Name: Alasdair Maclean (The Clientele)

Nationality: British

Occupation: musician

Current release: I Am Not There Anymore on Merge

If you enjoyed this interview with Alasdair Mclean, visit the The Clientele website for more information about the band and the music.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc. play?

It always starts with an image - strangely, I suppose, as I make music, not paintings. I sometimes think of stained glass, and it’s that kind of image, the way that stained glass is different in every light, the colours change. Or sometimes a sense of space or patterns. Always accompanied by strong emotions of one sort or another. 

It can come from a dream, daydream, book, film, something misheard or a misunderstanding. But I always know when the image is right and is a good one. I’ll wait until a piece of music suggests itself to match it and then I have a song. The music will echo some aspect or feeling of the image.

The images aren’t necessarily invented by me - they can come from anywhere, like the description of a statue in an Italian garden which grew horns in front of a sentry and came to life in ‘The Village is Always on Fire’.
I’ve been dazzled by images that come from certain poets - Tomas Transtromer for instance, or Paul Eluard. I love reading them. But the best thing is to try to mis-read them so I don’t directly steal their ideas.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Planning things out never creates good music in my experience. The very best songs come in the same time or less that it would take to sing them! “Reflections after Jane” was written that way. The second best require polish and work - and being open to chance. The planned ones tend to feel embarrassing, and they pollute and drag the rest down.

That said, once I have a completed section of the song, then I’ll think hard about how to build around it. Again, I think about music as visual patterns, but patterns with depth, something like pearl inlay on a piece of wood.

Sometimes I’d put two patterns together in a song, for the harmony or dissonance between them - there’s much more dissonance in the new record, on ‘Fables of the Silverlink’, all those overlapping, conflicting statements. I copied this from poets and writers; I actually like how difficult to understand it is.  I’m not a huge Dylan fan but I was taken by his idea about what was and wasn’t true - the jingling of cutlery in cafes in the morning is true, Leonard Cohen’s polished phrases are untrue.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

It always happens by chance, no matter what preparation or tools I have. When I was three, I used to go into a trance when my mum put on the vacuum cleaner. I sang melodies around it. It used to give me the shivers! Much later, I heard Charlemagne Palestine singing in falsetto over big, beautiful drones and I thought, hey!
I’m very susceptible to hypnosis, I think. Before our son was born, my partner Lupe and I went to hypno-birthing sessions, she didn’t find them effective but I was under almost immediately and having visions of gold dolls in high summer, some kind of submerged memory. Completely inappropriate for the occasion of course.

I like using field recordings as the basis of songs. That’s been happening more and more- we used to use them as gateways between songs to break the flow and give you a sense of a time and place, but now I use their rhythms to make songs with. Our first recordings were so primitive they almost count as field recordings anyway.

And lately I’ve been messing around with computers. I recorded the wind by a well in Epping Forest and fed the audio into the computer, then I got the software to translate the field recording into midi notes and harmonies. I separated them into four parts and made a score for string quartet - that was ‘My Childhood’. That was me just trying to abuse the software but we got a song out of it. Almost killed the string players, though.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I remember when I was a kid on holiday in Scotland I’d go to the beach and feel the wind on my face and music would start to come to me, I’d make up songs as I walked along - I loved them. I later realised that every single one of them was Valleri by the Monkees. I was channelling Davy Jones. 

Then it used to be hangovers. No Davy Jones in those. Now I’m older and hangovers poison me, so I try and ditch my phone and just sit and watch things. I get so bored I sort of forget who I am. Then sometimes, an idea comes.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

It’s never really difficult- because one day it just arrives. I don’t sit around trying to write music. I’m obviously not trying to claim I’m a hollow reed that the almighty speaks to his people through, but I think these things arrive from somewhere else - the subconscious or whatever. Anyway, I’ve released enough stuff already and I dislike the idea of writing for the sake of writing. I don’t mean other people shouldn’t, just that for me there’s no merit in it. When I actually tried, I always felt embarrassed by the results. I like to think that The Clientele’s music is outside of me.
 
When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

I think lyrics should emerge from the music. I think of different keys as having a physical sense - for instance A major is leafy and green but F# major is like twilight. 6th and 9th notes bring in a sense of the indistinct. In the same way, music can suggest words or phrases to me, which I try to grab and refine.
My lyrics have to grow with the music. Apart from the fact they’re sung by me and have to fit the shape of my mouth as I sing certain notes, they need to cohere with the music, in some way which is probably only clear to me.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

I don’t know because I don’t really think of lyrics as a whole. I know the lyrics I like. One of the great beauties of popular music is that inarticulate and clumsy lyrics can become so powerful if everyone knows them from the radio and the charts, if they become a kind of mysterious reminder of when we were young.
Then there are lyrics which stand on their own, almost as poetry. Tom Verlaine. I love his approach, the baffling zen contrasts.  But I don’t try to write poetry- my lyrics need the music as an anchor. I try to express what I hear in the music - things which I couldn’t articulate with written words alone, outside of music and sound- a change in the light, a sense of place. They sound trite on their own but maybe music gives them a deeper emotional truth.
On ‘Garden Eye Mantra’ there are pictures - birds starved at the edges of chimneys, woods so cold they look dark blue, and to me they marry with the sub bass and the dub echoes we used.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

I love the image of a bridgehead from one side of a river to the other - once the bridge is complete, the song is made. The ideas float down the river from the horizon and you choose a few and keep them. Probably a silly metaphor but I think it’s true.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

I don’t feel like I have control over much of it. If I did, I might have made more sense to people. I feel like there are certain images with a life of their own, which need to be expressed. I have some musical technique which I can use to refine them, but I have to be really careful, almost respectful - I always try to record quickly and use just enough technique to get the point across, never more than that, so it doesn’t become a distraction.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It’s a trance, for me. When I read about automatic writing I recognised it as my own technique – if you wanted to, perhaps you could say I’ve just written one decades-long automatic poem.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

As quickly as possible! When you’re fussing it’s always a sign that you don’t have a very interesting song. I like songs and production to be lumpen, uneven in a way. Three lines for one verse, five for another, an extra bar here and there. Stuff you’ve done wrong without realising it. I try to keep it in, record it quickly before my brain starts to impose monotony and symmetry on it.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

For me, it’s crucial to leave it, walk away, forget it ever existed. Then come back to it much later and hopefully ask “Oh, who is this? Sounds good”
I hardly ever change my parts once they’re down for the first time- and they very rarely go beyond three takes. But I will mess around with the mix and the arrangement a lot. I’ll edit songs on the computer and move bits around. We drive engineers insane, there’s always 6 or 7 separate mixes of each song before we’re happy. Then we come back with a different edit! But I think eventually they realise we’re looking for something very deeply felt and very specific and they respect that.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Mixing is as important as songwriting to me. The richness and balance in the sound is so important to get the required clarity, that stained glass feeling. I really inhabit the mixing in a way I don’t with the songwriting, I’m always consciously there for all of it. I also get involved in things like mic placement and compression levels - I always have a clear idea of how things should sound. As I say, engineers hate me.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Yes. People take their own meanings from music - people have called my music somehow healing when in my mind I’ve been expressing something harrowing and unbearable. Best you can say is it’s not mine anymore, it’s theirs. It’s like being depressed though - you have no faith it will ever end until it does. Then you entirely forget what it was like.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I like this question. There’s no difference I can articulate, however I’d rather write a good song than make a good cup of coffee. Maybe with that song there will be some sort of important but obscure communication. People pay more money for coffee these days though.