Photos by Loreana Rushe 

Analogue got a chance to speak to Owen Pallett before he took to the stage to support Girl Talk at the Foggy Notions Christmas Party in Whelans. Sitting around in Whelans mini boardroom come makeshift green room, Owen chats openly about “doing new things with technology”, why comparisons to other musicians don’t bother him and how he unexpectedly came to score the strings for Alex Turner’s new album.

A: Your show at Vicar Street on Tuesday went pretty well, you tried out a quadraphonic sound set up. When did you start experimenting with that and how do you think it’s going so far?

FF: Well literally about two weeks ago, I was originally just going to do that and have that something in the distant future but just because this was a hilarious one off gig, I was just like whatever I’ll do it! I’ll try and make it, like I mean it’s not even technically quadraphonic but rather it’s just like doing a looping show that’s more than stereo is, or even more than mono is. It’s really really difficult and requires some extra programming and concentration and stuff like that. It’s also my way of trying to stay ahead the curve, you know.

You haven’t used laptops in the past, have you?
No I never have and I always think there is a stigma to having one on stage.
I think at this point I think people are pretty familiar with the set up and understand that it’s a live show and that there’s no prerecorded stuff going on. I think it’s safe that I can have a laptop on stage and plus the amount of stuff I can do now is crazy, I get so excited that I’ve actually started to dream about it. It’s opened up this whole new world, I’m a little bit embarrassed about the nerdiness of it, reading about Stephen O’Malley from Sunn and reading interviews where he’s talking about amps and I’ve been getting really excited. I’m like ‘ohh I’m going to play with amps’. I don’t have a huge savings account so I can’t really afford to go out and get a huge rack of amps but wouldn’t that be exciting to just surround the audience with big amps, just a wall of sound. That would be so cool but we’ll see…

So it’s still in the experimental stage at the moment.
Yeah I really needed to change something from my mono set up because all the new songs I’ve been writing have been getting a little more complicated sonically and when you’re doing mono looping, the amount of sounds I have at my disposal are very limited but now it’s really cool, I’m using Mac Msp to do all sorts of crazy things where I can have the violins go in circles and carosels around the audience and stuff so I’m really excited around when I can get it perfected.

Was that the first gig where you played like that?
I did one before that was a total disaster but because my computer didn’t crash I decided I’d do this one. Even this one I kind of thought was a bit of a failure, I played every song badly. My singing was so happening and I was really concerned about playing it all correctly but it was the same thing when I just started off and I was doing mono looping.

I wouldn’t say it was a bad show at all but it seemed like it was a little bit different to what you played at Electric Picnic and a lot of people who were there on Tuesday night would have been at your Electric Picnic show and for them it was a totally different experience because you didn’t play all the same songs.

Well the Electric Picnic set was really…I tried to make it very like “let’s have fun at the festival” and this one was actually kind of like “I am doing new things with technology!”
Because really I looked into it and there’s nobody else doing this, isn’t that exciting? Because when I first started off people were like “Oh Yeah, Andrew Bird blah blah blah” and now you know…

Loreana: No don’t say that!
I didn’t say it.

Loreana: I mean in your favour.

No I think it’s really disrespectful to both me and him. He does this amazing thing.

Gareth: You’re both great in your own unique ways…

Ahh that’s nice. Well we’ve decided that we’re going to fight to the death and I will emerge triumphant and then nobody will ever listen to Andrew Bird again.

Loreana: Or join forces, Final Bird.

Final Bird! Ha. Actually we were talking at a Latitude Festival in Ipswich because he heard this cover I did of his song, I did a cover of, actually it was three of his songs, that I smashed together into one song and I was looping parts from different Andrew Bird songs all on top of each other while Cadence Weapon did his Shark Song which has “that means stop biting my shit” over and over again in the song. I was like this is hilarious! And he when he heard it was like really confused so we had a conversation about it but was ok, he like “I thought it was nice”. I was like you know when you’re compared to somebody all the time it’s best to just look them like right in the eyes and be like, fuck you.

Bren: It doesn’t happen to a lot of people, if they’re compared it’s always like the journalist doing it and it’s probably fairly rare that they actually come head to head.

No dude, I don’t feel bad about it because I see what happens to any female musicians, because it’s impossible for female musicians to be considered original. Either female musicians sound like Cat Power or Jonnie Mitchell or they’re considered crazy, like these crazy bitches. I’m serious, like you read about any sort of female musician who is doing anything even remotely weird and it’s always just like “Oh She’s crazy”. Even Joanna Newsom until She was like “fuck you I’m going to get all these men to help me make this record and there’s nothing you can say about it” and granted everyone loves Joanna Newsom now but up until She made that record people were just like “She sings crazy, your music is about weird things” you know what I mean? Scout Niblett is still at that point where people are just like “She sounds like Cat Power, it’s Cat Power”. It sounds nothing fucking at all like Cat Power, it sounds like Black Sabbeth, her music sounds like Black Sabbeth. If you put on Black Sabbeth and put on Kidnap by Neptune, you’re listening to the same record. I don’t feel so bad about getting compared because I feel that women have it so much harder than any man does.

You’re past the whole, well not stigma but like that guy who recorded with Arcade Fire and now I don’t know how often you get that any more.

Em I don’t know, yeah it’ll just be replaced by something else.

So next week you’re scheduled to record with Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys on a side project of his, how did you get involved in that?

It’s pretty confusing actually, I’m not sure how it happened. I think they contacted Nico Muhly who is the guy who arranges for Bjork and he did the best Bonnie Prince Billy record ever, Letting Go. He did all the strings on that and he’s doing the new Anthony record and stuff and Sam Amadan and every other record, it’s going to be amazing. Anyway I think they contacted Nico, I don’t know how and he has started passing stuff off in my direction because we became friends earlier this year. We both have ears for different things like I could never do a Bonnie Prince Billie record because I’d just be so precious about it, every second I’d be like “no no no no!” you know what I mean, whereas Nico is just like “whatever, here it goes”. With Alex Turner I feel more relaxed, I’m like “Yeah!” so you know. Not that I don’t connect with Alex’s music, it’s just I feel a little more relaxed about it.

It just seems like you would move in different kinds of circle, it’s strange that you would come together on something like this.

I don’t know, you think so?

Well your fans would be different to Arctic Monkey fans.

It’s kind of funny because I’ll be talking to…you know I’m friends with like a few really famous British musicians like Keli from Bloc Party and Patrick Wolf and when I started working with Alex, they were so surprised and even a little starstruck by the whole thing because I feel like Alex Turner moves in different circles to the entire British music scene. Because he’s not comfortable with being a star, he is actually some dude who he just like “I play in a band with my mates”. You know what I mean?

You come across a lot like that, except that you don’t have a band behind you. You’re very much like this is what I do.

Like unromantic?

No, I mean that you’re not like searching for fame, you just seem like you do something that you’re passionate about and not in a way that’s aiming to be a star.

I think everybody does stuff the exact same way. I feel as if different people have, everyone who’s making music have like a different level of ability and a different background and everyone has like different levels of substances that they abuse and different diets and stuff like that. But other than that, everyone just wants to make records that everyone is going to love, everyone just wants like everyone in the critical and public community to love them for the rest of their lives and proclaim that they’re geniuses. So I don’t think it’s that different.

Are you going to be writing any of the songs on this album or just scoring strings to accompany it?

For Alex’s record, no I didn’t write anything. In fact they came to me with pretty specific things of what they wanted me to do so I just tried to flesh them all out. I have no idea how this is going to sound. I’m so excited about it, I was tapped to score a song on this last Spoon record, the Ga Ga Ga one and so I worked on it. It actually took me a long time to work on it because Brit was like really precious about what he wanted on the song and I did a lot of research and I just spent like a week listening to all these songs off records that he liked and I was listening to all the Spoon material. I did so much research for it and then I sat down and wrote it and it took me an entire month to do an arrangement for one song which is like insane, I’ve ever put so much time into anything in my life and I sent it to him and he like “Nah I don’t like it” and so that was that.

Loreana: Are you for real?

Yeah so he didn’t use it.

Loreana: Which song?

It’s the very last song called ‘Black like me’ and he ended up writing his own arrangement which was very very simple. I thought my arrangement was pretty good but what he ended up using, his arrangement was far more suitable in the context of the entire record which I hadn’t heard so obviously Brit Daniel knows how a Spoon record is supposed to sound and I don’t so I mean it’s totally good.

Bren: When I spoke to you at Electric Picnic, you told me a bit about your next album Heartland. How’s that coming along? Have you gotten a chance to work on much of it? Have you been sitting in the back of a van writing that?

Yeah I mean I’ve got about four songs now written for it, of which I’m going to write eventually twenty. I tend to write songs quickly when I’m actually at home. I’m like today write songs and I can write a song but I just haven’t had much of that time so I’m kind of behind. These spectrum Eps have been taking up a lot of my time as well.

They’re coming out pretty soon as well.

Yeah they’re going to be maybe coming out in April I believe. I’ve still got to mix them, I’m still working at the mercy of other peoples schedules and stuff like that, there’s been a lot of other weird things that I’ve had to take care of. Margarine commercials…

So will you take time off from touring in 2008 to get that finished?
Yeah I’m not going to tour until the record is done, until Heartland is done and I’m not going to play any shows.

Apart from the Maximum Black festival.
Yeah apart from the festival.

So 2008 is going to be an exciting year between the album and Maximum Black, what’s the idea behind creating the festival? Have you any ethos that you want to bring forth?
To be honest the whole festival is fine but I’m happy to let it slide, do you know what I mean. I think that was something that I feeling really negative about but now I feeling much better about.

Pitchfork posted a story about it and it came from various different sources.

No it came from a single email that I wrote to them because they were like “what is this?” and I wrote them, well this is what happened. I mean honestly I didn’t want to spend any time thinking about it and I kind of still don’t, I’m like sure I’ll play this festival and I’m really happy to be playing with my friends bands. It’s as much Susanne’s [Owen’s manager] project as it is mine because She’s the one who settled up with the finances and is booking the shows because She’s the professional booker. I’m just like “Oh, get these bands”.

In terms of the whole Werner Stadwerker thing, from what was essentially a terrible situation you’ve come out on top.

I didn’t even think of it as a terrible situation, it’s just like the ad company who made the ad is like a group of eight people, the dude who recorded new violin over the track and added the ‘Can you feel it?’ is just like this fifty year old dude that makes music for commercials, he’s just some dude. Like some of my friends do the exact same work that he does in Toronto so it just didn’t bug me all that much. I definitely didn’t want to pursue any sort of litigation. But they [Werner Stadwerk] were very nice, they came forward after the show in Vienna, I actually played their version of the song at the show. To the people I was like you might of heard this song before you went to see the Bourne Ultimatum or something and then I played it with the ‘Can you feel it?’ and the new violin solo.

Did you do the “Der ist ein Stadt” part over it?
Yeah I did!

Where did you get the name for the festival from?
Oh yeah it’s from a song by Bohren and the Club of Gore, which is a really awesome German metal band so Susanne was like “ where should we get our name from?” and so She came up with all these song titles from her favourite band which is Born and then came up with a whole bunch of song titles from my favourite bands and all of my favourite bands have lousy song titles so we picked Bohren.

What were the other options?
There was a Destroyer song called ‘Don’t become the thing that you hated’ and I was like that’s a terrible name for a festival And then there was a teabjbob song Hair hair hair hair hair hair hair, that was a contender for awhile. I’m just kidding, that would be a pretty funny name. The Boy Soprano music festival, that would be ok.

Brendan McGuirk is the editor of Analogue, and former Chair of Trinity FM.
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