Gavin's Underground: Nolens Volens

City Weekly by Gavin Sheehan

Gavin: Hey Andrew, how have things been since we last chatted?

Andrew: The last time we chatted was under unfortunate circumstances. Several thousand dollars of equipment had been stolen from our house. It was a very sad time, but the experience has led to many great things. It's been a total rebirth as an electronic musician as all of my old tools were sudden taken from me. I started picking up instruments again, sampling them, and have been amazed by the results. My music now is the best I have ever produced. None of it wouldn't have been possible without the freedom and rebirth wrought from circumstance.

Gavin: What got you interested in music, and who were some of your favorite acts and musical influences growing up?

Andrew: I grew up in a family that valued rigorous classical music training. I started playing the violin at six and was influenced by Bach and Mozart. When I was around ten or eleven, I discovered Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto No. 1 and it changed my life forever. Imagine a chubby little boy laying down in the back of a camper trailer in the mountains of Idaho, enraptured by the emotional violin playing of Henryk Szeryng. While my brothers and dad were looking for that giant non-typical buck, I was wandering around a multi-colored forest listening to Rachmoninov's Piano Concertos, Mozart's Requiem, as well as the piano compositions of Liszt and Chopin. I have never felt more magic in my entire life. That was the moment that I fell in love with music and would never look back.

Gavin: How did the idea come about to do Nolens Volens?

Andrew: I have always been amazed by human nature and collective taste. The duality of sound fascinates me. It can be extremely pleasurable or equally painful. My attempt is to contradict pop music convergence while riding the line between pleasure and pain. The Nolens Volens idea has also evolved towards the world of collaboration and the recycling of sound.

Gavin: What's it like for you composing a particular piece, and then turning that around for a live performance?

Andrew: Early on I was very influenced by abstract expressionist painters. My first three albums were created in a very similar technique. Everything I recorded was the first take and minimally manipulated in post production. In my latest efforts I have taken the opposite approach. The composition process happens very quickly and comes together, sometimes, in a matter of days. As an electronic musician, I have the challenge of presenting a more engaging live performance. My audience isn't coming to see a self-indulgent virtuoso performance, so I have to be very aware of the experience. That could be visual art or video projections I manipulate on stage while reworking the music on the fly or even a stage performance with a cast, lines and stage direction. Anything, as long as it coveys the nature of the work. I've performed on stage as a musician over 400 times and I've grown weary of the format: players strumming guitars and pounding on drum to a group of people. I'm more interested in exploring new avenues that are, hopefully, more thought provoking.

Gavin: Do you prefer making the albums in the DIY approach, or do you wish you could polish it up in a studio?

Andrew: Like many artists, I am the product of my limitations. One of the best things about being a touring musician is that I have access to many professional engineers. Europe is obsessed with great live sound, and sound checks sometimes take hours. On several occasions, I asked if I could plug a recording device into the board and get samples of everything. Most of drums on the last self-titled album were taken from Uzi & Ari recording sessions at a tape studio The Echo Lab in Dallas, Texas . The album was finished at Blake Henderson's studio in San Francisco. The longer I work at music, the more time I spend in actual studios.

Gavin: You're also one of the few local performers who does remixes of their own work. What made you decide to take the work you did before and re-release it as something new?

Andrew: When approaching a remix, I scour the track and highlight a particular emotion or rhythmic element. Music is undeniably complex and in my analysis of a song, I choose very small elements that I feel should be brought forward and explored. I've never had a bad experience remixing a song because I spend so much time in making sure that it is engaging. I spend twice as much time on a remix than I do on an original track. My latest album, Nv//nN (released 2/12/10 at Circle Lounge) is an entire album remix of my self-titled album that I released last year. Dave Madden, aka nonnon, provided several of the beats and Jonathan Higley, aka //, helped produce and engineer it. I feel it is my best work and was produced in a matter of weeks.

Gavin: Speaking of, last year you recorded and produced the self-titled album. What was the process like in creating that one, and what did you think of the reaction to its release?

Andrew: My albums are always very personal to me, but this one was the most obvious in its scope. For years I have drifted away from my family, and I decided to try and bring myself closer to them by creating a song for each family member. My hope was that I could recreate each person in sound and somehow feel close to them that way. It was my attempt at being heartfelt, an exploration into why I felt such a distance from them. The project failed miserably in some respects. The album ended up being more exploitative and fake, and became a projection of how insecure I feel about being heartfelt. It actually took me further away from them, to the point that I felt embarrassed to show them what I had done. In other ways, the project was a huge success because it made me realize that touching people physically will always be more effective than trying to touch them emotionally. It also made me realize that in order to be close to someone or some group, you often have to sacrifice your own comfort. Art is never the solution for healing relationships because it is always one sided.

Gavin: Coming up in April you've got the DATA/BOOTY release. Tell us a bit about that album.

Andrew: The genre of Booty House began in the late 90s when a few independent producers started making mixtapes for strippers. I discovered DJ Funk a few years back and became strangely infatuated with what he was doing. Booty House is painfully simple, but has a very specific purpose. I began writing beats with my own specific purpose in mind. For years I have struggled with the portrayal of women in the media and how they are reduced to mounds of flesh and desire. DATA/BOOTY was created as a reaction to this portrayal and has an accompanying visual component. The purpose of the DATA/BOOTY visual project is to examine a segment of exhibitionistic lust purveyors and to bring the typically anonymous voyeuristic experience into a public display through the eye of a technologically bent lens. We hope to showcase the fragmentation of modern sexuality through media excess and its dehumanization of the female form. All media presented on display will be of women who have either photographed or video taped themselves.

Gavin: Let's go more local. What are your thoughts on our music scene, both good and bad?

Andrew: Making music in any confined space is exciting. You're allowed to test and push limits with fearlessness. This isolation produces some really interesting personalities and interesting ideas about art and music. I really like how positive musicians are towards each other and how they work together even if their music is very different. Isolation is also the hardest part about the music scene in Salt Lake. It becomes difficult to put your all into a project when it seems no one cares. It may seem lonely, but someone always cares.

Gavin: Is there anything you believe could be done to make it bigger or better?

Andrew: Salt Lake is barely a city, and there are only so many resources for the music scene. I feel like Salt Lake shouldn't worry so much about having a thriving scene, but more concerned about producing music that is solid and timeless. I think there needs to be more interesting places to perform that aren't in a club or a converted garage.

Gavin: Aside the bands and projects you're involved with, who are your favorite acts in the scene right now?

Andrew: My current favorite local band is Dead Explorers Club. He is an electronic musician who has taken the time and energy to perform electronic music live, with analog instruments. My favorite producer has been nonnon for years now, and will continue to be for years to come. His compositions are unlike anything I have ever heard. I'm also a big fan of Palace of Buddies, Birthquake and Ether.

Gavin: What's your opinion on the current airplay on community radio these days and how its affecting local artists?

Andrew: Radio is a tricky subject. We live in an age of video, and radio is continually being pushed out the back door.

Gavin: What's your take on file sharing these days and how it affects you as a musician?

Andrew: Musicians have never really made that much money selling records. To make any money as a musician, you have to be an engineer, mastering technician, producer, or spend countless hours on the road. I'm a huge advocate of file sharing. It is great way of getting unfiltered information and I believe it is the future of all media ventures. The debate about intellectual property is one rooted in human identity. As we become more and more connected through technology, our identities will meld together to produce something that is not possessed by one, but by many. One of my goals is to have an ongoing network of music and files that are continually manipulated by a large group of people. If there were enough people involved in one project, say several million, the value of that project would rise above the current system and become something new and exciting. The most successful organizations are those that learn how to adapt and utilize new technology.

Gavin: What can we expect from you over the rest of the year?

Andrew: May 1st is the release of DATA/BOOTY at Urban Lounge, and then // will release his first album near the end of May at Kilby Court. I am planning on taking several months off to continue writing a book about food identity in America. I also plan on moving to Berlin for a few months to collaborate with German artists and build up our labels' repertoire.

Gavin: Is there anything you'd like to plug or promote?

Andrew: Jonathan, Dave, and I have just started a label called MSSV. Our goal is to promote collaboration with artists from around the world and recycle and remix releases until they can no longer be used. We already have several releases and free mixtapes on the site that anyone can download, remix, and share. There's also a DropBox, so if you've got an original track or a remix of a MSSV release, you can upload and share it with us.