Name: Isaac Watters

Nationality: American

Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Current Release: Isaac Watters's new singles "Child in the Rain" and "Sadness" are out now via hi-res. An EP will follow on January 17th 2023.

If you enjoyed this interview with Isaac Watters and would like to keep up to date with his work, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



Can you talk a bit about your interest in or fascination for sound and architecture and the relationship between them? What were early experiences which sparked it?

I was born in Mexico City, which at the time was the world’s most populous city. So right away I was surrounded by skyscrapers, but I was also always excited about building things with my hands. When I was a kid I built forts out of adobe in the desert with my friends, we spent days and days building, and tunneling through the clay soil.

I started playing violin in fourth grade and was in orchestras up through highschool in Tucson, so I was always around music, but didn't really start writing my own songs until after architecture school.

Which artists, architects, and approaches captured your imagination in the beginning?

When I started writing songs I was really into listening to Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, a lot of Wilco, lots of country songwriters like Kris Kristofferson. I was trying to do things lyrically that had a similar feeling.

[Read our Nels Cline of Wilco interview]

Corbusier really still captures my imagination architecturally. I have very physical memories of being in spaces he designed when I was traveling around Europe. I think my favorite building is still La Tourette.

Corbusier also wrote some poetry, and I would have loved to hear what he would have sounded like as a songwriter.

What's your take on how your upbringing and surrounding have influenced your sonic and architectural preferences?

I was brought up back and forth between Mexico and Tucson, Arizona, a couple years in Berkeley CA as well, but have been in Los Angeles for the last 20 years.. I think I tried in past records to make the connection clearer between cities and music.

I made a record called Casas, and another, Campanas, that dealt with things at the scale of a home. Or Campanas (bells) dealt more with the city scale, Mexico City in some vague way.



I think this new stuff is really more about LA, but in a way that's not trying to be - but actually is more so, for the lack of trying. How's that?

Architecturally and musically I'm drawn to simplicity and rawness. I think there’s a similarity in the best architecture and music, they feel like they have always existed where they are even when you see or hear them for the first time.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and working with sound? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

I tend to think of myself less as a musician and more a songwriter, so I guess I would like to be part of that tradition. I can't play any instrument well enough to be in anyone else's band, so I just write words and sing.

So for me the key has always been my friends that come in and make the sounds, I guess my approach to working with sound has been largely, trusting your friends. I guess it could be like a designer who trusts that his builders know the details better than he does, and they just need a sketch of the big picture.

For there to be connections between architecture and music, I would assume both disciplines can not be reduced to their visual or sonic dimensions. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Everything happens to you in your body I guess? You can’t really listen without being in a physical space with air, or can you?

I'm no physicist, but there sometimes is a sense of going farther inside my body to be able to leave it and write something removed from it, so I often feel like I'm listening in a different space than I am in.

Just close your eyes… and when the music starts the horizon opens up, even if you’re in a room with no windows.

What do architecture, sculpture, and/or design add to your perception of music? How does the effect of music change when it is combined with architecture, light and projections?

I have only barely experimented with projection and light during my shows, but I would like to do that a lot more. It really is an art in itself to figure out a way to add lighting and design to a show in a way that enhances the emotion of the music, and doesn’t distract.

For now, I'm just playing shows with a band in small clubs so I haven’t had the happy problem of performing in a space big enough that you would need a jumbotron to see my face. But the space really does matter, for instance the same song in a living room with a few friends can be just as powerful and intimate as the song performed in a concert hall. I think the space doesn’t add to the song, but it does change the experience and interpretation.

For instance I saw Tune-Yards play at The Echo years ago for like 20 people, and they were screaming “do you want to live!!” and it was so epic. And then I saw them at the Disney Concert hall a few years later. The space is perfect acoustically and architecturally, but it takes away some of the feeling of newness and rawness that seeing someone in a dirty club can give you.



It was still a great show, but the experience was completely different.

Architecture can project an image, just like music can. As such, it is part of the storytelling process. What kinds of stories are being told, would you say?

Am I really telling any stories in these songs? Maybe I'm just stringing together a series of images to try to get a certain feeling across. Think of it as a movie you’d see in an art museum, and not the cinema. You don't necessarily have to know what it's about for an image to stick in your mind and make you feel a certain way.

There are so many good storytelling songwriters, but I'm not sure I fit in that mold anymore.

What can architecture express what music can not – and vice versa? How can they mutually enhance each other?

There should always be both. Without both what is a city except a big ugly machine?

When it comes to your approach to writing, are there techniques or approaches that lead to a kind of music that has more of a sculptural or architectural feeling? How do you work on the “architectural” aspects of your music?

I think sculpture is maybe a better way to talk about music than architecture, but maybe it's sculpture at the scale of architecture, like a piece large enough that you have to walk around in order to see its edges.

Every song has a structure, but it doesn't have to be usable or accessible like architecture does. I will often start with a phrase or a few lines, maybe you could call that a building block.

But what is a metaphor anyway - which came first the natural world or its metaphors?

Xenakis, probably the most famous architect-composer, would often apply mathematical models from architecture to his pieces. Does this interest you as well? If so, in which way?

I know very little about math. But your question does interest me. I’m sure in a way there is math in every song, but I don't try to write with a model or formula. Xenakis’ music is amazing, but in a very disconcerting way that gives me panic attacks. Way more complex and sophisticated than anything I am trying to do.

I heard Weird Al Yankovic also studied architecture before doing music full time. Maybe there is something to this ... Would love to hear a Weird Al parody of a Xenakis song.

Many have claimed that both architecture and music have a rhythm to them. While I understand the point, I have always found it a bit hard to truly regard these two “rhythms” as being the same thing. How do you personally see that yourself?

Yes, they both have rhythm, the same rhythm in the way that everything in life has a rhythm. Well that is ... I should say architecture that is buildable has a rhythm, and songs that can be sung do too.

What about unbuildable architecture and unsingable songs?

Two other dimensions often associated with architecture and music are proportions and dynamics. Do these mean something for your work as well?

Proportion is everything, just like in baking. I like to play with dynamics in my live show more than on the record, but I love trying to get through the earthquake to the dusty gentle breeze if you know what I mean.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

I write with the intention of live performance, so if no one comes to a show did it even happen?

When you are listening to a recording you are standing outside of time. At a live show it's only happening in the moment and the second and the nanosecond.

So I guess the people are the strategy and the strategy is the people? Next show at zebulon nov 21!

What role do acoustics play for the way we experience a) interior spaces and b) cities? What conclusions would you draw from this for the consideration of acoustic factors for architectural decisions?

I guess this question is everything for people with hearing. I remember a conversation in architecture school, where one of my professors asked, what would architecture be without sight? Someone posited that it would be based on touch, and what is beautiful to the touch.

Maybe music without acoustics is just about the beauty of watching, and without sight, or hearing, or touch, in that darkness you can still smell the smoke at least.

I think in architecture light is more important than acoustics. But in music, sound is all that matters. The beauty of sound is that you can hear so many things all at once, but we can only see what is right in front of us.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like designing a building?

Yes it's very different for me. Writing and performing are freeing for me, and often easy. Architecture is a struggle, an enjoyable and meaningful struggle, but it is hardly ever easy.

But a lot of my best design ideas and writing ideas both come when I'm not trying, when I'm about to fall asleep, and it's the last thing on my mind. So somehow it comes from the same place, but the process of dragging it out from that place once I've found it is totally different.