Published
Name: Clocked Out
Members: Erik Griswold, Vanessa Tomlinson
Nationality: Australian
Current release: The new Clocked Out album Out of Time is out via Earshift.
Hometown Recommendations: If you’re in the Stanthorpe / Tenterfield region definitely try to come to the Piano Mill – a minimalist tower in the forest of New South Wales purpose built to house 16 vintage pianos! We are currently artistic directors of the performance.
If you enjoyed this Clocked Out interview and would like to know more about the duo, their music and upcoming live dates, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, and bandcamp.
What were some of your earliest collaborations? How do you look back on them with hindsight?
Our first collaborations took place in San Diego in the mid 1990s, when we were both students in the very experimental music department at UC San Diego.
We would sometimes improvise together on piano and percussion and also create composed works for each other. I believe our first performance was at Sushi Performance Gallery? I also think about our first projects in Melbourne – “Every Night the Same Dream” and “Dada Cabaret.”
Looking back, I’d say we were very unafraid to experiment in those days, we loved collaborating, and would fearlessly mix together different sonic worlds, including contemporary classical, jazz, Fluxus, folk.
There are many potential models for collaboration, from live performances and jamming/producing in the same room together up to file sharing. Which of these do you prefer – and why?
We are old school, working with the physicality of acoustic instruments, using extended techniques to manipulate the sound. We mostly develop ideas in the room together, but there are a couple of key starting points
1) the specific choice of preparations in the piano provide a timbral and harmonic starting point, alongside the choice of instruments/sounds in the extended drumset; and
2) snippets of handwritten notation which provide ideas for rhythmic interplay, melodic fragments, or an outline of the potential form of a piece.
We are almost always aiming for a live acoustic performance, so everything has to be somehow playable live, meaning the physicality of our setup and the performance is crucial to the process; the music has to fit our bodies.
How did this particular collaboration come about?
Out of Time emerged out of a need to respond to the ongoing global crises of environment, politics and culture in which we find ourselves.
While we worked on the album we were spending a lot of time in the forest of southern Queensland, witnessing first-hand the impacts of climate change on the ecosystem. At the same time the rise of populism and battles over AI datacentres left us with a mounting sense of hopelessness.
In this context the defiance and resilience of the “Dirty Lizard” awakening after its winter slumber, regardless of political decisions, became a beacon of hope to us.
There are three readings we have considered for the title Out of Time.
We are running out of time to solve the climate crisis, our music celebrates an out-of-time off-kilter approach to rhythm, and we are exploring musical approaches that are not necessarily “in fashion”, so perhaps they are “out of time”.
Tell me a bit about your current instruments and tools, please. In which way do they support creative exchange and collaborations with others?
In Out of Time Erik uses the prepared piano, which is a grand piano modified by placing bolts, screws, rubber and paper between the strings. The prepared piano subverts our traditional associations with the piano, so that it no longer sounds like a “classical” or “jazz” instrument, but something more percussive and bent. In terms of collaboration, prepared piano gives more flexibility to move in different stylistic directions.
Stand up drum set has been part of Vanessa’s performance world since a band called Fresh Air in Adelaide in the very early 1990s. What has changed since then is the expansion of the setup – there are staples like ceramic bowls, Sichuan Opera cymbals and gongs, prepared drums, an “om” spring she picked up from a start-up instrument company in the US in 1994.
Every instrument in the setup is bespoke, and every sound has a story about how it came into her life.
Before you started making this music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning vs spontaneity in a collaboration?
When we begin a project, we often come up with an overarching concept first.
For example, in “Foreign Objects,” we started with the collection of percussion instruments, that formed a kind of “microtonal scale,” and then prepared and tuned the piano to match. On the other hand, the concept for “Time Crystals” came from the very intriguing idea of physicist Frank Wilczek of quantum systems that repeat perpetually in time.
Out of Time coincided with work Vanessa was doing in ecological justice with Shu Wu and Ally Bisshop. This connected with work we were undertaking on the Wylah Nature Refuge which has become the site for some of the music videos that accompany this album.
Describe the process of working on your latest release, please. What was different from your expectations and what did the other add to the music?
We worked on Out of Time in two main locations, at our studio in Brisbane, and up in the country in southern Queensland.
The urban and forest environments brought different inspirations, not to mention the travel time back and forth, which is its own liminal creative space. The driving time brought out the “dreaming” aspect of the creative process, while the quiet and seclusion of the forest gave us the space to focus on sound.
Is there a piece which shows the different aspects you each contributed to the process particularly clearly?
In “Inevitable” you can hear Erik holding down a clear song structure while Vanessa improvises shifting soundscapes that spiral around her percussion instrumentarium.
On the other hand, in “7 Plus” (at 2:20), Vanessa holds down the groove while Erik plays a hectic and chaotic solo.
So there is a bit of give and take in the roles that we play.
What tend to be the best collaborations in your opinion – those with artists you have a lot in common with or those where you have more differences? What happens when another musician take you outside of your comfort zone?
A good collaboration needs a mixture of different perspectives, with people who have strong ideas and are willing to fight for them.
As satisfying as it is to realize your own creative vision, the end result is always richer with the creative input of “the other” (even if you know them really well!).
Decisions between creatives often work without words. How did this process work in this case?
With Out of Time, we would often brainstorm ideas and talk over the conceptual aspects of the album.
But when it comes to melding the pieces into their final form, playing them live in the room is how it came together. We might not know exactly how long a section needs to be, or how to transition from one place to another, or how to complete an idea until it emerges in realtime, on our instruments, playing together.
What are your thoughts on the need for compromise vs standing by one's convictions? How did you resolve potential disagreements in this collaboration?
I think we both have a strong conviction to stand by our intuition. In fact, one of our earliest duo pieces is called “We move by intuition.”
Our natural tendencies are completely different – Vanessa likes to be messy and disruptive, lopsided but layered, sonically engaged with the ability to listen intensely; Erik also loves sound and spontaneity, but also likes to inhabit structured and harmonic spaces, so somehow we find a middle ground.
Was/Is this collaboration fun – does it need to be?
Yes, this was a fun collaboration. Particularly the hands-on developmental parts of the work with instruments in the room. Once the basic pieces were formed the process of fleshing them out happened very organically.
But in general, I’d say that, no, a collaboration doesn’t have to be fun. Some of the work we’re most proud of came out of difficult collaborations.
