DT Probes… Ecstatic Sunshine - an interview with Matt Papich
Ecstatic Sunshine is the project of Matt Papich and a revolving troupe of minstrels, based in Baltimore, USA. Their music defies description - it’s an intricate mix of looping psychedelia, noise and offset timing; it’s as subliminal as it is sublime.
You can get an idea of the loose direction sound by looking at some of the fellow travellers on their label, Carpark Records - Dan Deacon, Beach House and Toro Y Moi to name just three. ES released their latest album Yesterday’s Work in December 2009, and it’s arguably their most accomplished and coherent to date. Here’s a suitably tripped out video for one of the tunes, Conch:
Ecstatic Sunshine are doing a full US and Europe tour this summer, and are playing at Ducked Tapes’ own night at The Basement, York on July 21st 2010.
Anyhow…
Here’s DT’s interview with Matt Papich of Ecstatic Sunshine.
DT: Your songs have such intricate texture to them, so much delicate, and, for want of a better word, psychedelic stuff going on - yet it all feels very deliberate. How does your writing process work for something like this?
Matt: I think what your hearing is the amount of attention paid to individual sounds. At every step of the process - from building loops, to tracking, to placing the sounds and recording them in rooms - I’m trying to stay tuned in to each sound, to keep hearing it, and to reduce it to it’s most unique form. This is done with nearly every sound in the songs; guitar, percussion, melodic synthesizers, and discreet synthesized sounds all get equal attention. It’s a way to build something that is hyper-real, or at least attempts to be, and I think hyper-reality and the psychedelic are related in some ways.
DT: The songs are instrumental, but I do still feel that there’s something definite being communicated in each track. Do you have something certain in mind when you’re writing or playing, or is it more moments of ‘free-expression’?
Matt: No, I don’t really have something certain in mind when I’m beginning, but I’m looking for something specific or definite. I’ll generally mess with an instrument, like a synthesizer let’s say - work on a patch and develop it until it pops or resonates and forms a kind of identity. Its about hearing some realness amongst abstraction, which really isn’t a fresh idea - you could say the same for a lot of modernist painters..
DT: I’ve read a lot about your gradual picking up of more and more technology as ES progressed. What gear’s really getting you going at the moment?
Matt: Recently I’ve been lucky enough to get to use an old Lexicon Prime Time delay. Its has a very cool early dancehall kind of sound when you route percussion through it. I also think Korg Kaoss pads are a really amazing cheap tool that is poorly used a lot of the time, but can be so good, and very simple.
DT: Do you think that it’s been important that you ‘grew into’ technology rather than start at a technologically advanced point? I guess what I’m getting at is, do you think if you’d had access to all these computer programs etc… at the beginning, ES would’ve turned out for better or for worse?
Matt: Well, it’s hard to say. I’m just using the technology that has been arousing. Our recordings may have sounded better, or maybe they’d just be kind of flat. Either way, its all about finding the sound that is most relevant at the time, for the shows or for the records - working with what is available, exploring it, trying to make it contemporary.
DT: Do you have any particular ethos about recording in terms of analog or digital, or do you just go with whatever sounds right for the particular record?
Matt: No real ethos. A lot of times I’ve used both analog and digital. It makes sense to use a mixture of those qualities - because we’re always hearing all the types of recorded sound, we don’t listen to just contemporary music (hopefully), and we don’t necessarily listen to just one format of music. I hope to produce recordings that are flexible enough to reflect this.
DT: You’ve often spoken about your love of photography and taking pictures on tour. Do you think work in other artistic media has influence, and perhaps helped, you as a musician?
Matt: Completely. In part because if you keep a diverse practice, you also keep a diverse lexicon. Ecstatics as a project has been very heterogeneous, sonically, aesthetically, and also in terms of players. I think most importantly, ES started in a completely conceptual framework, as part of a class at the Maryland Institute College of Art called Parapainting, taught by the poet Jeremy Sigler. So, if you look all the way to it’s inception, the project has always been in bed with the better sides of the arts.
DT: You’re from Baltimore, a place with a rich musical heritage (Ian MacKaye, ‘nuff said) and some really exciting contemporary artists such as Dan Deacon. How has living in Baltimore shaped ES’s sound and musical outlook?
Matt: Baltimore is one of the more reality based cities in the US, unlike New York which is market based, or LA which seems primarily imaginary. If you live here and are tuned in you can have a very actual life. It is a city in a basic form. So it lends a kind of primary and minimal environment. I think that environment is the one that is most important to me now, whereas in the past, the influence was mostly coming from the scene and peers.
DT: Which bands or artists are making the music that’s exciting you the most right now? Is there anyone you’d really like to work with or do a split with?
Matt: New electronic music from the UK is getting a lot of play for me right now. Mount Kimbie and James Blake are making really gorgeous and contemporary sounds to my ears. I also like the new To Rococo Rot record, in terms of the gestures it makes towards band dynamics along with loop based composition. I’d love to work with Vladislav Delay, I’d really just be watching the working though.
DT: Do any of the ES lineup have day jobs? Do you have any tips on how to effectively manage music making when faced with having to work for a living?
Matt: It just takes time. Ultimately that is what is valuable, and if you can increase the value of your time, or the time you own, whether it is by making music or art or otherwise, then you’re really beginning to acquire more or better time, which is all I think of really wanting anyway.
DT: What’s your favourite children’s character and why?
Matt: Charlie Brown for sure. He’s like the John Cage of cartoons.
