Introvertirani melodijski esencijalizam, crni kvadrati iz snova, akustični encefalografi. Saksofon, klarinet, glas, preparirane žice, zvona, metalna škripa drveta... Zraka sunca ubija plastičnu aždaju.
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REL
If last year’s Slow Boat (released on Keith Kawaii’s Orange Milk) was a free-float through an impenetrable fog, Ashley Paul’s follow up, Line the Clouds, might turn out to be something of a clearing. At least that’s what sounds like is going on with the title track, sunlight peeking through Paul’s penchant for a spooky atmosphere, shining down to reveal the song’s nudity, a bare and spare mix of delicate instruments and that most fragile of melodies. But even though there’s less clutter to be found here, it’s clear that Paul’s vision is still to challenge basic forms like the “ballad” as we once knew them. Here now, in 2013, on the other side of the end of the world, we find ourselves evolving yet again. Music is mutant. But of course that doesn’t mean it has to be any less beautiful. -
If last year’s Slow Boat (released on Keith Kawaii’s Orange Milk) was a free-float through an impenetrable fog, Ashley Paul’s follow up, Line the Clouds, might turn out to be something of a clearing. At least that’s what sounds like is going on with the title track, sunlight peeking through Paul’s penchant for a spooky atmosphere, shining down to reveal the song’s nudity, a bare and spare mix of delicate instruments and that most fragile of melodies. But even though there’s less clutter to be found here, it’s clear that Paul’s vision is still to challenge basic forms like the “ballad” as we once knew them. Here now, in 2013, on the other side of the end of the world, we find ourselves evolving yet again. Music is mutant. But of course that doesn’t mean it has to be any less beautiful. -
Ashley Paul's voice in the so-called experimental scene is a unique one. ... she has an aversion to electronically generated sounds. Considering that many of Brooklyn's major experimental outposts-- Issue Project Room, Roulette, Silent Barn-- trade in these exclusively, focus on material sources is significant. Equally striking is the fact Paul binds vocals and acoustic instruments with songcraft, considering the pervasive predilection for abstraction. In practice, this amounts to essentialist melodies, self-harmonies, and off-the-cuff orchestration which blends timbres ranging from droning to tiney. Dream logic reigns on Line the Clouds. Often the most poignant elements seem incidental, be it an amp buzzing in the background or the wind that precedes tone from a woodwind. - Michael Sugarman
The music is is equally beautiful, with Ashley Paul’s hushed, delicate and warm vocals creating a very intimate connection between artist and listener. The spirit of experimentation on the record is remarkably free yet the songs are constructed with stirring, ghostly melodies.
Ashley is exceptionally talented; employing flute, clarinet, guitar, bells, percussion, prepared strings, sax, etc. There’s a genuine magical quality to this record which I’m struggling to articulate, I can highly recommend being caught in its spell for it’s a thing of rare beauty that will continually reward across repeated listens. This is the real deal from one of the bright new voices of the avant-garde. In a world where the music industry is plagued by fashion and pretension it’s always reassuring to know that there are still people making breathtakingly honest music straight from the heart. Edition of 300 hand-numbered copies - get in quick! - Norman Records
“Line the Clouds”, the newest release by the Providence based composer Ashley Paul is an album of contradictions that clash and irritate at first, but later find their way into the listener’s ear and begin to fit perfectly. First such clash comes in the opening piece “Soak the Ocean”, where the lullabish vocals and a soft, peaceful melody sound jarringly out of place among the screeching, metallic, atonal sounds that belong more to a dryly academic elecroacoustic improvisation suite than an oneiric folk album. But is it really a folk album, after all? The listener would like to believe so, but Ashley Paul deconstructs the psychedelic folk cliches through droning, unsettling compositions that are more guaranteed to send shivers down one’s spine than wash them in the beatific beauty.
Through sparse, almost totally random sounds and skeletal track structures she builds an intensely intimate, emotional atmosphere. It feel almost intrusive to listen to this album built on fragile vocals and shyly played instruments, as if one was listening to something reserved to the creator only, invading the personal space of the musician. Just like the cover, the music on “Line the Clouds” often feels crude and unfinished - and this is exactly where its strength lies. It leaves much space for interpretation and for the sounds to sink in, allowing for reflection. And that reflection allows the music to hit the listener harder. The droning, whining clarinet. The few basic plucks on guitar strings. The occasional bells. The ear-piercing reeds. Everything has its time and place, every piece of machinery knows its role perfectly well, even if it feels random in focus. Ashley Paul plays God, and has a lot of fun with it. The tracks jump from stuttering, free improv vignettes in the vein of early Supersilent (without the virulent synths) or AMM to fractured, deformed proto-songs which evoke the ghosts of American folklore.
It’s also worth ot mention contributors to the album. Together with Paul, they both work up some great chemistry, pushing raw, restrained sounds forward toward a very demanding, yet very rewarding end. “Line the Clouds” may, and most likely will, require some preparation and repeated listens. But once the listener gets it, it feels like opening a vault of new meanings and emotions. - weedtemple.net
Through sparse, almost totally random sounds and skeletal track structures she builds an intensely intimate, emotional atmosphere. It feel almost intrusive to listen to this album built on fragile vocals and shyly played instruments, as if one was listening to something reserved to the creator only, invading the personal space of the musician. Just like the cover, the music on “Line the Clouds” often feels crude and unfinished - and this is exactly where its strength lies. It leaves much space for interpretation and for the sounds to sink in, allowing for reflection. And that reflection allows the music to hit the listener harder. The droning, whining clarinet. The few basic plucks on guitar strings. The occasional bells. The ear-piercing reeds. Everything has its time and place, every piece of machinery knows its role perfectly well, even if it feels random in focus. Ashley Paul plays God, and has a lot of fun with it. The tracks jump from stuttering, free improv vignettes in the vein of early Supersilent (without the virulent synths) or AMM to fractured, deformed proto-songs which evoke the ghosts of American folklore.
It’s also worth ot mention contributors to the album. Together with Paul, they both work up some great chemistry, pushing raw, restrained sounds forward toward a very demanding, yet very rewarding end. “Line the Clouds” may, and most likely will, require some preparation and repeated listens. But once the listener gets it, it feels like opening a vault of new meanings and emotions. - weedtemple.net
Like some disastrous tightrope act, Ashley Paul’s beautifully fragile patches of song – gently quivering, poised in a state of equilibrium – are surrounded by the threat of collapse. Even its spots of explicit beauty (first seen in hushed vocals and cascading guitar petals of “Clouds”) feel destined to lose balance, and those chaotic wails of improvisation for woodwind, string and percussion are always lurking in waiting; lingering somewhere within the ugly un-gated amplifier buzz that cradles every melodic pluck.
The pressure borders on the intolerable on occasion. Paul seems to delight in a taut and dissonant friction; violin bows are treated like serrated saws, dragged across strings and cymbals until they splutter and scream in overtonal discomfort, while woodwind comes in little slithers of forced breath and choked reed. Everything feels ready to snap – the noise is torturously held at the very precipice of catastrophe, kept on a leash that forbids any venture into absolute cathartic explosion.
Her vocals adopt a strange position in amongst all of this – soft and lullaby-esque, snatching loosely at melody without ever becoming too clearly defined. They sound lost and unsure like a re-emergence from coma, restricted to vague breaths of half-sentences, confused and somewhat withdrawn in amongst such unstable and threatening instrumental company. As a listener, I am left waiting hopelessly for clarity to come sweeping over the blur of instability – some sort of glorious, epiphanic eruption that brings everything into sumptuous alignment, alleviating Line The Clouds’ tension with the warmth of simplicity and meaning. It never happens, and agonising though that is, the record is all the more fantastic for it.. - www.attnmagazine.co.uk/
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Composer/ Multi-Instrumentalist Ashley Paul uses a unique mixture of saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared strings and bells to create a dream-like mash of minimalist, psycho-accoustic experiments, floating melodies, metallic clatter and screeching bit-reed tones creating introverted songs, and intuitive forms. Performing solo, she brings to the stage her own eclectic set-up, forging a dense sound closer to a small band than just one person, often playing multiple instruments simultaneously while accompanying her voice.
“This is highly personal music that somehow ties up creepy basement singer-song writer styles with avant garde strings, improv moves and exuberant non-musical techniques...highly recommended.” - David Keenan
“a form destroyer if there ever was one...” - Keith Fullerton Whitman
Ashley Paul uses a unique mixture of saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared strings and bells to create a mash of understated clatter, floating melodies and psycho-acoustic experiments. She combines these disparate elements to compose introverted songs and intuitive forms.
"...once in a while something gets slapped in the tape deck that just utterly, completely nails you to the underpinnings of heavens dripping maw. Such an experience is to be had by anyone lucky enough to grab hold of if only goodnight, the first cassette on the Wagtail label by Eastern Massachusetts improv/noise/strange-string shaman-femme Ashley Paul." - Byron Coley & Thurston Moore
"…Ashley's sound remains stark and crisp, each plucked string and clattering strike standing out as strongly as a winter twig against a clear January sky…"- Ed Pinsent
"Album of the column from this newcomer... DOL is an intriguing hybrid, merging long-form tones with primitivist DIY clatter and Improv dissonance. Paul handles the mutually antagonistic idioms with aplomb and a winning mixture of accuracy and rawness." - Nick Cain
A Conversation With Ashley Paul, by Brad Rose:
The biggest compliment I can give to Ashley Paul is that there is really no one else producing music like she does. When I first heard her D.O.L. album many moons ago, I was spellbound. Her music is confident yet fragile and exudes both qualities in spades. On her latest opus, Slow Boat (beautifully presented by Orange Milk), Paul reaches new heights and shows a rawness and vulnerability that hasn’t been this present or integral to her music, at least not like this. It’s a stunning, multi-faceted album that turns clatter and whisper into a hammer whose impact is felt long beyond its 40 minute running time. It is a beautiful and powerful statement from an artist who is just finding her peak.So first off, what are some of your earliest memories not just of playing music or learning to play, but more general… what were some of the first experiences you remember where hearing a particular band or piece of music really made an impression or impacted you in some way?
I grew up surrounded by music. My older sister was practicing piano and singing all the time, my dad playing guitar and my grandfather playing clarinet and saxophone. As far as early influences/ inspirations it really was singularly Paul Desmond. I always wanted to play music, and began piano lessons at about 3 and sang in the children’s chorus starting not to long after that, but when I heard Paul Desmond that was that. I began telling people I was going to be a saxophonist around 6 and actually started at 10. The day I brought my horn home from the shop I turned on Paul Desmond “Skylark” and tried to transcribe it. It was pretty slow going but all I did for years, seriously, was transcribe everything Paul Desmond did.
And when did you start writing and recording your own stuff? The first thing I was ever aware of was the “D.O.L.” album…
I didn’t start writing music until college. I had this impression that it as incredibly complicated…so many rules and I was totally intimidated. I have issues with rules. Things really came together for me though when I started recording myself. Again, I was completely intimidated ... until I finally tried…and then it just very quickly became the center of my music and really, my consciousness. I love recording. It helped me to be able to form ideas and achieve what was going on in my head in a very immediate way, which I need. Anyway, I self released a 3” CDR in 2006 but my first real album was DOL.
How do your live shows differ from your recordings? Do you write/record with an idea of being able to play the pieces live or do the records and performances sort of offer up different perspectives on the same ideas? Basically, what’s the most difficult aspect of balancing the two?
Despite my best efforts, I cant play all the instruments at the same time live, so that is the main difference between live and recorded, although I’m still trying. My set-up now is guitar, saxophone, voice and crotales where I play multiple instruments simulateously. I want it to sound like more than one person. Musically I think live is different and not different than my recordings, perhaps a little more rough around the edges. I usually will work in a couple songs from the albums but then also do a more extended saxophone section.
Initially when I recorded I didn’t think at all about performing the pieces live, but now it is something I a lot about. I got frustrated with not being able to produce a performance that at least referenced the recorded material. I enjoy going to concerts and hearing songs I know and wanted to be able to do that myself without having to use anything electronic; no tape recorders, samplers, etc…so I began to thin out my recordings significantly with this in mind.
The most difficult aspect is really just finding that sweet spot; where the recording can have everything I want and hear but not overloading to the point where there would never be a possibility of performing it.
What do you love most about playing live?
People. Adrenalin, Its terrifying.
To me, it’s the biggest statement you’ve made as a solo artist… it really brings together a lot of the different ideas you’ve explored on past releases and not only melds them into something really cohesive, but it’s full of surprises and unexpected moments to. So I’m curious if it feels like that to you or if it’s simply a continuation down the path you started on back with “D.O.L.”?
Wow, thanks. You know, I don’t know how not to think of it as a continuation…things grow and shift, but I have definitely settled. I was nervous about having this whole album of songs with very little horns. I didn’t start out planning it to go this way, and then it did and I felt super vulnerable putting it out there.
Has it been a conscious effort on your part to incorporate your vocals more into your recordings over the last few years?
It has been something I’ve been really aware of. I had a lot of outside resistance to my singing in the beginning, so I tended to do less of it. I just kept hearing these melodies over the chaos, these simple melodies and I couldn’t shake it and the more I started to sing, and combine these disparate elements the more clear things became. Its funny, the people who were against my singing have since told me they are really glad I didn’t listen…so…
It’s really interesting to hear you mention how vulnerable you felt putting “Slow Boat” out there, which is something I can certainly appreciate it. While I recognize that, on some level, every piece of music is personal, this album feels even moreso. Is it like that for you?
I think the part that made me feel the most vulnerable was not relying on the saxophone. Using this particular instrumentation was a departure for me from what I had been doing for almost my whole life. To leave the saxophone behind and sing and play guitar, etc instead. It was not my initial intend when I started this album. It sort of just happened, and then I was like “oh no!” Of course I wanted to put it out there, but at the same time it definitely felt different….
Why did you call the record “Slow Boat”?
Slow boat is the name of one of the songs on the album…which us also one of my favorite songs I’ve recorded. I wrote it while feeling pretty stuck. Like this big transition was about to happen but was just far enough away that nothing whatsoever was happening and I was waiting in limbo, floating. I guess I just had this ridiculous image in my head of a boat that couldn’t move, standing still. It seemed appropriate somehow to also name the album slow boat…it felt like a slow boat.
What are your future plans for your solo stuff? Should we expect the return of more horns?
Well, yah. I’m recording a new album right now and there is a lot more saxophone on it… But also a lot of voice too. I think the general atmosphere is pretty similar to slow boat, but I piece each album together like programming a concert. I want it to feel like a whole, and in this case there are considerably more horns.
Are you still working on your Wagtail label? And if so, what is in the works?
I’m so excited, I just got the tests for a new Reuben son 7″ I’m releasing. It’s so good. Reuben on guitar…seriously excited about it. I am anxiously awaiting those and will probably release it by early june.
REL is also rereleasing the Paul & Maurey cassette on vinyl with a few new songs. That should be out any day too so we are looking forward to that!
Ashley Paul: Interview
“Someone said that it helped them, as a member of the audience, to close their eyes, because it felt so intimate — like they shouldn’t be watching me.”
Café Oto is a live music venue in North East London. Although it is situated in the trendier borough of Hackney, it remains one of the only venues in the city that hosts avant-garde and experimental concerts on a semi-daily basis. In that respect, it’s a unique space, offering local and international artists a platform for exhibiting their work for an increasingly engaged and enthusiastic community of listeners who frequently pack out the café’s 150 or so capacity. I often attend, and when Brooklyn-based musician Ashley Paul came to play her debut UK show there, I took the opportunity to speak with her about touring her most recent album, the gorgeously jarring Line The Clouds.
Oto already boasts an intimate setting. The audience is permitted to sit or stand merely a few feet away from whatever makeshift setup the musicians assemble. On the evening of Paul’s concert, that intimacy was increased tenfold, due to the intricate and improvised nature of the sound she meticulously crafts. In support of Ilyas Ahmed, she played a fantastic half-hour set, an incredibly delicate and often disturbing performance that pushed the boundaries of high-frequency noise, but within a refined, acoustic context.
How does it feel to play in a venue like Oto, and how would you compare that to some of the places you might play back home?
It’s funny, because the longer you are in Brooklyn for, the more insular it seems. You know, from an outsider’s perspective, there is so much going on, but I think now that I have lived there for a couple of years, it seems like a very small, insular group of people that are really doing things. There are some interesting venues there though. I normally play at a place called “Barbes,” which has more of a jazz vibe, but they also have some experimental, crossover musicians in as well. There is a lot of crossover, particularly with the older, downtown New York scene. There is also this new place called “Silent Barn,” it’s kind of like a collective-run place — it feels like it belongs in Berlin or Providence even; it was just like this house, and I think the owners got a grant to turn transform it into a two-story venue with a garden, and it has artist studios in the back. But it has the feeling of a squat, which makes it one of the more interesting places to play in.
That must be particularly important for you. I mean, the sound of your album is very private and specific. How do you determine the right spaces to play in?
Well, it doesn’t really work in any of those spaces. I think the place that works best is The Stone. It’s a venue in New York, on the Lower East side, and it’s one of the most intimate. It’s like a really small theater, painted all-black with seating, and there isn’t a bar either — you just go to hear music there. It probably fits like a hundred people in there when it’s packed, but it’s great because you know the audience is there, purely for the music. These other places also sell drinks, and there is other stuff going on, and that isn’t my favorite situation to play in because the music I make isn’t necessarily background music.
You’ve acquired an exceptionally personal sound on the latest record. But as a listener, when you are playing the music back, you can find various entry points that can make you feel as though you are included in that somehow. But when the audience sees you live — and you close your eyes when you are playing — you’ve got the case like last night where even though people are a couple of feet in front of you, it seems that much more isolated.
You mean like, me from the audience?
Exactly! How does that feel from your perspective?
I got a comment last night, which was really quite interesting. Someone said that it helped them, as a member of the audience, to close their eyes, because it felt so intimate — like they shouldn’t be watching me. I think my music is very personal, so I don’t know how I expect it to be perceived by other people as much — but that was something I had not really thought about so much until recently.
....Where do these aesthetic preferences come from, then?
Well, I grew up with very classical, very conservative music in my house. I mean, we listened to a lot of jazz and opera, and all the standard classical repertoire. I wasn’t really exposed to any experimental music until I was around 19, when I moved to Boston and went to school, but I was always more intrigued by anything experimental.
I think that when I first started making music, I was like, wow, OK, there is all this experimental stuff out there. I was so excited by it, and I think for a number of years after that I was just taking in information. I think it was always really important for me to figure out my own voice — something that was truly mine. However, I had idols and role models as well, but I really wanted to be myself — that was the most important thing to me and so I think, by 25 I was beginning that process. By then, I was really able to start trying to figure it out — and I feel like I only just settled into that way of working in the last year and a half, or the last two years. I feel like my first few albums were working through the beginning stages. I made D.O.L. when I was like 26 or 27 and I listen to that record, and it feels like I am just settling into where I am now.
You were talking about progression through the different albums. How did you come to record Line The Clouds?
Well, I had just finished Slowboat, and I pretty much started working on Line The Clouds straight away. Slowboat took a long while for me to finish, and then it took a really long time for it to come out, and I think it was in a holding place for a while, and there was a lot of transition in my life. It was funny, because as soon as it did come out, I started working on the new album, but I had a real vision of it, not being like a song album at all — like totally being like composed, instrumental pieces with lots of saxophone. I think I was still very much accepting that the voice and the guitar had become more prominent in my sound, and in my mind when I started.
I really didn’t want that to be the case on this album, and I recorded a bunch of music that didn’t make it to Line The Clouds — I might end up releasing it as something else, but I started the album with this vision that actually it went in the opposite direction. I had the whole thing almost 90 percent complete and I thought I was going to record one more song after returning from Europe in October, and I got home and recorded like half of Line The Clouds — all of the most “song-y songs” on there. And it all happened really quickly; I still had all these other tracks that I had recorded, and I had like 60 or 65 minutes of material, and I was debating whether I should keep trying to piece it all together to make it work, until I realized that I like albums to feel like one thing, instead of separate tracks, so I just started taking songs out and working with different orders, and then it finally came to be what was released, which was a wonderful learning experience.
You also mentioned that you have been traveling a fair bit around Europe. Was that something you had done with previous album releases?
No, this is totally new for me.
How did that come about?
I guess I felt it was time to start traveling — I wanted to see more of the world, and I guess I wanted to play music all over the world. So I played in Europe last year, and that was the first set of shows where I was touring around and playing my own music. It was really great, and it was nice that I could go with friends. This time it was different because it is the first time I have traveled solo, which is also interesting.
And is that something you are enjoying?
So far it’s really good — I mean, I was really nervous about it, but I generally get nervous when I travel anyway. But it has been really cool to meet people everywhere — I think I prefer performing in Europe [to] in the U.S. at this point.
I’m really interested in the spaces that you use to perform your music. The one that you played in last night, for example, is completely unique.
Yeah, it seems like a very special place.
It is, but it seems like the sort of thing you have a lot more of back home?
Yeah, we definitely have more. But I feel like Oto has people coming through, and it actually brings people to play there, whereas New York, there are so many musicians already living there that most of the shows are by people who are living in the city. Occasionally there will be someone traveling through, I mean, obviously there are a lot of people traveling through New York, but those who play in the smaller venues, the intimate venues like those I mentioned before. In addition to that, there is not as much funding in New York. Issue Project Room is one of the good places that is bringing in people, that might be the most similar thing to Café Oto, though they don’t have performances every day at this point.
So the reaction you get from European audiences could quite possibly come from the sparsity of these somewhat unique outlets?
I think that I have become numb to a lot of shows in New York. I mean I love going to them and I love going to see people play, but I think that most of the time people are just going to see their friends. I mean, everyone knows each other. Even though it is a huge group of people, there is definitely a lot of recycling of different people playing in the same groups. I wouldn’t say there is some place, at this time, like Oto that seems to have a community and that pretty much has nightly experimental music.
Did you find that you had similar experiences around the rest of Europe?
I think in general people pay more attention to music at the shows in Europe. There are different types of venues in New York, so at certain types of venues, they will pay more attention, but at every concert I played at in Europe, I got the feeling that everybody was paying attention as opposed to — I don’t know maybe in New York I’ll end up playing in a place that has a bar and it feels like the music is secondary, it’s like a social scene with music happening, instead of a concert that happens to have a bar. I feel like I am totally dissing the New York scene right now — I don’t mean to be! I’m thrilled to be there, I really love it, but there is something about bringing my music to different parts of the world that is so good.
I don’t think I was recording when we spoke about Greece earlier; we were talking about how you were there during the riots, but in the midst of all that, you found a pretty cool record store and a group of people who continued to maintain a great appreciation for experimental music. How were you received there in that context?
Well, I think it was cool to see so many people come out for the show. I think there also people were very attentive. A lot of people talked to us after the show. People definitely engaged with the music, which was great. I feel like I was in a totally different world there.
I guess there is a general assumption that with the financial cuts in arts funding and arts councils, that it’s going to have a negative affect on how people produce and how people make music.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it’s having an effect here, or even in Greece at the time, at least where we were. In the U.S., the arts funding has been so terrible for so long, and people there also know that traveling and playing in Europe is harder now because a lot of funding has been cut. However, I do feel that being in the music industry is such a hard lifestyle, and that’s why there [are] so many unique people coming out of the U.S., because you really have to want it badly.
What about the exchange then, because you said that there are so many people playing in New York, and that there may be an over saturation of musicians there; what about when a European musician or a musician from another part of the world comes over to play in a smaller venue there? Is there a different response?
I was thinking about this while I was talking to you just now — I wonder if it’s different because I am here and from a different place — maybe that’s why there is a different response. But I definitely know when people come over, people take it more seriously, when there is someone playing from out of town, its a much bigger deal. It could be that because we all know each other in New York, that things are different for us.
So what can people expect to hear from you next, in the coming months?
I started recording some new songs, and I have also started recording a duo album with Anthony Coleman, and I just recorded a duo album with Greg Kelley, who is half of Nmperign, and so we’ll see what happens…
Could you tell me about that one, it sounds fascinating.
Which one?
Your work with Kelley.
Yeah, well, Greg lives in Boston and I was there for a few days and we have played together a few times ... in larger groups, so we are friends. But we would never really rehearse, we would just perform together. There was a certain connection in our language — and listening to our recordings sometimes I can’t even tell who is playing what. So I was going to Boston, and I called him up and asked if he wanted to record. We met, set up some mics and recorded for like four hours straight — we got a whole bunch of material. I still have to edit it all down, but, I don’t know how I am gonna deal with it all yet — if I should just leave it as trumpet and saxophone, or if should play clarinet over it, or add to it, but I haven’t had the time to listen enough to it to figure it out. It’s exciting to me, the way that we blend together — there are a lot of overlapping sounds and frequencies, and it’s really cool when you find someone you have this immediate connection with — I hope he feels the same connection. I definitely feel excited to play with him.
But you have worked with some other interesting people recently, from what I remember. Pete Swanson did a remix of “Soak The Ocean”…
Pete and I met at the same festival where I first met Ilyas Ahmed. It was in San Francisco a few years back. Pete mastered one of my records for me, then he moved to New York, where he now goes to school, and he was nice enough to do that remix for me.
I remember that he said in his intro that your music has the power to make the hair stand up on the back of the necks of these crazy noise guys, or words to that effect.
Yeah, that was a nice intro. The festival we met at had a lot of great performers; Grouper and Bill Orcutt played there, but there was a lot of electronic and drone music, and then we came on and… we were definitely the odd people of the festival.
That must have felt kinda cool, in that environment.
It feels good and it’s hard, because I often feel like I am the odd person at any festival. I’m not sure where my place is really — I feel like I am on a lot of borders of things and don’t really fit anywhere. That feels hard, that we weird people out too much, but at the same time it’s nice to be an individual. I think people are beginning to know what to expect from me.
But even last night’s show — the styles between you and Ilyas are so divergent.
I feel like it’s always like that… I guess it is my own doing, but sometimes it would feel nice not to feel that way. I feel like, if anything, it makes me want to take the direction even further — it’s an issue and its something I deal with. Having said that, I have very strong convictions about what I do. I just hope the world comes to me as opposed to the other way around, because I’m gonna just keep on doing what I do. - www.tinymixtapes.com/
Ashley Cole by Sean Higgins
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