Interview with Luke Wyland (AU) = LW
Interviewer : Kyoko Yabusaki = KY


Luke Wyland


AU

KY : First of all, Please tell me your basic background.Where are you from? Where have you been growing up?

LW : I was born in Columbus, OH in 1981. Spent the first fifteen years of my life there and then moved to New Hampshire for High School, which is in the Northeastern part of the United States. From there I went to the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and then found my way out to Portland Oregon.

KY : Now you are based in Portland / Oregon. What do you think about your life in Portland when you compare it and where you lived before? And Portland seems to have original underground music scene. what do you think about it?

LW : Portland works really well for me. It's an incredibly beautiful city that feels much more like a large town with woods and volcanoes that remind me constantly of whats outside of the concrete and brick. It's also a bit easier (though getting harder) to get by on very little here when you compare it to other major cities..New York, San Francisco, Chicago…etc.
As for the music scene I've been very fortunate to find many friends to play with.
There is a certain insularness amongst the smaller groups of friends but all in all it's a bustling city of great music.


KY : What was your opportunity to start playing music?Also I heard that you have learned the classical piano when you were child.Please tell me your opportunity to start playing the piano.

LW : I began playing piano when I was 4. A relative hodgepodge of classical training that left me with some good muscle memory, but not much musical theory. As I was growing up it became a mandatory thing my mother made me do all the sports I was playing. Had to sit each evening with a timer atop my piano for half an hour. Which I guess is relatively easy considering what some parents put there kids through.

At the age of 13 I quit to focus more on sports. Soccer, gymnastics, diving..you name it and I most likely played it at one point in time. Only after we moved to New Hampshire did I start to make music again. Was actually how I met my first friends there. This was also the time of my first experiences in a band. We primarily played the music of the Grateful Dead along side our own free improvisations heavily influenced by the 60's and 70's psychedelia. After High School I passed up going to school for music to study visual art at Massart in Boston. Half way through art school I did began focussing more on composing and writing songs. Fortunately I was able to do this at my school easily.

KY : What is your oldest memory about the sound in your childhood?The sound means music or the sound itself...Whatever it sounds.

LW : My mother was an aerobics instructor from before I was born. She was even teaching classes with me in the womb and I spent the first few years of my life in the day care at her aerobics studio. It's a vague memory but I can recall the glass window that separated the actual dance studio from the children's room and the muffled 80's dance beats that were being played on the other side.

KY : I heard that you studied at the art college. Was your major Music?please tell me your major at the college.

LW : The Massachusetts College of Art has a very unique program called the Studio for Interrelated Media. It's basically a student run open major that is loosely led by 4 to 5 faculty members. All of these teachers have different areas of expertise. One maybe be a computer arts specialist, another dance and performance, another 2D and video arts and so on and so forth. Eventually John Holland, who comes from the school of modern composition lead by such thinkers as John Cage, became my mentor. He was the first person to help me start thinking about structure and various ways to compose music unconventionally. Right before meeting him I was deep into the free improvisation world of music. I was practicing a real loose form of piano playing akin to such players as Cecil Taylor (though not nearly as amazing). After I began working with John I started to structure my ideas and from this sprung my first songs back in 2002.

Initially music was not my area of focus. I was much more into my visual work and the craft of wood working. I was primarilly focused on the construction of musical instruments and at one point wanted to be a professional wood worker who specialized in constructing custom instruments. However by the end of my senior year of school I was primarily recording and performing music. This is unusual for an art school in the United States. I still graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, where as most who go to college for music get a Bachelor of Music. Ultimately I think it aided my creative process and allowed me to find my own idiosyncratic approach to composing outside of the traditional schooling a music major might receive in college.

KY : We knew that you are a multi-instrumentalist from the credit of the album.You play so many instruments like the guitar, piano, accordion, keyboards, drums, percussions, melodica and etc...which is the best instrument that can express yourself? Or is there any instrument which made your fundamental? Also please tell me which instrument you use to compose the music.

LW : The piano is still where I feel most comfortable expressing myself. The accordion is in a close second. I spent a few years without a piano or keyboard of any kind and found a lot of new ideas in the accordion. Was actually how I first met Alec Dartely of Aagoo Records, the US record label I've been working with ever since. He was interested in putting out a solo accordion album..which has yet to materialize. Maybe when I'm a bit older.
I do compose on several instruments though..each giving a very different slant to my music.

KY : I heard that you started AU in 2005. What was your opportunity or idea to start the project AU?

LW : Originally my music moniker was "luc". This was a last minute decision right before my first album, peaofthesea, was released as up until then I had no name.
When I moved to Portland and the project started to become more of a live project with a full band I had to change the name as it felt pretty absurd introducing a group of people as my name. Thus the need to come up with a new one, Au.
As far as the why I started up this project was to explore my interest in Pop music and the craft of songwriting. In a certain sense was looking to connect and be apart of the continuation of the heritage I was born into.

KY : Is AU basically your solo project?Jonathan Sielaff (clarinets, saw), Mark Kaylor(drums), Sarah Winchester (vox) whose names were also on the first album's credit. Are they main players as your collaborators?Please tell me each player's backgrounds. And what does those people mean to you?Also, if you have any special person besides them, please tell me.That reminds me, you collaborate with Dana Valatka who is also a member of Jackie-O Motherfucker.Is he a member for live performance? We are the label which released JOMF's cd in Japan so that we would like to know the connection between AU and JOMF in detail!

LW : It definitely fluxuates a lot between being a solo project and a group one. I am the primary impetus behind all the songs, shows and business of it all. Thus far there has actually been 3 or 4 incarnations of the live band. Eventually I'd love for it to be a set line up. As it stands now it's a traveling/touring duo with my good friend Dana Valatka.

Jonathan Sielaff is an incredible clarinetist and guitar player, amongst other things. We met here in Portland back in 2003 playing together in the free improv community. This is also where I met Mark Kaylor, one of my favorite drummers of all time

Sarah Winchester and I have been long time collaborators after meeting in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art. She's the one who first taught me sing as I was backing her up on banjo and accordion. She's now playing in a great band here in Portland called A Weather.

The other main collaborator and featured singer on 3 of the songs on Verbs is Becky Dawson. She's an Idaho transplant to Portland who I met when we played a show with one of her other bands Ah Holly Fam'ly. This lady has a fire and voice all her own. RR vs. D was written for her voice and her voice alone.

They're all incredible collaborators that definitely help shape and write the songs as they evolve. Sometimes I'll write something specifically to work with someone's strengths. That way I know once we begin working together it'll go somewhere I couldn't expect it to as they start to inject there own visions into it.

Dana and I are the main touring group. Everyone else who's involved locally has other priorities that keeps them from touring for extended periods of time. Leading up to the recording of Verbs Mark Kaylor and Jonathan Siellaf were the main live band. We had been playing together for over a year and had done a few tours together. After Verbs was done and things started to line up for us to hit the road they both had to bow out of the band. They're both married and Mark just had a kid! So they couldn't exactly go traveling for months on end.

Once this took place it just made sense for Dana and I to team up and get the ball rolling. I'm very happy with where its come as a duo. Initially I get a lot of confusion from people who've never seen us live as the recorded music can be so vast and many headed. Ultimately the songs are just loose structures best reinterpreted when played live. I think you ask me about this in the next few questions. I'll wait to explain until then.

KY : I heard that you are making a cover song of Parenthetical Girls for the bonus track of japanese version CD. I found the name "Jonathan Sielaff" on thier new cd's credit of Tomlab and your name is also in the special thanks credit! It seems that you and Parenthetical Girls have a close relationship. Why did you choose their song for the bonus track?

LW : Everyone in the Parenthetical Girls are dear friends of ours. We did an amazing West Coast tour this past May where we played in each others band. There was lot of amazing nights and even more love by the time the trip was over.

The song we're covering, "Here's to Forgetting", has always been one of my favorite of there's and was by far the one I had the most fun playing live with them.
Plus there is a definite aesthetic connection between this song and a lot of my own compositions that just made it easily translateable.

KY : Each PG's music and AU's music has different textures but both can excellently combine the modern classical music and traditional american pops. And both music have the atomosphere as if I'm in the fairy tale's world. It seems to me that both bands relate each other at the bottom ... what do you think about my thought?

LW : I would definitely agree. While we may have different roots in terms of our musical backgrounds and tastes, there is a very similar atmosphere to both of our musics.

KY : Regarding photos of the members are on the artowrk of "verb", please tell me which is who?

LW : If you are looking at the inside cover of the album.

Upper left: Sarah Winchester
Upper right corner: Mark Kaylor
Middle; myself
Lower left: Jonathan Sielaff
Lower right: Becky Dawson

KY : Please tell me why you named the band AU?By the way, AU is the atomic symbol of Gold.Is there any relationship with it?

LW : Au was meant to be as ambiguous as possible. In general I've always had a hard time labeling things and would rather leave it open for interpretation as to not pigeon hole what it is that I'm doing.

Here are a few of its possible meanings.
Au= Gold
Au=Astronomical Unit (the distance from the earth to the sun)
au= in French: "the preposition à, often meaning to, in(to) or at, combines with the definite article to produce the following contracted forms."

KY : AU's music has very diversity musical elements such as traditional American pops/rock, traditional Appalachian folk, improvisation, minimal music (especially the tones of Charlemagne Palestine and Pauline Oliver's), savant-folk, primitive tribal music, drone, ambient music and noise... As if they are all multi-layered...I imagine that you are a record mania???Please tell me which musicians you were inspired by.

LW : Here's a relatively short list:
John Coltrane
Phil Elvrum (Microphones, Mt. Eerie)
Terry Riley
Steve Reich
Keith Jarrett
Miles Davis
Bjork
Music from Mali
Music from Laos
Gagaku music
Miles Davis
Pauline Oliveros
Paul Simon
Michael Jackson

KY : The album "verb" is very impressive and stimulating and I felt lots of things from the music. I felt the power in the real voice of human beings from a big choir. And the moment horn sections, hand crappings and cheering voice are all mixed, I felt that music became the anthem. When your naive and emotional vocal and lilting and powerful anthem are combined, I felt it is like a music which was sung at the imaginary religious celebration, and it is also like a carnival. I imagined if the carypso music of Bokononism in the book "cats cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut might be like AU's music? This carypso thing is really my personal impression though, your colorful and twisted-pop music evoked the music in the novel. And a lap steel sound in the song "summerheat" also evoked steel pan and that evoked Caribbean Sea and carypso...What do you think about my thought? Do you like Kurt Vonnegut?

LW : I love Kurt Vonnegut and spent a lot of time reading him when I was younger. I have always been in love with the Magical Realism of people like Vonnegut and Haruki Murakami. That slightly twisted sense of reality that's just believable enough to convince you of what would be rather impossible instances in everyday life.

And yes there is definitely some ceremonial celebration that plays into a lot of my music. I also spent a lot of time in high school listening to the communal bombasts of John Coltrane's large ensemble work and felt a real affinity to that form of expression. For me its this unknown search for something higher.

KY : In addition, in term of the colorful and twisted-pop music that evokes fantasy like a dream, this is also similar to my impression of the Wes Anderson's movie. What do you think about it? If you have known about wes anderson, please tell me your opinion about his works.

LW : I've been a big fan of Wes Anderson for years now. A man so complete in his craft and vision that this movies are like nothing else. I would say there is definitely a connection between my intentions with the creation of an album and what I feel Anderson is doing in his films. I'm always hoping to create something to be enjoyed as a whole…that if broken up the songs might stand on there own, but if listened to from start to finish create a world unto themselves that builds upon the chronological experience its entirety.
Its all about the details, which is something Anderson is a master of. The miniscule little parts that when added up create something so layered and multidimensional that its as if the work breathes on its own. A self contained world that growns and reveals more of itself each time a person revisits it. Kind of like building a personal relationship.

KY : I would like to ask about each song. There are lots of power and beauty mixed together in the the flow from "All My Friends" to "Are Animals" and it completely blew my mind. How was the song born? Was it like a jam session? Please tell me the background of those songs.

LW : "All My Friends" was done the last evening we were in the studio. We had invited as many people as we could to come sing. I expected far less than who actually came so I was immediately thrust into having to conduct and find something that worked with such numbers. It was an amazing evening with a lot of whiskey involved. I did have the song mapped out before the singers arrived, but as always new and far more interesting ideas came out of the group once they started singing… especially all the harmonies and the extra female singing that threads the song together.

"Are Animals" was more of a last minute thing that came from the inspiration of having all these people at hand. Especially as this song wasn't even completely recorded or composed when we recorded the vocal parts that eventually became such an integral part of the song.
We ended up recording a bunch of vocal samples of the choir doing different things..like singing from the lowest note they could to the highest. Once I had these things on tape I was able to place them accordingly once the song started to take place in my own home studio. This song was a total surprise and I'm still amazed that it came together the way that it did.

KY : And the next song "summerheat" (track3), I had a floating feeling like a rest after the celebration, siesta, the state between sleeping and waking, and daydreaming. I think this is the other character of this album. Please tell me how his song was born.

LW : This was heavily inspired by Jonathan's musical saw playing and the glass harmonica- an amazing instrument created by Benjamin Franklin that gives off this otherworldly sound when played.
I've always been interested in that state of mind right before falling into deep sleep. That self awareness of drifting from reality and the way your thoughts structure and play upon some pretty abstracted references. So in essence your interpretation is right on.
I also find respite in the slowness of sound. I'm a very anxious person and find a calm or lucidity that comes once I've brought the pace of the music to a point where time begins to stretch a bit. All a matter of perception but medicine all same to my usual hyperness.

KY : I would like to ask about the recording. What are you particular about AU's music at the studio? for instance, over-dub, effects and process of the sound etc...

LW : I've always made most of my music on my own equipment; a very simple setup of a mixer, Mac laptop and a few mics. This was the first time we spent the first three days of the recording process in a professional studio (Type Foundry Studio here in Portland, OR). We primarily used the time in this studio to record the louder and more live parts of the album, as well as to track a lot of the drum set stuff as I don't have the capabilities to do that at home. All in all I'd say a third of the album was recorded at Type Foundry. After this I brought back all the raw tracks and went at it in my attic studio for the next two and half months. Inviting people into lay down tracks when I needed them, but primarilly working alone. I had just recently quit my job and quickly fell into a 10-12 hour work day pretty much every day flushing out the songs.

A lot of the songs get rewritten or reorganized once I'm multitracking them on my computer. What had worked live for practical reasons might not be the most interesting representation of the song after I've had time to digest it in a different light. So I do a lot of over-dubbing and make use of the computer as a tool for composing. I don't however do much processing or apply many effects to the sound, enjoying more the pure tones of the instruments. If anything sounds effected it usually because I've recorded numerous tracks of the same thing and layer it specifically to help bulk up the sound and texture of the song…something I do quite frequently with my voice.

KY : I watched AU's live on Youtube. It was a short one though. I saw you were playing the keyboards and there was one more guy on the stage. 2 piece band.When you play AU, are you usually 2 people? Otherwise, how many people in the band basically when you play AU? And what kind of atmosphere does your live has?Also, what do you think about "live performance" and "recording"? what is the important thing on each activities?

LW : Here are some more links to some other songs on youtube from our album release show here in Portland. There is with choir of singers that are up front hugging the stage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_BFsRqZhnA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujXr2eEj6j0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsoMNzPpCSY

The live band is an ever changing thing. Locally its usually 4 or 5 people. On the road at the present its only 2 (due to other peoples obligations to family and jobs).
For real special shows it can be up to 25 people strong when we incorporate the choir and the drum corps.

I've always heard people explain our shows as immersive. We tend to blend a lot of the songs together and only take breaks between a few of them. There is also a lot of instrument changes that give a very eclectic presentation of the msuic. We also rely on improvisation quite a bit amidst the writtens songs using it to transition between different parts of the set.
So we'll map out a setlist with the songs being mile markers along the way. How we get to each is left the evening and how we're feeling. A lot of us have backgrounds in free jazz and improvisation. Keeping this practice alive helps the musics fluidity and keeps us from getting lazy onstage.

The duo you saw on youtube was myself and Dana Valatka (of JOMF) on drums. I play a pretty large setup that involves a Nord Stage keyboard, lap steel guitar, sampler, accordion, melodica and percussion all run through some pedals that allow me to sound like several people at once. Most everyone who plays regardless of the numbers sings and plays percussion, as well as numerous other instruments so it's a very malleable live show.

We also use a lot of texture in the music and enjoy going from one extreme to another whether its in regards to dynamics (from real quiet to real loud) or pacing (real hyper and carnivalesque to real dreamy and spacious).

The differences between the live show and the recordings can be dramatic. I've always approached songwriting with regards to the structures of traditional folk music or jazz. Leaving the songs open for reinterpretation so they can keep developing. For instance, the song "Boute" from our first album has now been through 4 very different incarnations.

Recording is a chance for me to dream big and incorporate as many different elements into an album as my mind can muster (hopefully without over blowing it or making it seem scattered). As well as the craft of piecing an entire experience together into an album format.

The live show is more about the performance and our connection to the audience. Ultimately I'm always trying to honor and adapt to the places we play and to push myself into being surprised by whats produced.

KY : I would like to ask about "improvisation" and "composing". Is the factor of improvisation important in your music?you compose and produce all tracks on the album but I think you would have the factor of improvisation in your live performance.

LW : Improvisation is very important in my music. Its where my strongest musical background is based. I came out of high school and college exclusively playing jazz and free music. Composing is relatively a new thing. Whenever I place too many restrictions on an idea that may sprout into a song it looses all of its momentum. Improvisation and/or a structure that allows a certain freedom allows the song to exist on its own…developing as we develop along side it.

KY : When you made the album "verb", was there a theme?Also please tell me why you named the album "Verb".

LW : As the name of the band is ambiguous so is the name of the album meant to be as well. I know this doesn't help you at all, but I hope to leave it open for interpretation. Sorry. The only over riding theme had to do with the actions of working with friends and the joy of collaboration.

KY : What does the album "verb" mean to you? Where do you position it in your music carrier? And how does the album influence to future AU？

LW : Good question. In many ways I'm still figuring what making this music means to me. Up until know its been more of a compulsive thing. Now that its become my business I'm a bit more confused. Artistically it was definitely a big step forward from conception to actualization and I feel like I learned a lot of valuable lessons in collaboration and the craft of songwriting and recording. Ultimately I'm constantly looking to the next album and all the ways I can push myself and the music into new realms. It's all a sort of game or test to see what can come out next. The duo setup has been bringing forth a lot of new ideas and while Verbs was definitely grandiose in its scale and the numbers involved, I think I'm more geared now to make something that's a bit more based in our live energy.

KY : Which musician is your favorite at the moment?

LW : Very hard question. I've been listening to less and less music these days but when I do I've really been enjoying the traditional music of Madagascar. Especially their group polyharmonic singing. Incredible stuff. Not really a favorite musician but something of interest I guess.

KY : Which musician would you like to play with or to collaborate with?

LW : To be honest I'd love to play with Joanna Newsom. Her harp playing and her sense of composition are like nothing else being made right now.

KY : Please tell me your future plan.

LW : As of now we'll hopefully be traveling internationally to tour in the next 6 to 8 months and will be recording after this first US tour in November.
Other than this I really have no idea. We left Portland at the end of September and are not really sure when we'll be back. Its quite refreshing actually as well a bit terrifying.