Into the Liquid Unknown

Ourobouros

by Dweller at the Threshold

by Dweller at the Threshold

by Dweller at the Threshold

Secret Fire

Paul Ellis' 1st release

(free for download at Paul Ellis' website)

AV:  Back in 1977 when you first bought those European Electronic albums what was it that you heard in them that made such a difference in the way that you thought about music in general and specifically what your music was to become in the future? 

PE:  Actually, my first exposure to full blooded electronic music was Kraftwerk's Autobahn. I remember in '74 drawing pictures after school while listening to the FM radio stations and once one played the entire side of Autobahn and I was amazed at the sound.

I saved my allowance for a couple weeks and went out and bought it... my second album! I loved that first side but it was just another album. I continued my art and continued collecting albums, but mostly pop and rock. I changed my listening habits to Classical, Jazz and Prog Rock in high school and this was '77 when I got TD's Stratosfear, Schulze's Mirage, Jarre's Oxygene and Tomita's Snowflakes Are Dancing within a week's time. Even though I had heard Autobahn before this was the revolutionary turning point for me. For the first time I really seemed to hear the sound of infinity which is what pure electronic music has until now meant to me. It also resembled a kind of music I heard swelling up within me. I've always had a hard time describing this phenomena, but when I was concentrating on my drawings I would hear a sort of music in my head.. Sometimes while listening to other music I would hear this music in counterpoint to something else, like a record I was playing or the radio... other times just in the quiet it would be playing by itself. Sometimes it's like resonating strings. This is a very hard thing to describe without sounding new-agey, but it is a very real phenomena I still hear to this day.

So this music I was hearing in my head was very different than anything else suddenly sounded very similar to what I was hearing in these European electronic albums... there was an instant desire to play this sound. It also had a very liberating effect on me ... suddenly the realm of possibilities of what music could be opened up blowing the doors off the popular forms of music that surrounded me. Unfortunately the synthesizers of that time were far more expensive than what I could afford so I started with a classical guitar and began learning Ragtime, Folk, Classical and of course Rock and Pop music. I knew that playing music with synthesizers was what I ultimately wanted to be doing, but I came from a poor home and worked a job in high school to help pay rent and food. I simply couldn't afford something like this... Looking back this was a good discipline for me to start with. It kept me hungry for what I wanted and I had to work hard to get it. Somewhere in the mid eighties synths reached a level I could afford and after purchasing the first one I was completely gone. 

AV:  When you finally were able to take the plunge and pick up your first synths did you already know what direction you wanted your music to move in? 

PE:  The basic direction, yes. I've pretty much gone in the direction I was always thinking of.

AV:  Were you able to reproduce the sounds in your mind on the synths right from the beginning? 

PE:  Not even close! It took quite a while to learn the art of synthesis, recording, mixing to where I was happy with the results. I'm still learning of course, but there's a lot of myths about what synths can and cannot do. A lot of magic there, but a lot of work to learn it and do it right. There are some who poison the well by using the same presets over and over creating a stale sound or the band in a box situation where someone just throws up some samples, lines them up and calls it good... but various cliche traps exist in any genre you can name. Creating a unique voice is no less difficult in Electronic music than any other  genre. 

AV:  How long did it take before you started to recognize what you were creating on your synths in relation to the music that existed in your mind? 

PE:  My first release that I was sure of enough to really try and push it was in 1991 called "Secret Fire" which, by the way the entire album is available for free download at my website: www.paulellismusic.com.  This album got a really good review from Keyboard magazine which surprised me as at that time they poked holes in almost every album they reviewed that was even remotely orbiting the new age genre. In fact they wrote a scathing review of Schulze's "The Dresden Performance" in that same issue... which led to a nasty, vitriolic 3 page letter to me from Klaus Schulze's manager, but that's another story. I still love that album and it's the earliest one I can still listen to but being that it was recorded on cassette I don't feel right about releasing it again.

AV:  What kind of learning curve was there to your becoming proficient with your new synths? 

PE:  Well, like anything it was pretty steep at first but over time I got things where I basically wanted them...In fact my first few synth "patches" that I created had far more creativity going on in their titles than in the sound itself... I think the first big breakthrough (after getting a synth and a 4-track cassette recorder.) was learning how to use tape sync which is how you can line up sequences and basically get far more than 4 tracks. This was in the "Secret Fire" period and it's where I finally began getting the sound deep and rich enough that I started becoming satisfied with the overall production... and here is where I first began working with slowly morphing sounds. One thing that you can always find in my music is this technique where let's say a bass part may have 5 different sounds... not all playing at once, but one emerging very slowly out of another. This, I believe, helps balance things. What I love about this kind of sequencer music... (which really stems from minimalism) is that the looping melodic phrases have a hypnotic quality that can put you in a very comfortable state of mind... the trick is finding ways of letting it organically change slowly so as not to interrupt the mood, but to keep things interesting... of course a drastic brick wall / 90 degree change can also be an interesting technique. My approach is intentionally very pointillistic in nature very much where the separate parts tend to work together to form a larger picture from small points of light. 

AV:  Does a person need to have some sort of musical background before they can begin composing music or is it just the desire you need? 

PE:  I think ideally you need both. I would encourage disciplining yourself and learning some kind of musical vocabulary before writing... and never EVER think you've arrived at some final place where you can't learn anything more.. I don't agree that it's all intuition. Like many things I think it's about balance... balancing technique with spontaneity. Technique and studying music can make for a more solid structure that will stand the test of time, but too much second guessing and analyzing can stall you right out of the starting gate... and while spontaneity allows for a certain magic. I see an awful lot of lip-service toward improvisation, which, while that is the basis of any composition... you noodle around and stumble onto something worth developing ... while improvisation is the foundation the problem I'm talking about is that I hear it being used in a lot of cases where on listening to the music I can't help but think it's become a rationalization for laziness. One of the dangers of exclusively using this approach is thinking every thing you fart on is worthy of release and perfect in itself. Most "Improvised" Sequencer music I've heard really just rough ideas that need developing. A favorite quote of mine is from Meister Eckhart "Only the hand that erases can write the true thing". I think if it's worth doing it's worth doing well. I've also seen some people come aboard because not so much of a deep love of the genre, but a feeling of "Hey, this is easy... I can do this!" Consequently there's an abundance of mediocrity... There should be a desire to do this because you love it... but I agree with the composer Ernest Newman when he says "The good composer is slowly discovered, the bad composer is slowly found out."   Even though I would always recommend a good solid musical education and variety of musical experience as the way to go there are definitely exceptions to the rule. For example one of the few recent EM albums that really knocked me off my feet was Sayer's "1st Encounter" and he mentions in the liner notes that he didn't have much musical experience... but for every one album like that I've encountered there's a hundred mediocre ones that I feel would have been better off with some more effort compositionally. Melody and harmonic content seem to be the weakest point of most EM releases. The tone is there but the structure is weak. 

AV:  How would you define the Classic European Electronic style and why was it that you adopted it as your main form of musical expression?  

PE:  I prefer that title to "Berlin School" which gets tagged on my work a lot... the influence is far greater than that...Jarre fromFrance, Vangelis from Greece etc. etc. I would define it as leaning more towards a classical sensibility in that there typically aren't any drums or vocals or forms you would find in pop music... verse chorus verse etc. This music tends toward a more free flowing stream of consciousness approach and in my own work while I may repeat a few melodic themes throughout a piece I tend to move in one direction without returning to an earlier section giving the impression of constantly unraveling landscapes. This is what I've observed to be a strong point in the albums I love from the European synthesists. I think this plant takes root in European culture more easily than in American culture because of the strong Classical traditions that are rooted there where America's musical climate is very strongly rooted in variations of blues, jazz, rock and country forms...a very strongly guitar based culture. In EM you have to be willing to let the music unfold at its own pace and suspend the desire for instant gratification. Once you get a taste for it, it's hard to go back to pop music, though... Other major influences on the style would be the American Minimalists and the French Impressionists. As for why I adopted it as my main form? well, it just felt like a language I could say what I wanted to.. it seemed a natural fit... though I've always been determined to create my own voice within the genres context. 

AV:  How long did it take after you started composing before you felt that your music was ready to release to the general public? 

PE:  It was about 5 years and three albums and by that I mean local release type albums... I'm sure no one's ever heard of "Listening",  "When I look up" or "Tribal Machine" and I have no desire to ever do anything with these again... basically they were early cassette releases... but they were all about getting my feet wet. 

 AV:  Is it difficult for a musician to reach that point, the point at which you throw your creations out to the wolves and see if they are accepted or rejected? 

PE:  Well it depends on the musician... some have skin as thick as a bank vault and some... well remember the princess and the pea fable? You have no idea how many musicians I've met who from the moment of recording their first piece start talking about releasing it on their first album... this is  always a mistake. What's the rush? Keep writing music and see how (and if)  it stands the test of time. If it really IS a great piece first time out well, bravo.... but this will be clear once you've been doing it for a while.

AV:  Tell me about your first public release and what kind of reaction it received from those who listened to it. What creative lessons did you learn from this release? 

PE:  While there were a few releases I did on a small level at the time I knew that they weren't there yet and consequently didn't push them too hard. I did get some negative feedback which was actually the best thing because at that early stage it is awfully hard to see the forest for the trees, and the negative feedback helps give you an objective view of it...and you start realizing that there are elements there that you don't care much for in other's work so why would it be any different in your own? Again the first release I was pretty sure of was "Secret Fire" and it got some really good reviews which helped encourage me through some dark periods when I wasn't sure if I was just wasting my time with this... I mean there is definitely no money to be made here and not everyone is going to "get it" when it's this far left field of the more popular forms of music so when you put your heart and soul into something and spend lot's of time and money... is it worth it?  These are hard questions I think every musician has to face some time or another but in my case the plant broke through the pavement and the desire to keep creating won over any resistance. 

AV:  What was it that brought about the formation of Dweller at the Threshold and how would you characterize the music that was created in the context of the group? 

PE:  Well a quick history would be that Jeff Vasey and I formed Tribal Machine in the beginning and we were both fans of the Europeans but we were also influenced by some harder edged stuff that was happening at the time like Skinny Puppy... so that first album we did as Tribal Machine was more aggressive than what we later morphed into. Though even through Dweller we were very conscious of trying to balance the lighter prettier melodies with a rawer more aggressive sound. We definitely wanted to be distinct from the uniformly mellow new age sound. We really just wanted a wider dynamic range. While Jeff and I were conscious of trying to stay focused compositionally we also were both involved with another band called Dumpster that was basically a group of Portland Electronic musicians who liked to get together once a week have a few beers and some smoke and pull out the synths and completely improvise sessions... The sound tended to be more in the Eno / Negativland found sound abstract area...and while the session were typically a lot of fun I eventually became dissatisfied with the lazy tendencies of not wanting to really create something solid... just creating in the moment. I found that there was a usual ratio of 25% interesting to 75% crap. and more often than not it was just self indulgent...but it was a lot of fun and met a lot of people through it. One of these was Dave Fulton who came a little later on the scene when he moved up fromEugene.

After a show Jeff and I did at Echo Theatre Dave approached us about joining Tribal Machine... he also wanted to do something a little more thought out and focused than what Dumpster was doing. At first I wasn't interested in a third member, but after a while it seemed a better idea as I was somewhat frustrated with Jeff's lack of musical training. I couldn't get ideas across to him sometimes and had to constantly adapt to the level he was playing at. I have to say that Jeff is an amazing person overflowing with creativity.. a true artist on many levels who influenced my sense of aesthetics more than anyone else I had met, but I needed to work with someone I could talk to about scales and chord changes... so we brought Dave in. Initially we went on as Tribal Machine but soon changed the name to Foundation... which still wasn't right so I came up with Dweller at the Threshold. I liked that one because it meant (in mythological terms) the one who guarded the entrance to a treasure, a different world or a secret... like the sphinx. I liked the mystical connotations and I think Dave liked it because of the H.P. Lovecraft reference. It should be said that the first two Dweller albums are really mostly myself, Dave... Jeff became more peripheral at that point as he was very busy building his home and the birth of his child meant little free time... later things started balancing more with the inclusion of John Duval, a great guy that I like a lot. Though even there he appears only on a couple cuts of Ouroboros because Dave and I had so much material ready to go. I've left Dweller for the typical "creative differences" but I wish them well. 

AV:  How does the process of creating/composing music within a group setting differ from your normal process of doing solo work? How is it decided the style of music that the group reflects as opposed to what each individual member is currently pursuing in their solo compositional work? 

PE:  Usually in a group or collaborative setting it seems to be either one person brings in a seed idea which is then developed in the studio or an improvised jam starts from which an idea is hammered out, or variations on that. Mostly in EM it's not so much a group effort in the classic sense more along the line of people trading CDR's of basic tracks and then adding parts to them away from the other person. I'm afraid my experience in working in the context of EM is that for the most part the musicians involved don't have much experience in working in a group setting at least outside an improvisational structure... it's a rare thing to find a composed piece of music all have worked on together ... most people are used to the insular world of the recording studio and sometimes discussing the work in progress is a bit strained as the lack of experience with this process leads to misunderstandings... a lack of objectivity. Also I don't think EM has really developed its own musical vocabulary yet... another area that tends to be creative quicksand for EM artists is the heavy weight put on the technological rather than the creative side... in most of the other genres in the world a group effort is the norm and in my experiences with various other kinds of music I found it for the most part easier to enter into dialogue about it than EM...Of course in all music forms there is the problem of semantics and how do you really describe the sound in your head? ... Music has never been exactly easy to discuss which is why some people describe it as "Dancing about architecture", but it seems to me to be particularly strained in EM. This is definitely one area that is somewhat peculiar to Ambient / Spacemusic / Electronic forms... in that the norm is more an isolated, insular process. I've been wondering about this lately and it seems to me the pros and cons of this approach are:

Pro's- you get to fine tune a composition far greater than you could have before. It's going to be a much tighter and purer to the vision that you have in mind for the music. Every parameter can be adjusted until it's just right .You don't have to accept something you think is sub-par if you don't want to.

Cons- Sometimes someone else's approach brings the magic touch... and in my experience the process of learning music grows in exponential leaps and bounds when working with others...learning new licks, chords, scales etc. Kind of a cross-fertilization that keeps musical in-breeding at bay. 

Like I was saying earlier I think the key is all about balance. 

I've had a much easier time with recent collaborations like Steve Roach and Craig Padilla who, I find think in similar terms to what I do and are very easy to discuss ideas with.

AV:  We've talked about group dynamics as they pertain to creating music but when it is just you how is it that you come up with the seed of a new project and what kind of process do you adhere to so that you stay on track while working on this new project?

PE:  This is a good question... but I'm not sure how good an answer I can come up with for you as it's an extremely difficult area to define. I have for a while now tried to find a variety of different approaches to each recording. I have tried to make some aspect of each piece different than anything I've done before... of course any artist does have certain patterns that recur, but it's always been important to me to try and trick myself by approaching the process as differently as possible each time.... I would say that the one common denominator to the seed of an idea is improvisation and just playing along and seeing what comes up and then balance the levels of spontaneity with a more conscious later refining.  Sometimes the way a certain collections of sounds or patches suggest one thing and after a bit you find yourself going in the completely opposite direction and find that the fit is much better than you would have thought. This is a very stream of consciousness influenced style of music and the seeming formlessness can sometimes make it appear to be an "easy" thing to do but, like anything it's much harder to balance than it would seem. I do have a couple traits that consistently show up in my writing. Once I get a recorded take or some seed idea from improvisation down that I like, whether it's just playing live or manipulating a loop sequencer.. I listen to it for a bit for the quirks in the unfolding then go back and trace around them a bit... this kind of helps define the flow and then as it gets more built up a shape emerges and you begin writing the melodic areas around that shape.  

I think it's certainly gotten easier to be near the cutting edge of synthesis technology today then when I started... for example I just bought the Absynth software synth for a couple hundred dollars that has an amazing synth engine in it. One very very cool and intuitive and musical synth and I could get some textures on it very easily where I couldn't elsewhere. I personally like to try different tools, but most certainly not bound to it. I could have just a Triton and a multi-track recorder and would be confident of the sound being plenty deep.
We all feel that lust for the latest / greatest piece of gear, but more than almost any other style of music you are judged by the gear you use. I am interested in "electronic MUSIC" and not so interested in  "ELECTRONIC music"... for some this what they are listening to... the gear and not the music. Big mistake.

AV:  What kind of relationship did you have with the label that issued your first few releases? Is there a process that the artist and the label go through to ensure that both their needs are met by any given release?  
PE:  Hmmm well, The first label I was on was a tiny little local Portland label called "New Weave" which was really just a group of musician friends who got together on Tuesday nights at the local pub... It ranged from pop to instrumental music usually in the EM-prog-world music- new age categories. Later we hooked up with Eurock which was more directly related to the genre, but ultimately not the best working relationship with a label.
Fortunately,  I've been pretty much left alone to my process on most labels... usually it's submitting an already completed album, though a couple times I've submitted works in progress. 

AV:  You released a couple of CD's with Hypnos/Binary, tell me a little bit about them.  

PE:  Well, Dave Fulton hooked up with Mike Griffin and got us in with them... I think Hypnos is a superb label and Mike was very good about getting the CD's out to the radio stations and promoting them for the first two Binary albums. Mike has great taste and is a superb graphic artist... It also didn't hurt that he was right across the river in Portland. Ultimately I think the fit was a little off though.. A somewhat different aesthetic. I think Hypnos has some great releases, but I lean more toward the right... I thought about Spotted Peccary for a short while too, but I think I am a little too left field for them... I an very happy with Groove, I think the fit is the best there for me label-wise when I look around at the other artists on Groove and I see a group of people aiming for much closer to what I am aiming for too.
 
AV:  Electronic music has always occupied a small percentage of the overall music market, do you that changing at any time in the near future? Is there anything that is not already being done to market this style of music that might help to bring it to a wider audience?  

PE:  No and no. I am a little pessimistic of average Joe's listening abilities to suddenly open up to spacemusic on a huge market level for a couple reasons:

1) You're chances of getting sex because you're playing it are not high.
2) You have to pay attention. This isn't an Attention Deficit Disorder-friendly area.
3) You have to be willing to go where the musician wants to... no verse-chorus-verse structures to hang your hat on.
4) See point number 1 again. 

AV:  It was my pleasure Paul. I'm always happy to continue to bring the readers of Ambient Visions chats with those talented individuals such as yourself who comprise the EM community. Thanks again and much success with all your future projects.