Part 2

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?

Even if I am not in the studio, I am taking in information and experiences that will become a work.

Once I set out to start turning that information into my own work, that is when the real “creative state” hits and it usually hits in hard bursts. 3 hour deep focus kinds of moments. Those moments are kind of spiritual, sure. I am not a religious person, but I try to make myself available to visitations or experiences within the sublime when I am in the studio.

I get that same spiritual kind of experience when I am gardening though, or hiking, or skateboarding. I guess it is like a flow state … a kind of emptiness and presence at the same time.
 
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?

I definitely do this! I call this process “fermentation” and it is wildly important to my practice and to me finding satisfaction in what I make. I let things – demos, songs, ideas, albums, artworks, whatever – ferment and I do multiple fermentations.

Before I show anyone what feels like a “finished album” in any sort of official capacity I make a rule to not listen to it at all for a month and then try to come back to it with fresh ears before I send it off.

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

I think of music cinematically. Albums are movies in a lot of ways for me.

Some scenes/songs can stand on their own, sure, and some scenes/songs are crucial to the listener’s journey through the album but don’t really do much save for building atmosphere … There are action sequences and shifts in speed and all that when I make an album-length sequence.

I struggle with picking “singles” because I love individual songs, sure, but I prefer to listen through an album start to finish most of the time.
 
What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?

I have been recording at home for basically my entire musical life, so recording and mixing and all that is just part of the process. I make music by doing those parts.

In some ways I think the studio is one of my instruments. I am composing and arranging simultaneously, or in shifts, at all times in the studio.
 
Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

I am a visual artist as well as a musician and an album sort of always has a texture or color or feeling to me. I don’t have synaesthesia but I think it is a fun idea to use generatively, as in, “what color is this song? Is it a combination of textures? Pillowy and also staticy? Is it sweet or savory or spicy, or some combination?”

My last two solo albums have had designs from Will Work For Good and they, in collaboration with RVNG, do a really great job of turning my own notions of what I want the album to look or feel like into the final packaging that I am happy with. It isn’t always a straight line to that destination, but we get there.
 
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?

That emptiness is real because I see each album as a kind of channel, and in some ways releasing it means I am done with that channel.

I also find this moment super relieving because I really take my time and work in a super detail-oriented way on an album for so long that it is kind of nice to be like “ok that’s done, whew.” It is nice to turn that channel off in the studio.

I often feel moved, a week or so later, to just really start the input process again. Reading, watching, listening, doing. More work will come from that as I start to process it.

I have also found a new piece of gear is a great way to start a new creative exploration, and I often try and re-visit an old piece of gear, or explore some new piece of gear in those early stages of working on new material.
 
I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”

I have been told more than once that people have conceived or given birth to my music, or to Fuubutsushi music, and that is one of the wildest things to me, to be invited into that kind of deeply personal human space. That is like … heavy feedback, I guess. Also the best case scenario for me, to make music that people want to have those kinds of special experiences with.

I also don’t know if, for me, an instrumental song can be misunderstood. There may be a title that hints at my thoughts as the artist, but there is no right answer to what the song is “about” really.

I like wordless/instrumental music for this reason; it is open to listeners to make what they will of it.
 
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?  

I am really fascinated by “the album” as a cultural object.

Recorded sound is incredibly nascent – only 150-200 years old really – and yet it feels like it has been around forever! The oldest instruments found date back like 40,000+ years … music is ancient, but albums are severely contemporary. I think we forget this too often.

Recording music and making “albums” for me is a sort of expression of an appreciation of that technology and the culture it has created. I make albums because I love albums both as aesthetic things but also as little cultural/conceptual capsules of humanity.

A cup of coffee can’t last as long as a recording of a song can, but for me, I make albums by collecting mundane moments, great cups of coffee, gardens and harvests, trips, moments, books and art and conversations and meals and deaths and births, and turning those into recordings.