Textile Audio

Hey Y’all,

Well this is a pretty big day in my world. The Pomegranate EP was released by Feral Media last night. You already know this if you have come within a Google search of my website. Tracks are being streamed from Bandcamp so the whole EP is available to hear online by clicking here.

Stuart Buchanan has written an introduction to the project on the Feral Media blog which you can read here.

Sleeve notes are also up at the Bandcamp page here.

Lyrics are available here.

The remix track on the EP was by Gentleforce. Check out his amazing album Sacred Spaces here.

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I wanted to write about the process of creation for the EP and put the production choices in context. Because I’m working across genres I had some very deliberate decisions to make in terms of how the record should sound, especially in terms of the vocal recording and treatment. Operatic recordings sound pristine and give the perception of being the pinnacle of a live performance. In a good operatic recording, every note will be perfect. Rarely is this achieved without vast amounts of editing and tweaking, well beyond what you would expect when listening to it. If it’s done right, it will sound like there has been no editing done at all.

This level of manipulation undoubtedly happens with the great pop recordings as well, however we expect it, and mostly the processing is audible.  FXs like flanges and even Autotune are the norm. In terms of the vocals we often hear the breath, the cracked note, the warble, and we expect all manner of vocal processing. In fact, we like it.  Artists like Jolie Holland and Joanna Newsom who were at the forefront of the recent mainstream folk obsession do it beautifully. Holland’s debut album Catalpa, supposedly recorded in a lounge room, is utterly charming with its crackles, noise, and even coughing included on the tracks. Personally, with the technology available in 2003 I’m not buying into the “authenticity” spin that was placed on the low-res production values of Catalpa, but admire it as a deliberate aesthetic choice. Perhaps I’ve just listened to too much glitch and IDM in my time where the clicks, pops static and noise are often poignant musical devices.

Opera voice is something beautiful. I didn’t want to compromise on the performance of the tracks. When I was recoding the vocals for the EP I sang them in full operatic voice. But opera performance is dangerous. In a live context, even the most experienced singers still have a sense of risk. There are marvelous operatic performances, but there are never perfect ones that sound just like a studio recording (or at least none that I have ever seen). It ads to the anticipation of live opera for both performer and audience. I didn’t want to efface this in the production of the album. And I didn’t want to efface the breath either. A lot of acoustic contemporary performances leave in the breath as a marker of intimate human connection (and an artifact of close micing). I wanted it as an artifact too. And I wanted the immediacy, danger, of a live performance. So I made the choice to leave the idiosyncrasies of my voice in the recordings. Most of the performances have some minor editing, but they are not hyper-constructed.  In this way I’ve kept much more consistently to a style of recording used for pop vocals, than operatic ones. I’ve tried to leave in “the grain”. I don’t apologise for that.

One key difference in my approach to vocal recording has been the number of microphones employed to catch the vocal sound. Harmonic overtones are what makes an operatically trained voice unique. They assist a singers ability to cut across an orchestra and be heard at the back of an auditorium. Opera voices can have complex, luminous timbres which build in a space and are completed at a distance, as sound reverberates. Its very difficult to replicate on a recording. In order to capture the colour of my voice, I surround miced the recording space and blended in close mics to reduce the reverb and bring back some of the immediacy of my breath.

One of my all time favourite recordings is Mitchell Akiyama’s If Night Is A Weed And Day Grows Less. Listening to it always warms me. Akiyama uses sweeps of static as melodic lines and punctuated by struck notes, chords and minute riffs repeated again and again. Tiny glitches provide subtle emotional markers. While not a groundbreaking album in and of itself, Akiyama’s timbrel choices seemed to invert glitch and more main stream music styles.

I think, unconsciously, If Night Is A Weed And Day Grows Less has crept in and guided my approach to the production on Pomegranate. I wanted invert traditional opera, weaving it into something ambient, cinematic, and contemporary, while maintaining its melody and narrative structure.  This meant including noises, warping instrumentation and layering tiny sounds. In the end, the songs are fragile creatures and I like lingering in that space.

The Pomegranate EP is a teaser for the larger tapestry, The Pomegranate Cycle which will come into being at the Brisbane Festival and shortly after, in recordings. I hope you enjoy it.

Over+out.e