It’s been almost two years since my first posted interview with Toni Oswald, the multifaceted creator behind The Diary of Ic Explura, and about the same since we were given the audio feast of the first album. The first album was an enchanting journey with Toni’s alter ego, Ic Explura, to uncommon and fantastical realms. While that album was done in collaboration with current Red Hot Chili Pepper, Josh Klinghoffer, this album sees Klinghoffer’s departure and the arrival of the strong, multi-talented amour Max Davies.
Prior to my hearing any of Max and Toni’s collaborative efforts, I had already become familiar with portions of his musical output, and most notably for me his wonderful song “Wild Strawberries.” Within that song I heard a wonderful depth and sincerity that I often seek in my own completion via music, a goal I feel I’ve yet to achieve.
What follows is meandering transcripts of an email Q&A conversation that transpired over the period of a couple weeks.
Q: Le Bateau De Revel could be translated as Drunk Boat, is it safe to assume this another sea song like “Black Fish Pearls”?
Toni: I think you may be confused about the translation. The title of the first song is Le Bateau de Reve which means the Boat of Dreams. Drunken boat would be Le Bateau Ivre which is a Rimbaud poem. As for the question, it is a sea song like “Black Fish Pearls”? Water is a metaphor for the emotions because in the second half of my book (A Love Letter to the Transformer, which the music is based on), Ic’s journey is an emotional journey. Le Bateau de Reve is the boat that Ic and the Transformer essentially fall in love on and begin on their journey together. The reason it is a Boat of Dreams is because falling in love feels a lot like a dream.
Toni and Max
Q: Is there any reference in the title to Mars Volta “Drunkship of Lanterns”? Only in the sense that the songs tells stories about traveling on boats. I do love that song though — lyrically, you have some very nice imagery, would you say that you can see this song as clearly as it is described?
Toni: All of the lyrics on the album are very visual to me and I can see the places very clearly in my imagination, but I think that is because the piece started as a storybook and so it is all mapped very clearly for me. It is a world I’m very familiar with.
Q: Fantastic arrangement, beautiful use of backing vocals, I really love the slide guitar, the synthy bits, and the ocean samples. Do Toni and Max always work well together musically? Are the synthy bits done with Reason? I remember previously you told me you expected you’d be using Reason a lot on this album. For the most part, are all the synth parts Reason or hardware? Is the waves lapping sound a field recording that you acquired?
Toni: Thanks a lot. As for the question about us working together, we do for the most part, as we both come from a place where we are trying to do our best and make sure our hearts are free and really in the music. Sometimes we argue about things, particularly if one of us is very passionate about a particular idea and then we love each other and respect each other enough to go with that person’s vision at that moment. I probably am more of a brat than Max, but he puts up with me. All in all, I enjoyed making the songs that we wrote together the most. I have so much fun working with Max on music! I learn a lot from him and he really inspires me to push myself and get my vision across. I’m looking forward to making new music with him so much. I am going to let Max answer the technical questions, as he loves technical stuff!
Max: Hmmmm, this song was really a collage to record. The seed came from a 4-track demo idea that had a capoed guitar part where I played two chords percussively with a bundled rod drumstick in addition to a Funkadelic-inspired synth part I did on a Micro Korg, (the actual synth part on the song is from that demo, I just dumped it into Logic). I played the demo for Toni with the idea that it might be a good Ic song and she agreed. The “slide guitar” I think you’re referring to is actually Toni playing a Fender Mustang thru an MXR phaser pedal thru a tiny Guild practice amp we got from Hella’s tour manager. We liked it because it reminds us of Siouxsie and the Banshees. As far as using Reason, we only ended up using one plug-in synth from Reason, which was the Mellotron sample on track 2. Initially Toni thought we would use Reason, but rewiring that stuff is a headache sometimes and so often we would just use a Roland Juno-106, the Micro Korg, and a few soft synths from Logic. The water is a sample from within the recesses of Logic’s labyrinthine annuls.
Do Toni and I always work well together? Essentially, yes. Any hurdles we have had so far have been overcome. Toni is good at editing the big picture and I’m good at myopic little things. Toni tends to go for a feeling or a vibe and I can get lost in the details from time to time. The different approaches tend to balance each other out. For example, at the last minute of mixing Toni insisted I turn down or take out a lot of the reverb sends on things, which ended up giving a much more lo-fi, raw, and pre-digital recording vibe to things –which was important because part one is pretty lo-fi and raw.
Toni and Max II
Q: Over what length of time was this album recorded?
Toni: A couple of years, on and off. Writing and arranging began in Nevada City where we used to live. The piano songs and overdubs were done in Boulder. Some of the songs were written a few years back in LA, including one of the outtakes, “Broken Birds,” which was also recorded with Josh and never used. So we did a piano version too which also didn’t make the cut this time, but we might release both on a B-side thingy one of these days.
Q: Would you like to talk about the additional musicians a little further?
Toni: When we were living in Nevada City we became friends with Pete Newsom. He’s an amazing drummer and keyboard player (played with Devendra Banhart and tons of others), and Max and him started playing together a lot. We just knew we wanted him to play on the record, so we got him to do some drumming for “Invocation of my Demon Sister” as well as “When I was 7, I met Marcel in a Dream.” He is a wonderful musician and wonderful friend. Also, while living up there Max’s mom, Roberta, came to visit us and she plays an African instrument, the Mbira. She was playing it every morning and I kept thinking how good it would sound in something, so Max recorded her playing some things and one of them ended up on “Transcending the Ghost,” which is the third part of the trilogy. The other musician, Hagan Caldwell, is a friend of Max’s he has known since childhood. He came over one day to play cello on the “Broken Bird” track (which, as said above did not make the cut) and also brought along a bunch of percussion stuff for the that track as well. We also got him doing some percussion on “Former Tides” – he plays the little glass Sun Ra chimes.
Q: Great cover art, are there plans for a physical release so we can see/feel/smell the art?
Toni: I would love to release part one and part two as a double vinyl; we’ll see how that goes. If it does happen, I will be including some of the book in there as well hopefully.
Q: Was the album recorded more at day or night? Do you find yourself more creative in either day or night? I find I have a lot of creative energy in the middle of the night personally.
Toni: The album was recorded at all hours actually. The only songs recorded late at night were Former Tides and Invisible Influences and a song that got cut called “The Me I Never Knew” which we are going to put out eventually on an outtakes album. The main reason was because that is the most quiet time at our house although the trains come by late sometimes, but they have vibe. For me personally, I feel most creative in the earliest part of the day when no one else is awake yet and also at night around midnight, but I don’t try and record then or anything like that on purpose, I think I just go with whatever available time we have. I think the night tends to be a creative time because there is silence so one can actually hear the muse, but whenever it is quiet is a good thing for me in the creative department. Max does tend to work at night when it is quiet. He sometimes will go to sleep around 11 p.m. and then get up again around 2 a.m. and work into the morning.
Q: There is on “The Lawns of Morpheus” a lyric “You gotta get in to get out.” If I’m correct, that is a reference to “The Carpetcrawlers” from Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. That is a really terrific album and you pay tribute in the liner notes to both Genesis and Robert Fripp. That album notably is produced by Brian Eno, who I am greatly fond of… Do you ever see yourself turning to Eno for inspiration in songwriting and recording process, be it Oblique Strategies, or other aesthetic?
Toni: I love that album a lot and it means a lot to me as well. It is a deep and mysterious album and that line really resonates with me. The line exists in a place in my book where the character of Ic Explura goes to a reality called The Land Of Dreams, so it just kind of entered the lyrics of “On the Lawns of Morpheus” as that song is about that experience of the character. As for Brian Eno, he is definitely a huge influence on me when making music. He calls himself a non-musician, and I can relate to that as I kind of collage music together a lot of the time without being a really technically skilled musician. I know sound and I have an ear as to how things should go and I think he does that to a certain degree as well. I also love his solo records so much as well as the Bowie stuff, and we do use the Oblique Strategy cards as well. I used them with Josh on the first record and Max and I used them here as well. I like playing with chance when creating something. I am of the mindset of wanting to see what happens and where something might take you rather then always going with your own idea of how things should go. I use The Burroughs/Gysion cut-up method a lot as well for writing lyrics. I personally want to get out of the way and let the spirits and the air come through. What can I learn from those entities? I am always there anyway as it is coming through me, but I am not all that interested in ME being the main thing.
Max: Early Genesis (with Peter Gabriel) was a bit of a guiding light for us during the arrangement of songs on the record. Toni is one of the only birds I know who digs Genesis, so we often used the colors and aesthetic of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (seeing as how it’s a concept record too) to help us get this stuff down. The song “When I Was 7…” has a complete Genesis homage in it on the bass part. I have been enamored with the bass on “Back In NYC” for many years now, and I just couldn’t resist using a one note bass line in 7 for that particular song. ENO is always a bit of litmus paper for us, a reference to ways to think outside of the box, try something different. Toni was just saying to me how for ENO essentially being a self called “non-musician” (he doesn’t actually really have a tremendous mastery of any instrument per se) he has effectively changed the face of music quite drastically. Yes, we like Brian Eno.
Q: That panning guitar solo at the end of “The Lawns of Morpheus” is fantastic! I really like this album’s dedication to fascinating sounds. Max, do you want to talk at all about what sort of tools you used for recording? Mics etc…? I find it interesting that in my previous interview, Toni mentioned a Neumann mic that she used at John’s. I’d imagine you don’t have that mic, yet, throughout the album everything recorded sounds really good. This is a definite vote toward making due with what you have – especially with such results.
Max: Thank you, I’m glad it came across! It’s funny, at the last minute we were re-mixing that song and I kinda questioned whether or not to leave that effect, which was some rotary pan type emulator in Logic. Basically, everything we recorded ended up in Logic. But we also recorded some songs/parts to a Tascam Portastudio four-track cassette machine and then dumped it into the digital realm. As far as mics are concerned, we did end up using a Neumann TLM-49 that we borrowed for the vocals on “Former Tides,” and “The Valley of Tears” trilogy, as well as some of the guitars on “On The Lawns of Morpheus.” But funnily, that solo you like was actually recorded straight into the computer thru a MOTU Ultralite into Logic. So no, we didn’t have that Neumann (which was actually not John’s, but Toni borrowed it from another friend–if I’m not mistaken). Toni and I definitely have a modest recording set up, but in a way we have more than the Beatles had, a least more options, because of the computer. The argument could be made that limitations actually help people to engage deeper and work longer and harder to get it right from the get-go. Toni and I talk often about how people get G.A.S. (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and then never do anything, never put anything out, never finish stuff. A lot of this has to do with the way Westerners have been programmed to buy. Now it’s worse than ever, with software updates, new versions, X Y Z. I realized that the version of Logic I had worked fine at one point and that getting the new version and having to relearn the little differences was time I could be playing or writing music, which is the point, right? So yes, definitely a vote for more with less. For example, Toni told me that Niandra Lades was almost completely recorded on a little Tascam four track on a practice amp with a $100 mic. We like that aesthetic, we wish it were still around more. People! Use those Shure SM57′s for vocals! We do. We love to. And we’ll do it again.
Toni: To add to the less is more argument, I just wanted to say that having less stuff (music gear, in this case) encourages one to think outside of the box and be inventive about things. When I get some sound in my head that I want, but maybe do not have the so-called gear to get it, it makes me think of ways to do that in a different way with things I do have around the house that might not have anything to do with music normally – like kitchen stuff that one plays while singing nonsense through a distortion pedal and then one loops a tiny part of that to get one sound kind of a thing. Also, in reference to all of the fascinating sounds on this record, I think it all began, as I am obsessed with Scott Walker, and after we had been watching the documentary “30th Century Man” about him on a daily basis. Hehe, we recorded parts of the “Valley of Tears” trilogy inspired by his use of strange things to make interesting sounds, for instance hitting fist on a slab of meat to get a sound he wanted for a song about Mussolini and his mistress being hung in the streets. This was the way we began to record the album. I had already written a couple of songs on my own on guitar, but this piece was the one we started with. It just kind of came out of us. We didn’t go to that extreme with the meat, but I want to! Hehe
Q: On “Invisible Influences,” which is a gorgeous song, you sing “I’m a killer, you’re a killer, too.” Previously Toni, and I don’t recall where, I remember reading something you had written that said something to the effect of “We’re all murderers.” If I’m correct, can you talk about what you mean by that statement?
Toni: Well, we are all killers. We live in a world that is destroying nature, people, animals and so on every single day and even if you are not doing the killing yourself, especially as Westerners, we are responsible in some way as we drive cars and use plastic which has created a war to get oil. We mono crop the world over which has destroyed the livelihood of millions of people and driven them into cities with sickness and poverty. So no matter what you think, no one gets out of this. We are in it together because we are not out in the streets protesting the destruction of our planet by corporate interest, which we support by shopping and buying their products. (I encourage everyone to research and try to fight this with only buying from companies that are ecologically and humanely sound and do not have covert interests. That is a start.) Having said that, the lyric is the character having come to that conclusion through her experience of transformation, which is also my own experience as well, as Ic is an alter-ego of sorts. As I have said before, Ic Explura is how I make sense out of the things that have happened to me in my own life.
Q: Regarding Oblique Strategies, did you ever go against the cards?
Toni: I have gone against the cards before, hehe, but usually because the answer was so abstract to what it seemed to relate. I didn’t quite know what to do with what the cards were saying. Although, many times as well, I will just do something abstract in a way that makes sense to me, which is quite fun. I am not completely stuck to my vision at all, except maybe in a left brain way. For instance, if somebody says they think I should add drums or change the vibe of a particular song…in that case, I can be stuck to my vision unless it really makes sense to me and helps the vision in a way I had not thought of. When trying to realize an idea I have, I just try to be true to that particular vision/story or whatever you would like to call it. I have found throughout my life that things that emerge without my forcing them too much are always the way to go. I trust in the spirits, if you will. So, for me, the Oblique Strategy cards are a great way of getting “me” out of the way, and if I am completely connected to what I am doing, the cards are almost like an oracle tapping into the bigger vision of what is trying to emerge from me. I am a firm believer in the idea that I am just a vessel and whatever art or creation that comes through me is something much bigger than little old me, but that my particular life, energy, and experiences color that particular message/idea being created and made into form. Sometimes the cards are very mysterious to me, but in a way, those are the ones I find most interesting as if I can find a way to do what I think they are saying something very interesting emerges that I would never have ever thought off without them. It is kind of like using cut-ups, which I do a lot, wherein something emerges from the unconscious – which in the long run I find has so much more wisdom and accuracy and revelation than what I thought something might have been about. I love the feeling of six months or a year or even longer looking at something I have made, whether a song, poem, film, or painting, and seeing something completely new and very different from what I had originally thought the piece was about. Art teaches me so much about myself and allows me to make sense of my life in many ways, but it sometimes takes years before I understand something I did. It is all kind of mysterious to me and I adore mysteries.
Q: For instance, an occasion such as, ”Remove the Foundation,” or something similar? I feel as an artist making songs that there may be a difficulty in allowing yourself to do what you think is contrary to your vision because the cards told you so. If one was to allow the cards to play that definitive of a role, would it become the cards album?
Toni: Well, maybe it would be the cards and your album, hehe, which does not bother me in the least.
Q: Do you think that the whims of one’s imagination are just as suitable?
Toni: Absolutely, and the cards are just part of the imagination as well because it is we who translate them according to our own understanding of what they say, and that involves imagination. I actually use all kinds of fun things besides the cards. On the first album Josh and I had a stack of books and would randomly pick one and then pick numbers out of hats and go to the corresponding pages in the books and whatever emotional description we first looked upon we would use as a starting point to a feeling we wanted. I love chance operations and am heavily influenced by the ideas of people like Duchamp and John Cage in that area. I always incorporate them in some way when I am working on something, as more than anything, it is a fun thing to do and always interesting and surprising and helps to get the critical mind out of me. Creation is a way to understand, to learn, for me. I’m not really interested in forcing my ego all over everything. That actually seems to prevent me from seeing something miraculous, at least that is my experience in these things and in life in general really.
Q: When might we expect the conclusion of the trilogy?
Toni: Well, the album is complete now. The book kind of falls in three parts, but with the music I decided to make it parts one and two, so it is now finally complete. Mainly because I really would like to release it on vinyl and a double vinyl is way more easy than a triple, hehe, also I am moving on to other worlds besides residing in Ic’s world. I have a few new projects I wanna do by myself and with Max as well, so it is time to let Ic Explura go a little bit, at least until I find someone to put it out on vinyl.
So with the music finished we bid adieu The Diary of Ic Explura. It is always inspiring to see the creative will of a person take an idea and firmly hold it to completion, as is the case here. I highly recommend both of the Diary of Ic Explura albums for some in depth headphone music, as a wonderful aural escapism. They are full of tidbits of wisdom and sounds from the aether.
Part 1, A Loveletter to the Transformer (newly remastered!) can be found here: http://tonioswald.bandcamp.com/album/the-diary-of-ic-explura-part-1-a-loveletter-to-the-transformer
Part 2, The Daughter of the Flood can be found here: http://tonioswald.bandcamp.com/album/the-diary-of-ic-explura-part-2-daughter-of-the-flood
