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Press Kit.
Features on Christopher Willits.
Surf Boundaries Reviews.
Flossin - Lead Singer - Willits/Hill/Depedro Reviews.
Mujo - Deupree/Willits Reviews.
Pollen Reviews.
Little Edo Reviews.
Audiosphere #08 - Deupree/Willits Reviews.
E*A*D*G*B*E Reviews.
Folding, and the Tea Reviews.
Live Show Reviews.
Interviews.
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Ah, the autumn. A season of vibrant colors, fresh breezes, resurgent emotions, and, if you're in Chicago right now, raging snow. WTFs aside, fall also serves as an ideal backdrop to San Francisco-based guitarist and Ryuichi Sakamoto/Zach Hill collaborator Christopher Willits' new disc Surf Boundaries, due October 17 via the good apparitions at Ghostly International.
Surf Boundaries features 12 placid cuts-- many of them hue-oriented-- and includes Willits' "Colors Shifting", which recently joined the esteemed ranks of Pitchfork's Infinite Mixtape. If "lovely," "serene," and "dreamy" are among your favorite AMG adjectives, this disc is totally for you, my friend.
Willits aficionados are also encouraged to check out The Right Kind of Nothing by North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, C-dub's collaboration with man-about-town Brad Laner (Savage Republic, Medicine, Lusk). It's out now in digital format from Ghostly.
A restless soul, Willits also joins forces on occasion with Hella's Zach Hill and Miguel Depedro (aka Kid606) to form the improv entity known as Flossin. That trio is presently working on the follow-up to 2004's Lead Singer with the gentlemen from Matmos and a posse of indie remixers.
Wily Willits takes Surf Boundaries on the road this autumn, treating audiences in San Francisco, Providence, and Baltimore to a dose of serenity, and hitting up NYC for CMJ, FYI. LOL. TTYL. (and) Willits Collaborates with Zach Hill, Kid606, Matmos on next Flossin disc.
-Pitchfork, by Matthew Solarski
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With the Postal Service temporarily out of business, who will provide us with warm blips and bloops underscoring male and female vocalists harmonizing all lovey-dovey stylee? One gentleman up to the task is West Coast soundsmith and North Valley Subconscious Orchestra co-conductor Christopher Willits. His forthcoming Ghostly International debut Surf Boundaries (due October 17) is awash in lush blankets of drone, comforting crackles, murmurs, and frequently, hushed, whispery vocals.
While it begins just like a PS banger, "Colors Shifting"-- rather than flutter about like Jimmy Tamborello's compositions-- calmly drifts, in no particular hurry to get anywhere. The vocalists, likewise, linger on their words longer, less intent on crafting quotable love letter poetry than on evoking texture and color through sound. Like the slowcore drift of Ida meeting the Books' glitch-laden electro/acoustic textures, it's one of the best blissed-out dream-pop cuts we've heard this year.
-Pitchfork, by Matthew Solarski
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Bay Area electro-indie guru Christopher Willits meshes live instrumentation with intelligent electronic sounds via his Jamie Lidell-style homemade software and gear. The result is a fresh sound remincencent of Stereolab in their heydey... Willits is (also) one-half of North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, but is releasing a solo album called 'Surf Boundaries' on the innovative, Detroit-based Ghostly International on October 17.
AOL Music - Mike Spinella
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> Willits' Subtle Soundtracks
San Francisco is made for heady soundtracks. When a heavy morning fog reminds you that fall is just around the corner, there's nothing like bundling your ears up under a pair of headphones and watching the white skies compress the city into a misty oasis. It's perfect timing, then, that internationally recognized electronic musician
Christopher Willits just released a new collection of cinematic songs. The Bernal Heights resident's blissful, mostly instrumental compositions complement the aesthetics of a cloud town and its gray subway systems, giving new points of light to both types of visuals. Willits is an artist who seems to exist in the same ether as his music, hosting audiophile events in the East Bay under the Listen tag and eclectic live showcases here in S.F. as Overlap, when he's not globetrotting. He recently traveled to New York, the U.K., France, and Japan — sampling fresh fish and raw horse neck and connecting, collaborating, and recording with appreciators of his "folded guitar" technique. That phrase, which he brought into the name of his 2002 release for 12k, Folding, and the Tea, describes a custom-made process of merging his six-string and a laptop, crafting melodic patterns that drift through your eardrums. He's released more than a dozen discs in the past six years, for such esteemed labels as Ghostly International and Ache, and he's included on rosters in Japan, Belgium, and Ireland.
The latest output from this prolific Mills College graduate comes under the moniker the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra . The release, titled The Right Kind of Nothing (Ghostly), fuses Willits' skills with those of Brad Laner — best known as the founder of Los Angeles' '90s-era heavy noise poppers Medicine (Laner also records solo as the Electric Company). "I've always been a huge Medicine fan," Willits writes via e-mail. "Very inspirational guitar work for me." Linking up through mutual friends at the local label Tigerbeat6, Willits and his hero easily merged ideas. "The whole time I was just trying to ignore the 1995 part of my mind yelling, 'Holy fuck!'" he admits. "We kept talking, [and] it just seemed natural for us to get together and make some sounds. I luckily played it cool enough — no teenage-style autograph requests — to make it to his Eichler Studio in L.A. and jam a number of times throughout 2005. It felt very comfortable to work together, and I think the music shows that."
Songs on The Right Kind of Nothing are one- to five-minute bursts of ambient, shoegazing electronica, minimal electro pop, skeletal sketches of chimes and bird chirps, and thickening static rolling over wayward beeps and blips — like a sonic marriage between Slowdive and Plaid. "We just wanted to make an LP with all the sounds we wanted to hear, from sweet vocal melodies to krautrock grooves to huge walls of melodic guitar noise," Willits explains. Nothing is available only as a digital download, so you can pop it straight into your iPod (check www.christopherwillits.com for info) and let the ebullient human hums and sparkling guitar folds alight among your travels around the city.
Not one to sit and wait for the next project, though, Willits has another solo album coming out soon (Oct. 17, to be exact), and says it features more vocal harmonies, string arrangements, and drums alongside those cascading guitar sounds. And that's not even mentioning his myriad other collaborations — with famed Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and sound artist Taylor Deupree, both slotted for 2007. Oh, and in the meantime? "I'm learning how to make clothes, trying to make friends with these nasty raccoons outside my place in Bernal Heights, and I want to redesign my garden." Apathy seems to be one of the few options unavailable to Christopher Willits.
- Jennifer Maerz, SF Weekly - Aug 30th, 2006
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> More than dream pop -
Christopher Willits hears things. It might be a melody in his head or a sweeping chord progression that he finds in his heart. What he hears has evolved into what he describes as the "song-like things" that make up much of Surf Boundaries, his stunning new full-length release on Ann Arbor's Ghostly International.
"I'm surprised at what emerged," says Willits, 28, from his home in San Francisco. The songs "grew from simply trusting my intuition and the choices I was making, musically and in my life in general. I feel the music come through me, it's not an analytical process."
That's not to say there isn't lots of technique involved. Processed effects are evident all over the album. For the record, Willits uses Ableton Live software and other custom-made plug-ins that he created using the Max/MSP/Jitter programming environment.
But gearhead factoids aside, what Willits does is play guitar, harmonize with guest vocalists and add electronically treated strings and horns to make something unusual: a marriage of celestial dream pop, ambient jazz and human emotion laid bare.
One highlight on the 12-song album is a suite that includes "Colors Shifting," "Green and Gold" and "The Greatest Rain." It shimmers and soars in melancholy shoegaze style and features vocal parts by Willits and New Zealander Latrice Barnett. "Yellow Spring" and "Medium Blue," meanwhile, recall the lighter side of groovy California psychedelic pop — as well as current like-minded artists like Canadian Dan Snaith, better known by his performance name, Caribou.
Willits says he usually starts writing on his guitar, and that "might be the end result right there. Other times, I add layers and let them build or erode. I never design a song like a modernist architect may build an upside-down house. I'm interested in the creative process working from the bottom up, not top down. There is no blueprint."
At 14, Willits says he was part of a "psychedelic noise funk band" that combined Hendrix with Sonic Youth and Sly Stone. A native of Kansas City, Mo., he later studied painting, sculpture and video art at the Kansas City Art Institute and completed a master's degree in electronic music at Oakland's Mills College, where John Cage, Steve Reich and other theory-based innovators once held residencies. Faculty at the school when Willits was in the program included experimental composers Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros. (Oliveros is also, coincidentally, in Ann Arbor for this weekend's improv conference.)
"I was always into art, painting and making stuff," he says, "and when my dad bought me a guitar when I was 13, it transformed my life. I knew exactly what I wanted to be doing from that time on."
Willits has collaborated with a wide range of artists, including micro-tech-house producer Taylor Deupree, Miguel Depredo — better known as Kid606 — and legendary Japanese musician Ryiuchi Sakamoto.
"Sakamoto and I are editing and mixing some recordings that we made together in a New York studio," Willits says of the man who formed Yellow Magic Orchestra in the late 1970s and has had a long solo career, including composing film soundtracks for The Sheltering Sky, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence and The Last Emperor."It's really intense, atonal ambient music. Working on it is difficult because it always puts me in a trance as I'm editing. It makes concentration hard!"
Willits is also part of the two-person group North Valley Subconscious Orchestra with guitarist Brad Laner of the Los Angeles-based group, Medicine. The pair released The Right Kind of Nothing this summer on Ghostly. The album is available only as a digital download at ghostly.com.
Willits appears to have found a home at Ghostly International, a label he says, "has its shit together, and I trust them. Few labels have their diversity and vision into the future." He makes his first visit to the area this weekend in a big way: Willits will perform three times at three separate venues in Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Detroit Metro Times - by Walter Wasacz - 11/29/2006
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- German Magazine (print only)-> .pdf
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top stories - Christopher Willits On Tour
Bay-area guitar maestro and multimedia artist Christopher Willits got a tidal wave of positive press following the release of last week's Surf Boundaries, his latest solo album full of ambience, shoegaze jazz and dreamy chords. For those of you already in love with the album, check him live at one of these dates. For those of you that don't believe the hype, check him live to be persuaded otherwise.
XLR8R - Posted by Jennifer Marston
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- Surfing New Turf:
Christopher Willits swings between ambient bliss and grating discord."
Listening to the warm analogs, e-bowed guitar, and post-jazz swing that manifest on "Medium Blue" off Surf Boundaries (Ghostly International) — one of two new albums by Christopher Willits — you might assume that the instrumentation was performed by an ensemble of helping hands rather than simply the Bay Area electronic musician. And you'd be half right. The 28-year-old Kansas City, Mo., native executes many of the album's compelling melodies and fizzling, ambient textures on guitar, laptop, and synths — aided at times by compañeros including Adam Theis, Brad Laner, and notably, R&B-pop vocalist Latrice Barnett on the calming orchestrations of stringed instruments and horns.
"My name's on the record, but tons of collective energy came into making it
happen," explains Willits at a Mission District bar. "I outsourced some things
to the brilliant friends around me."
Their impact is evident: the CD shifts dynamically from the usual
guitar-run-through-a-laptop drone and fuzz of Willits's live sets. He says that
he hopes to someday put together a band to perform a release like Surf
Boundaries on tour. That plan isn't a surprise, considering Willits's
determination to always have a full plate.
The Mills College graduate's musical career has quickly taken flight since his
move to the Bay in 2000. It's amazing that Willits even has time for solo
endeavors between playing with Flössin — his side project with Hella's Zach
Hill featuring guest noisemaking from Kid606, the Advantage's Carson McWhirter,
and Matmos — and ongoing collaborations with avant-garde musicians such as
Ryuichi Sakamoto, and former Tool bassist Paul d'Amour. When not on tour,
Willits spends his time at the Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco, where
he began teaching digital audio workshops five years ago. With John Phillips, he
also founded Overlap.org, an online community that aims to give exposure to
electronic and experimental artists through blog feeds, podcasts, and live music
events.
Much of Willits's work as a solo artist and a collaborator is documented on
labels such as Taylor Deupree's 12K and Sub Rosa, but his recent alliance with
the Midwestern electronic imprint Ghostly International may prove the most
promising. "I really like Ghostly, because they're more into artist development
rather than boxing in artists' sounds and constraining them from branching off,"
Willits says.
Likewise, his latest offerings are all over the sonic map. The art alone for
Surf Boundaries illustrates its ethereal mood: soft hues delicately wash images
of animals scattered around a portrait of Willits. The music within strikes a
wonderful symphonic balance between electronic composition and live
instrumentation as Willits and his collaborators frolic with a blend of jubilant
French pop, glitchy guitar, and shimmering psychedelia.
Along with Surf Boundaries' cozy, sleepy appeal comes Willits's shrill wake-up
call with guitarist Brad Laner (Medicine, Electric Company) — the North Valley
Subconscious Orchestra. The space pop–oriented unit gives the Creation Records
class of ’91 competition with white-noise guitar treatments and alt-rock
rhythms.
The duo met through mutual friend Kid606, and for Willits the collaboration was
a dream come true.
"Laner is one of my guitar heroes," he says, adding that when he first listened
to his old Medicine cassette in high school, he mistook Laner's
nails-on-chalkboard approach to guitar playing for a stereo malfunction.
"I realized that the way he's making that sound is that he's running all his
guitar effects into a shitty four-track and then cranking the preamps up on it,
so it's getting this full ..." — Willits makes a fast, circular motion with
his arms — "whish!"
Released in August as Ghostly's first full-length available exclusively via
download, NVSO's The Right Kind of Nothing highlights Laner's signature guitar
bluster and Willits's ability to dabble subtly in an aggregation of soundscapes.
What results is a continuous squall of beaming shoegaze discord that feels like
sunshine bursting into a dark room — only to be broken by heavy kraut rock
tempos and Swervedriver guitars.
Though Surf Boundaries and The Right Kind of Nothing radically differ in sound
and structure, both discs showcase Willits's ambition to crack the electronic
mold and move toward a contemporary vein of experimental rock.
"All I'm trying to do is feel out my own energy and relationship to my creative
process," Willits explains. "I could have never envisioned the albums sounding
the way they do. I love being surprised by my own creativity."
Chris Sabbath, SF Bay Guardian - Oct, 2006 --
- "Iron Willits"
The layers of guitar melody mapped through Christopher Willits' laptop echo in shifty compositions that are effectively lulling and precariously
engaging. Live, Willits grips his guitar onstage in front of his laptop,
subtly modulating his incessant hooks and warping seemingly cyclical
patterns into whole new movements. Check out his mind-twisting "Seven
Machines for Summer" on the "E*A*D*G*B*E" compilation (12k), which captures
such "electronics" on record.
- Ethan Goldwater, SF Bay Guardian (4/28-5/4/04)
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Willits is the prime gtr/lptp mover/shaker to keep tabs on at present.
- mimaragloomusicsales.com
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In the future, Christopher Willits' surname will likely become a verb, at
least among musicians, for the technique that most succinctly distinguishes
his work: the cascades of computer-pixelated guitar that make each of his
records a must-listen. The "Willits sound" is so remarkable that it's
amazing a technophilic pop star like Bjork, Cher or Madonna hasn't already
licensed or aped it for one of their state-of-the-art singles. That his
sound lends itself both to extrapolative, nouvelle-classical composition and
to imaginary radio hits says much about its appeal.
- Disquiet.com - Dec, 04
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Mission District guitarist, producer, painter, and sound designer Christopher Willits is the center cell of a rather complex indie rock-avant-garde-electronic art Venn diagram here in the Bay Area. A graduate of Mills College's prestigious music program, Willits gained a firm foothold in the academic musical community that's been built around the school's long-standing high-art tradition. But rather than take the insular, sometimes stuffy route many Mills students follow, Willits made a break for it and infected a host of other genres with his restless spirit and never-ending well of creative output.
As Flössin, Willits and bandmates Zach Hill (of Hella fame) and Miguel Depedro (a.k.a. Kid 606) release a bit of tension with their rackety take on post-rock. Their 2004 debut on Vancouver label Ache Records is cheekily titled Lead Singer, though there aren't any vocals. Instead it's a fury of tone generators, psychedelic feedback, and jazz-metal drumming that hardly seems the product of years spent behind a computer in composition class. His upcoming collaboration with Latrice Barnett, an as yet unnamed funk-R&B project, doesn't sound tame either – it points more in the direction of nihilistic genre fuckery than art-school wankery.
Willits's most notable partnership, however, was forged through a cross-country cross-pollination of tracks with Brooklyn's Taylor Deupree, head of CD-and-MP3-only label 12k and de facto poster boy for the glitchy laptop minimalism craze a couple years back. The pair have examined the minute processes of digital recording media on more than a few projects, including Audiosphere Series 08 (Sub Rosa) and the recent Mujo (Plot), which prompted a much ballyhooed tour of Japan, where they're apparently quite the superstars.
All told, Willits's fortitude propelled him to record eight releases in the past two years, and it's no surprise that zeitgeist-charting journals like the Wire and URB are singing his well-deserved praises; in fact, the latter named him to its "Next 100" list of up-and-coming noisemakers for 2004. Did I mention that on top of all this, and teaching sound design classes throughout the Bay Area, he also finds time for solo gigs. He's pretty prolific in that respect too, with ambient guitar-driven pieces on imprints like Northern Ireland's Fällt, Detroit techno powerhouse Ghostly International, and, naturally, 12k, on which he released 2002's somewhatpoppy Folding, and the Tea – well, as poppy as this kind of stuff gets.
- Ken Taylor, SF Bay Guardian - Sept 04
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Stylus Interview - 2006
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(germany) - Versteckte Harmonie
Christopher Willits
Versteckte Harmonie
Christopher Willits umgeht den verfänglichen Harmoniekitsch der Electronica mit einem geschickten Versteckspiel
Christopher Willits Albumtitel »Surf Boundaries« passt. Auch wenn man sich erst zurechtspinnen muss, was dieser bedeuten könnte. Trotzdem, er passt. Es ist ein Surfen im Lee, ein Hören an den Grenzen des Hörbaren.
Wie so viele Electronica-Künstler begibt sich Willits, Multimedia-Künstler und umtriebiger Musik-Kollaborator mit Künstlern wie Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kid 606 oder Paul D’Amour (Tool), auf das Feld der Click & Cuts und der Gitarrennoten. Ein klassisches Konzept also, könnte man meinen. Doch anstelle nur an den Noten- und gefälligen Harmoniesträngen entlang zu gleiten und ein wenig herum zu loopen, sucht der gebürtige Kalifornier die Grenzen des surftechnisch Machbaren, selbst wenn diese Suche die seichten Gewässer nicht unbedingt verlässt.
Grenzwahrnehmung
Doch auch das Surfen ohne Wellen kann spannend sein. Willits Melodien rutschen trotz ihrer Wiedererkennungsmomente als Indie-Riffs, Postrock-Schrabbeln oder Singer/Songwriter-Gezupfe nie in den beliebigen Gitarrenkitsch, der dann nur noch durch Zerstückelung und Loops malträtiert wird. Die Clicks & Cuts verstecken sich vielmehr ganz weit hinten, erscheinen nur offensichtlich, wenn alles ruht, während Willits mit einem breiten, weichen Pinsel alles Harmonische aus Gitarre, Bläsern und Gesang nahezu in ein White-Noise-Feld verwischt. Aber eben nur beinahe. Es bleibt immer ein schwacher Melodienpuls bestehen, der den Surfer weiterträgt, immer ein zurückhaltend eingesetzter Drum-Part, der vorantreibt. Es ist ein Hauch, ein kleiner Halt am Rande der strukturellen Wahrnehmbarkeit, der im Rauschen der Stille erklingt und die Orientierung sicherstellt.
Goon Magazine (germany)- Oct, 2006 - Text: Jens Pacholsky
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> Surf Boundaries review
4.5 of 5 stars
Christopher Willits's musical signature is the way he digitally "folds" his guitar sounds over each other, to borrow the language of his 2002 album, Folding, and the Tea. On the San Francisco artist's latest full-length, Surf Boundaries, electric and acoustic guitars still wrap across each other in a strange fabric of processed blips, clicks and bloops, but now they're part of dreamy pop songs rather than minimalist electronic compositions. The album's ostensible subject is a relationship falling apart, made more poignant by the fact that Willits's singing partner, Latrice Barnett, is the girl he broke up with. The album's highlight is its romantic apex, the shimmering "Colors Shifting", which sounds like Fennesz covering laptop softie the Postal Service. Awash in crackles and glitches, Willits and Barnett exchange hushed, pure imagery about love's power to change pretty much everything. But soon the colors shift again, from "Medium Blue" to "Green and Gold" and "Yellow Spring," drums clattering as a relationship fades. Either way, Willits's inventive sonic textures leave plenty of room to get lost in. Finale "The Greatest Rain" turns around the musical motifs of "Colors Shifting," finding the bitter sadness in the original's bliss. Let the guitars fold around you like a blanket, or risk getting the chills.
Playboy Magazine - Marc Hogan -11/06
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- Surf Boundaries Review
There is something opulent and comforting in the smooth tones and processed sounds of Christopher Willits’s new album. Hailing from San Francisco, Willits has released records on labels as diverse as 12K, Fällt, Sub Rosa, Nibble and Plop, as well as collaborations with Brad Laner as North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, and with Kid606’s Miguel Depedro and Hella drummer Zach Hill, with whom he is currently recording as Flössin. If this wasn’t enough, he also regularly contributes to diverse multimedia projects and installations.
Ever since he appeared on the music scene at the tail end of the nineties, Willits has developed a delicate blend of layered processed guitars, glitches and statics, which have placed him somewhere on the accessible vicinity of Fennesz. With this first album for Ghostly, his ninth altogether, Willits dips his experimental range in breezy Californian pop to produce a record that sends the Beach Boys into orbit with no intention to ever bringing them back down to Earth. The songs on Surf Boundaries are colourful expressions of various emotional states, which build up deep within each piece to add to the weight of the complete work and form a rather suggestive collection. Allegedly recorded ‘during the rise and fall of an intense personal relationship’, Surf Boundaries bears few emotional scars on its sleeve. Instead, Willits applies sumptuous soundscapes and soothing melodies to appease the mood.
Although Willits’s work is in majority of instrumental nature, the addition of vocal harmonies throughout the record, albeit buried under dense layers of guitars and brass sediments, reveal a blissful dimension to his work that had, until know, only been expressed with parsimony. Here, Willits dares simple melodies and drifts into introspective pop, at times flirting with shoegaze (Love Wind, Finding Ground, Yellow Spring), or stripping down to near-acoustic (Like Water), at others blowing a digital breeze over intricate constructions (Colors Shifting, Orange Lit Spaces).
As the album progresses and Willits redefines his soundscapes with each new track, he manages to retain the peaceful atmosphere all the way through by seamlessly bringing together his compositions with constant sonic touches. Surf Boundaries is one of these records that gradually reveal more depth and relief with each listen and ends up sticking in the mind.
- Milk Factory (UK) Sept 2006
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- Surf Boundaries Review
Our friends over at Ghostly International almost slipped this one by me. See, I've had this new album by Christopher Willits, Surf Boundaries, sitting amongst my to-review stacks for a minute now, but kept passing it by.
But this weekend, as the haze of turkeystuffingcranberryconfitpiepiepiepie was wearing off, I made a point of going through said stacks of CDs, and pulled Willits' album out, with a knowing hunch that it would be worth listening to, and probably worth writing about. That hunch paid off, big time. Today, still in a haze, I felt the need for something soothing to pull me out of it, and Bingo! Surf Boundaries is full of gorgeous, hazy, glitchy, multi-layered tone poems that are totally soothing the savage beast in me and making this Monday so much more bearable.
Willits has been making music for years now - he is a guitarist and sound-artist who has released a number of abstract and experimental albums, he has collaborated with a number of musicians (Kid606, Matmos, Paul D'Amour, and Ryuichi Sakamoto among others) and multimedia artists from his home base in San Francisco. On top of this, he custom designs all the signal processors he uses with his guitars, so the sounds he coaxes out of them are entirely his own creation. He has a number of other folks working with him on the album, providing additional vocals, as well as horns, drums, viola, vibraphone and other percussion, rounding (and filling) out his compositions. There's lots more info about him and the album on his Ghostly page.
One of his songs - "Colors Shifting", a beautiful and subtle slow burning dreamy pop song - previously appeared on Ghostly's Idol Tryouts 2 from earlier this year, so it makes sense that the mostly-techno Ann Arbor label would give him free reign on his full length, which came out a few weeks back. The album is, as I said, soothing and beautiful, but there are also a few tracks, like this one, that are real doozies - all clash and clatter, but melodic and captivating. Reminds me of Four Tet or Manitoba at their best. Very highly recommended.
The album is available at fine retailers everywhere, and available for download via iTunes and eMusic.
Also, Willits is on tour right now - he'll be here in NYC tomorrow night at Joe's Pub - see the tour flyer here for more dates. AND (I think this is one of the coolest ideas I've heard in a while) there is a remix competition for the song "Colors Shifting" - Willits will select the best remix, and the winning mix will be included on an XLR8R Incite CD compilation, which will be included in copies of a future issue of XLR8R Magazine. The song - in multi track form - is available via a Creative Commons license, so this is all totally legit. The contest and all necessary information is available right here. Get cracking!
Music For Robots - posted by robot blair - 11/27/06
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- Surf Boundaries Review
October 17th marks the release date of new Ghostly artist Christopher Willets’ Surf Boundaries. A beautiful piece of post-shoegazer guitar and electronics, it represents a narcotic blend of melodic, ambient drone and pastoral, at times, uplifting playing and programming. Glitchy yet highly listenable, Willits mixes his/her vocals into an ambiguous, heavenly concoction and literally surfs the boundary between experimental and accessible. There are moments of undeniable beauty here, not unlike staring through partially stained glass with light fractured in infinitely divergent paths. And there are also a handful of pretty, instrumental sonic experiments spaced throughout the entirety of the LP, so if 2-minute noodlings are not your thing skip to the meat of the record. “Medium Blue” — today’s post — may just be the most satiating bit on the menu. An accomplished debut from an artist who clearly possesses an exciting potential.
- ScissorKick, Oct 2006
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- Surf Boundaries Review
That Willits' Surf Boundaries appears as part of Ghostly's SMM series, a showcase for ambient and downtempo music, says a lot about its overall style. It's mellower than The Right Kind of Nothing, the California-based guitarist's recent North Valley Subconscious Orchestra collaboration with Brad Laner, for one thing, but also more varied than the fully instrumental Pollen, issued by Fällt in 2004 (though Willits' staccato guitar flicker, so much a Pollen signature, dominates “Orange Lit Spaces”). Even so, Willits disrupts lush splendor with occasional episodes of noise; guitars wail from deep within a blurry vortex in “Love Wind,” for example, proving that Surf Boundaries isn't always so polite.
Unfurling like a pastel cloud, the gorgeous “Colors Shifting” sets the tone for the album. In this first of three variations, soft guitar flickers pan from left to right while the feathery vocals Willits and Ultra Records' Latrice Barnett exhale gently over a softly ringing cymbal pulse. The tempo gradually slows to a halt before the tune re-emerges in a slow-moving blurry haze. “Medium Blue” then abruptly explodes the mood with a hyper drum solo before morphing into a clattering mass of string tones, guitar haze, breathy vocals, and driving bass lines. The later “Yellow Springs” exudes a similarly rambunctious and psychedelic spirit that suggests strong affinities between Willits and Caribou. Shorter pieces, like the peacefully billowing “Saturn” and “Like Water,” a sweet interlude of bright guitar flutter, provide stylistic variety while the quietly euphoric ballad “Green and Gold” is particularly heavenly. At disc's end, trombones guide the ruminative “The Greatest Rain” to an almost orchestral close before the album exits in a glorious a cappella reprise of the “Colours Shifting” vocal. At 38 minutes, the album's short compared to most releases yet doesn't feel slight; if anything, Willits compresses a broad range of music-making—shoegaze, psychedelia, ambient, post-rock—into a bold yet succinct statement.
Textura - 11/06
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- Surf Boundaries Review
No, your audio isn't freaking out -- it's just Christopher Willits! Upon listening to his album, Surf Boundaries, I found myself adjusting my speakers and tinkering with my controls, thinking the CD was skipping a million times a minute. Little did I know, that's just Willits's style.
His music is complex to say the least. This Bay Area multimedia artist is pledged for his homemade signal processing software that he uses with the guitar. Together, Willits can generate improvised melodies with interweaving guitar riffs and harmonies, all playing at once. Yea, San Franciscans know how to represent.
Extremely instrumental-based, the majority of his songs lack any form of vocals whatsoever. Instead both electronic and acoustic sounds fill the void. In his music you'll find the default drum kit, guitar, and keyboard, all played with a considerable amount of skill (listen to the drums in Yellow Spring). Trumpets are also present, casually complementing the electronic bleeps and bloops that are ever present in Willits's music.
I said vocals are pretty subjugated, but when they are present, they're great. Smooth and airy and chorus-like (yay), vocals are on the same level as the instruments. Simply there as another sound, voices bring further life to the songs, songs that are pleasant, light, and above all, ethereal.
Both Sides of the Mouth -12/06
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- Surf Boundaries Review
When trying to think of an appropriate comparison to make in order to shed light on the sound of Christopher Willits' Surf Boundaries little comes to mind. Experimental, orchestrated, electronic-pop flavored bands are a pretty rare breed, and the most relevant thing I can come up with is Jaga Jazzist, but even the the ten-piece Norweigan ensemble is a far cry from an accurate comparison. Insead, what comes to mind as appropriate illustrations for Willits are descriptive words, colors, movement, and the ideas of theme and solidarity. For Willits and his latest album, the biggest difference maker is an unrivaled sense of sonic inhibition.
Never at any point during Surf Boundaries, Willits’ third release and his first for Detroit's Ghostly International, does it feel like the composition is hedging too aggressively towards a hook or an end (two vitally inherent conventions of pop music). The organic flow makes Willits’ musical blend seamless and void of any major disruptions; the overall idea is very experimental and electronic. But even that word - electronic - is a descriptive misnomer; in its greater sound aesthetic Surf Boundaries doesn’t always boast what one would traditionally consider as an "electronic" attitude.
This musician/tinkerer and his collective – which shows off an adept collage of musicians from horn and string orchestral players to wall-of-sound rock ‘n’ rollers – are more concerned with the finished composition than with the particular instrument used to create it. In each sound there is an extension of an overall feeling, one that is brought on by crescendos, accentuations, distortion, effective repetition, and countless other effects. There are tracks ("Saturn") that ride airy background sounds with glitchy electronic popping noises for two full minutes, and lead into songs full of indie-pop vocal harmony ("Green and Gold") that would bring Sufjan Stevens and his after-school special band to their knees. Down moments are not filler, instead they are set-ups or simply the quieter sides of a multi-level musician and his helpers.
Another edge of confusion to the overall pinpointing of style here is Willits' use of vocals and meaningful lyrics. Similar to the aforementioned Jaga Jazzist, the singing is all done in choral harmony and drones, and on Surf Boundaries it sounds amazing. The fact that a good part of this album was written reflecting a personal relationship in Willits’ life makes the vocal urgings and guitar loops and experimental electronic freakouts that much more personal. He was really in it, and this effect bleeds through on all levels.
-Lost at Sea, Reviewed by Josh Zanger. Sept 2006
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- Surf Boundaries Review
Cut from the same cloth as Aeroc's classic (well, classic in this household anyway) debut album 'Viscious Solid'. Christopher Willits offers us a body of precise guitar work laced with interruptive electronics and considered use of effects.
Long soundbite:
This is music to soundtrack seasons in a state-of-flux; a time for transition, change, renewal.
Short soundbite:
Pretty fucking essential.
- Failme.net
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Rhapsody - Surf Boundaries Review
The subtleties of minimal house and glitchy laptronica can be lost on most people, but those tempted to explore that world would do well to start with Christopher Willits, for there is much beauty amidst his insect-like ticks and pops. Sounding like the Polyphonic Spree covered by the Postal Service, Surf Boundaries is haunting yet euphoric, particularly on the lovely "Medium Blue," where the electronics are perfectly balanced against acoustic guitar and a Spree-esque chorus.
- Nicholas Baker - Rhapsody
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(italy)- Surf Boundaries review
È invece un deciso passo verso l'ipotesi pop (esperimento già tentato col singolo "Little Edo") il nuovo disco di un altro chitarrista, questa volta americano. Ben noto al pubblico della microelettronica per via dei suoi trascorsi con 12k, Fällt, Plop etc., Christopher Willits naturalmente lo declina a modo proprio, sfilacciandolo in un reticolo espanso e appiccicoso dove il caratteristico suono della sua chitarra ripiegata, cui si aggiungono in ricchi arrangiamenti archi, ottoni e voci, cigola e scrocchia, dondola, incespica di continuo, va in loop e replay, indugia in schizzi stenografici prima di aprirsi a melodie limpide e ariose, tendenzialmente memorabili. Noi però continuiamo onestamente a preferirlo in forma più intima e asciutta.
Blow Up - Nicola Catalano - 12/06
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(italy) - Surf Boundaries review
Chris si e’ innamorato. E naturalmente ha registrato il disco piu’ caldo e accessibile della sua giovane ma intensa carriera. Chi lo apprezza per le sue scorribande in seno ai Flossin rimarra’ deluso ma per tutti gli altri sara’ una rivelazione. L’elettronica di Willits – in passato di casa presso etichette di culto come la 12k e la Plop – e’ rimasta con i piedi ben piantati nei campi di glitch dove e’ cresciuta ma la testa ha preso a girare dietro a farfalle dai colori molto vivaci. Dopo un intro che dura solo una manciata di secondi ci pensa la voce di Latrice Barnett, trattata ed effettata come il manuale dello shoegaze insegna, a marchiare il disco di quella sensazione di leggerezza che poi anche le chitarre di Willits sapranno riprendere nei brani strumentali. Christopher si avventura in un paio di casi (“Medium Blue”, “Finding Ground”) su sentieri piu’ avventurosi, con l’elettrica a inseguire le scale impossibili di Robert Fripp, ma e’ solo un attimo prima che le lente melodie ricoprano di nuovo di zucchero a velo ogni angolo di musica. Dopo averlo ascoltato insieme a Kid606, Matmos, Taylor Deupree e Ryuichi Sakamoto risulta difficile credere che questo ragazzo di San Francisco sia capace di tanto romanticismo. “Love Wind” e’ la meravigliosa estasi che tutti si aspetterebbero di ascoltare da nuove session dei My Bloody Valentine.
Losing Today - Roberto Mandolini - 10/06
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> Surf Boundaries review
Cut from the same cloth as Aeroc's classic debut album Viscous Solid, Christopher Willits' previous offerings were works of precise guitar laced with interruptive electronics and considered use of effects. They were experimental in compositional structure with emphasis on exploring the range of sounds he could muster from his guitar, laptop and software patch setup. Surf Boundaries, however, is more song-based in approach, which is made clear from the opening summer wash of "Colors Shifting", where five-part vocal harmonies (with assistance from New Zealand vocalist Latrice Barnett) slide alongside glitch-ridden riffs and soft echoed rhythms. From this auspicious opening, the album then moves into more textural fields with passages of drone, ambience and even noise. Moods shift from track to track, but somehow the album retains its narrative. You could say this could soundtrack seasons in a state-of-flux; a time for transition, change, renewal. - Kultureflash - 10/06 --
> Surf Boundaries review
Amerikansk guitarist/laptopproducer brygger smuk alt.pop på kærlighedsaffære
Christopher Willits barsler her med et nyt soloalbum, der afslører, at hans musik har taget en lettere poppet drejning. Den californiske guitarist og laptopproducer har tidligere udgivet album via 12k og Fällt, men befinder sig nu på Ghostly International med denne drømmende og smukke plade, der er brygget på en personlig kærlighedsaffære. Udover Willits’ guitarspil er der også benyttet strygere, blæsere og trommer hen over cd'en, der kan beskrives som elektronificeret alternativ pop. Der er vokal på et udvalg af de 12 numre sunget af produceren selv og Latrice Barnett, hvis stemmer flere gange klinger i fine harmonier. Pladen favner alt fra semi-ordinære sangstrukturer som på Colors Shifting til abstrakte kompositioner som Finding Ground, men den 37 minutter lange udgivelse opleves alligevel som et sammenhængende forløb. Der er jazzrytmer og shoegazetåger i musikken, og i samspil med strygerne, blæserne, vokalerne og den detaljerige laptopproduktion skabes Surf Boundaries' flotte, højtidelige aura, der er fuld af varme og skønhed.
Gaffa - Jakob Rosenbak
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> Surf Boundaries review
Christopher Willits is the latest musician to dip his toe into jubilant pop, but then he’s always been half way there hasn’t he? Even though he’s released on 12k (most notably the incredible ‘Folding and the Tea’ album) his music has never been quite so steeped in academia as his label-mates and associates might have you believe. His cyclic glitching guitar-parts have become synonymous with his name and ‘Surf Boundaries’ sees the musician taking a giant leap into fully fledged dream-pop. He doesn’t hold back either, after a few seconds of warming organ we are catapulted head first into ‘Colors Shifting’, which is as fine a pop track as you’re likely to hear this year. Although held together by Willits’ trademark high-frequency clicks and pops, we are treated to subtle drumming, bass guitar and then the luscious vocals of Latrice Barnett and Willits himself in glorious harmony. The easiest comparison would be to early (pre-Loveless) My Bloody Valentine or Slowdive, but there is a modernity in Willits’ production that transcends his obvious use of laptop trickery. Indeed there are moments here which would surely have fans of Ulrich Schnauss, Khonnor even Tunng getting weak at the knees, and yet Willits still finds the time to throw in moments of pure abstraction to show where he’s coming from. ‘Love Wind’ for example is closer to Tim Hecker’s latest work than anything the aforementioned artists might have produced, and ‘Saturn’ comes across like a more restrained Fennesz, but Willits’ finest moments are his poppiest. Towards the end of the record we are treated to ‘Yellow Spring’ which blindfolded I might have mistaken for a Stereolab/Tortoise collaboration – yep, it’s that strong. So ignore the fact that Willits will be lumped in with the current glut of electronic/indie hybrids and rest assured that ‘Surf Boundaries’ is simply a great progressive pop record with few of the trappings of the ailing electronica scene. Boomkat - 10/06 --
> Surf Boundaries review
It's getting cold outside. But that's okay, because I think it'll make listening to Christopher Willit's fourth album (and first on Ghostly International) even better. Venturing into more pop-oriented territory, the California-based artist combines digitally manipulated guitars, stuttering IDM beats, jittery clicks 'n' cuts, recurring five-part vocal harmonies, enveloping noise and treated strings -- all implemented when you least expect them. The result envisions artists such as Oval, Fennesz, Telefon Tel Aviv, or past collaborator Taylor Deupree remixing the works of M83 or Spiritualized. It's a cozy concoction that should make the miserable winter months much more bearable.
Prefix Magazine - Alex Ruder - 10/06 --
- Surf Boundaries review
Guitar-wrought ambience is essential to Californian Christopher Willits’ work, but on Surf Boundaries, he also references his coast’s better-known songwriters. Willits arranges layers of laptop-tweaked guitar as any bedroom musician would, while rampant vocal harmonies (featuring house artist Latrice Barnett) point to Brian Wilson as frequently as effects-loaded progressions reveal an affinity for Slowdive or Christian Fennesz. “Love Wind” basks in nearly grating high-end beatless splendor, and an ongoing album color theme enters and exits in four summery parts, often peppered with treated brass shots andcomputer-processed snare hits. A shuffling middle entry called “Green and Gold” anchors Surf Boundaries in its successful mix of all the LP’s most noteworthy elements: a swirling synth loop, scattered pauses of pitch-bent horns and an indecipherable chorus of hippie vocals. Those hacky-sacking surfer burnouts in second period wood shop can only dream of communicating hazy bliss as effectively as Willits does. Far out, Chris.
Orlando Weekly - By Dominic Umile - 11/9/06
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> Surf Boundaries review The pop world is a cruel one, yet many people are drawn to it every day. Christopher Willits’ new album, Surf Boundaries, proves he’s one of them. But thankfully, this electronic composer has kept his avant-grade roots in tack. Like the artist formerly known as Manitoba, Willits has opted for a more song-based approach on his new record, where he draws on elements of noise, shoegaze and jazz. And he has added some vocals along the way to remind listeners this is supposed to be a pop record. However, Willits still can’t help but fill a large chunk of the LP with cut-up blips and loops, which resemble many of his more experimental collaborations with Matmos and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Willits carefully weaves these instrumental segments into the mix and in the end strikes a perfect balance between the two. The result is cohesive album worthy of attention.
Good Night Cigarettes - Brock Thiessen
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> Surf Boundaries review
Hot on the heels of his release with with Brad Laner (ex-Medicine) as North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, Christopher Willits drops this blissful solo album. Each track features layers upon layers of dreamy vocals, soaring guitars, and chirpy synths that keep washing over you until your mind is completely free. Call it shoegazer, call it stargazer, call it what you will. Just make sure you call it up on your iPod to keep you warm inside this fall.
3Hive - 10/06 --
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Lead Singer documents three of today's most inventive and original musicians at their most private and pure. Highly, highly, highly recommended.
- DiSCORDER
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A note to 12k devotees: this is not your typical Christopher Willits
album. In fact, the signature sound that made laptoppers and guitar
fanatics alike drool all over their persons is nowhere to be heard within
a 100-mile radius. For some this may NOT be a bad thing, but for others
this could be a rather invasive, unexpected experience. Conspiracy
theorists could point the finger at one Miguel Depedro for all of this,
for the mighty Kid 606 shed his moniker for the session and slipped
something into Willits' wheatgrass juice when he wasn't looking. Or they
could direct their attention toward Hella/ Nervous Cop drummer Zach Hill
for talking the two into a drunken session over at his place on a Friday
night. However, they should stop pointing the finger and just listen.
Because Lead Singer is the sound of three musicians letting loose and
having fun interacting with one another in an improvisational environment.
It's not free jazz, it's not noise, and it's not rock.
It's a lovely combination of all three (and if microsound/IDM snoots listen closely they would hear Willits' signature sound layered in there somewhere). It's as
abrasive and challenging as it is lovely and carefree, and anyone who is a
fan of any of the three artists involved in Flossin would be well served
to kick back and give it a listen, or maybe even join in the fun and play
along at home.
- Rob Theakston (All Music Guide, USA)
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Where could this label possibly go next? With a diverse catalog including full-length releases by Death From Above, Kid Commando and Secret Mommy, the output on Vancouver-based Ache Records has a lot of people talking.
The lastest release from Ache is the debut of Flössin, a collaborative project between Miguel Depedro, Christopher Willits and Zach Hill. To offer them a bit more of an introduction, we’ll start with Depedro who is more widely known as Kid606, head of the Tigerbeat6 label. Next is guitarist Christopher Willits, acclaimed for his unique music on record labels such as 12k, Fällt and Sub Rosa. Last but not least we have Zach Hill, a talented drummer whose band Hella has already released an excellent split 7” with Four Tet on Ache a few months ago.
As the story goes, Lead Singer is a selection of tracks edited from a late-night improv session recorded when these three busy lads met up in San Francisco near the end of last year. The session recording maintains the loud, spontaneous feeling of the jam, which is essentially equal parts free drumming, guitar manipulations and electronics. The result is an album that is both unpredictable and entertaining. The titles of the 13 tracks have been mostly obscured by scribbles with a black marker, leaving us to giggle and guess at what they could possibly be. According to the Ache Records website, Flössin is planning to hit the stage with some special live performances later this year. Check it!
- Constantine K. (WLM > welovemusique.com 09/04)
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Quando tre genii del surreale come Christopher Willits, Zach Hill (Hella) e Miguel Depedro (Kid 606) si incontrano per dare vita ad un nuovo progetto, il risultato non può non essere surreale elevato alla terza. Flossin racchiude in sé un’essenza di improvvisazione jazz che non ha precedenti. Ognuno dei componenti porta con se la propria esperienza e la sfoggia in ogni brano dimenticandosi della dimensione terrestre e lasciando che la cacofonia più irritante si impadronisca del proprio essere. “Lead Singer” è un concentrato di ritmi schizofrenici di batteria, echi di campionatori, chitarre in feedback e quanto altro possa descrivere l’inconscio. I 13 brani che compongono “Lead singer” non hanno titoli, o meglio, sono stati cancellati, come risulta sulla quarta di copertina del cd. I Suoni ancestrali della manipolazione delle chitarre, scanditi dalla impressionante tecnica di batteria diventano incessanti con il susseguirsi delle tracce assumendo l’effetto di una pioggia di note fredda ma affascinante.
- Nicolò Mulas (kronic, Italy, aug 2004)
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> Mujo review
Expectations are usually best when they're undermined or completely thrown out of the window, as was the case when I first slipped this little gem into my CD player. On the basis of my previous experience of Deupree and Willits' solo records, I was expecting the usual guitar/hard disk antics; chords smashed to atoms and then glued back together, glitching their way through elusive snatches of melody. Instead, the opening track had me rushing to the player to check that I hadn't been sent an early 70s Genesis record by mistake; "Seasons Centers Studies"' lush pileups of guitar arpeggios could easily pass for one of the pastoral interludes found on something like Selling England By The Pound.
Now that's not a criticism; it's a beautiful little piece and while not entirely characteristic of the rest of the record (you may or may not be pleased to hear that, depending on your own particular prejudices), it does set the tone for what is an intriguing and lovely album. This is the second collaboration between the two men, sourced from improvisations and then shoved under the studio microscope for examination, dissection and God knows what.
Despite such digital jiggery-pokery, Deupree and Willits don't let their software get the better of them. Like Fennesz or Oren Ambarchi, they seem more interested in results than process. The music whirrs, clangs and hums away to itself, sometimes chipped into tiny fragments, propelled by metronomic, clicking percussives, or it floats away into metallic, chiming reveries. If there was a church on Neptune, it might have bells that sound like this.
As is often the case with this kind of thing, Mujo works either in the background, like a set of futuristic wind chimes, or up close and personal (headphones are good). Here, the music becomes a sensual, immersive experience, tickling your neurons with little bursts of sonic bliss. Fortunately it doesn't last too long either, so your ears don't get tired out. Instead Willits and Deupree's 12 miniatures offer a sweet, quietly emotive soundworld; fans of the aforementioned Fennesz, Ambaarchi and so on will know what to expect, and they won't be disappointed.
Lovely.
BBC Music - Reviewer: Peter Marsh
By cutting, pasting and processing pretty simple sketches and recontextualizing them into a hypnotic neo-surrealism, Deupree and Willits' association brings a highly listenable, yet not easy form of ecstatic mood excursions standing halfway through pseudo-minimalist schemes and complex insights towards less intelligible subtleties. The well functioning relationship between "regular" instruments and computers provides several handfuls of electroacoustic codes sounding extremely brilliant; intense vibrations and deeply resonant buzzes mix with sequences of sophisticated coagulations and triggered electronics in a mini-maelstrom of sampled outbursts and delicate chimes. It doesn't take long to be hooked - and when it all ends, you feel alone.
(touching extremes, USA)
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Plop. Now we're talking about an exciting label. Japanese, but not limited to Japanese artists. A welcoming home for people such as Kazumasa Hashimoto, Sora, Fonica, Gel and Lullatone. Music closely linked to nature. After all, isn't plop the sound made by raindrops? In Japanese Mujo means constant change, transience. The aim of the artists? To celebrate "the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. It's the second Willits / Deupree release, after last year's Audiosphere 08 (Sub Rosa)... Mujo is an interesting mix of what both musicians are able to do at their best: Willits digitally edited guitar work and Deupree's digital edition of other people sounds work together in a very interesting, and at times intriguing, kind of way. Add to this a bit of accordion and melodica,and you have a seemingly rather limited palette of sounds giving birth to a kaleidoscopic world. If you've got some issues with digitally reconstructed music, then you won't enjoy Mujo as much as I do. But there is no denying the quality of the melodies and the sheer beauty of the soundscapes. This is music that is fragile, incomplete and almost immature, and in those apparent problems lies the beauty of the ensemble. Whether you are actually able to identify the source material or not doesn't matter after the first song: you let yourself drift away on this endless flow of great sounds. Another fantastic release from Plop..
François Monti -- back to top
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Fallt interview with Willits available here.
We loved Willits' last full length so were were pretty excited for this one. Not nearly as abstract and 'academic', Pollen instead focuses much more on melody and song structure, approaching these pieces more like a songwriter than a composer. And while a few folks have been disappointed by the poppier results, we think fans of Oval, B. Fleischman, Ekhard Ehlers and the like will definitely find this hits the spot, a sun dappled, sweet and super warm, totally organic, chilled out glitchscape.
- Aquarius Records (San Francisco)
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The guitar has come to occupy a more central role in electronic music the past few years, spurred on certainly to some degree by the success of Fennesz and the rightful attention his recordings have attracted. One thinks of Oren Ambarchi as another leading figure in this regard, although the two artists' respective styles are hardly similar. Christopher Willits name must be added to that short list judging by the exquisite Pollen, recorded in 2001 but only now released by Christopher Murphy's Fallt label. Willits already garnered attention with Folding, and the Tea released in 2002 on 12k, so his style of playing will be familiar to those lucky enough to have discovered it. His style in no way mimics the static-soaked haziness perfected by Fennesz. Instead, Willits uses signal processing and real-time sampling to fold his guitar lines on top of each other to generate cycling patterns and continuous streams of mutating sound. The lines continuously turn back upon themselves, generating intricate webs that can verge on labyrinthine. Drifting passages of interweaving lines coalesce to form a music that's delicate and hypnotic. Crystalline melodic fragments glimmer, glisten, hiccup, and pause, with tactile clicks charting the paths Willits' guitar takes. It's hardly one-dimensional, however, as Willits uses different rhythms to create contrasts from one piece to the next. The rhythm in Stomata, for example, resembles a funky shuffle, of all things, but it's more implied than overt, with the constant folding of guitar shimmer camouflaging the beat. Gasoline, on the other hand, unfolds more languidly, its gentle fragments fluttering like butterfly wings seen in slow motion. Willit's folded method makes Pollen a delectable complement to Akira Rabelais equally satisfying recording ...benediction, draw (Orthlorng Musork). Interestingly, Rabelais used a similar method, as the disc's music was generated entirely from Rabelais guitar recorded in single passes and filtered with Argeiphontes Lyre. Anyone looking for abrasive guitar soloing should look elsewhere but for those interested in subtle electronic ambience, Pollen and ...benediction, draw make a lovely pair.
-Ron Schepper (Absorb, March 2004)
...The initial impression made by this music is of a pastoral, perhaps even wistful gentleness, but after only a short space of time it becomes clear how continuously each track teems with sound: there’s no respite - literally no pause for breath - until the momentary pause between tracks arrives. Note is overlaid upon, rather than succeeding, note. Pollen portrays a very particular soundscape which results from the application of signal processes to guitar lines played by Christopher Willits. The original sound of the guitar may still be spied - not by its attack or decay but in the centre of the sound. Moment by moment it’s there, then gone again - trying to pin it down is an action akin to a dog chasing its tail - forever just out of reach, try for too long and you end up dizzy. Small percussive noises, probably the byproduct of the processes applied to the guitar...
- Colin Buttimer (BBC, U.K. February 2004)
San Francisco artist Christopher Willits has been busy lately. First, his debut CD, Folding, and the Tea, was released on 12k in late 2002. Then, in 2003, he contributed the biggest (and best) chunk of material for the excellent 12k compilation, E*A*D*G*B*E*, released a cool single, "Little Edo," on Nibble Records, and also released a collaboration with Taylor Deupree on Audiosphere. Now here is a new album on the wonderful Irish label Fällt. How does he do it?
One way is to spend several years recording music, only to wait and wait and wait for it to come out. That's what happened with Pollen. It was supposed to come out in 2001 and be Willits' debut release, but something happened along the way, making this the follow-up to Folding, even though it is really the precursor. Does this matter? Well, as much as I'd like to ignore all these facts and focus exclusively on the music, I can't. It's clear to me, after listening to the two albums back to back, that Folding is more mature, more polished, and more entertaining than Pollen. Hence, I appreciate Pollen largely because it allows me to better appreciate Willits' development as an artist. As an album in its own right, it is interesting, but not nearly as polished or as satisfying as Willits' later work.
Willits creates music by "folding" guitar lines into his laptop to create intricate, beautifully layered melodies. On Folding, Willits manages to turn these folded melodies into abstract stories that flow, twist, and surprise at every turn. In other words, Folding had songs, not abstract experiments. Pollen seems to consist largely of experiments, not songs. A track like "Become Territory" takes folded guitar sounds and twists and shuffles them around until the track is over. The music is interesting, but it doesn't really go anywhere. This fact alone doesn't destroy the music's elegance or beauty; it's just not as interesting (to me) as Willits' later work.
I actually like this album, especially shimmering, bubbly tracks like "Flora" and "Wind Powered." But my appreciation and enjoyment of this album is tempered, at nearly ever turn, by the simple fact that I've heard Willits' other, better works. I'm sorry, but I can't ignore this fact, no matter how much I'd like to. So, my recommendation to all of you out there in Stylus land is this: if you've never heard of Willits, then I'd suggest you pick up Folding, and the Tea right now (it's been re-released); you won't be disappointed. Alternately, you can get the more recently released E*A*D*G*B*E*, which actually contains some of Willits' best work (so far). I'd only recommend Pollen to those of you out there who already own the aforementioned works and need to buy everything by this intelligent artist, or you want to get an idea of what Willits' work sounded like at its early stages.
- Michael Heumann (Stylusmagazine, USA)
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very late 2003 release from mr. willits, his first single, his first appearance on vinyl (exciting times, these). two tracks working a particularly magic combination of real-time steel-pluckage with the 0/1s firing off some blissfully melodic variants of the guitar-sound. awesome. imho willits is the prime gtr/lptp mover/shaker to keep tabs on at present, following in a rich lineage of creative guitar/computer thought that spans from christian calon to fennesz to greg davis etc. etc... (this is a) limited run, first release on a new chicago label, special vellum packaging, little cat drawing, clear vinyl. recipe for disaster. buy now or drown in your tears...
- mimaragloomusicsales.com
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Do lush melodies belong with dissonant, digital guitar fragmentation? Well, why not? Willits creates music using his guitar and his laptop, and while he's not alone in doing this, he might be alone in being able to transform these digitally fragmented sounds into catchy melodies (well, he and Fennesz). "Little Edo" and its partner, "Your Face Looks Like a 15th Century Turkish Carpet," manage to transform these fragments into a nice, upbeat melody, complete with falsetto harmonies that wouldn't be out of place on a Donald Fagen record.
-Michael Heumann (Stylusmagazine, USA)
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This collaboration began during a performance at Tonic in NYC celebrating the release of Willits' Folding, and the Tea, still one of my favorites on Deupree's 12k label. Willits' style of guitar processing, a method he calls "folding," involves the digital reassembling of plucked rhythms and melodies in a way that resists both fragment pile-up techniques and a tired glitch aesthetic. The accurately "folded" results show evidence of computerized cuts, false stops, and redirections, but each piece also retains the timbre and irregular sustain of the guitar itself, as if Willits' laptop were just another pedal at his feet, each uncanny alteration arriving seamlessly, swift as the click of a heel. Folding would not be as impressive, however, if the guitarist's playing were not so underhandedly melancholic. Without the rolling minor chords of someone like Fennesz, Willits brings emotion to his music in a more subtle way, producing fragile, staggered tonal clusters, taking on weight only as they are creased and misaligned during the "folding" process. The "tea" to which his debut's title refers is clearly not the skyward, psychedelic brew filling fellow lap-tarist Joseph Suchy's glass, but more like a strong herbal black, the kind meant to accompany sitting and staring into surfaces. Taylor Deupree's earthbound approach to micro-tonal sound arrangement is a perfect match for the concentrated, tactile element of Willits' work. Fostered by the growth of his 12k imprint, Deupree's now-mature style has developed around a minimalist dissection of sound, a mapping of sound particles in a way that, like Willits', avoids an obsession with glitch-ist process, or deconstruction per se. Instead, Deupree, along with the expanding 12k roster, favors a highly suggestive magnification of sound events that feels wholly related to human gesture and the surrounding world, full of miniature drama and plaintive tug. Most of the music on Audiosphere 08 comes from live sessions where Deupree uses Willits' guitar, run first through the folding box, as source material for his microsound investigations. The live setup creates a kind of circular dialogue resulting in some remarkably focused compositions. Up close, the product of the collaboration is predictable: the dominance of Willits' guitar gives the tunes a buoyancy and a more present melodic portion than Deupree is used to, and the latter's position in the background situates the guitar's colorful folds in a crisp stew of tiny sounds, ranging from the static skips and jumps more typical of Deupree's solo output to assertive drones, pulsing as if stripped from the core of a plucked string. At greater remove, isolating each musician's contribution becomes not only impossible, but a easily forgotten interference in the enjoyment of these tracks, so much so that the two solo live tracks also included make for an interesting look at just how much one of these guys brings to the table. As a release, Audioshere 08 holds up surprisingly well among the intimidating previous output of its contributors, and as a collaboration, this music is a stunning achievement, a beautiful rounded sound that leaves me hoping this duo will record again.
- Andrew Culler (Brainwashed.com, USA)
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It's fantastic stuff, particularly because it manages to take the best parts of both Willits' and Deupree's own music and mesh them together into something that resembles both artists' work without copying either. Deupree's melancholy fuzz blurs seamlessly with Willits' pinprick guitar explorations, while deep, piercing bass tones slide up and down, chirpy bee snaps in and out of existence, and a thousand other sounds creep in and out of the soundscape. In short, there are a lot of interesting sounds here, but what makes the music so interesting (what makes it music, not a lot of noise) is the way that each work, each collection of sounds, captures a specific mood, be that antagonism ("Simple Sleep"), sleepy confusion ("Morning Mochi"), or happiness ("Jasmine"). Deupree and Willits, in their separate works, are each capable of creating nuanced, delicate soundscapes using their own, distinct musical pallets. Here, however, sharing their musical tools with one another, they've managed to create something that neither could create on his own. This is the definition of collaboration.
-Michael Heumann (Stylusmagazine, USA)
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... Fonica, Whitman and Roux are a gradual build to E*A*D*G*B*E's stunning centerpiece, seven related and connected tracks by San Francisco composer Christopher Willits called "Seven Machines for Summer". Willits' technique is to sample a number of plucked single guitar notes and then arrange them into pieces with relatively light processing. "The Baroque Machine", for example, consists of computer-assisted guitar runs, Takemura-like clicks, and what sounds like organ but is probably processed feedback. His rapid and repetitious style owes something to classic minimalism (occasionally I'm reminded of the Reich piece "Electric Counterpoint", written for Pat Metheny), but Willits' method is more overtly melodic and pop oriented. It's immediately catchy and emotionally engaging.
Willits occasionally has a passage in "Seven Machines for Summer" that could have been played by a live guitarist, but that would have been boring. Instead, there is a stiffness and slightly "broken" quality in his digital arrangements that inject a pang of melancholy to feelings of joy. His tracks move gradually to the climax that is the almost painfully gorgeous "The Fall in Love Machine". This finale reprises the theme of "The Baroque Machine" but fleshes it out into a chattering music box symphony. Finally, after his seven-track series, Willits closes the compilation an unrelated short piece called "Champagne and Soda", a darker piece with an almost industrial texture. Had Willits put "Seven Machines for Summer" on its own EP, it would have been one of my favorites of 2003. As it is, his work anchors this occasionally spotty but ultimately excellent compilation.
-Mark Richardson (Pitchforkmedia, USA)
See this full review of the compilation at pitchfork.
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.... Ah, but all this other music is just a prelude for the true center of this album, the eight tracks by Christopher Willits, whose Folding, and the Tea was a gem from 2002. Whereas the earlier works were claustrophobic, elliptical, and obtuse, Willits' work is wide open, happy, bubbling, and free. Interestingly enough, these are the only songs on this album where the guitar itself is clearly audible; that is, the digital manipulation, while still making its impact on these songs, does not completely eliminate the guitar sounds and effect. If anything, Willits managed to take the basic emotional core of this guitar sound and blend it seamlessly with subtle, haunting digital effects. ... Willits' music here (and, for all I know, Willits himself) celebrates both the history and the future of music not by denigrating or masking the guitar but by altering its sound and recreating it, freedom and mobility intact.
-Michael Heumann (Stylusmagazine, USA)
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"Iron Willits" - The layers of guitar melody mapped through Christopher Willits' laptop echo in shifty compositions that are effectively lulling and precariously
engaging. Live, Willits grips his guitar onstage in front of his laptop,
subtly modulating his incessant hooks and warping seemingly cyclical
patterns into whole new movements. Check out his mind-twisting "Seven
Machines for Summer" on the "E*A*D*G*B*E" compilation (12k), which captures
such "electronics" on record.
- Ethan Goldwater, SF Bay Guardian (4/28-5/4/04)
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Over the course of the polymorphously lovely Folding, and the Tea, Christopher Willits joins the ranks of fellow laptopists Oren Ambarchi and Christian Fennesz cementing the cyborg relationship between guitar and granularism. Enthralled with the regenerative software that makes tracks such as 'Lichen' and 'Poa' the aural equivalent of rug-weaving in Photoshop, Willits' music is all about soft haiku and pensive sparkle until the subdued thunderoars of 'Scrims' trade clicks for cool clamor. His panoply of sounds aren't extraordinarily variable < all originate out of similar interlocking string/data patterns, but the dexterity of the macrame on hand displays a remarkable grace that renders such considerations moot. Compositionally unique among his peers, Willits keenly grasps the geometry of his muse and his music; curious to see what other sound choices he'll further extract from his iToolsbox.
-Darren Bergstein (e/i magazine, USA)
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The dismemberment of a guitar sound can be all consuming and exciting at the same time, especially if its metamorphosis is being treated by Christopher Willits. Currently living in San Francisco, this young artist (also active in the fields of painting, sculpture and video art) has been able to create a relentlessly beautiful and original album. Deconstructing guitar chords in a indeterminate way, he has then structured these sixteen tracks on the border of melody and glitch by sudden intuition. So you can go through peaceful rows of granular sounds ('Scrims') or waver between clicks e acoustic intermittences ('Filtered Light'), dealing with the pure pleasure these sounds are able to convey. A real electroacoustic heaven which finds a commemorative moment to sweetness in the 18 seconds of 'Drifting Below The Oak...', as well as its obscure and melancholic side in 'Fold, Refold, Folding Again'. An album not to be missed and bound to be remembered for a long time by the followers of the genre.
-Michele Casella (Neural, Italy)
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12k's latest signing has a background in Kansas City post-rockers Saturn138 and studied structure-generating processes in music at Mills College (whose alumni include John Cage and Steve Reich). Not surprisingly, the basis of Folding, and the Tea is the processing of acoustic guitar notes through software to create complex, latter-day systems music. As is often the case with these exercises (Dan Abrams' Stream and Fennesz's Instrument are close parallels) the record is constituted by warm, drifting tones suspended amidst glitch and detritus. Sometimes, as on "Or with the Tea," the guitar lies naked on the surface, all but unsoiled by a modicum of "errors," strummed as though this were Papa M feeling particularly picturesque. Most of the time, through, the instrument becomes unrecognisable, sunk into software code to leave jittery traces. If it's hardly a novel idea, it is executed with sufficient panache as to be well above any suggestions of stagnacy.
Postmodernist theory underpins the album (the "folding" in question is a Deluzian notion, an irruption on an otherwise undifferentiated surface), but this is an accessible affair and it really isn't necessary to grapple with the academic literature to get a kick from Willits' music. Like work from labelmates Sogar and Shuttle358, Folding, and the Tea conveys an emotive side, and whereas those other acts are imbibed with poignancy and sadness, Willits sounds as though he's grinning his rear end off. This is a very literal take on the notion of laptop music as "folk music," since that's exactly what it sounds like - the downhome country blues scrambled, but its farmyard spirit never completly erased. Another kick in the teeth for the smug acolytes who dismiss this stuff as too minimal for its own good.
-John Gibson (Grooves, USA)
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A sequel to Pollen (Fallt), "Folding, And The Tea" is the fourth record of Christopher Willits, newcomer on 12k. At first sight quite close to Sogar or Mitchell Akiyama (author of a sumptuous Temporary Music on Raster-Noton), the musical world of this californian guitar player, former student of Pauline Oliveros and of Fred Frith, is part of a promising renewal of the 'aesthetics of failure' as put into words by Kim Cascone in his analysis of the course followed by 'post digital' music, starting from the first records of Oval based on scarified CDs. Far from squeezing to the last drop the glitch strategy to offer nothing but a vain and an aesthetic rehash, Willits makes the most of one of its aspects-sound fragmentation- to insert it into an original perspective (again) borrowed from Deleuze: that of 'the fold'. Conceived as a mere demarcation in a continuous form, the folded line 'retains the fluidity of the wholeness'. Writing on 'the division of the continuous', Leibniz deemphasizes the image of sand with its separate grains, preferring the image of the sheet of paper that can be forever folded. Generated using computer and guitar, the sixteen pieces of "Folding, And The Tea" thus generate a music of origami where each click-beat becomes a crease in a sound continuum, a fold in a soft tonal matter. In this respect, the exploration of the sound properties of symmetry makes "Folding, and the Tea" stand out against other improvised music. Willits achieves an utterly magnificent tender and moving record.
-Maxime Guitton (Chronic Art, France) best of 2002
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...here's the debut CD by Christopher Willits, a guitarist with a master's degree in electronic music from California's authoratative Mills College. Its a work of fine rhythmic and melodic geometries; tiny sketches which spontaneously spring forth from the live electronic elaboration of delicate guitar chords. It's the stellar dust of glitch encrusted on the good old six strings set in a dialectical brood over continuity and fragmentation. Here, the implication of the fold (even the the sleeve is perforated with folds!) has been borrowed from the writings of Leibniz and Deleuze.
-Nicola Catalano (Blow Up, Italy) best of 2002
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Immediate comparisons to Oval and Fennesz will be the first thing coming to mind upon listening to "Folding, and the Tea". While they are mildly reasonable, they are also far too easily convenient to accurately describe what Willits does on his debut release for 12k. Digitally processed guitar washes flow in and out of sync with one another, creating rhythmic patterns that are implied, rather than jumping out directly to the front of each composition. Tasteful melodies and harmonic patterns tease one another with great frequency and the interplay between harmony and dissonance. What sets Willits apart from the pack is his attention to detail and concentration on guitar textures. In a style where releases of this caliber are few and far between, this one is definitely worth seeking out.
-Rob Theakson (Allmusic.com, USA) best of 2002
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...And this is, perhaps, why Christopher Willits... is so interested in the idea of fusing old instruments with digital signal processing: not to create new sounds but to redefine the old sounds so that we hear them, and experience them, in ways that challenge our fundamental attitudes towards music, towards sound, and even towards life itself. Folding, and the Tea is a powerful work, as unsettling as it is inspiring.
-Michael Heumann (Stylus/Haunted Ink, USA)
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Christopher Willits brews a particularly particulated blend of experimentronics... his Folding, and the Tea are awash in ever-rippling fragments of unknowable resonance... Surprisingly guitar-like jangles introduce Willits' disintegrated sound styles with opener 'Or With The Tea' the warm strums erupt into a stuttering stream... like a sunbeam diffracted by semi regular fan blades. Less-identifiable tones burble fountain-like from lichen (or given that title, perhaps spore-like). As if a distant blast furnace were mightily churning miles below, cool seismic rumbles score Scrims, an appealingly continual sound stream, laced with micro sizzles. Returning to the more-intermittent mode, Filtered Light (7:57) gleams and pulses simultaneously luxuriant and many-fractured, an odd combination of states. A little bit of crackling-vinyl texture leaks from Drifting Below The Oak And Redwood Trees... (0:18) before skewed rays begin spurting from Pentagonal as if it were a crazy light-throwing circus. The radiant low thrums of Fold, Refold, Folding Again aren't quite as atomized as some of its forerunners, and delicately spiraling Free Singing Strawberries For Children maintains a quixotically pleasant bleat-and-glimmer..
-David J Opdyke (Ambientrance, USA)
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Lo smembramento del suono di chitarra pu-- essere struggente ed allo stesso tempo entusiasmante, specie se a curarne la metamorfosi ? Christopher Willits. Attualmente domiciliato a Chicago, il giovane artista (che ha anche coltivato forti interessi per pittura, scultura e video art) ? riuscito a creare un album spietatamente bello ed originale. Decostruendo accordi di chitarra in maniera non predeterminata, ha poi strutturato queste 16 tracce al limite fra melodia e glitch, facendosi guidare dall'intuizione del momento. Ci si pu-- allora imbattere in placide distese di suoni granulari come in 'Scrims', o si pu-- ondeggiare fra click e intermittenze acustiche come in 'Filtered Light', fiduciosi nel semplice piacere che i suoni raggruppati in 'Folding, And The Tea' sono capaci di trasmettere. Un vero paradiso elettroacustico che ha nei 18 secondi di 'Drifting Below The Oak...' il momento commemorativo per la dolcezza delle tonalit- medie e che mostra in 'Fold, Refold, Folding Again' il lato oscuro e malinconico dell'album. Imperdibile e destinato a durare molto a lungo negli ascolti degli appassionati di genere.
-Michele Casella (Neural, Italy)
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My enjoyment was refined by someone naive to contemporary outside music..
I put it on at 4am duing the come-down back at my place after an epic
acid-fueled batchelor-party trek through all of GG park and around the
coast in the fog, and he begged me after half an hour to please put brian eno
back on because 'folding...' was undoing him and he was going to go
insane.
- anonymous critic (San Francisco, USA)
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"Guitarists were among the representatives of the electroacoustic spectrum, most notably through Christopher Willits, whose agitated improvisation played out like a hopped-up, glitch enhanced iteration of 'infinite guitarist' Michael Brook's performances from the early 90s. Willits's mastery of radical shifts in tone color and the fact of his being, at root level, a great guitarist capable of leading audiences wherever his muse will next lead, are both commendable."
-Richard Henderson (The Wire, Jan 2002, is.215, UK) --
"Christopher Willits positioned himself and his electric bass behind both a Powerbook and a MIDI command station. Just shy of transforming into a Rube Goldberg mechanism, Willits addressed all three implements with the adroitness of a medieval harpist. The processed fragments of staccato picking came to resemble Steve Reich's work with the Pulse Gate and evoked the cyclical aura of his Four Organs."
-Richard Henderson (The Wire, Jan 2002, is.215, UK)
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Standing in the back of the room, watching Christopher Willits on the darkened stage, his face illuminated by his laptop and a flickering constellation of tabletop candles flashing off the faces of a roomful of rapt listeners, it seemed about as far from the administered life as you can get.
-Philip Sherburne (Needle Drops, 12/07/02 , USA)
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Stylus Magazine - Christopher Willits Interview - 09/29/06
Christopher Willits is a busy man. As one-third of Flössin, he creates the melodies that float through Zach Hill’s harried drumming and Miguel Depedro's wild electronic maelstrom. As one-half of North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, he teams up with former Medicine guitarist Brad Laner for inspired avant-pop experiments. Willits is probably more popularly known, however, for the music he makes under his own name. As one of the more accessible acts on the 12k label, Willits guitar playing captivated on his 2002 disc, Folding, and the Tea. Willits returns this year with a record under his own name on the Ghostly International label called Surf Boundaries. We caught up with Willits via e-mail in advance of the record to talk about his various projects.
Much has been made of your custom-made software in the past when talking about your music. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Is it based on Max/MSP?
It’s based in Max/MSP, but I have new setup recently. I'm now making plugins using Max and using those in Ableton Live. So, the bones of the sync system are now in Live and funky processing, folding, cutting, strange sample mapping, and whatever else happens in these plugins that run in sync with it all.
Have you found Ableton to be a better tool than Max—or is it apples and oranges?
Yeah, they are very, very different tools to me. Max is my favorite tool for making my own processing systems and customizing things—and Ableton is great for live sequencing. But I don't even compare in terms of what is better, because they complement each other so much in what I do.
Your new record under your own name—and your project with Brad Laner: North Valley Subconscious Orchestra—are both appearing on Ghostly International. Any reason for this change?
(Label head) Sam Valenti IV got in touch after he heard some stuff from the EADGBE comp that 12k did in 2003. So I started talking with Ghostly about collaborating a few years ago, and the first thing we did together was the SMM Vol. 2 12” in late 2004.
I was really impressed with working with them and the music I was visualizing was less 12k in sense—it was growing, twisting, and overlapping into a new focus. I dig the diversity that Ghostly is going for and I feel that Sam's approach to managing the label gives my music a lot of breathing room to evolve.
I don't want to box in what I do, so working with a label that respects pushing things into some new turf is key to me. I am definitely still planning on working with 12k for specific projects, but Ghostly is now my base camp.
Was there a particular impetus for this new focus or were you always interested in branching out your sound past the minimal 12k style?
I've always been making music that's different from things I've done in the past. I just follow my creative energy, I try not to lock myself into any specific formula style-wise. In 2004 people were asking me the same question about the Flössin release. And before that about my 12k work. I just follow my intuition in terms of what I feel like making at any given time.
Some of your time at the Kansas City Art Institute was spent studying video art. What part does video play into what you’re doing musically?
Editing video is actually what got me into digital audio in the first place. I was always playing guitar, making noise, painting, and doing strange sound installations, but the sequencing and editing of audio in a nonlinear way didn’t happen for me until I got into video around 1996 or 97.
So, on a technical level, it was revolutionary in terms of my process. I started blending my band's sounds with strange montage sequences.
And I think that despite the musicality of a lot of my work, I always approach sound/music in a very material way—the same way I edit video. So I think starting with video help to dodge any hang-ups about specific music sequencing and editing.
I’m finally getting back into more filmmaking after a few years break, which I’m excited to explore with my sounds more.
Do you think that approaching music in a more material way hampers your ability to make “song-based” music?
No, but in a way I hope it does. I'm interested in trying to make new forms. I've always been interested in making music that branches out of the traditional pop form, while still feeling somewhat familiar. I'm not against the mainstream structures of pop, I just find it more interesting and challenging to produce other things. I want to hear different patterns.
Do you have any specific plans for video and your future work? It certainly seems like Surf Boundaries might lend itself well to visuals…
I’m working on videos for live shows right now, and I’ve also had some specific short film ideas brewing for a while that I'm excited to get off the ground. And, yes, I definitely have some "Surf Boundaries" video stuff brewing.
What’s your favorite moment on Surf Boundaries? (Perhaps a happy accident or a particular sound that took an extremely long time to get just right…)
I think the moments that I am singing in harmony with Latrice Barnett. The songs are about shifting love, and being honest—and eventually the need for us to let go of each other, even though it hurts to do so. It's also about feeling so strong about the decision to set each other free, to be great friends, and devoted artists. This LP was in production during all that.
Surf Boundaries has a whole host of different instruments. Did you bring in collaborators for that? If so, was it a process in which you knew exactly what you wanted—or did you allow them to improvise to see what happened?
I never know exactly what I want. The music drives me to make decisions. Solve problems.
I just follow things that I'm hearing in my head, and once they make it out into the air I let them dance a round a bit to settle and find what they want to do. Seriously, I have no idea how this stuff ends up in the final shape that it does. It’s hilarious, and I love that about it.
For the other performers I recruited for Surf Boundaries, I would write some notes down or give other performers some constraints to work within, and then I would edit and process those results. Exactly the same way I generate guitar pieces—general ideas, improvisations, refinement, or erosion, but all working through a broad emotional or spiritual vision. I feel like I become so much of the process that my energy is encoded into these sounds.
How many people ended up working on Surf Boundaries?
I recruited friends for strings, horns, drums, and a couple friends helped me with the recording, so nine total. Latrice, Brad Laner did some overdubs on one track, Adam Theis and Alison Sawyer did the horns, Gabe Coan and Sam Ospovat the drums. I’m so happy to have all these brilliant friends around me to help grow these sounds—my name is on this record but a lot of collective energy made it happen.
How did you meet with Brad Laner, and what led to you working together as the North Valley Subconscious Orchestra?
We met through a mutual friend, Miguel Depedro (kid606). I told Miguel to tell Brad what’s up, since I've been a huge Medicine fan for years. (We're talking high school soundtrack level.) He was a very influential guitarist to me—up there with Hendrix, Lee Ranaldo, and Van Halen. And so he got us in touch. I had no clue that Brad even knew who I was, let alone that he was into my music. We hit it off on the phone, then hung out when I was down in LA, ended up improvising for a few hours and had a blast. It felt so natural, so we did it a few more times and decided to make a record. I never told Brad how starstruck I was when we first kicked it. Hopefully he's not reading this!
Can you tell us a bit about the older bands that you were in before your 12k work?
While I was in art school I had a project called saturn 138. That was a main focus for about that years. We were making some really messed-up tunes and videos from about 1997 until 2000. Before that I had this psychedelic noise funk band. Lots of long guitar solos and feedback experiments. Sonic Youth, Hendrix, Sly Stone all rolled up together. That was pretty much my first real band, I was 14. I think our big climax was opening for the original Puddle of Mudd in Kansas City before Fred Durst signed them. That was possibly the most wack bill ever: Strange stoned noise funk psychedelia with maximum butt rock.
Why do you think that you’re moving more and more towards composed elements in your work?
Hmm, yeah. It’s funny because I have not really changed my creative process that much since I was 13 years old or so.
I’m always just playing with different materials and listening to them and letting them take shape with gentle pushes and pulls.
But I think now it’s a more refined process. I'm being more patient and more efficient with my own creative energy. I understand better the overall vision and relationship I have with sound and energy in general, so that sharpens my intuition within the process of making and experimenting. I definitely feel like I’m improving my creative process, which hopefully should happen as people get more experience.
It’s a mixture of improvisation, memory, concentration, and devotion.
People think I'm doing something new here, making songs with words and stuff, but I'm actually returning to ideas about song structure that I was playing with in old bands, even pre-12k releases. Avant-pop has always been a core idea to me—trying to push things into a fresh familiarity. It’s funny, what was avant-pop then is purple haze now. The market, the tools, the ideas of music are always evolving. It's anyone’s guess what will bubble up next.
How do you feel about people sharing your work via P2P networks?
Go for it, I hope it spreads the sounds to people. The North Valley Subconscious Orchestra release is the first digital only, object-less full-length release I've been involved with, so I'm really interested to see how it moves. I would definitely appreciate it if people download the files from emusic, bleep, or iTunes, rather than try to get it for free, it helps us out since we get some of that money. But I'm not freaking out about it. I trust that people will, if possible, trade us for the files. Its inevitable that people will share recordings and I encourage it, but it's also good to pull your own weight and support your people and sounds and culture. Whether it’s a download or a live show. and again, I trust that people will.
On that note, with all the free and low-cost tunes out there I really don’t understand how people complain that it costs $10 to get into a live show. If independent artists are not making much money from their recordings (few are) we've got to compensate them at live shows. It is not easy making left-of-center music, or pretty much any music or art for that matter—and still have enough money and time to propagate its growth. But, an easy way to support the stuff is with some cash. At Overlap.org we're going to be sharing a lot of content, working with creative commons, using CC licenses, to find that middle ground between making people feel like a criminal or letting everything fly free to the wind without any context of sharing. For instance we can communicate, via these CC licenses, that it's cool to share a certain file featured on overlap.org, but if you use it for commercial use it's going to be glaringly obvious, at least to that person, that they are not respecting the artists wishes. To me it's all about communication via clear licenses and trust that people will respect those boundaries—not enforcement. Amazing times these are.
Tell us a little bit about the Overlap project that you’re involved in.
Overlap.org is a lens that focuses on featuring forward-thinking independent music, video, images, and live events.
All kinds of artists and media types will be featured on Overlap.org. This work will come from two places; content submitted to Overlap via RSS feeds (blogs, podcasts, vlogs), which is open to the public (we call this the Overlap commons), or unreleased content that people involved in the day-to-day operations of Overlap decide to feature on the front page. This could be a digital-only audio or video release, or recordings from a live event that we promote. Basically, we will feature cool work, distribute/syndicate it, and hopefully bring some people together on the web and at Overlap-sponsored events. We have got a solid crew on board, and already have some fine content to share, so it's going to be interesting to watch it grow. The site goes live later this fall.
Last five records you listened to?
Douglas Lee - Ethnomusicology is the City: Informal Case Studies
Sun Ra - Lanquidity
Magma - Spiritual
Jeff Parker - Like-Coping
Coltrane - The Complete Africa/Brass Sessions
The Beatles - Revolver
Carpenters - Close to You
What have you got upcoming?
On October 17th the new solo release will be out on Ghostly. I’m also preparing Overlap.org to go live with some friends, as well as finishing the new Flossin release and recordings I made with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Taylor Deupree and I are finishing a release for early 2007, and Brad and I are going to begin the next North Valley Subconscious Orchestra LP.
Stylus Magazine - By Todd Burns - 09/28/06
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(Germany) > .pdf
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> interview
discussing Flossin, solo work w/ Ghostly International and 12k, bike riding, iraq, and the 2004 elections.
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