How do you perceive DIY (and specifically the “it”) within the online community in which you interact?
I think the DIY know-how is really important these days, in a time when the industry has changed so much. You can’t always depend on the support of a label to get your music out there, and the average person doesn’t have the finances and resources to pack up and go on tour. It’s up to the artists to be self-sufficient, which is completely doable, if you know a thing or two. The internet is a great tool; all media is at our disposal, and it’s just a click away. Finding a target audience is easier than ever. I’ve observed and learned a great deal in the past couple years — my eyes have been opened to the endless possibilities of the DIY method. Hell, I’ve been doing ‘it’ myself for the past 13 years now, but was unaware of how far I might have been able to take it until recently. What exactly is it? It’s putting out an album without the aid or backing of a label — it’s finding an audience, catering to it, advertising — it’s booking your own shows, and managing multiple networks — it’s a starting your own label out of your bedroom or basement, spending your hard-earned cash on CDs or cassettes, designing your own album artwork, manufacturing small runs, and then using any profit to turn around and buy more supplies, and if you’re lucky enough, you can give the artist a percentage or pay yourself…
I’m fortunate to have been signed with AMDISCS, a label that has internationally credibility, and who also do an amazing job on the promotional level. They’re one of the forerunners in ‘net music’ which may be a broad term, but the groups and artists they take on share a similar creative energy, and sense of artistic expression — the label’s not pigeonholed to any particular sound. It’s not a vaporwave label, yet in the past couple years, they’ve released albums from likes of Infinity Frequencies, Luxury Elite, and ESPRIT 空想 — all notable artists in that field, and artists who have previously and still to this day rely heavily on the DIY way of going about things. Com Truise released his first EP Cyanide Sisters on AMDISCS, and has since gained massive popularity.
WHOSE memories/dreams do you feel like you’re reproducing, specifically in Dream Sequins?
I can’t say they’re my dreams necessarily, in the sense that I actually fall asleep and dream about all this nostalgic stuff, but memories, yes — and really it could possibly trigger memories for a number of folks in my age group. Being a child of the 80s and early 90s, (maybe I’m biased) but I think there was a certain commercial magic that I just can’t see in TV shows/games/toys of this generation. Part of the fun of the last two albums I put out on AMDISCS, was being able to revisit my childhood to some degree — A majority of the samples are things that were relevant to me when I was a kid.
The Nintendo commercials and sounds, the three-second opening of Family Matters, 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love,” dialogue from “Are You Afraid Of The Dark,” and “The Grinch Grinches The Cat In The Hat“… The WHAS 11 weather report sampled in “Irregularly Scheduled Programming” is taken from footage during one of the biggest snowstorms in Louisville’s history, back in 1994 when I was 10 years old. I still remember my dad made a pathway out to the driveway from the front porch, and there were literally walls of snow on both sides, almost as tall as me at the time. The first section of “Rainforest Suite® V1.3” samples from a PC game I was addicted to in the 90s. I got help at the end of that track from my wife’s childhood nostalgia — one day last year, she spent an off-day watching old episodes of the Babysitter’s Club. When I came home and heard the dialogue, I immediately grabbed my Tascam recorder and pulled up a chair next to the television.
“3NATURE.mov” is the actual file name and sample of a 30-second video clip that came with the Windows 95 software. I used to play it over and over on my family’s first computer — I believe it was a Gateway 2000. If you perk up your ears in “The Gull Wing Doors Of Perception,” you can hear a string of movie trailers from 1988 that include The Land Before Time, which was my absolute favorite movie when I was 4-5 years old. Last year’s record, Nu.wav Hallucinations was the first exercise in getting all this out of my system. The nostalgia element has always been somewhat prevalent in my music, but in 2012, I finally fell upon the perfect medium to summon all the audio of my past, and let it flourish, with no restrictions. It’s very freeing.
When most audio is only emitted through two speakers, how do we even know what we’re really hearing? Is it a grand piano, or an extremely convincing VST? Live drums, or drum machine? There are too many variables.
How do you feel MOST connected with your work: during the mastering/editing, producing it on [equipment/computer], creating samples, traveling and/or sitting at work, etc.?
There’s several stages in production where I feel the most connected. The first one being the initial fucking around with sounds and samples and throwing them into the sequencer. There’s no pressure when I don’t have a plan of action. It’s just a matter of planting the seed and watching it grow into something. If I lose interest after a bit, or feel like it’s not getting anywhere, the session is usually scrapped or left to fester on my hard drive. I can tell really quickly if an idea is going to be worth pursuing, because I start building onto it and working at rapid speed. That’s the method I’ve been using for the most part since the beginning. There’s the occasional genius idea or melody that I’ve had stuck in my head, where I come home and lay it out, and try to do it justice. Some good tracks have derived from going about it that way — for instance “Full Service Printer” was an idea I’d had for nearly seven years while working at a printing company — there were so many different unique sounds coming from the printers and bindery equipment, and I wanted so badly just to sample everything at my disposal, and create a track composed entirely of those sounds. So one day I made it happen — I sampled tape guns, fax machines, drills, printers, cash registers, our alarm system, canned air, shrinkwrappers — even my coworkers spouting off random shit over the intercom. I had a fucking field day with all those samples once it came time to start turning them into drums and melodies. That’s the kind of instance where I feel like a kid in a candy shop. It’s the playful stage that winds up setting the course for the rest of the track.
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Pam Huntington, Nmesh’s vapor muse
The other gratifying part of the songwriting process is post-sequencing, or the multi-tracking phase — that’s when the fun starts all over again. The skeleton of the track has been laid out, and thrown into a session where I can start moving everything around like puzzle pieces until it fits. The pressure of the initial arrangement is over with. I can start beefing it up with layers of sounds, adding meat to the bones. It’s usually where all the detailed editing happens. I might spend a half hour on a small section of the drums, or even longer laying down low-amplitude background noise, or subliminal vocal bits. It can get very experimental in this stage.
I’d say the most connected I feel when I’m in listening-mode, is when driving around, or walking through the park with headphones. Music and motion seems to go hand in hand with me. I’m more receptive to it when I’m on the go for some reason. Back when I lived in my parents’ neighborhood, I used to throw my first mixdown of a track onto a CDr, along with other works-in-progress — I’d pack a bowl up and take a trip up to the less-inhabited side of the local park. I’d just get high and walk around, listening and critiquing my music. I felt that’s when I could really take it in the best. I’d note the changes and adjustments needed, develop new ideas, and then come back and get it all squared away. That was so much better than listening to a track for an endless amount of times behind a computer screen, where I’m always destined to hit the ‘wall’ sooner or later, when everything turns into white noise.
Where’s the most common ground you interact with labels and other musicians to produce and work with your music?
Without a doubt, social networks and email play a huge part in how I interact with others, and the internet has proven to be the perfect means of channeling my music to the rest of the world. I mean, there’s the promotional aspect of it — these days it pays off to have your work accessible on a number of sites, in order to reach a broader audience — but aside from that, I’ve sort of stumbled into a community the past couple years, that is largely internet-obsessed. And since I’m not playing shows, that works out just fine. Back in the day, it was word-of-mouth, mostly on a local level, and eventually MySpace. That was the first time I was really able to put my stuff out there for everyone, and in the years that followed, Facebook, Reverbnation, Soundcloud, and the works. Pretty much the industry standards.
I just recently started a Twitter account, actually. I’m a little late in the game with that one! For a long time I used to just think the focus was on celebrities, and I really didn’t have any interest in managing yet another account - Turns out its just Facebook: Part 2, except I seem to feel more inclined to tweet or post random shit. As far as collaborations go, Facebook messages and Dropbox links. If it’s a local collaboration, they’re usually friends of mine, and I’ll have them over for recording sessions in my office/studio. When I’m in engineer-mode, it usually ends up with me getting drunk and chain-smoking a pack in the process. With the label, we mostly communicate via email.
What video game AND television series MOST influenced your music?
I’m incredibly nostalgic about 80’s/90s video games. My back catalog is like an archive of retromania. I grew up with an NES, SNES, SEGA Genesis and Gameboy. Occasionally my dad would hook up the Atari 2600 and we’d be baffled trying to figure out exactly what the fuck you were supposed to be doing in Superman. We never had a console past the point of Super Nintendo, because PC games took over in the mid-90s for my family. I spent a great deal of my childhood playing video games, and the memories are all good ones. Naturally, I’d want to revisit some of the most iconic games from my past, so what better excuse to do that, than to go sample-hunting. Anyone can very easily come across a slew of video game samples in my music, and that includes the pre-vaporwave material.
I liked the idea of a seamless, uninterrupted ‘trip’ as opposed to the conventional methods of mixing or laying out an album.
My favorites on NES were Zelda 1 & 2, Jackie Chan’s Action Kung Fu, Adventure Island, Mega Man 2, Bubble Bobble, Gauntlet, Solstice… On SNES, Earthbound (one of my all-time favorite games, and what I consider the best RPG, hands down). Also Secret Of Mana, Actraiser, Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter II, etc. On Genesis, I was obsessed with Sonic, Ecco The Dolphin, Altered Beast, Jurassic Park, X-Men… Aside from all the Return Of The Living Dead samples on the You’re Dead To Me EP, there’s a fair amount of Splatterhouse 3 in there. I can say without hesitation, the game that I treasured the most (and still do to this day) is a platformer from 92 called Kid Chameleon. I’ve used a countless number of screenshots for album artwork, and levels for track names. 2004’s Absolut Hell is utterly ridden with Doom samples. The last two releases both contained appropriated versions of new-age music from the 1995 PC game Endorfun. As far as TV goes, I grew up on the Disney Halloween and Christmas specials, Mr. Boogedy (Eat the eggs…), G.I. Joe, TMNT, Ultraman, and everything Nickelodeon… I developed some strange infatuation with I Dream Of Jeannie later in the late 90s. It’s probably about time to retire that Larry Hagman bit — “I sort of had a hallucination… I was floating around up there…”
What’s stopping you from performing live?
A number of things, unfortunately — Nmesh has always been almost exclusively a studio project, with the exception of a number of shows back I did with some buddies of mine 10 years ago. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to, I mean, I feel like that would be the next big step in progressing - but I don’t have the means or setup to execute a live performance the way I’d like to. I’ve got limited gear, and most of the material I’ve been putting out in the past year or two is all multi-tracked insanity. I don’t know how I’d pull that off in a live setting, and I don’t want to be the guy that just hits play and fakes his way through a set, pretending to do more than he’s really doing. It could almost be compared to painting a picture, and then all that’s left is to put it on display.
Besides that, I’d really want to incorporate a strong visual element into my live performance — whether it be a collage of found footage, or some kind of performance art, I’ve always imagined it being a well-balanced combination of audio and visual. The sad truth of it is, I just don’t think I’d be that interesting to watch ‘poking around’. I’m hoping this might change in the near future. Several months back I was asked by some local guys I know if I would open for OPN if they could manage to get him to Louisville on his R Plus Seven tour. It was an exciting prospect, but the idea almost gave me a heart attack, because I only had so much time to prepare. Passing up an opportunity like that, I’d regret for the rest of my life. Turns out, his tour managers declined, so I was off the hook anyway. Definitely a little disappointing, but I was able to breathe easier. If anything, it lit a small fire under my ass to figure something out, so that I won’t get caught with my pants down again. I’ll be trying to explore the possibilities of making a live show a reality in the very near future.
