Part 2

Before you started making music together, did you in any form exchange concrete ideas, goals, or strategies? Generally speaking, what are your preferences when it comes to planning versus spontaneity in a collaboration?

MD: I think I just sort of asked Alec if he wanted to come over and record some stuff at my apartment. I prefer to plan to be spontaneous.

AW: I like a lot of talking beforehand, then a lot of action, quick takes, and decisive motion during the recording process.

Max was a great partner in this, he works extremely quickly and is a lover of first takes. I usually like a nice second take.

Describe the process of working on Febrile, please. What was different from your expectations, and what did the other add to the music?

AW: Max came in with a ton of ideas. He had these field recordings, the graphic scores, and a couple of synth beds. I brought a few keyboards.

We would listen to the tracks he brought, and I would start building a sound. We’d adjust the sound and edit it until it felt right with the environment. We’d say "ready, set, go," and then I’d play along to the field recording, sometimes wandering, often getting stuck on an idea.

I was thinking about making beautiful sounds, making phrase lengths that felt beautiful, and suggesting harmony that would be respectful to the sound environments. I was thinking about Haruomi Hosono, Morton Feldman, and Graham Lambkin. Max and I played together, too, sometimes monitoring with only laptop speaker playback.

MD: I knew I wanted to make music that had a horizontal feeling to it: densely layered and stretched. I had several field recordings gathered over the years, as well as ambient sounds captured inside the skyscraper apartment building where we recorded the album.

I knew it would be interesting to pair those field recordings with graphic scores literally composed in the building, to see how the inspiration from the building, neighborhood, and city would feel emotionally once layered on top of one another.

As we began the recording process, I realized the music reminded me heavily of a few different influences, including Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Some of Alec's and my synthesizer explorations also reminded me of the soundtrack to the 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet, composed by Bebe and Louis Barron.



The music we were making also brought to mind John Cage and David Tudor’s collaborations, and I drew a subconscious connection between that early electronic synthesizer experimentation used in sci-fi film/TV and the avant-garde classical music of the same era.

I later learned this connection was more than just in my imagination, as John Cage had actually worked with the Barrons in 1952–1953 to realize his fantastic composition Williams Mix.



I believe we pretty much achieved the result I was looking for, and for that reason, I like the album. Alec injected a really nice sense of melody into my sonic environments, and having his contributions made the album much more lyrical and appealing.

I think if I had been left to complete the album on my own, the Forbidden Planet I was building would not have been populated by so many complex and unique lifeforms.

Is there a piece that shows the different aspects you each contributed to the process particularly clearly?

MD: I would probably have to say the track "Guse" because it is simply a field recording of me walking into a hardware store, browsing a little bit, and then buying a deck of cards, with Alec recording keys on top of it. That’s it. So you can really see how the sausage was made there.

AW: Some of my favorite tracks on the record are actually the ones where our roles become blurred and I can’t remember who contributed what. "Inner-face," in particular, comes to mind.

There’s something soothing about listening to a recording and being released from the knowledge of what sounds I’m responsible for.

What tend to be the best collaborations in your opinion – those with artists you have a lot in common with, or those where you have more differences? What happens when another musician takes you outside of your comfort zone?

MD: The best collaborations are ones in which you and your collaborator both clearly grow in some way from having made the work together.

I wish another musician would take me outside of my comfort zone, but I am actually extremely uncomfortable all the time, so that is impossible to do.

Decisions between creatives often work without words. How did this process work in this case?

AW: Lots of eye contact after we finished a take, accompanied by maybe a raised eyebrow and a "Good, yeah?"

What are your thoughts on the need for compromise versus standing by one's convictions? How did you resolve potential disagreements in this collaboration?

MD: I usually speak my mind in a creative setting and will battle to the bitter end in order to stand up for my ideas. But I also know that one of the most important aspects of collaboration is trusting your collaborators; this trust sometimes means saying, "Even though you are very wrong, I will watch you destroy this because I trust you."

AW: I am a very conflict-avoidant person. I am working on this. Sometimes I think this makes me a good collaborator because I’m flexible, other times I think it makes me a bad collaborator because I’m timid about bringing strong ideas to the table.

The truth must be that I am simultaneously a good and bad collaborator, and that everyone is always mad at me and also pleased with me at all times.

Was/Is this collaboration fun – does it need to be?

AW: I think a balance of fun and not-fun music-making is pretty standard across trusted peers I talk to about this sort of thing. Working with Max was fun for me because it was spontaneous.

I do also get a sense of satisfaction from making not-fun music. I’ve made a couple of not-fun records in my day. That kind of music-making feels connected to personal growth or self-discovery. There is a heaviness that comes with that kind of music, and sometimes you want that.

Sometimes you don't, and you make something fun, and it still feels deep. Or sometimes it feels fun and silly, and that’s okay too. Isn’t it nice that we can have it all? We can do anything, all the time, forever.

Do you find that thanks to this collaboration, you changed certain parts of your process or your outlook on certain creative aspects?

MD: Not really.

Collaborating with one's heroes can be a thrill or a cause for panic. Do you have any practical experience with this, and what was it like?

MD: My heroes do not reply to my emails, so I will never know.

AW: I hope to someday panic while collaborating with a hero.