When Ode and Elegy contacted me about featuring his album on the blog, I had already decided that it would be featured. Ode and Elegy was also kind enough to answer some of my questions. This interview was conducted over email, since timezones were a concern.
Goat: In your statement on Invisible Oranges you mentioned that this is a very personal project, partly inspired by dissoociative episodes you had and your desire to express those in sound. Can you elaborate on how this is expressed in the lyrics and the concept oft he album?
O&E: Those episodes, when they occur, are a detachment from reality such that I believe that I have invented the world, that it is time to let it go, and I will never again see anything or anyone from it again. The grief and loss I feel then is profound and horrifying. But that phenomenon is not unlike confronting the reality of death, which we all share. The experience of life, for humankind, is a cumulation of past moments, all of which are lost. They exist in memory, and we can live with that loss perpetually through memory - this is the elegy. In the lyrics, the “heron” is the metaphor by which one views their memories and dwells within them. The “long song” is the collective grappling we commit as a civilization to preserve and celebrate the past - our little ongoing war against death.
There’s a bit of a narrative arc written into the lyrics, as they explore what loss means on an individual, collective, and worldly scale, and what confronting that means. But I leave that for interpretation. I tried to leave room in the lyrics for universality, so that an individual may derive what they wished from them, but these themes were always a driving force for me while I was making it.
Goat: You seem to want to inspire people more than anything else, asking only for the listener to have an experience in exchange for your album. Is this release strategy intertwined or tied to the lyircal concept of your album?
O&E: Well, the original idea was “let’s create a situation that puts a meaningful touch on the acquisition of this music”, that is why I asked for a gesture in trade for the music, a little personal “ode of the moment” for each listener. But I think the strategy was flawed - if someone has a genuine experience because of the music, then it would be my honor to hear of it, but I can’t expect someone to manufacture that kind of moment on-the-spot. So for that reason, I recently altered the text to ask people to share the music with loved ones. For us, that’s more valuable than monetary compensation, and may also lead to that genuine experience that I do so hope the music will inspire.
Goat: „Ode and Elegy“ presents itself as a continues, unbroken track, focusing heavily on Leitmotif ideas and extended builds. What are the challenges involved in writing such a piece of music and were the other musicians involved in the writing process?
O&E: I’m not sure I could write any other way, to be honest. I don’t have any talent for popular structure, and I really like music that rewards active listening. Most sections refer to other sections in various ways (melodically, harmonically, rhythmically, lyrically), partly I hope this gives a listener an unconscious sense of familiarity as they experience the track, but also a bit of the thrill of exploration when their ear makes a connection.
Harold was essential to the writing process, especially in the early years of writing it - he kickstarted most of the guitar writing, and is responsible for a vast majority of the vocal melodies. Others, like Reilly on bass, Greg and Chris on drums, and Alice on harp, brought their own talents to the composition, only lightly guided by me.
Goat: Was the writing process done before the recording began or did ethe work change fluidly other time?
O&E: Though I had some solid notions from the outset about how the song would flow, so much of it was dictated by process along the way. I think by the time we tracked guitars, the entire structure was fully decided, but up until that point it was a shifting thing. And most of the elements we tracked in our home studio, like auxiliary percussion and some vocal lines, we didn’t have properly planned out until we got a good take of something. It was emergent more than planned, but in order to not have whimsy and chaos, to have it feel like a cohesive composition, I tried to be very intentional about every decision along the way.
Goat:You mentioned that the creation of the album took quite a long time. Was the coordination of the classical session musicians a challenge and if so, what did it all involve?
O&E: Both Laurels String Quartet and Four for Music are groups that specialize in recording sessions, so logistically it was very easy to work with them. But the preparation for the sessions was insane at times, because I am not really of that classical world. For instance, I am not the most proficient at writing notation, so creating the scores for the performers was quite a challenge. The music for the strings wasn’t even completely written when we started the four-day session, so I’d be leaving a session, and working all night on composing and notating in my hotel room, and catching two hours of sleep before I went back into the studio. And as a result, I was delirious and drunk on joy to hear those sounds be produced by those wonderful performers.
Goat: You recorded the musicians in studios that are quite a bit apart. Listening tot he album I noticed that the different spaces are quite audible. Were the recording spaces chosen with the specific room sound / reverb in mind?
O&E: That’s an interesting thing to notice, and is a credit to your ear! The studios were mostly chosen from convenience, because they were most accessible to the chosen performers. I would say that much of the mixing approach was actually to mitigate those various room tones, to attempt to give a cohesive sound environment to the entirety of the piece. But before that was decided on, one very conscious decision was to track vocals (specifically some of the clean vocals heard early and late in the track) in the Integratron, which is an entirely wooden structure with quite a characteristic reverberation. But, to help in the homogeneity of the soundscape, I think the mixing engineer D. James actually scrapped the room mics to those takes. Hopefully the effect is that the music transports you to its realm for the duration.
Goat: In your statement on Invisible Oranges, you mention that you find the work to be flawed. If you had unlimited time and resources (and a willingness to continue), what would you change about the album?
O&E: Thankfully, at this point, I would answer “not much”, there are a few takes I would edit differently, that I only caught too late into final mixing. But I poured hundreds of hours into editing the material, and D. James worked for a full year on the mixing and mastering processes for it. So we were thorough.
At various times, while working on it, I did lament that the entire structure of the piece was flawed and could have been approached with even more intention. But that was when I was deep inside of it and driven by a ravenous insecurity. Since the final master I have begun to get some distance on the work and believe I can hear it more objectively, and I can finally see how the tens of thousands of little choices made all served the larger purpose, and I am really pleased with its final incarnation.
Goat: What are some similarities to this projects „precursor“, „The Pax Cecilia“? What are some differences?
O&E: Even though there are forty performers credited on this work, and six who contributed to the writing of it, I was a tyrant. I wanted this to stand as my personal musical statement to the world, and to that end every final decision came down to me. Ultimately that may mean that the music has less dimension than what The Pax Cecilia produced, as that group operated democratically. Five people coming together with ideas and compromise, I have to believe, creates a more dynamic product, than one monomaniacal vision. But, that said, this is absolutely a continuation of what I contributed to the Pax Cecilia, it has the same impulse and the same ethos, and the same belief in the transcendent power of music.
Goat: Is the project is done or if it will continue in some other way? Maybe with another cohesive long-form? I imagine turning this into a touring act would be near impossible. O&E: One of the initial conceptions of the work is that it would be presented as part of a multi-media live concert, with avant-garde dance, in a makeshift art gallery space. As we got a better grip on the scope of the music, though, we pivoted toward making the recording the thing in itself, with no concern about how to recreate it live. As it is, to play the piece properly, it would require over 100 performers and multiple engineers, i believe. The logistics of it would just be maddening.
The consideration remains to make a live arrangement of some of the material to play with a much-reduced ensemble, but something I cherish about the project is why the song, album, and band all share the same name - it is a complete work in and of itself. It's not part of a larger discography, there is no merch associated with it, no tour dates - the entity is the song is the experience of listening to it. Self-encapsulated, I think that serves the work best. That's not to say that I won't produce music in the future, but if so, it will stand apart from Ode and Elegy.
Ode and Elegy´s self-titled album is available for free through their website, https://odeandelegy.com/.