asked if I could make a compilation that had stuff that wasn’t already released on Penultimate Press. The way I did it on my computer was that I was butting them up against one another so it was just one long track on GarageBand. I thought it’d be really annoying if it were all just one track and you couldn’t skip anything. Like, you’re just in it. I asked him if it’d be okay to make it it like that and he was like, “Yeah, sounds great.” I was just trying to be annoying. But also, I had it already set up and I didn’t want to reorder them outside of what I’d already done. It was both laziness and because I thought it’d be funny to make it hard to listen to.

That album was meant to be the last one, and now you have a new project with Duncan Harrison, Vegan Horse Meat (2026).

This one was just live stuff. I’m not doing anymore Barn Sour releases, but I’ll still perform. Well, that’s not true. If I do a show, I’ll usually put a tape out. I made a tape for the UK shows and I made a tape for the Belgian shows, but there are so few copies that I don’t think they’ll ever get unearthed. I’m over my formula. I’ll happily collab, like with this Duncan thing, but this also isn’t really Barn Sour. Duncan did everything—he mixed everything around with some other sounds. I think Side B is my live set that he’s added some stuff to, though some of it is untouched. And then Side A is when we did a set together in Amsterdam, and it’s some of my sounds and some of his sounds. Side A also has his live set from the next night. He recorded all of our sets in Europe, and he also recorded a bunch of sounds throughout the cities we were in. He mixed everything and he put the art together. He was the mastermind. All I did was play live a couple times, but he set everything up. I also have some other collab stuff on the burner, but it’s not straight-up Barn Sour so nobody please get on me for faking the end.

Can you share anything about the next collab?

I don’t think we even know what it’s gonna be, but it’s just me and another friend. It’s in the early stages.

There’s a question I end all my interviews with and I wanted to ask it to you. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

I think I’m emotionally pretty regulated. I like that I can stay pretty relaxed in most situations. I also love my kids. I have a son and a daughter.

Have they heard your music?

Briefly. I think if I played it they wouldn’t really care. My record player and tapes and stereo system are all in my basement. One time we were down there and my son asked me to put something scary sounding on. I put on some Barn Sour and he was like, “Oh, this is kind of spooky.”

Barn Sour’s new album with Duncan Harrison, Vegan Horse Meat, is out now via Regional Bears.

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Thank you for reading the 236th issue of Tone Glow. Barn sour, buddy sour, whiskey sour.

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