Part 2

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

I really like working in home studios, though that can be widely defined. If an engineer or producer has a studio where I can move in and live and work in the same space, that makes it feel like home.

Ironically I like the opposite for my own home studio situation. I like leaving my house to work on a day-in/day-out basis. But when hunkering down for a discrete project, I like to move in somewhere. I would love to travel back in time to Dave (Animal Collective’s Avey Tare) basement and work there again. It’s where I learned to play with other people and record music.

Playing music … I guess I like dive bars and DIY spaces at the end of the day, but like a dive bar that has a great system and monitors so maybe not ha. It just reminds me of old tours when things felt new and exciting.

My solo stuff is still at that level and while it can be a challenge financially, it’s nice to be back in spaces like that after decades of theaters and festival stages with Animal Collective. When you tour like that you connect more with local scenes and communities and that’s what it’s all about.

I like playing outside but weather and time of day is crucial to the experience.

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

Definitely! I mostly think of myself as a collage artist. Even if I make something that feels like a song, I rarely have a melody or progression come into my head. I make cool sounding raw materials and then piece them together. Sometimes it remains abstract and feels very much a product of the process, and sometimes it’s hidden and sounds like a traditionally composed song.

When I work in modular synthesis, I often think of it like breathing; like a process of physical exchange or transformation. I think about the electricity coming out of the wall as air going into an organ of change where my synth functions more like lungs, and then it undergoes a change and comes out as a different form of energy than what went in.

I like to think of myself in more of a passive way in that scenario than a “sculptor.” As a friend put it to me, it’s my job to set up a system and process, and then afterwards comes the most important job - getting out of the way. I enjoy the lack of ego in those moments.

I wouldn’t say it goes as far as chance music and the way Cage relates that to Zen, but it feels in the same ballpark to me.

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?

This is a tough question to answer because I think how one defines acoustic health may reflect biased cultural values or socio-economic realities. I would need to spend a lot of time trying to distil something that can be broadly applied.

In general I do think the idea of acoustic health is a real thing and reflects overall health, I just think the specifics are tough for me to comment on. I don’t think it’s as simple as saying silence or natural sounds are good/healthy, and loud or man-made sounds are bad/unhealthy. Obviously if the latter was true, humans coming together listening to loud music would inherently be a bad thing. It’s probably somewhere in the middle.

I guess I can think of some things that feel a little more clear cut, like noise pollution in the ocean being a bad thing. But as a scuba diver, I contribute to that with boat engines and I think diving is a good thing for my overall health as well as societal health, so what do I know?

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?

Speaking of scuba diving, I have been fortunate enough to hear humpback whales singing underwater on two occasions. Once was just grunting which different sound pretty, but I could feel it in my chest. That time was at night and we had no idea where the whale was but someone local said probably pretty far away.

Another time we heard a mother and baby singing together and that sounded more like the classic pretty whale song vibe. It was at the end of a dive where we had been swimming with a school of 100 hammerhead sharks and we were just hanging out in the blue doing our safety stop.

I’ve also been face to face with wild dolphins and when they use the echo location in your direction, you can feel the clicks going through your body. Those moments have been really beautiful.

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?

Yes of course.

My dog barks when he wants to go out. He cries when he’s upset. My cats meow and hiss. I feel like interspecies communication happens in my life every day and I don’t know how I’d function without it. If we could expand on it I think it would be great for our empathy exercise and lead to a healthier planet.

As far as creativity? I guess when animals bring us “gifts” like shoes or dead animals, there is something creative to it. They are picking those objects for a reason.

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?

Yeah sadly I have tinnitus. It’s gotten much worse in the last couple years which is funny because I’ve spent less time playing loud shows.

I wasn’t great about protecting my ears in my 20s but in my 30s I was having a hard time sleeping after gigs and feeling like it affected my balance and orientation when I laid down. I started wearing ear plugs and eventually the band got in-ear monitors. But then in our 40s the other guys wanted to go back to no ear protection to have more fun.

It’s been hard for me to go back to just regular ear plugs and that’s been bad for the tinnitus. It’s worse in my right ear than my left which makes sense in terms of where I stand on stage. I really hate it and am nervous about it getting worse as I get older.

I also suspect noise cancelling headphones make it worse somehow. My tinnitus has gotten worse since I got noise cancelling ear buds for sure. Maybe coincidence, maybe not.

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?

I like to listen to music so yes I consider it a great delight, but you do leave yourself open to unsolicited music that can ruin your time.

I’m not a big fan of live music in bars/restaurants when it’s like a steady gig kind of thing. Like when you go to a bar just to have a drink and there is a person or band who has a regular night kind of thing and it’s free and out of nowhere they just start playing a cover song. You gotta let me know and give me the choice before I’ve ordered my dinner.

There is that kind of campfire/cafe type music that people assume is pleasing and inoffensive to everybody and if you react negatively in those moments where it’s forced upon you, you’re painted as the asshole snob. But if I was the one up there playing my music while they were eating, people would feel completely entitled to call it horrible noise and dismiss it without any judgement. Speaking from experience. The same dynamic holds true in college radio and college dorm rooms.

Silence … I try and incorporate it more and more these days. I try and meditate though am not as consistent as I’d like. It’s really taught me the value of silence. I’m a big 4’33” fan/supporter.

Going back to the previous question actually … it was one of those things that was a punchline around my college radio station, aimed at those of us who liked that kind of thing. “Oh you can just mess up your cue and tell people it was 4’33””, or “I heard you have so many great live recordings of 4’33” in your department’s collection.”

Even I took a while to come around to the concept until I realized there was a deep spiritual component to it. It helps me engage with any kind of silence as a chance for openness and lack of control. It’s another reason I like scuba diving. No coincidence Cousteau called it The Silent World.

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?

Well similar to the question about acoustic health, I’m not sure ‘d say definitely better or worse. It’s probably in the middle. Some things would be better, some wouldn’t.

I’d like to think it’d help with xenophobia and human connection, but in places where silence reigns, we’d be missing the full picture, no pun intended. We aren’t equipped to hear parts of the natural world and get the same appreciation as we can with our eyes.

I say this as an able bodied person so take it in that context of course. My sense of hearing may not compare to someone who has no sense of sight.