Name: High Pulp
Members: Andrew Morrill, Antoine Martel, Bobby Granfelt, Gehrig Uhles, Isaac Poole, Rob Homan, Scott Rixon, Victory Nguyen
Nationality: American
Current release: High Pulp's Days In The Desert is out via ANTI-.
Recommendations: TNT by Tortoise; Dots and Loops by Stereolab

If you enjoyed this High Pulp interview and would like to stay up to date with their music, visit their official homepage. They are also 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?

Bobby: Sometimes nothing, sometimes something, but it’s never consistent. We’re pretty much constantly listening to music, so usually life dictates the music and not the other way around.

Sometimes my eyes are open, sometimes they’re closed. It’s never one way.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

Antoine: I think an artist can come from anywhere and with any level of training. Like your technical proficiency doesn’t make you an artist, but it can certainly help you express the things you want to in more accessible and digestible ways.

The desire to express those things though, that’s really what makes an artist to me. Anyone with a urge to creatively express themselves and a medium with which to do so. In that way it’s more of a mindset or approach to tasks rather than a specific skill, and therefore something that can be learned or taught at any point in life, though the desire must also be partially internal. I don’t think you can force someone to be artistic right?

I think almost any task can be transformed into art depending on how someone does it … i.e. I believe in the existence of an artist accountant out there somewhere who does their work so elegantly / artistically that it can be as beautiful and expressive to behold their spreadsheets about your accounts as the classic paintings we see hanging behind cases of glass in the Louvre.  

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

Bobby: Music had more sparkle to me back then. I was younger and could be absolutely swept away by almost any song.

That is more rare in my life now. I cherish it the same though.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

Victory: The love and joy of music.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

Rob: Just as physicists think of light dualistically as both a particle and wave, I think that discovery and creation are 2 sides of the same coin: for any given musical idea, some abstract Platonic ideal exists a priori and creation is the act of willing the abstract into a tangible Aristotelian instance.  

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Bobby: I agree with that. The overall sound, and more importantly the emotional response that happens when listening to the sound.

I don’t like trying to define our sound. It’s the summation of a group of peoples' lives and emotions and experiences.

If there was a word for that, maybe we would be writers. But because there isn’t a word  for that, we’re musicians.  

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? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

Victory: It’s all music.

From very deep/high/loud/quiet sounds to very long/short/simple/complex compositions - are there extremes in music you feel drawn to and what response do they elicit?

Rob: I think that differences between extremes and their juxtaposition within a composition are of more interest to me than any one given kind of extreme.  

Release requires tension.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of one of your pieces, live performances or albums that's particularly dear to you, please?

Bobby: Days In The Desert is dear to all of us. We starting recording it remotely during the lockdown, using dropbox and ableton. It allowed us to get outside of our limitations and time constraints.

Because of that, we were able to take more risks and be more intentional with the choices we made.

Do you conduct “experiments” or make use of scientific insights when you're making music?

Antoine: I’m not sure how explicitly scientific we get but we certainly experiment a lot? On this record specifically we started running whole sections of songs through our growing collection of eurorack modules, which lead to some super wild results - lots of ways to experiment with different patches, seeing what sounded good with a saxophone sound vs a piano sound in the modular, that kinda thing.

I think the active fusion of electronic and acoustic sounds is a really exciting frontier. In the past we’ve messed around with recording in strange locations, an old garage, a warehouse, a moving car to name a few, and explored extended techniques both on the instruments n with mic placement (plucking the inner strings of a piano type stuff).

Overall the spirit of experimentation is strong with the pulp though think we approach it generally more creatively and intuitively as opposed to scientifically if that makes sense?  

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

Victory: They go hand in hand. They're symbiotic to each other. Art imitates life and life imitates art.

Do you feel as though writing or performing 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?

Bobby: I think that making a cup of coffee can be just as beautiful as making music.

Every time I listen to "Albedo 0.39" by Vangelis, I choke up. But the lyrics are made up of nothing but numbers and values. Do you, too, have a song or piece of music that affects you in a way that you can't explain?

Antoine: Not sure about ways I can’t explain, but as someone who listens to mostly instrumental music, I feel like that’s one of the main appeals of the experience? The way music can make you feel things it would take multi page essays to describe so effortlessly and efficiently in 5 min of beautiful sound.

The big standout that's really got its teeth in me lately has to be the Drive My Car OST by Eiko Ishibashi.



Hard to put the feeling into words, sorta the point I guess, but it’s one of those feelings I’ve deeply and intuitively connected with over the past year.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

Bobby: To remain open and maintain an honest relationship with the life and  music.