Part 2

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

Matt: Music can communicate both abstract and simple concepts depending on its intent and audience. Lyrics help convey meaning, but I’ve mostly not been that type of a music consumer. I think the listener decides.

The moment something goes out into the world it is outside the control of the artist how it will be perceived. I find it a bit boring to think that someone would be wrong if they saw or heard a piece of art as inspiration and it didn’t exactly align with the artist’s intent.

I imagine if all of the sudden something I made became iconic to something I didn’t stand for I’d say different.

Brad: I guess I would draw a distinction between what we try to communicate with Reunion Island versus what others communicate with music. I think we are trying to communicate pretty elemental things. Trying to have the music arc in an interesting direction for example or mixing it in such a way that little details may only reveal themselves on the twelfth time you listen to a track.

I think other musicians are capable of communicating virtually anything – love, hate, how to make a bomb – but yeah, I think we’re more about just creating an auditory landscape that is captivating.

I don’t think enough people have heard our music (yet?) for us to worry about misunderstandings.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?

Matt: I feel strongly that music should never feel like “work” – I think there should be a degree of discipline in performance, and it always helps to put in the work to be proficient with your instrument, but the creative process needs that flow and a playful looseness to explore and get to that “place” where the magic happens. That’s why the best musicians make it look easy!

I have learned to embrace mistakes and to leave a certain amount of the process to chance, maybe controlled chaos? I think subconsciously people can hear when something is overworked.

Brad: I think it’s pretty tricky to keep a track sounding fresh after you’ve worked on it for a while. That’s something I struggle with quite a bit. I try to keep things interesting by setting up little constraints or hurdles for myself. Working with odd time signatures or alternate tunings or just playing for a really long time so things start to unmoor a little bit.

I am also a really firm believer in the value of collaboration. Every time Reunion Island gathers up to make music, I learn a ton. There’s some crazy alchemy that happens when you’re in the same room together making decisions about music. Likewise, every time I’ve gathered up with John McEntire, I learn a great deal and I think that shows in the music.

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”?

Matt: That first hot summer day in TX when the hundreds of cicadas in my neighborhood decide to chirp incessantly. That sound is HEAT to me.

Moving experiences? I took a trip to Taos, NM years ago and I went out a few nights with a DAT recorder and recorded the nearby forest – it was pretty terrifying! That level of heightened awareness that there were many things moving around me was a natural horror soundtrack!

I love natural reverb/echo situations like caves or canyons. Unfortunately, I think I’m that guy clapping or yelling something like “hello-o-o-o!” or something dumb.

Brad: Makes me think of this guy named Gordon Hempton. He’s an acoustic ecologist – he goes to remote locations and makes these incredibly pristine recording of the natural world. His website is https://soundtracker.com/ if you feel like taking a little soundbath in Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

Matt: I’m not sure I’m getting this question. If this in any way is referring to algorithms suggesting music you want to hear, I fucking hate that. Imagine a future where all DJs are replaced by Ai! What a soul-less hell. Selectors are so important!

I have the worst time with Spotify, I don’t know how to use it correctly. I don’t know why I can’t passively allow the machine to automatically play tunes for me I’ve never heard. I’m a pretty old school, listen to the entire record like a piece of music guy.

I’m admittedly not smart enough to know about the time of Plato when music was intertwined with math. In the mid-90s I thought math-rock was cool. I do love 4 against 3 rhythms, odd time signatures especially when they groove.

This question made me put on the Slapping Pythagoras record by Tony Conrad. (I think because “Plato”.)



Brad: I tend not to be too analytical when it comes to math and music. I recognize that unique rhythms and tunings (for example) can fire off some different synapses in my brain, but I normally do that by feel in my own music as opposed to working out the math ahead of time.

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?

Matt: I don’t really make this connection, maybe I should. I don’t really have a system for either.

I think music influences my overall mood and sense of moving toward something, a form of growth. I don’t really know what lessons we can learn about life by understanding music on a deeper level.

Brad: I guess I feel a little constrained by my music making process as I’m really digitally oriented and anchored. I rely on electronics to make, record and arrange music. I am envious of folks who can pretty much play anywhere. That being said, I have an infinite array of sounds at my disposal, so I guess there is a different sort of freedom in that.

The answer to second question is hard to articulate. I very much believe in the power of music to shape consciousness and put us in touch with things that might otherwise be hard to articulate or perceive.

Your question reminded me of the first time a saw this Brazilian singer named Teresa Christina perform—it may have been the most fun night I’ve ever had. It was at a club in Rio de Janeiro with maybe a hundred people dancing and singing along. I remember thinking something along the lines of “This is a perfect moment, and it is somehow being sustained by these musicians. This is what humans are actually meant to do.”



I think if I could go hear great live samba music about every two weeks, I would be a demonstrably better human.

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?

Matt: I think sometimes I get fixated on a sound that I may hear all day long, like a fan or a refrigerator hum and it nearly drives me mad. Why did this happen at that moment and not on another? I enjoy silence but does it every really happen?

Yesterday, I spent hours trying to eliminate a hum in my old stereo amp and it took me right to the edge. I wanted to turn on the amp and hear silence! I eventually gave up and put on a friend’s new cassette (New Fumes “Experiencer”), forgot about all the noise and shitty buzzes and just listened to the album in its entirety and it sounded great to me.



I do wish my house/studio was properly grounded.

Brad: I’m pretty much fall into the Glenn Gould camp. I listen to a ton of analog and digital music as well as podcasts and audiobooks. That being said, I do occasionally crave silence. I think it’s good for my nervous system to reset. Also, I think it’s important to be aware of it in music.

Obviously, it can serve as a really interesting contrast compositionally to sound and make one listen more attentively.

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?

Matt: I hope so. There is an art to a great espresso, but it is nothing like making music to me. I think that you can express such a wide range of emotion with sound, alter the perception of space, stretch time, it’s all magic!

Or, you could also bore someone to death!

Brad: I don’t think it’s inherently different – both can be done with care and artistry. There can be a meditative quality to mundane tasks. But I do think that music lends itself to accessing higher planes of consciousness.

I’ve had orders of magnitude more profound experiences making and listening to music than folding laundry.

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

Brad: Forgive me for “name-dropping” another country, but how I think about music has been really shaped by travel. I took a trip to Mali a while back and heard a ton of pretty wild “experimental” (for lack of a better word) music that will probably never make it out of the little communities where it’s made.

My wish would be that there were better opportunities for that sort of thing to make it out into the world.

On a more personal level, I would love to be able to make a living between my music and art. Frankly, I think it’s distinctly possible that I am just not talented enough, but it feels like the deck is stacked against me most of the time. Hard to know if it’s me or things way beyond my control.