Voices #5
◦ “voices” is the place where we ask, artists reply and you read.
here we got:
Sunrise 2×4
answering some questions. We have already observed his field recordings / drone / dark ambient / ambient work here.
[1. IDEA]
■ The A. O.: The track from “The Drowning of Guanacaste” that we prefer is “The Blood Spilt From the Lizard Will Return To Wash Over Us All”. Can you tell us how it came to light?
► Sunrise 2×4: Sure, this track was mostly made up of aggravated acoustic guitar samples, recorded onto a microcassette and fed through various effect pedals. The guitar for this specific track was a fuller recording I had earlier from Jarret Luttrull who did the original sample of my older tapeloop song “music for your dying plants ii”
The electrical hums are inspired by the constant rain and lightning storms that we worked under, and every day they seemed to show up out of nowhere and drown out everything around us. I remember walking a mile on the beach back to my room from the bar, which would have been blissfully picturesque but in the distance I could see a lightning storm move closer and closer to the direction I was heading. So even at moments of complete peace, being alone on the beach there was always a looming threat of electrical storms. At one point a lightning strike took out all the cameras and electronics in one of the rooms we had set up and fried tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
The title of the track came from an unfortunate event with the passing of one of the older lizards that lived on the property. He had always sunbathed in the same spot near the restaraunt we all ate at, and he passed during our residency there. It’s hard to believe it wasn’t collectively our fault for being there.
[2. CREATION]
■ The A. O.: How do you usually approach composition? Do you start with a concept, a sound, a state of mind or what else? How do you generally proceed from the initial seed to the complete work?
► Sunrise 2×4: Most of the sound recording work I’ve done is started with an indescribable feeling. Usually brought on by fog, droning hums, quietness in the city, in the case of this record, lightning storms.
The whole Drowning of Guanacaste record was conceived during a 2 month work stay in Samara, Costa Rica. I had recorded a ton of field recordings, drone footage, film shots and sound samples while I was out there, and that became the foundation of the record. Our film crew had worked so many extremely long days, in the heat and the rain, and I wanted the sound to represent the absolute exhaustion that was the sludging around of that gig. I was feeling burnt out physically and mentally to such an extreme degree, but being held together by the insanely positive connection I had with a lot of the people I got to meet and work with. There was a strong group of us that got along so well, it made an indescribably exhausting experience into an unbelievably positive one. So I wanted there to be positive textures in the music that strung along the sluggish droning textures that were the foundation of every track.
[3. FEEDBACK]
■ The A. O.: What do you hope listeners feel or experience when engaging with your music?
► Sunrise 2×4: I always hope people put on the recordings and get into a mental space where they forget they’re listing to it. I make a lot of these sounds in my studio while working on other projects. Just making long, droning, repeating sounds for hours on end and piece together the best of them into compositions I think tell a story for myself. All of the tape loop work I’ve done are made in that way. I guess this record was the most intentional as far as storytelling goes. All of the samples are tied directly to that 2 month work contract in some abstract memory or another. Like in Midnight River Crossing, there’s a repeating sample from a George Jones tape, that came about from my good friend Grant telling me about the Mike Judge animated series about him. That memory is so strong, for whatever reason, that I became so obsessed with George Jones from that stay I ended up listening to his tapes over and over, and that wouldn’t have happened without him mentioning it out there. So most of the recordings I make are made up of thousands of those little abstract memories. Effectively I’m just making a diary for myself consisting of these tiny moments that bring me back to those things. The fact that anyone outside of myself stumbles upon, and then listens to them is really incredible to me.
[4. IDENTITY]
■ The A. O.: In a world saturated with digital music content, how do you try to keep your sound distinct and personally meaningful?
► Sunrise 2×4: I guess I answered a lot of that in the last question, but I really enjoy making all of my recordings with samples recorded to physical tapes. I’m growing increasingly obsessed with field recordings of actual events I’m at to bring a more humanistic recognition to the sounds. A lot of the droning sounds in the recordings are slowed down samples of things like HVAC units in the city and things like traffic sounds. Mixing that with long synth samples creates more textured droning sounds that I really like.
Eventually I’d love to just make 10+ hour long albums that are just those drones, because I become obsessed with filling my space with that.
[5. INFLUENCES]
■ The A. O.: Name three albums that you consider relevant to your musical path and why.
► Sunrise 2×4: ○ “Tim Hecker – Ravedeath 1972”
This is probably the album that truly started it all for me in a real tangible way.
I was in San Francisco visiting my friend Kyle and we were driving around the city super late at night. If anyone’s been there during extreme fog nights they know what that feeling is. The street lights are just huge colorful gradients that move with the fog and the rain. We were driving with the windows down and the heat full blast, and he said he had a song for this exact moment and put on the In the Fog series from that album. It was mindblowing how on point that feeling was described with the song. Years later I was in Ferndale, California for work and found myself on the beach completely encased in fog and that feeling came back again and I was compelled to try and describe that sound in my own way.
○ KMRU and Aho Ssan put out an album called Limen that I became obsessed with because of how perfect the album cover is compared to the music. For all the reasons I loved In the Fog for its observation of a feeling, I love this album. The intensity and the electricity of that album is so brutal and beautiful, I used that as a north star for The Monkeys Never Returned. That was my rendition of a feeling I had knowing we were about to be encased in a lightning storm and the buildup of that slowly getting closer to us. KMRU has so many great records but Limen just hits me in a way that is hard to put into words, which I guess is why there isn’t any on the album.
○ I recently became obsessed with Perverts by Ethel Caine. The whole record flows together so beautifully and is recorded in a way that is truly an inspiration to how I like to compose sounds. The drones, the textures, the samples, they all work so well together and are so hauntingly ideal for the vibe of the record. Years ago I made a sound called The Moon Was Dreaming that was made up of found recordings and samples that I made with tape loops that heavily remind me of the Perverts record; And I recently made a handful of recordings that are heavily inspired by the tone of her album. I’ve listened to that record so many times I’m seeing a lot of the influence seep into the newer stuff I’m working on for the next record I’m making called “I am in desperate need of a near death experience.” I want that album to be extremely long and bloviated with drones and samples, and I find myself listening to Perverts constantly and really being inspired by the tone of the whole thing.
[6. REGARDS]
■ The A. O.: Leave us with a quote you love.
► Sunrise 2×4: “Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals… except the weasel”