Name: Conner Youngblood
Nationality: American
Occupation: Multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer, songwriter
Recent release: Conner Youngblood's Cascades, Cascading, Cascadingly is out via Missing Piece.
Recommendations: In this interview, I mention a story called “Liking What You See: A Documentary” by Ted Chiang — and that story, like many of his short stories, does a great job of analyzing pretty heavy philosophical questions in the form of extremely creative sci-fi while resonating on a very human level. He’s got two main collections of stories: Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation. Both are incredible.

If you enjoyed this Conner Youngblood interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.
 


When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Great question. I’ve never really thought about how I use my body to process music, but I definitely have a couple of modes.

In front of speakers while working on a new song at night, eyes closed and doing various listens, trying to focus on different parts each time. Like, a bass listen, vocals listen, guitar, etc .… and then eventually just trying to absorb all the directionality of the sounds at once.

“Blue Gatorade” might be the only color-related song on this album. I knew it had to be blue regardless of the fact that there was an actual Gatorade in question I was writing about, and it was red.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

Speakers for making the music and 4-5 different pairs of headphones for testing the mixes.

Nothing beats studio monitors full blast though. It might be my actually favorite feeling/experience in the world. No one else in the room, playing a song that I have just determined as “finished” as loud as humanly possible on the nicest sound system I can find.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

Where to start. So going purely off sound, I would start at the Atoms for Peace album AMOK. I’m obsessed with the production, the clarity of every single noise and how the vocal sits so tightly tucked in the middle of all of this chaos. It’s basically as quiet as a vocal can get and still be heard as clear as day.



It is so well mixed in its own little sonic pocket, that way you don’t have to turn down or sacrifice any of the musical elements to “make way for the vocals”.

In a very different approach, I love Cocteau Twins' Heaven or Las Vegas for just sounding like one warm blanket where I don’t have to pay attention to anything but the entirety of the song at once.



It is a fun exercise, with headphones on, trying to listen for new elements that I had never paid any attention to. When “more is more” becomes so much that it ends up sounding singular.

Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

For sure. It happens so often though that it is hard to explain. Maybe a couple songs a year that I can spend hours listening to just to feel whatever that high is.

I mean, it could be as simple as a Neil Young song with just that vocal timbre of his and a guitar, or a full-on Sibelius symphony to the max. When something resonates with you like that it is pretty incredible.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

The sound of scratching MacBook metal KILLS ME. I had such a hard time adjusting from the old plastic versions to the new ones based on feel alone.

I can listen to a good owl hoot for hours. Ohh and loons. The sound of a loon, nighttime, by a lake in northern Minnesota, might be the greatest sound of all time.

Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?

The sound of a skatepark is very zen for me. Wheels on concrete. The sound of the boards, the people, the exuberance of it all. Love it.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

Nothing really comes to mind on this one. Maybe a Flux Pavilion concert or a Death Grips concert — where I definitely had hearing damage due to both of those events.



What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

In my bedroom/ bedroom adjacent studio, or a specific studio in Dallas that I’ve recorded at for maybe 10-15 years now.

Comfort is key. In my room I just like the fact that I can continuously work on a song for days, sleep on my floor, go for runs, watch movies, order food, and never have to close the session or the train of thought.  

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

I don’t really feel the shapes, but, I do really enjoy watching an oscilloscope while recording and seeing what the sound wave actually looks like.

I end up judging sounds based on how interesting or boring the shapes and patterns look.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

I think we have started to get a little overwhelmed with sound as a society as a whole. You need the yin and the yang.

Silence is golden. It’s almost like without a constant stream of noise people get bored, or anxious or for me, I feel like I am not maximalizing my time with silence.

Music ends up just becoming noise for the sake of noise. And that sucks. I’m not advocating raw dogging a 15-hour overseas flight, but there is a balance to everything.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

(I’d say this is the same answer as one of the previous questions concerning the loons in summertime-Minnesota. Seriously an incredible sound. Like should be a tourist attraction/reason to visit that part of the world)

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?

Totally. I mean, I certainly understand the sound of a dog growling at me, a squirrel yapping at me, a rattlesnake shaking that tail at me. Message received.

Body language, sign language, vocal language. I think all are easily possible between species to a certain extent.
 
Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

Brings me back to one of the previous answers about hearing damage after a Death Grips concert. I was so upset and scared. I remember the sensation of the concert ending and not being able to hear the crowd cheer. Nothing but a weird muted silence and it lasted a couple of days.

I got my hearing checked just to have a sort of baseline measurement, and now wear protective hearing for certain types of loud concerts and events.

The only exception is listening to my own music full blast. But that is essentially the main thing I want my hearing for in the first place.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

Ah, it’s crazy how many of these questions lead to thoughts I was having just a few questions prior. Pure silence is admittedly kind of freaky, but the sounds of nature, the city, or just whatever surroundings you are in can be extremely captivating.

Plus, as mentioned earlier, I think you need the balance of silence just to get a little refresher and get back to making music.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

They’ve made a few books and TV shows on this, and almost all of them turn out pretty awful. “Blindness”, “See”, “Birdbox”, “Liking What You See: A Documentary”, just to name a few. All of them seem kind of dystopian.



On the other hand, no sound leads to “ A Quiet Place” … so I’m cool with trying to keep both.