#oakeater

Every Record I Own - Day 62: Barnett + Coloccia Retrieval

I’ve become the default email interview answerer for Russian Circles, and one of the most common questions we get is “what’s your writing process like?”

I hate this question. I hate it because the answer is so boring. The truth? You hear a note or a musical phrase in your head, and you just build off of it. Or you play a note on your instrument and it almost seems to beg for another specific note, then another one, and another one. The songs build themselves, one note or one beat at a time. How else are you supposed to do it?

Last year I was fortunate enough to contribute bass duties on a couple of Mamiffer tours. I’ve known Faith Coloccia since her tenure in Everlovely Lightningheart and played on a few of her early Mamiffer recordings, but I only had the pleasure of actually performing live with her last year. Working with Faith was very illuminating because her creative process seems much more visual, more deliberate, and more conceptual. It’s not a matter of striking a note then figuring out what comes next. She already has the whole textural arc of the piece envisioned in her mind. She knows what she wants to convey, she just has to put all the pieces in place. I find that very inspiring.

This is her first of two collaborations with Oakeater’s synth-wizard Alex Barnett, and my understanding is that while most of the actual melodies were determined in the studio, the dynamic trajectory and textural shifts were all mapped out in advance. In many ways, that kinda blows my mind. But listening to Retrieval, it’s understandable how the passages of protracted ambience, John Carpenter-esque synth-based creep-outs, sound collage, and classical minimalism had to come to fruition through this process. This is music that’s really about the big picture and creating an overarching feeling to a project, as opposed to the more standard convention of stockpiling bits and pieces and fashioning them into songs.

Paintings I made for Oakeater using: ash, salt and gesso

Good friends and collaborators Oakeater have a new record out on SIGE Records. You can stream "Aquarius" at FACT Magazine

Oakeater film still images

Oakeater film still images