Stars of the Lid – Music For Twin Peaks Episode #30 Part I

As scientists of sound, Stars of the Lid compose their slow motion symphonies with an expansive, ethereal drift in mind. Lasty year, their Kranky-released double album …And Their Refinement of the Decline was met with widespread critical acclaim and has since been heralded as the duo’s masterpiece. However, despite the gushing praise, Adam Wiltzie insists that it’s certainly not ambience for the masses.

Your music has a sort of visual, cinematic quality to it. When you’re composing, do you ever think in terms of images or colours?

“Oh, definitely. I think there was a point where I was finding it harder and harder just to get influenced by other music or to be motivated to make music for its own sake, so I needed to find other outlets to inspire me. I started to actively search out movies and art, and I’d always scatter colours, shapes and images around my studio. Whether they’re pink squares or a picture of a beautiful sculpture, I really think it does have a huge, profound impact on me.”

Solo projects aside, how much of the last six years were focused on the new album?

“I was always working on it, but I’d say the last three years more intensely. The whole concept was to try to make a record where it would just be a case of working on it when something came to me. It’s as simple as that. Best way to make a record. Usually I take my time anyway but every six months to a year you’re being reminded that ‘due date for Christmas is September 1^st’, so I feel…you lose yourself a little bit because you think ‘okay, we’ll put out something I’m not 100% on just so we can make a deadline’ and for me that’s not the way it should be. But I think that’s how most people to do it. Obviously, there are a lot more bands now than there were ten years ago, but people are putting out records at an unbelievable pace. Even with musicians I respect, I don’t like all their albums because they’re not making great ones anymore. They’re making a living from it and they have families to feed so I guess they have to bring home the bacon.”

So for the sake of quality control, do you prefer not to have to live off music in that sense?

“We don’t really sell that many records anyway. I don’t think it would even be possible if we wanted to. I think that helps a lot. I mean I’ve worked with a lot of bands that do live off their music and I think their material does, at times, suffer because of that. They have a label to contend with and managers to pay. It’s not solely about the music anymore, it becomes like a machine that they have to keep feeding or it will die. I just don’t want to ever be like that. I feel fortunate if people find our music, but in a way I’m glad it’s not more popular because I have to ask myself whether success would change me into thinking that I have to keep putting stuff out there.”

Given its sparse nature, are people ever surprised when they hear how long you spend creating the music?

“Honestly, I don’t know. It’s a good question. Maybe you could answer better than me!”

Well I heard that for the song ‘Music for Twin Peaks Episode 30’, you spent a month just mixing it.

“Yeah! Which actually isn’t that much anymore. At the time, I had forty or fifty different mixes for that song and I spent a long time just…listening. Different places, different atmospheres. Those levels that you hear, there’s a sort of gritty guitar that comes in at the very beginning and I couldn’t really get the right level, so it was really small things I was changing. But in the end I think I came up with the best mix. It’s a really harsh, distorted guitar but it sounds so soft and lovely when you hear it first coming in. It’s almost like a locust or something. So, it helps!”

I think part of the magic of Twin Peaks was that it felt like this strange little world actually existed out there somewhere. Similarly, your music feels like it inhabits its own particular place. Do you think that when your listeners are immersed in it, they’re all, in a way, occupying the same space while still in their own bedrooms?

“Yeah, I think a little bit for sure. People say that it’s their favourite thing to listen to before they go asleep, which is fine by me. This nocturnal activity seems to be the general thing that bridges everyone together so there is a sort of camaraderie amongst the application it’s used for. I know that when I’m making the record it’s always been the case that if I can’t fall asleep to a track, it doesn’t ever make the final cut.”

Is there a sense of relief when you finally finish an album?

“Oh my God, the biggest relief in the world! It’s like you took the biggest shit in your entire life and you just feel like a million bucks. And you never want to hear it again…Every time I just feel really spent, like I never want to do another record.”

Well that can’t be too good a feeling, can it?

“Well it’s a relief, you know? Although I do enjoy making music, it can feel like a burden.”

Brian (McBride) described your earlier recordings as ‘hectic’ – how do you think you’ve evolved over the last few albums?

“I don’t want to say that we’ve gotten better. We’ve just evolved a little bit like any band that’s been around for a while. I think we’ve become a bit more mellow and hectic is a pretty good description of what it once was. During my early twenties, I was really in a dark place. Although the music can be described as darker now, there was just a sort of insanity behind the first few records that really comes across. Maybe a normal person could listen and not tell the difference but I think there’s a huge change in what we’re doing now. And hectic it is not.”

Your music seems to reward time spent with it – do you think in a time of internet downloads and leaked albums, people’s attention spans are on the wane?

“I think in general people have really poor attention spans. With us, you don’t even have to sit and actively listen to the record, so I don’t know what people want. Personally, I love background music that you can put on and go about your business, but most people aren’t like that. I could never try to convince someone to listen to my music because I know nine times out of ten, the person probably listens to the White Stripes or something and would just throw our stuff out the window.”

So you don’t really care who listens to it then…

“I really don’t. I feel that we’ve been more than fortunate to have a nice label to put out the record and we have some people that have connected with it. A small amount it may be, but I feel fortunate to have these people. I mean I’ve been to festivals, I know firsthand, I’ve seen their faces, these people…I don’t want them to be my fans. If they find a way to discover it without having it pushed down their throats and if they really like the music for what it is, that’s great. I just don’t want to be mass marketed. I don’t know how you found out about it, but for me word of mouth is still the best way.”

MySpace

You can catch my interview with M83 (along with some album reviews) in the new issue of State magazine, which has just hit stores. This month also includes features with Iggy and The Stooges, The Ting Tings,
Saul Williams, Baby Dee, Dan Deacon and much more.

For Gillis, this frantic pilfering of the Top 40 is the result of years’ worth of carefully cataloguing breaks, loops and voice clips in order to re-contextualise the material into a new aesthetic. “When I put this all together, I’m not necessarily trying to make the ultimate party mix,” he explains. “I’m trying to make fun, interesting music that’s also challenging. In some ways, you have to grow with it and experience it but just by attending the show you’re saying: ‘I’m open to all of these different styles of music’. There’s a lot of variation in the crowds and some people may not be into hip-hop or dance music but I don’t think you have to be to enjoy it.”

One only need take a glimpse at the many YouTube clips of Girl Talk performances to see that this is obviously the case. On a good night, Gillis’ exhilarating parade of snippets can spark a response that quickly gets out of hand. Often resembling a Mardi Gras-like atmosphere, the stage is typically invaded within minutes, the crowd stripping off their clothes before there’s even time to make sense of how Metallica and the Jackson 5 are being interspersed with Wham! and Ace of Base.

“I can only play for an hour because the material is so hard to format, so I think people realise they may as well use that time to get crazy,” Gillis reasons. “I’ve had a stage collapse in Dallas…a guy was tazered in St. Louis. It is the music [that produces these reactions] but obviously I can’t take all the credit for that.”

Although Girl Talk essentially follows on from pioneering samplers such as John Oswald, Gillis’ ecstatic following is often met with disapproval and bewilderment from die-hard turntablists. “Sometimes DJs see my shows and think: ‘this is too crazy. How can it be moving so quickly?’” says Gillis. “If you’re DJing for party music, there is an art to it but it’s not about experimentation. There are rigid rules. I’m not necessarily trying to push boundaries but I think with ‘Night Ripper’, I finally found my own distinct sound and an audience to share it with.”

Wild Peace IV: Feed The Animals, Raise The Dead is soon to be released on Illegal Art.

MySpace

Though it may seem crass to draw comparisons with Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings” series, there’s a refined quality to Christy Moore’s new album, “Burning Times,” that recalls the same kind of presence the Man in Black imbued to songs that were not his own. However, rather than having a producer like Rick Rubin to pick out the songs that might work best for him, Moore has found himself magnetically drawn towards certain songs over the years: “I love to sing a song that has meat and bones in it, that has a personality and a character…’cause it’s what I do. I wouldn’t perform my own or another writer’s songs with any more passion or examination. To me, a song is a song no matter who’s written it. I mean if I sing a song to you now and it lasts four minutes, for those four minutes, that song belongs to me and you – the singer and the listener. As soon as I’m finished singin’ it, then it reverts to Bob Dylan. He gets it back then,” he laughs.

In many cases, Moore has been playing these songs for years, honing and subtly re-shaping them until they’re as familiar as an old set of friends. Yet even for those that have come to make regular appearances in live performances, the songs of this particular collection were fortunate to find a home together at all. Ever the perfectionist, Moore’s meticulous preparation also means long periods of incubation, wearing a tune in like a new guitar until there can be no doubt about its place in the fold. So much so, in fact, that Moore didn’t hesitate to re-record the album until it felt right: “We tried it in two different recording studios, and the third time we did it down in Declan’s house in Cork. Just from the time we kicked off, I knew we had it, which was fabulous. We both knew it was happening. I mean it is a bit of a cliché, but in a way, this is a series of photographs of what Declan and I have been doing for the last couple of years.”

Having such an inclination towards the heart of a well-written song, crossing paths with the penmanship of Bob Dylan may have always seemed inevitable. Covering the likes of Morrissey, on the other hand, may come as a surprise. “I was talking about my ambivalence towards America, the fact that I’ve got wonderful American friends whom I love dearly. I love being in America, I love gigging there, I love a lot of its culture and art. And yet, the behaviour of some Americans appals me…at the moment, it’s a very frightening country.” Having been a major part of the “When Bush Comes to Shove” protest gig last year, and recently organising a benefit concert for New Orleans, it’s clear Moore harbours a bittersweet relationship with the US – one that led him to an acquaintance with the ex-Smiths singer’s song at just the right time. “I think I said to my wife: ‘I’d love to write something about my mixed feelings for America’. So she just played it for me and I said: ‘Jesus, I wonder if I could sing that’. And then it started,” Moore smiles, “…the long, agonising journey of trying to learn a Morrissey song.”

Moore has enjoyed a fruitful association with some of Ireland’s finest songwriters, and so unsurprisingly, when the Kildare-man applies himself to the work of John Spillane and Wally Page, it’s an entirely natural fit. The country-tinged macabre of the world of The Handsome Family, however, is another connection that one might not have foreseen with Moore. “I heard the Handsomes singin’, and I was instantly smitten… I mean they are very dark, but sometimes they manage to be hilariously funny simultaneously, and I love that. It’s great sometimes to be breaking your hole laughing at something so incredibly dark.”

One of the two Handsome Family tracks to feature on “Burning Times,” “Peace in the Valley Once Again” imagines an end to the world’s all-consuming concrete sprawl with an apocalyptic vision where only insects remain. The rather serene contemplation bookends matters nicely by answering the almost despondent call of Natalie Merchant’s “Motherland” at the album’s beginning. Despite not being his own songs, everything that lies between and around those two points is distinctly Christy Moore. Perhaps it’s that there are universal themes at the foundation of many of these songs, or maybe it’s just the feel that Moore’s voice lends to them, but he has found a way to make the work of Merchant, Richard Thompson, and Joni Mitchell sound like they were once traditional Irish folk songs. In fact, finding that means to add eloquence to shards of life-changing memories and heartbreaking imperfection – the fabric of Ireland’s character – is what makes Moore the iconic storyteller that he is. In his own words, though, cohesion and the themes that announce themselves from it only arrive as an afterthought: “I don’t set out to make a concept album…I hope that in the recording, sometimes unbeknownst even to myself, one will actually emerge and there will be a vibe that will go through an album. But it’s just twelve individuals that’ve been brought together, and hopefully, will hang well that way.”

As a whole, there is a duality at play within “Burning Times” – a mixture of nostalgia for the craic and biting statements that can touch a nerve unexpectedly. An expert at knowing how to prick the listener’s consciousness, Moore knows that the right moment to do so is just when you’re at your most comfortable. “…I suppose that would be my approach,” he ponders, as if he had never thought of it that way. “But I think you’ve got to be very careful how you do it…you can’t go straight from the abuse of children into ‘The Craic Was Ninety In The Isle Of Man’, we have to move gently from topics that deserve sensitivity to bit of lunacy.”

Stepping seamlessly from the warmth of “Magic Nights in the Lobby Bar” to tales of injustice within a minute, the proportion of this balance on “Burning Times” acutely represents the essence of Moore’s live experience. “My impression of the atmosphere around the countries I do is that there’s usually a fairly happy aul’ buzz around the hall when it’s over, a lot of smiling faces. So that seems to be the way it works; we seem to be able to present a mixture of songs, some of which reflect on heavy subjects, and we manage to do it in a way that also allows us to have a good night and to enjoy ourselves.” Even still, Moore is always prepared to pick up a lesson or two along the way: “I remember a long time ago in the Point I got stuck in some kind of a rut. I played ‘Farewell to Pripchat’ and then I did ‘The Middle of the Island’, and this guy shouts up: ‘For feck’s sake Christy, would ye ever lighten up!’ Just this voice booming down the Point: ‘Bloody lighten up man’. But he was right…and it was a magic moment.”

Taken from Trinity News, November 2nd 2005