#funcken

Let's start with your more recent full-length "A Vast and Decaying Appearance". I might be the only (other) person that knows there is a theme to it. There is a poem in the liner notes that in conjunction with the song titles is a somewhat cryptic framework. Care to elaborate on the album's narrative? 

The narrative behind the album is all based off of a vivid dream I had. The day after I wrote 'Invisible Handcuffs' and structured the rest of the music around it. Picking up where Departure left off, A Vast and Decaying Appearance begins as a tragic story where a young man is lost inside a coma. He believes he is being held captive by a group of men, all dressed in black suits. Each day he makes his escape out of his cell in the asylum, always finding himself running up a hill where a small glimpse of light can be seen. Atop the hill is a young girl with light blonde hair dressed all in white. Each time he reaches for her shoulder, the men in black suits pull him back and return him to the asylum. In reality he is just in a hospital and his nurse is the girl he keeps picturing on the hill.

So does the story keep looping around like that or is there a finale? How does the new Elas EP fit in with the narrative?

Elas EP is just the next chapter in this massive story that I'm writing. This character suffered a massive injury that put him in a coma after the conclusion of Departure. In the Elas EP we are following his final moments in the coma and his struggle to escape back to reality. It is also safe to say that he has not made a full recovery. At this point he has only just woken up and met Elas for the first time, outside of his dream world. Without giving too much away, the next album/chapter will focus on his struggle to return to the man he was. Elas will play a large part in this next chapter as well by helping our main character return to a normal life.  

In the last year or so you moved from Connecticut to Colorado. What prompted the move westward? 

It really came down to music. I played shows in Connecticut for years, but it didn't really have the music scene I was looking for. One of my old bandmates moved to Denver a few months prior and I decided to follow. I think I've been to more shows this past year than I have in my whole life :) 

Ah yeah. I can see that. In Connecticut you probably had to drive into NYC to see more established underground acts. 

Care to share any of your recent Denver show highlights?`

Exactly. My friends and I would either go to Providence, New Haven, or NYC for shows, but it would have been on my days off of work. Now I can walk 10 minutes down to a venue and see any number of acts. I saw Machinedrum when I first moved out here right when he released Vapor City. I figured it would be a dj set, but he came on stage with a guitar and then a drummer walked up. It was probably one of the best performances I've seen in the city. Run the Jewels, Seth Nichols b2b Kevin Callison, and Death Cab for Cutie were also noteworthy shows.

And speaking of Denver show highlights, you've been playing out there as well. How are the shows going over?

I have been playing a lot more shows in the past year. I've played a few live (ghost) sets where I focused solely on my own material. So far the shows have gone over really well, but the attendance has lacked a bit. I recently became a resident dj at Milk Bar in Denver as part of The Underground. I focus mainly on techno/idm at these shows, and tend to play other material outside of my own compositions. That being said I recently played Nocturnal.04 with L'Estasi Dell'oro and Paul Fleetwood, where I created an entire set filled with original techno compositions all based around my (ghost) sound. It was the first time I've played for over an hour with all original music, and everything was improvised. 

I remember you mentioning to me in conversation before that you own some of Richard Bailey's (Proem) old equipment. How did you come to own it and, i'm curious... have you ever been tempted to use any of his patches/banks? 

 I saw he had put his Korg R3 up on ebay and bought it without hesitation. I've used a couple of my favorite patches, but I usually end up mangling the audio files. 

So you've used some "mangled" Proem patches? That's actually kinda cool that there is some connection. Maybe one or more of those have been on an n5MD release before.

I'm really inspired by his music so its great to have the chance to work with his sounds in my own compositions. I used a few of the patches on the new album but most of the time I just use them for improv sessions.

Indulge me and other gear-heads a bit...what does the (ghost) studio consist of?

A 13" Macbook Pro, Maschine Mikro, Korg R3, a number of guitars and pedals, and a basic 2 octave midi keyboard. I have a lot of various plugins that I've been collecting the last few years. Most of my sound comes from resampling inside of Logic 9. I tend to "destroy" sounds and use layering techniques to make those big ambient sections of the music. By the time the listener hears the sound it is almost unrecognizable to the original. I think it is important to have a unique sound especially album to album. There are a few sounds that I stick to consistently .

So you guy share 'studio space" and equipment then? Either of your flatmates on "A Vast and Decaying Appearance"? 

Yea most of the "studio" is at our apartment and then we have a practice space where we jam. My roommate Jacob Porter was actually in two tracks on the album. One night he was messing with his pedalboard and came up with the ominous sound at the end of 780.03. It was originally kind of a joke, but I stripped out a bunch of the layers and ended up really liking the sound. I wanted to include other musicians on this album, and it was great to have some of my friends improv over the tracks.