Null Device Interview (WTII Minifest hype-a-palooza)
It took me a while to get this interview out there as life got in the way. So, today we got this pig finished and published for the people.
Falken: I myself love the work you do. I will come right out and say that I am a complete fan. It's completely different than what I usually listen to, but just amazing melodically. So many different instruments and amazing vocals. It's not something I normally see in "the scene". What led you down this path with Null Device?
Eric: Heh, thanks! It's always nice to know that the stuff we do, pretty much for the main purpose of "just enjoying the hell out of ourselves", is connecting. And I'll quickly move on or I'll start blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl.
As for what got us here? It's been a long and circuitous path. I mean I've really never had a sharply defined vision for the band beyond "what's interesting to me" and "what can we try" so it's just one of those thing...whatever we end up doing just happens to be because we thought it'd be fun to try, and it's something that's been influencing one of us recently. Whether it's me listening to a lot of turkish pop music for a summer and deciding I want to start rolling dumbeks into a song, or Dr. Goedken writing lyrics inspired by a new film, or me getting a new microphone or whatnot, we just kind of go with it.
When this all got started, I was basically looking for an outlet for my synth-nerdery. I've been a huge electronic music fan since the 80's (yes, I'm old, shut up), and when I finally started the band, I was focused primarily on that. But over time, I've aggregated in other things I've found interesting along the way, and drafted talented people who I've come into contact with as well - like Eric G, Jill, Elizabeth, Dan, Chuck, Raya, Ramya and so on - to put their own twist on things.
Plus, being the sort of geek I am, I am rarely content to just take an idea and use it without investigating it - like I'm not going to just throw tabla into a song unless I know something about how they work and what the standard tala are, or use kanun samples without reading up on arabic maqam or something. It doesn't always come out quite right, as my ambitions tend to outmatch my skills by a few orders of magnitutde, but nonetheless it gives me an excuse to keep learning things and more importantly allows me to justify buying musical instruments I can't actually play.
Falken: So, you really put a lot of thought in to the instruments that are getting used when you record?
Eric: I try, anyway. It doesn't always work out right, but it's fun to try.
Falken: How does that translate out in to playing live? Are there certain songs you just cant play because the instrument itself might be too cumbersome to lug around, or do you just sample the track and play it in the background?
Eric: There are certain practical limitations, yeah. In some cases it's a question of quantity - there are instruments that get used once on one song, so it's not worth dragging them all along. Other times it took so damned many takes or retunings or such fussy mic placement to get it right in the studio that I doubt I could get it even close to right live.
There hasn't been a strict limit in terms of size, yet - nobody in the band plays anything that's too unmanageably big, although we've had to make a few sacrifices just for practicality.
If one of us can play it live, we try, but I don't have a lot of difficulty with the idea of sampling something impractical and sticking it in with the synthesizers, but if they're the main melody instrument playing the lead for long passages, then I usually have to come up with something else to replace it. Nobody wants to watch a bunch of band members just stand around awkwardly onstage while the laptop takes a solo.
Falken: Yeah, that's one of those things we struggle with as well.
Eric: Live shows are always tricky when you're an electronic band.
Falken: Last year we had the opportunity to see Null Device the first three days of the Dark Clan/Null Device tour when you released your last album. I've seen a few web tracks hit in the past year... anything new on a full length side anytime soon?
Eric: We took a little bit of a break after the tour - there was a lot going on in everyone's lives so we had to sort of back off for a while. Some of that is still going on. We're still writing new music, doing remixes for people, learning new stuff, so there'll be something, although probably not for a while yet.
That said, I'm not entirely sure how we'll approach releases anymore. The whole EP/full-length difference is starting to feel less and less relevant as we sell fewer physical CDs and more digital downloads. I mean, we can put out new short collections of tracks cheaply as they're finished, whereas a full-length can take a long time to finish, meaning by the time the album's out we're putting out songs we wrote and recorded well over a year ago, and that's got a whole host of problem associated with it. It's also harder to stay relevant and even remembered when there's a 2-year gap between albums.
Falken: I've noticed a few bands really taking on the "release it as it's done" approach lately. Do you think that is the way the industry as a whole might see itself go? It is hard for me to think of the last time I actually bought physical media and actually listened to it.
Eric: It's hard to say. Certainly in an era of a zillion artists using social media to get your attention, it's easy to be forgotten if you wait too long between releases. At the same time, it's still easy to get lost if everyone's doing it, and in a sense it probably devalues the final product a bit. It's also hard to make a grand musical statement over the course of two tracks than it is with a 12-track album.
But things have kind of come full circle, in a way. In the days of the 33LP, a full-length album was usually less than 45 minutes long, and an EP was defined as less than 4 tracks. Now we have "EP's" that are longer by far than an actual Extended Play record ever was, and "full lengths" that are the length of a 4-LP set. Not that I'm advocating a return to the days of the 30-minute full-length, but sometimes there can be some benefit to brevity, given how easy it is to feel compelled to stuff a full-length with "filler" songs.
Physical media won't die for a long time yet, but its position as the dominant driver for music sales is waning fast. As much as the audiophiles like to moan about the terrible state of personal audio (which I, as a sometimes-mastering-engineer, attribute as much to the loudness wars and overharsh commercial mastering than to just audio-file compression), the consumer music market has always been driven by convenience. The mp3 is still much greater fidelity than cassette ever was, and during the 80's and the early 90's the portable cassette walkman drove much of the industry. The digital audio revolution is just the logical extension to that. 20 years from now, the next thing will make the current digital market look just as quaint as cassettes do to us now, and there'll be dudes with chunky glasses and ironic t-shirts meticulously collecting "retro" mp3's by the latest indie band.
Falken: Ok, so you do mastering engineering as well as Null Device. Man, I just get done with Dan who tells me he runs his studio too and now you have yours. I'm amazed how many people do side work other than stuff for their own band.
Eric: It's funny, cuz Dan and I have a sort of symbiotic relationship, studio-wise. He sends a lot of his clients to me for mastering, and I recommend him for mixing. Plus we're constantly swapping tips-n-tricks. And blathering on about gear.
Falken: This is a subject I got on with Matt Fanale in his interview, but I'd love your take on it. Live music, and the people who watch it. Sometimes it's hard to tell that they are in to it while you are on stage because of what feel like a lack of enthusiasm. Do you ever get that "Man, I should just record music for it to be listened to" kind of mood?
Eric: The hardest part of performing in an electronic band, is motivating the crowd. A guitar-bass-drums trio has the advantage of movement for energy, and the audience knows what to expect, sonically. When you've got racks of synths and keys, you're kind of stuck hiding behind them, and you could be making any sound on earth, so you have to work extra hard to engage your audience. They don't know what to expect, necessarily, and you've got an extra level of distance between you and them.
I admit, there have been some days where I look out at an empty room, save for a soundguy, a bartender and some drunk dude who thinks he's at a different gig, and I think "man, was there even a point in showing up?" It's hard not to get discouraged by that. But still, you kinda gotta get out there and do your thing even if it's just a few people, because you never know who those people are. And it can turn out that sometimes even the most sparsely-attended shows end up awesome - we played a gig in Iowa once where the original soundguys bailed, the club wasn't really suited for us, and about a dozen people showed up - but they were all TOTALLY into it, dancing and having fun, the replacement soundguys were phenomenal, the promoter was extra-nice, and overall it was just a lot of fun. We may not have played to a packed house, but we made those dozen attendees into capital-F Fans, and made friends with a bunch of them. That sort of thing carries over. It was in many ways a lot more fun to play than some of the packed-house gigs we've had.
And when a show goes well, there is really no feeling on earth quite like being onstage, pouring all your energy and emotion into that performance.
Falken:Well, Eric, people are waiting for this interview, and life got in the way of finishing it all in one or two days like I wanted.... so... as to not keep people waiting, we will go to what is becoming quickly a staple for my interviews. THE LIGHTNING ROUND! Seven questions, seven answers. You can keep the answers short like Semonik, or write a novel for each one like Fanale did.
Eric: Sounds like a plan.
Falken: Last year we had the opportunity to see Null Device the first three days of the Dark Clan/Null Device tour when you released your last album. I've seen a few web tracks hit in the past year... anything new on a full length side anytime soon?
Eric: We took a little bit of a break after the tour - there was a lot going on in everyone's lives so we had to sort of back off for a while. Some of that is still going on. We're still writing new music, doing remixes for people, learning new stuff, so there'll be something, although probably not for a while yet.
That said, I'm not entirely sure how we'll approach releases anymore. The whole EP/full-length difference is starting to feel less and less relevant as we sell fewer physical CDs and more digital downloads. I mean, we can put out new short collections of tracks cheaply as they're finished, whereas a full-length can take a long time to finish, meaning by the time the album's out we're putting out songs we wrote and recorded well over a year ago, and that's got a whole host of problem associated with it. It's also harder to stay relevant and even remembered when there's a 2-year gap between albums.
Falken: I've noticed a few bands really taking on the "release it as it's done" approach lately. Do you think that is the way the industry as a whole might see itself go? It is hard for me to think of the last time I actually bought physical media and actually listened to it.
Eric: It's hard to say. Certainly in an era of a zillion artists using social media to get your attention, it's easy to be forgotten if you wait too long between releases. At the same time, it's still easy to get lost if everyone's doing it, and in a sense it probably devalues the final product a bit. It's also hard to make a grand musical statement over the course of two tracks than it is with a 12-track album.
But things have kind of come full circle, in a way. In the days of the 33LP, a full-length album was usually less than 45 minutes long, and an EP was defined as less than 4 tracks. Now we have "EP's" that are longer by far than an actual Extended Play record ever was, and "full lengths" that are the length of a 4-LP set. Not that I'm advocating a return to the days of the 30-minute full-length, but sometimes there can be some benefit to brevity, given how easy it is to feel compelled to stuff a full-length with "filler" songs.
Physical media won't die for a long time yet, but its position as the dominant driver for music sales is waning fast. As much as the audiophiles like to moan about the terrible state of personal audio (which I, as a sometimes-mastering-engineer, attribute as much to the loudness wars and overharsh commercial mastering than to just audio-file compression), the consumer music market has always been driven by convenience. The mp3 is still much greater fidelity than cassette ever was, and during the 80's and the early 90's the portable cassette walkman drove much of the industry. The digital audio revolution is just the logical extension to that. 20 years from now, the next thing will make the current digital market look just as quaint as cassettes do to us now, and there'll be dudes with chunky glasses and ironic t-shirts meticulously collecting "retro" mp3's by the latest indie band.
Falken: Ok, so you do mastering engineering as well as Null Device. Man, I just get done with Dan who tells me he runs his studio too and now you have yours. I'm amazed how many people do side work other than stuff for their own band.
Eric: It's funny, cuz Dan and I have a sort of symbiotic relationship, studio-wise. He sends a lot of his clients to me for mastering, and I recommend him for mixing. Plus we're constantly swapping tips-n-tricks. And blathering on about gear.
Falken: This is a subject I got on with Matt Fanale in his interview, but I'd love your take on it. Live music, and the people who watch it. Sometimes it's hard to tell that they are in to it while you are on stage because of what feel like a lack of enthusiasm. Do you ever get that "Man, I should just record music for it to be listened to" kind of mood?
Eric: The hardest part of performing in an electronic band, is motivating the crowd. A guitar-bass-drums trio has the advantage of movement for energy, and the audience knows what to expect, sonically. When you've got racks of synths and keys, you're kind of stuck hiding behind them, and you could be making any sound on earth, so you have to work extra hard to engage your audience. They don't know what to expect, necessarily, and you've got an extra level of distance between you and them.
I admit, there have been some days where I look out at an empty room, save for a soundguy, a bartender and some drunk dude who thinks he's at a different gig, and I think "man, was there even a point in showing up?" It's hard not to get discouraged by that. But still, you kinda gotta get out there and do your thing even if it's just a few people, because you never know who those people are. And it can turn out that sometimes even the most sparsely-attended shows end up awesome - we played a gig in Iowa once where the original soundguys bailed, the club wasn't really suited for us, and about a dozen people showed up - but they were all TOTALLY into it, dancing and having fun, the replacement soundguys were phenomenal, the promoter was extra-nice, and overall it was just a lot of fun. We may not have played to a packed house, but we made those dozen attendees into capital-F Fans, and made friends with a bunch of them. That sort of thing carries over. It was in many ways a lot more fun to play than some of the packed-house gigs we've had.
And when a show goes well, there is really no feeling on earth quite like being onstage, pouring all your energy and emotion into that performance.
Falken:Well, Eric, people are waiting for this interview, and life got in the way of finishing it all in one or two days like I wanted.... so... as to not keep people waiting, we will go to what is becoming quickly a staple for my interviews. THE LIGHTNING ROUND! Seven questions, seven answers. You can keep the answers short like Semonik, or write a novel for each one like Fanale did.
Eric: Sounds like a plan.
Falken: 1. Biggest influence in your music?
Eric: I could try and be original, maybe talk about Stockhausen or something, but...hell, I'm in an electropop band. So Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. I mean obviously I like to appropriate stuff from all over the place - anything from Peter Murphy to Kuldeep Manak (those, uh, both just came up on my iPod this morning) but it really all goes back to Ralf and Florian. I probably wouldn't be doing this at all if "The Man Machine" hadn't been such a great record.
Falken: 2. Books or movies (and why?)
Eric: I'm a sci-fi nerd, so I read a lot of stuff like Stross, Mieville and Iain M. Banks. It doesn't really come across in the music though. Dr. Goedken, though, is a huge film buff and a lot of the lyrics he writes are inspired by and obliquely reference the films he watches and the books he reads. It's not immediately obvious, but it's there. Once you know what some of the songs are inspired by you can sort of nod and say "oh yeah, sure enough!"
I can say that "Suspending Belief" had a bit of Richard Dawkins rolled into it.
Falken: 3. Synths... analog or digital?
Eric: Why choose? I adore them all. If it makes noise, I'll find a use for it.
Falken: 4. Project you've mixed/mastered/worked on that has surprised you the most?
Eric: The last Caustic disc susprised the hell out of me. I don't generally listen to the noisy/punky side of electronic music, but damned if Matt didn't put together something I enjoyed...a lot.
Also, I worked recently with a local all-girl alt-country/folk-pop band, and they write some damn good songs and they all like electronic music, too, so we had some really interesting crossover stuff going on - they got The Dark Clan and Caustic on board for their project too.
Falken: 5. We started talking about Juno Reactor - Favorite song by JR?
Eric: Hmm...I waffle between "God Is God" because I'm a Natacha Atlas fan and "Conga Fury" because it's just fun. Although occasionally I'll just randomly walk up to my friends and say "High energy protons spilling over into our atmosphere!"
I get a lot of funny looks when I do that.
Falken: 6. Band you are most looking forward to seeing at the WTII Minifest II and why?
Eric: Stromkern. I love those guys, and with Ned being a globe-hopping linguistics bigwig these days, they play so infrequently. I also want to see Die Warzau, since I've never seen them before and I loved Big Electric Metal Bass Face.
Falken: 7. Rapture - did it actually happen already and none of us were fit to save at all?
Eric: You'll note I mentioned Richard Dawkins before. That should answer this question too.
Falken: Thank you, sir for taking the time to do this interview, and for playing the WTII Minifest II. I'm pretty sure you're on the same day we are, which means I get to see you guys live again. It's been a while.
Eric: My pleasure. It HAS been a while. Of course, we haven't really gigged since the tour, so...
Eric: I could try and be original, maybe talk about Stockhausen or something, but...hell, I'm in an electropop band. So Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk. I'd be lying if I said otherwise. I mean obviously I like to appropriate stuff from all over the place - anything from Peter Murphy to Kuldeep Manak (those, uh, both just came up on my iPod this morning) but it really all goes back to Ralf and Florian. I probably wouldn't be doing this at all if "The Man Machine" hadn't been such a great record.
Falken: 2. Books or movies (and why?)
Eric: I'm a sci-fi nerd, so I read a lot of stuff like Stross, Mieville and Iain M. Banks. It doesn't really come across in the music though. Dr. Goedken, though, is a huge film buff and a lot of the lyrics he writes are inspired by and obliquely reference the films he watches and the books he reads. It's not immediately obvious, but it's there. Once you know what some of the songs are inspired by you can sort of nod and say "oh yeah, sure enough!"
I can say that "Suspending Belief" had a bit of Richard Dawkins rolled into it.
Falken: 3. Synths... analog or digital?
Eric: Why choose? I adore them all. If it makes noise, I'll find a use for it.
Falken: 4. Project you've mixed/mastered/worked on that has surprised you the most?
Eric: The last Caustic disc susprised the hell out of me. I don't generally listen to the noisy/punky side of electronic music, but damned if Matt didn't put together something I enjoyed...a lot.
Also, I worked recently with a local all-girl alt-country/folk-pop band, and they write some damn good songs and they all like electronic music, too, so we had some really interesting crossover stuff going on - they got The Dark Clan and Caustic on board for their project too.
Falken: 5. We started talking about Juno Reactor - Favorite song by JR?
Eric: Hmm...I waffle between "God Is God" because I'm a Natacha Atlas fan and "Conga Fury" because it's just fun. Although occasionally I'll just randomly walk up to my friends and say "High energy protons spilling over into our atmosphere!"
I get a lot of funny looks when I do that.
Falken: 6. Band you are most looking forward to seeing at the WTII Minifest II and why?
Eric: Stromkern. I love those guys, and with Ned being a globe-hopping linguistics bigwig these days, they play so infrequently. I also want to see Die Warzau, since I've never seen them before and I loved Big Electric Metal Bass Face.
Falken: 7. Rapture - did it actually happen already and none of us were fit to save at all?
Eric: You'll note I mentioned Richard Dawkins before. That should answer this question too.
Falken: Thank you, sir for taking the time to do this interview, and for playing the WTII Minifest II. I'm pretty sure you're on the same day we are, which means I get to see you guys live again. It's been a while.
Eric: My pleasure. It HAS been a while. Of course, we haven't really gigged since the tour, so...
Catch Null Device on Saturday, June 11th at the WTII Records Minifest II
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