#5 Have you ever given any thought to the cinematic effect the music has?
SR: Its part of the experience for me, the images that the music suggests, sometimes the images come first and I create the soundtrack for my one inner film so to speak.
You have built your own home studio Timeroom in Tucson Arizona. Is it a fairly “normal” recording environment or a strange and wonderful place like one might imagine when listening to your music?
SR: The neutral, safe environment of the Timeroom is something that I longed to have before building it from the ground up. My Timeroom studio as a state of mind has travelled with me through several location through out California over the years before it evolved into its current state. When it was time to make a more permanent space I wanted to create a space that was more than a room full of gear. It had to offer a kind of sanctuary during the creative process and also let the feeling of the location inside. For me this was achieved by the shape, windows and colour scheme, the arrangement of gear, no phones or clocks. It’s one large room. The thing that makes it stand apart form other studios is the larger floor to Ceiling “picture” window that look directly out on the desert and craggy ridges and mountains directly out back. From my position at the mixing board I can gaze out to other time I pull the blinds and create a cave or Kiva like environment. Since I often refer to the ways of a visual artist, painter or sculptor in the way I create having a solitary studio that allows lots of natural light into the space is important to me. When I am deep into a project the space is set up for me to sleep and stay inside the sound current for a few days at a time.
#6 Also, while recording these albums you collaborated with Australian aborigines (Australia) as well as North American Indians (Kiva). Can you describe the process of creation of these two records? Can these records be considered to be World music records or you don’t feel comfortable with this term?
SR: Dreamtime Return was certainly a culmination of my deepest desires and aspirations up to that point. It’s where I feel came into my own as an artist. It was really an initiation for me on many levels including the connection to my own sound that I was constantly searching out. Most of all, it was a time of intensive personal growth and understanding. Also with the music, I felt that I’d left a lot of the European influences behind at that point, integrating them as well. This is when the relationship to my own land in which I’d grown up became really clear to me, starting with Western Spaces. Also the feeling of a sonic and spiritual bridge between the Southwest and the Australian outback was awakening. I spent a lot of time Joshua Tree outside of L.A. in the desert region. I grew up in the Southern California Deserts, Anza Borrego and others. So all of that was there for me to connect to in a deeply personal way. I was feeling a sense of spiritual expansion, out from beyond the desert I grew up in and was inspired by, to a much larger, less familiar landscape. This is when the Dreamtime concept started to unfold, Around this time I also saw the film by Peter Weir, The Last Wave, and hearing the first didgeridoo. That introduced me to at least a white filmmaker’ version of certain mystical aspects of the Dreamtime and Aboriginal culture in it’s own obviously diluted way. But still, it was a significant step in my growing fascination with Australia for many years. I had a friend who moved to Australia in the 60’s and came back with great stories of this faraway place that captivated me. It was alive in my subconscious for years. In the mid 80’s I was starting to work on preliminary pieces for Dreamtime Return, just gathering different impressions with no idea that I would be going to Australia. I really hadn’t thought about it much more than just fascination about the worlds out there, that you can travel to in your imagination Knowing I was working on this project, the owner of Fortuna Records at the time, Ethan Edgecomb, sent me a book “Archaeology of the Dreamtime”, about the time I was starting to get deeper into the project, around 1986. Probably within a month of receiving that book and reading it – which was from more of a anthropological point of view of the Australians Aboriginals in the Cape York area ( of Australia) – I received a phone call from a filmmaker who was working on a film called the Art of the Dreamtime. Using that very same book as a reference, he was producing a documentary for PBS and planning an expedition to that very same remote area in Cape York with a film crew from a university. One thing led to another, and I became the musician / composer on that expedition. They took care of everything for me so I was one of the crew members. It was just an unbelievable turn of events. The filmmaker said he first heard my music when he was traveling to Mexico through Texas and Structures from Silence was playing on the radio late at night across the desert. I remember him say at that he felt like he was in a Stanley Kubrick film. The feeling of synchronicity was overwhelming at times. Along with being in those remote Aboriginal sites for weeks, the entire project brought up so much in me that went way beyond music. Being at these sites, sleeping on the same dirt as the ancient people of the land and listening to pieces on headphones that I’d already created back in the Time before I ever imagined I would go to Australia was unforgettable.
So it was a tremendous opening for me as an artist, as a human being, and as a person who really listens with their ear to the ground very closely. That to me was a direct experience of how magical things can happen when you listen with your heart and mind. They continue to spiral out unfolding with a natural order. I feel the uninterrupted connection still reverberating from that point – the understanding that I came to during the 2 years of making Dreamtime Return. By 1989 I was back in Australia for a second adventure that led to the project, Australia – Sound of the Earth.
#7 It’s was directly after this second trip to Australia that I moved to Tucson and started a new life with my wife Linda Kohanov.
Kiva was created from a more traditional project point of view, We brought ourselves together after several weeks of pre-preparation. Ron Sunsinger was the one reasonable for gathering the indigenous sources. Once we met up we created our own Kiva, sacred space environment and continued to create the flow of the music. During the week we also recorded our own ceremonial performances in a fantastic limestone cave near Santa Fe, New Mexico, We then took these back the studio and continued to weave these into the mix. Both of these recordings are good examples why it so difficult to try and categorizes the end result as simply world music, at a loss for a term, really sine its often more than music as it enter into the realm of sacred sounds and elusive ancestral moments captured on the recording.
Do you travel the globe to study the sounds, instruments and rhythms; or is it more of an inner journey?
SR: At this point its more inner and by way for remote research, exploring and experimenting within he studio with new instruments and musicians that play unique instruments.
Can you describe your approach toward composing? Do you improvise while composing? How do you structure and arrange your ambient works?
SR: I have no formula since every project takes on a different shape and set of harmonic-sonic-mythic-rhythmic puzzles to solve and explore and all into by chance… In some settings the feeling of creating a film is the best way to compare the process. Shooting the film can be compared to capturing improvisations and explorations in the moment, then telling the story by way of editing, like the texture and grain of the film, the processing, can drive it, slow it down, sweep one away… whatever… I get tremendous inspiration from films in this way along with the visual arts. Since I never really do “songs” many of the long form pieces are created from many different elements that, once woven into the fabric, serve many proposes in the big picture. With many of the long form pieces I will essentially live with the piece throughout the day and night often going to sleep and waking with the piece playing live in the studio. I have been doing this early 80’s and I have found that this level of living inside the music lets me perform micro adjustments that all add up to a nuance filled space that seems to breath and live once they find there way to CD.
It’s interesting having grown up with analog equipment – synths, and recording equipment. For me the organic influence has created a foundation that can absorb whatever new approach comes along while still keeping the priorities straight in terms of keeping the human element alive in the machine. Since this was the only way to create in the “old days,” with the analog gear nothing could be stored in memory, you always had to approach it in the moment with these living sounds. It’s still how I work now but with the luxury of the evolution in technology up to now.
I also take a lot of cues for my ambient pieces from the movements right outside my studio, the shades of light changing through out the day, the array of clouds and the counter movement between them, letting all this be absorbed into my body clock so to speak. This is where I can translate these organic movements into form with my harmonic clouds and atmospheres of light…
Since you are involved in electronic music what is your approach to technology? Do you keep up with the latest technology? How important is to be kept up to date with the latest technology?
SR: I keep my ear to the ground for what could be a valid new tool in my approach but it’s not important to be on the bleeding edge with all the latest and so called greatest gear and programs. On the most part I don’t read the monthly “tech lust” magazines as it seems the news of what’s really worth checking out travels more directly from a few people I respect and know I can count on when I check in to see what’s new. At this point in my life I just want to protect my time and keep the priorities clear. Creating music and living a life that feeds the music. I see plenty of people around me getting caught up in the game of thinking new gear will create new music. I really don’t feel this is the case. They seem to be constantly learning new programs and synths but not really going deep into the inner life where the real art emerges. The music industry feeds on this kind of human compulsion towards always wanting to encourage that what is new is what is better and you will have the edge and so on. The home recording industry money machine has created a kind of “need” that approaches drug addiction in comparison. I don’t have any answers and have been there myself with the gear hunger so I speak form my own experience. Now I have found my piece with it all and keep the discipline to work with what I have until something comes along that is clearly a big step in the direction I can relate to. I still find my self-discovering new sounds equipment that is considered outdated long ago. My approach to creating the soundworlds I am drawn towards demands an organic, intuitive interface, I have a very efficient way of moving into an evaluation period with what ever new (or old) piece of tech I might audition.
What do you think about the progress of technology related to music?
SR: I have always embraced the technology with open arms. I was ready to carve out my soundworlds with all these tools, and when I laid hands on my first “ancient” synthesizer years ago, I knew this was my path. It was never a strange feeling or something I had to adjust to, it was a natural process for me.
I feel just in my lifetime so far the evolution is incredible, with these tools that help create worlds that would not be heard just a few years ago. For me these instruments and the technology can be like the finest single-haired paint brush or surgical laser. They can also share the same space as the most ancient music “technology” touching infinitely subtle, complex and unseen worlds with in the human experience, This is the core of the music for me, why I am so compelled to paint with sound.
I see the didgeridoo and my favourite analog synthesizer the Oberheim Matrix 12 as both being high points in there time. It has to start with the human need to hear these sounds and then find a way to make the instrument to do so. Sonically they can create very similar feelings. The didgeridoo was naturally a much, much earlier form of technology, one that created a rich, continuous drone in the same way as the most current synthesizer and computer set up. The impact of the didgeridoo’s sound has lasted for thousands of years and it for me when blending the 2 worlds, the Primordial and electronic a kind of magic occurs that feels perfect and truly timeless. In the right hands, the Oberheim Matrix 12 Analog Synth can tap into the same timeless realm as the didg, and elaborate on this feeling with a much more intricate series of multi-layered drones that blossom into waves of sound that seem to be spilling forth from other worlds. Of course in the wrong hands, both the didg and the Matrix 12 or any synth can be irritating, threatening or just plain boring. It’s a matter of the artist’s intention and skill, and how deep he or she is willing to draw upon their own true source of inspiration and translate it through the wood log or plastic and metal electronic devices.