interview below by Marcus Whale, online at http://www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog/?p=3049 - and in print!


Brisbane laptop musician Andrew Tuttle records as Anonymeye. He’s
known as something of an Australian equivalent to the much championed
‘laptop folk’ sub-section of experimental music. But where other mainly
Western folk traditions have been appropriated or reconstructed into
revisions of themselves, Tuttle, as Anonymeye, more often deconstructs,
his steel-string acoustic guitar reduced to an often brutal digital
decay. At other times, particularly in his beat-focused 2006 debut,
Anonymeye Motel, Tuttle calls on his love of pop and the interesting
end of ’90s electronic music to prescribe new contexts again for these
folk ‘reconfigurations.’
With a second album to be released on Sound&Fury in April 2009,
The Disambiguation of Anonymeye, Tuttle is converging and extending
these influences, taking the guitar and its proponents in Anonymeye
into a wider, darker catchment of manipulations.
Anonymeye’s evolutions, however, have been unified by a curious
fascination with the very regular and ordinary existence of ‘middle’
Australia. When I first picked up Anonymeye Motel, I was
struck by its commitment to this aesthetic, from the cover art’s framed
picture of a post-War Australian motel, to the tacky font, liner notes
disguised as an instruction worksheet and the tracklisting transformed
into a room service menu, with complete descriptions of their
ingredients. The CD itself came pouched in its own piece of motel
memorabilia: green pool table felt.
The packaging seemed oddly alien for something so distinctly
Australian. So often, it seems that Australian musicians are attempting
to escape their origins by engaging in an international sound
aesthetic. Tuttle occupies a space that is both heavily contemporary
and staunchly local – at one moment allowing country-esque open tuning
improvisations, and in others ripping at the very fabric of the sound,
coming across as a jilted take on the distortion-heavy processing of
experimental luminaries Christian Fennesz and Greg Davis.
It is apt, then, that the beginning of the project, in a
geographical sense, almost mirrors this duality. Tuttle explains, “I
started working on Anonymeye in 2004 as a result of going on tour to
Europe with some friends, Brisbane ex-pat noise duo Kunt, and wanting
to have some of my own music so I wouldn’t have as many moments of
downtime. I’d played in various bands, but never anything solo. It was
a fairly spontaneous beginning, and one that I’d only really started to
think about after about half a dozen shows.
“The earliest Anonymeye material was quite sample-based, kind of a
country ‘glitch-hop’ constructed around copyright-free or at least not
too obviously copyrighted sounds and grabs from op shop records and
online databases. I had wanted to combine my interest in country music
and eccentric Australiana with cut-up electronic beats and my own
vocals. Over time, I gradually phased out sampling in favour of a more
organic approach, preferring to use the acoustic guitar as the primary
sound source, with live sampling and looping of these sounds.”
Certainly, this interest in “eccentric Australiana” is one that
becomes probably the most distinctive extension of Andrew Tuttle’s
character into the music itself. I’ve always pictured an adolescent
Tuttle in the 1990s, taking in the East Coast on a family holiday,
packaging these little memories, artifacts of times and places that are
more often regarded with distaste – Australia’s reputation for being
culturally (and otherwise) barren.
“The distinctive natural beauty of Australia is hard to ignore, with
the long open stretches of highway and its beach culture. As well as
this natural beauty, I’m also inspired by the quirks of Australian
culture, the humour, the spirit, and the faded glories of many of our
coastal tourist strips.”
“I think there’s a lack of pretension and an endearing camaraderie
through the Australian underground creative community, which is
probably both positively and negatively influenced by our geographical
isolation.
“While my interest in Australia and Australiana is probably less obvious in Anonymeye’s themes than it was around the time of Anonymeye Motel, I think it is hard for the location one lives and travels in not to inspire creatively.”
The material produced after Anonymeye Motel almost entirely eschewed
beat-based arrangements, and with it, went some of the focus on a
suburban or semi-rural Australian aesthetic. It would probably be
unfair to label this as a conscious choice of Tuttle’s, as all three of
his releases since the debut have been administered by external
parties: Australian labels Sound&Fury, HellosQuare and Curt.
The packaging of the first of these, Phase Two, released on
Sound&Fury, run by recently converted rural hermit Adam D. Mills,
turned attention away from the human elements of the Australian
landscape, taking on the kind of pastoral focus that is, by comparison,
quite popular among Australia’s experimental musicians. Encased in the
regular wax-sealed, handmade envelope of the sound&fury CD-R series
is a motion blurred photograph of a nondescript field, which, at a
stretch, could be categorised as the movement from the ‘motel’ into the
natural environment.
It is both opposite and parallel to the musical progression over the
same time. Phase Two, and the split releases with ex-pat British
electronic musician, Part Timer (HellosQuare) and Nottingham guitarist
Cam Deas (Curt), saw more rhythmically piloted electronic processing
give way to heavily eroded drones and free time, delay-based
processing. This freedom was itself manifested by a shift in attitudes
that Tuttle experienced.
“I have as much love for pop music and beat based music as I do for experimental and folk music, but since the release of Anonymeye Motel
I’ve found myself not wanting to be boxed in by a defined, rigid
structure when composing and performing. When I first started
Anonymeye, sound sources aside, there was structurally very little
different from other music I had made up to that point.”
“Since then, I’ve appreciated the difficulties and rewards of
creating music, at least for Anonymeye, that has a slow but definite
design.
“The tracks I recorded for the Sound&Fury, Curt and hellosQuare
releases are three of my favourite longer form improvisations for
acoustic guitar and signal processing, albeit edited down somewhat.
These are similar to my live performances, in that the relationship
between the guitar and the computer is total, with both elements
equally important to the end sound.
“I’ve found that the Anonymeye studio albums have incorporated less
of this one-take improvisatory relationship. Additionally, as I’ve
performed and improvised more, I have felt much more comfortable with
my processing abilities. It is a never ending journey full of change,
comfort, inadequacy and inspiration, but it is proving worthwhile thus
far.”
His interaction with the process of making music seems to have as
much to do with informing how he makes music as the actual, musical
result of those processes.
“The particular processes I utilise to create music, both
technological and intellectual, definitely influence the end result. Of
course, this isn’t entirely the case, and I wouldn’t persist with these
approaches if I wasn’t happy with the end result; or at least confident
of future paths I could explore.”
One important aspect of this process is the primary instrument used
for input, Tuttle’s hefty steel string acoustic, which he says helped
his musical tours around Europe on a holiday visa appear more legal in
the eyes of Dutch customs workers. It has also been as readily
identified as anything else, over the past three years, as the primary
tool of Anonymeye.
“Though it’s an instrument I still hold with some trepidation,
mostly because of overly earnest semi-professional singer-songwriters,
their busking counterparts, and MTV Unplugged style performances, the
acoustic guitar has largely defined and influenced the music I have
made as Anonymeye since around 2006.”
Tuttle offers this with lightness, almost suggesting that the
decision to use the instrument was more natural than by any artificial
choice. “I was performing with an electric guitar, however, it was used
only sparingly in live performance and on recordings, almost as an
afterthought. Since then, most of my live performances and recordings
as Anonymeye have been heavily reliant on the sounds created from this
instrument.
“I use the acoustic guitar in two ways, one as a solo instrument to
create structured compositions, and secondly as a sound source to be
looped and manipulated through digital processing. The guitar I own has
a wonderful tone, which is magnified when using complementary open
tuning patterns.”
It’s these open tunings that seem to give most Anonymeye recordings
this sense of earthiness, which, in the past, has worked as a strong
grounding for other elements.
A notable counterpoint to the acoustic guitar, and this “earthiness”
in much of Tuttle’s music, particularly on the forthcoming album, The
Disambiguation of Anonymeye is the use of square tones, saw tones and
sine tones. The resolution of these two rather disparate elements is a
fascinating process to watch unfold. The opening two pieces in the new
album explore a more mechanical, confronting sound than has previously
been seen from Anonymeye. Short, quickly decaying synth based pieces
that immediately, shockingly give way to a third track, beginning with
the measured, improvisatory guitar that has previously marked
Anonymeye’s style. This piece, and indeed, the rest of the album, sees
a remarkable tension between these forces, which had been built up over
the releases that separate Anonymeye Hotel and The Disambiguation of Anonymeye.
“I’m not sure that I have been able to completely manage a middle
point between the guitar and synthesiser and processor yet, but the
surprises the constant challenge continually brings I find incredibly
rewarding, albeit occasionally frustrating.”
“I have primarily used processed sounds and synthesised sounds as a
bedding to the piece I’m working on, as these sounds provide a certain
aural density that the acoustic guitar lacks. I’ve found though that I
approach both sound sources in a fairly similar manner live, in that as
a piece builds all the sounds contained continue to subtly influence
each other, and as an extension my thoughts on where to progress from
there.”
The Disambiguation of Anonymeye was produced in a number of
locations, as per Tuttle’s tendency toward movement (having moved from
Brisbane to Melbourne and back to Brisbane, as well as touring Europe
twice in two years). One particularly notable home during this period
of recording and editing was afforded by an invitation to record at the
Centre for Electronic Music in Rotterdam for four days, sparking a
number of joking comparisons to Rutger Zuydervelt, the enormously
prolific sound designer behind Machinefabriek. While Tuttle did not end
up releasing the full profits of this session as an album on its own,
the contribution its facilities, housed within the WORM artist-run
initiative, made to the shape of the album in its final form is
undeniable.
“Before coming to WORM, I had endlessly internally debated how I
would approach the session, but when I got there, I reasoned to myself
that I would be able to find inspiration from what surrounded me. I had
access to a mind boggling array of vintage modular and analogue
synthesisers and other equipment. It had the potential to either fail
or result in far too many hours of pointless jams, but I managed to
recreate an approach of improvisation in a multi-track studio
environment. I found myself tweaking with a synthesiser until I found a
sound I liked, running to the other side of the room to tweak another
synthesiser, run to my guitar, run back to another synthesiser, and so
forth, all with the convenience of editing capabilities later on.”
I first caught Anonymeye live quite late in the piece, at the launch
of the first Pow Wow release on Sydney label Feral Media, in 2006. At
the time, Tuttle was assisted by Jon Tjhia on keys and Alex Nosek on
guitar, the two members of Melbourne group ii. It was a curious context
to first experience him in action, but ultimately set me on the path of
finding the Anonymeye that has its roots in improvisation and in this
case, collaboration.
“I enjoy performing live as I get to play in front of a mix of
friends and strangers, enjoy other sights and sounds and occasionally
travel. The combinations of brief sound checks, bad sound, free drinks
and time pressures leave me more prone to error than I would be in the
home studio,” he says, with welcome frankness.
“I work fairly similarly at home and playing live, it is just the output volume that ultimately differs.”
The live realm has always been a difficult place for experimental
musicians, particularly in this era of offline processing and computer
dependent forms of production. Each copes or adapts differently to this
environment, and Tuttle’s own approach seems to follow,
philosophically, the stylistic basis for the post-Anonymeye Hotel releases.
“Particularly when performing live, although it is wholly
improvised, it does follow a kind of internal flowchart structure, in
that I know I start at point A and finish within sight of point B, but
everything else in between is not so easily defined.”
“Although I love the possibilities of the studio environment, I
don’t particularly have the patience to complete flawless opuses and
tweak every single sound for eternity.” It seems that this is where the
music ultimately springs from, where the “process”, so to speak, finds
its genesis. “For better or for worse, I think the risks of
imperfection are outweighed by the inspiration I find from taking a
risk.”
Anonymye’s The Disambiguation of Anonymeye is available from Sound&Fury.