Name: South Hill Experiment
Interviewees: Goldwash (G), Baird (B)
Nationality: American
Current event: South Hill Experiment's SUNSTRIKES is out December 1st 2023.

If you enjoyed this South Hill Experiment interview and would like to find out more about the ensemble and their music, visit their official homepage. They are also on Instagram, and Soundcloud.



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?

G: We started improvising music when we were young. It just feels very natural to play around with whatever toy until you can make it sound like something that feels inspiring and really get lost in it.

Improvisation and jamming is at the root of all the writing that we do, although we often try to catch an early idea and develop it with iterations.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

G: I was obsessed with A Love Supreme by John Coltrane when I was a young teenager. That and a lot of Herbie Hancock records.



Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

B: Honestly for me its usually the lack of practice or repertoire that leads me to make it up as I go.

Having another person there with you is helpful because as your hands sift through new ideas on the instrument you have someone to go ‘no wait, play that again, that was cool’

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

G: I think my improvisation is most effective when I’m not thinking too hard. When we catch a feeling and run with it, ideally pushing it a little over the line, trusting that the production process can pull it back and make it work with the song.

The piano solo in our song “DREAMS!”, for example, came from Baird prompting me to play like I was really drunk and angry. I did three passes and we Frankenstein’d the results together.



Baird’s guitar solo in “O SOFIA” also worked really well.



For that, we set up a crazy effect chain so that the guitar slices through the mix, which really impacted how he soloed. For us, setting up the mood and the sound is probably the most important part of improvising solos.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

B: We’re still learning. You gotta be fluid but still kinda naive.

Sometimes the best takes happen when you’re still figuring out the part.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?

G: I’m most comfortable improvising on keyed instruments and with my voice. With synths, the timbral variety and potential for the sound to evolve in unexpected ways is my favorite thing. On a piano or organ, it’s the potential for developing harmonies.

With my voice, I almost have to black out and just channel whatever wants to be sung, not thinking at all about sounding pretty or even what words or sounds are coming out.

B: I like improvising on the drum kit when Gabe's on piano - usually we find a good pocket in that arrangement for whatever reason.

But it's fun to give yourself a fresh challenge - maybe I'll switch the cymbals around, flip off the snares, or only play with my hands and see what kind of beat comes from that.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

B: I like that definition. I think sometimes when we say that we write songs by “jamming” it sounds like we set up a loop and take solos.

But for us the idea of a jam is to search and search until something falls out of the sky. And that search is valuable whether or not anything comes from it.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

B: Listen. I feel strongly that there’s no rules to music. But when it comes to improv the only suggestion I’d have is to really listen.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

G: This process works from listening. A solo performance can be powerful too, if you’re listening to yourself.

But there are more possible conversations if you’re listening to others as well.

B: Ditto

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

G: I think the ideal creative state is a bit of a paradox. Being open to experimentation and breaking rules while still being able to listen honestly, so you can see what’s working and what isn’t. I don’t think the state is very different for solo work and collaboration, though I guess when you’re working solo you can maybe go deeper into one direction.

But that’s not always a good thing. There are a lot of other steps in working on a song aside from that initial burst of creative energy - we try to stay in the loose, development phase as long as possible, keeping each song open to radical moves and not listening back to demos much at all.

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

B: David Byrne has that idea that music mostly responds to the space where it's made, which I pretty much buy into.

I think we try to keep our studio set up with that in mind, part laboratory part living-room.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

G: For me, improvisation in the context of recording is a really strange thing, because the magic of capturing sound is all about grabbing a magic transitory moment, and preserving it in amber, presenting it in its best form.

But even if the recording stays the same, it’s not like the listener ever hears the same thing the same way again. So in that sense, everything is flowing onward.