On Blue Metropolis, a Year Later.
(In conversation with Dylan Belfast, August 25, 2018)
On the album
“It’s a painting. I approached this just like I approach a canvas—with the goal of creating an image, likeness, or impression. I'd start with broad swaths of color, then add layers and shapes until I felt like I was done. I suppose the unifying theme is the grandeur of the city (any city, really) and the ability of man—individual and collective—to create and sustain such a massive thing. I see a city as this incredibly enormous and beautiful achievement that somehow functions seemingly on its own like a perpetual motor. So, imagine walking or riding the city streets and the things you would see and hear, often in bizarre juxtaposition. This is what I was trying to depict. Construction and destruction, colors of concrete and gardens, exhaust and blue sky, love and death, chaos and calm. I do latch onto certain ideas and topics, but it’s born out of stream-of-consciousness to maintain a feeling of wandering. I conceived of this when I was living in New York—a brief time, but one that had a profound effect on me.
"At the same time, the arrangement or curation of songs was an effort to mimic the pace and atmosphere of attending a concert or show, even including the idea of an intermission. I was thinking about vinyl from the beginning and what the experience of playing four sides might entail. Two songs on each side with an extra in the middle to function as an intermission, or at least intermission music.
"The cover art reflects the tone of the music. I liked the image for the juxtaposition of old and new and the forward-leaning orientation. And it looks especially great on the matte jacket of the vinyl LP."
On the music
"Musically, I wanted to do things differently, in terms of form and content. Expanded forms, symmetrical, cyclic, or palindromic forms.
“I tried to avoid stagnation and verbatim repetition. The vocals were the very last thing I recorded, and it was important to me that the tracks be musically compelling even without the singing and the lyrics. In most songs I’m trying to create a kind of composite swing feel by oppositely panning independent keyboard riffs. Yeah, it’s busy and sometimes chaotic, but that’s the point. It’s also sometimes calm and sometimes weird.
"Melody is always my primary focus. But I wanted to create depth in this album. I wanted the listener to be able to find something new on each listen. Some albums have great hooks and grooves but after a couple of weeks they become tired. I tried, through unity in the album, motifs, lyrics, buried melodies, etc., to create a place for the listener to explore and always hear or learn something new."
On influence
"I think everything I’ve ever played or studied is here in this album—not intentionally, but it found a way in. Classical, jazz, salsa, Gypsy brass band; Dylan, Waits, Jeff Buckley, Joanna Newsom. And actually, it was Joanna’s incredible way of writing that helped me kind of get over a wall that I was stuck at for a few years; her album Ys completely opened things up for me.
"Still, this album is entirely, one hundred percent me. There was no outside pressure or input and I didn't seek comments or anything (for better or worse), and the result is a raw look into someone hammering out music in a cramped, hot, makeshift recording booth in his home—basically, just like I was doing in high school on my 4-track, though the equipment is quite a bit better.
On recording
"This is actually the second iteration. I recorded most of these songs about 6 or 7 years ago but scrapped it all because the recording quality wasn’t there, and there were largely times when I wasn’t being myself—the music was affected in some way and I wasn’t happy with it. So I scrapped it. I can easily and accidentally absorb style and nuance, so I have to be very careful what I listen to. While recording this album, I didn't listen to any other music.
"While teaching a jazz history class—the Kansas City portion about Basie and head arrangements and basically the band’s process of stacking riffs—I became inspired to do the album in a way that I wanted. So I bought Logic Pro and learned how to use it, upgraded mics and monitors, built an isolation booth, and two years later (after a few distractions) had a completed album. The mixing was the steepest learning curve and took about five months of learning and experimenting and I’m not convinced I did a particularly good job. And finally the mastering was done by Jeff Lipton at Peerless Mastering in Boston, who did a really great job and made this thing sound better than it probably should."
On the future
"I'm back writing and recording, which is kind of a simultaneous process. I'm working on all of the songs at the same time. Much of writing comes from improvisation over a loop until I refine a melody or countermelody and then developing that idea. I have a narrative in mind and everything in order and planned out and I'm very excited about it. It will be more topical and at the same time perhaps more incoherent. Musically, I'm trying to strip things down to the bare necessities where each line is crucially important, and the melody can wander organically through the texture. Though at the same time I like the full sound of many layers happening in unison, so we'll see what prevails."