Name: Living Hour
Members: Sam Sarty, Gilad Carroll, Adam Soloway, Brett Ticzon
Interviewee: Sam Sarty
Occupation: Musicians, songwriters
Nationality: Canadian
Recent release: Living Hour's Someday Is Today is out via Next Door.

If you enjoyed this interview with Living Hour and would like to find out more about the band, visit their official website. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Everywhere all the time, looking, searching, yearning, noticing, feeling—a sensitive person, picking up on inspirations around and within me then I'll maybe convert it / create it into something I can say, write down, sing, play in a chord, push out in noise or a sound big and full and tall and embodying the thing that started the thought at the beginning.

I dream a lot, vividly, those live somewhere in me, I like to think about those worlds sometimes. Or a meditative day, boring day, a phrase will stick in my head and play to the beat of my legs pumping and feet walking around. “I see the headlights turning on” from Hold Me In Your Mind is an example of this internal sound byte ear worm that follows me in the rhythm of me walking home.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

Not really, just keep making always in small ways, chipping away at the thing and the process informs the final form.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I wish I was better at this, a scheduled practice with oneself or band … but usually it comes in spurts, it comes in big unstobbable urges to make, tangled chords and frantic tuning before I sing the same thing with the same couple of chords for hours.

And maybe that’s a song or maybe that’s a part of a song or maybe that’s a guitar part or a drum sound or maybe it was just some scratch on the back of the head of a bigger faceless thing that has no real good name and it’s getting a bit of sweet catharsis, teeth out.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I talk to myself all the time, or sing, especially driving, a semi permeable semi private place that’s still in the world, a portable pod with windows that displays you from the chest up. Maybe people see you or maybe they just see the car or both.

I like to yawn in the car, sing in the car, eat in the car, swear in the car, feeling protected by steel and a knot of metal churning making me move and tires turn, a concoction that’s transforming energy into getting you somewhere ... movement, gets my head buzzing.

Car CDs, same sound tracks, simple plan, pulp fiction, juno at shows, loud places. I'll hear words, mis-hear words and let my delusion sing out in my head a new lyric or a new version of a word I never knew how to hear.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

If it’s feeling difficult I'll step away, wait for it to feel better.

When do the lyrics enter the picture? Where do they come from? Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Lyrics definitely come from many places. I write, I write a lot down, skirting on the edges of calling myself a poet but it doesn’t feel right as a label, not yet maybe. A writer, sure.

The words inform the song sometimes if I’m searching for a vowel that feels good in my mouth to sing, or a phrase to repeat over and over.

“Lemons and gin” is a very lyric forward song for me.



A lot of it is stream of consciousness journal entry I wrote immediately, urgently after coming home from the grocery store in the dead of Winter.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion? What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

Say it without actually saying it, lyrics that explain, or are filler rhymes abababababa format make me snooze! Show what you’re trying to say through examples, details, playful experiments with words and sounds, pushing spots that feel good, for you, and then maybe the listener will get something entirely different out of it.

Grey area is key.
 
Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

Don’t think it’s one or the other, different processes for different songs will emerge.

It’s nice to offer yourself room to exist beyond the concept of process even, just to play, to fuck up, to make something. Write it down, then burn it so it’s for nothing, it’s for no one, but you got to witness, do, something just once.

Fun to weave together thoughts bits of your writing with sound trying to get the Big Feeling across.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it? What do you do with these ideas?

I write everything down. Might not mean anything now, but might later.

Really great resource to archive yourself and keep marking little things down. How else to remember.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

It’s a big gift to get to connect to others and myself in an abstract way through saying words, using my body to sing and create sounds. It feels like I'm grounded in something bigger than me for sure, something people have done for thousands of years, the inexplicable urge and response to make music, to connect.

That’s why it’s hard to explain it or pin down how / why / what I’m doing in questionnaires such as these— like trying to describe the feeling of seeing a pure white frozen field for the first time, stretching forever. How water can move and push light around but still be clear, how there’s a peeling sun washed sign that sits and sits in your home town with your old honda civic underneath, sun roof open head tilted directly up.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

Good to not over do it.

Once you know just know. And handle that nothing is forever, nothing is perfect, nothing is precious. It’s what you want to say and that’s enough.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?

Pretty great to “give your ears a break” and come back to something after it is “finished.”

Sometimes after a couple weeks or a month, I'll come back and listen seeing if the flow feels good and if there is anything else I could add / take away.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

Mixing is a crucial time. You really have to trust your mixer and the back and forth of notes is a time for sure where the clear communication skills et in my brain gets activated. It’s like the sculpting part of the statue lol

I like to be very involved in this part / all parts.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I dont feel emptiness at all. I feel anxiety, vulnerability overload, standing naked on a cliff, all nervousness to be perceived.

Also, a sheer excitement to have the stuff finally out there for others to hear and interact with is a great feeling. To just finally get it out, express, squeeze out.

Usually when there is a release of music, I’m also working on more. So that is another place to go mentally, creatively. Sacred and special seedling beginnings of a new expression.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing 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?

Guess depends how you look at it. To me the sound of coffee is in and of itself an ANTHEM. But getting to manipulate and alter and carve and sculpt your own sound is a totally other feeling.

Music is a tool, music is a place, music is a sanctuary, music is an expression. So much of art creation / expression is tied up in the body too, so to get to physically interact with my instrument, manipulating it to make a sound I want it to, holding, pressing, breathing into the sound and words im singing, then interacting with electronics, manipulating those too, it’s all a big extension of yourself.

Moving pieces externally to you into a certain order to get something out, to alter matter into another matter, to conduct, to play, to create, —- I feel like that’s all in coffee too, and other mundane tasks for sure. Just the intention, the focus is different with music creation. It’s yearning, it’s desperate, energy seeking transformation and interpretation