by Greg Phillips

GP: Paul, the album has been out for quite a while now and done incredibly well for you, on reflection how do you look back on it?

PM: I feel really good about it. It’s quite a special record for me because it is the first solo one. It was written in isolation, in my home in the mountains. It was a really beautiful time and a good documentation of a place where I was living and how I was feeling. Musically I was way happy with the way it turned out. I had a lot of freedom to do whatever I wanted to do and I still feel really good about it.

Are you a disciplined songwriter who dedicates a certain amount of time to writing or just when creativity strikes?

It more when the mood comes. Generally I write when I’m depressed (laughs). Probably half of the stuff begins at the piano. I’ll be in a certain mood and sit down at the piano and out comes a certain thing. Then I don’t record it, but if a week later I still remember it then I think it’s one of the good ones. That’s the Paul McCartney theory, it’s the good ones you remember. When it gets to a point where I have an inspiration of what its about, then I take it up to the studio and build on it. But often it’s starts with just a feeling on the piano.

Are you hearing the additional instrumentation as you write?

Not really. I can play pretty well and inside the chords I play there are voices moving up and down. If you have a have a really good sounding piano riff, it’s so easy to orchestrate it once you start going onto a computer. There are lines already written really. It’s a very natural way for me to write and once you strip away all of the electronics, you still have a song there.

Do you collect and store samples?

I’m more of a do-it-as-you go sort of guy. Just always trying new stuff for fresh inspiration rather than building a backlog or library. Sometimes it can be out of desperation. For instance I got busted for sampling something years ago, it was an Itchie and Scratchie record that was withdrawn from sale. So I had this ‘no more sampling’ mentality. But I was just trying to find other ways of doing it. Sampling a ghetto blaster with a microphone and reversing it, changing pitch. Just trying new stuff where you knew you weren’t going to get busted. Or distorting things beyond the point of recognition. I also just fell into a nice family of sounds. A lot of the stuff on this record is this Rhodes piano sound that I just fell in love with. I found it translated so nicely from the piano to that, giving it a certain mood. Then I have my family of synthesisers and one is really good at strings, and another is good at bouncing melodies and another one is good at bass lines. That’s sort of my palette and it’s like what are you going to do with it.

You sampled your log fire in’ Disconnected’, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever sampled?

That’s a pretty good one. I have sampled my dog, telephones, rain dripping on the window. I really want to get into sampling insects next. The fireplace one was sweet. When I was doing this album I was also musical director for Good News Week, doing Itchie and Scratchie and doing stuff for (silverchair’s) Daniel Johns. It was a music, music, music full time vibe. I spent a lot of time when I got home just with silence. I didn’t want to hear anymore music after listening to it for 12 hours during the day. So a lot of time was spent in front of the fireplace with ideas just going through my head. It became really special to me. So I had this idea of recording the fireplace initially, then the idea to turn it into a rhythm, and then to turn it into a song about the fireplace kinda worked.

What was your core gear for the album?

I mainly used a Macintosh with Logic Audio. I had a  Nord Lead, an Ensoniq sampler, Korg Wavestation, Jupiter 6, MS 20, an SH101 and that was about it.

Do you enjoy the process of cutting and pasting on the computer?

Totally. When I went to Logic Audio it was like, this is it. I enjoyed that immensely. I like to make a lot of my own sounds so having an MS 20 was fun because I had no real way of sequencing it up so it was more just sampling great sounds out of it. A  song like ‘Post Jesus’ has a lot of my favourite sounds on it, and that was just sampling my old synths. I also just got an O2R and suddenly I could really build my mixes with automation. That was a big turning point because I hate doing all the mixing on the computer. I think it sucks, because you stop listening and start watching. It was nice to do the bulk of it on the desk.

Essentially this is not a dance album …

Thanks, yes nobody seems to get that!

.. but did you find yourself naturally gravitating to the drum tracks anyway?

Yeh. I go through certain drum moods. For a long time it was strictly techno when I was doing Itchie and Scratchie. It was a lot of live 808 running along with live drum machines,. So there was that period. Then I got into break beats and loops then got sick of how everyone sounded the same, so I started recycling the loops and cutting them up and tuning everything up, then I got more into drum and bass. By the time I got to this album I had arrived at a space with a kind of drum sound I thought was more my own. There’s a mood about my drums. They’re not particularly slamming. They are funky but not really huge. They provide a nice atmosphere. I don’t get into finicky programming. I couldn’t be stuffed spending two days on a snare roll. You can worry stuff to death. I find It’s better to get a momentum when you’re writing a track, finding the right beat then the right bass sound and ‘wow’, this sound goes well with it and here comes the vocals and it’s over. I like that better than going forever losing yourself in fine detail that doesn’t matter.

One of the most exciting things about the dance music scene is the collaboration that occurs, what is it that you like about working with other people?

I think everyone has different strengths and focuses. I was thinking about this the other day and on the next one I might even be interested in working with another programmer just to get another take on things. Often I find if I get a remix back of one of my songs by a more DJ oriented group of people their version will sound far more punchier than mine because they are focussing on the kick drum, but musically I find it kind of boring. People are good at different things. If you have someone who does killer drums, and I figure I do good music, somebody else is a good vocalist, then the sum of all the parts is greater then the individual. You push each other further and challenge your preconceptions.

If you could work with anyone you liked, who would be on your wish list?

Most of the people I really like, I like them for what they do and I don’t really want to fix it. I like bands like Radiohead. I’d like to do mixes of people like that. But I also like discovering fresh talent. People like Peta Morris for example, who has had zero training or professional experience but ends up having a hit single. That’s cool. Another vocalist on the album, Elizabeth Martin who hasn’t done anything before, but what a voice, so interesting. That’s more exciting than tacking onto someone else’s success.

Can you listen to music without thinking what you could do with it?

No it’s hard not to. I can barely hold a conversation when there’s background music on. Seriously, at least half of my brain is focusing on the music. It is just so occupational hazard. I’m hopeless when I go out, I can’t talk very well because I’m listening to the music in the background.

No music genre should have boundaries but to me within the dance music genre you can do anything you want?

I disagree entirely. Possibly stronger than any other genre.

Why?

Essentially it’s because it’s a way for DJs to get work. A DJ will play a certain style and get good at that style, or whatever style is hot. For example if a track comes along that is really mind blowing I will go ‘wow’, I wish I could write a track as mind blowing as that. Whereas a DJ will go I’ll make a track that sounds like that and suddenly you have a new genre with pre established rules. And it’s very quick. When Drum’n Bass came along, it was a radically new sound like nothing before it. Then within 6 months, there’s your rules. It’s got to have this sort of bass line, this sort of sound and beat. I think dance music is really heavily genrefied and at the moment it’s just in this endless House cul de sac. Variations on different house grooves and it has been a while since it has moved on from that. I think in a lot of ways dance music is quite conservative.

Taking the album onto the road, what factors do you need to consider?

There are just so many different ways of dong it. With Itchie and Scratchie we’ve done the whole everything live on the road thing, until the gear just fell over one too many times. Then we’d done half of it with backing and half live, and that’s kind of annoying in that there are certain things you can’t do. Then we’ve done it as a DJ set and that works in a different way. Then I have seen bands like Massive Attack, who I have seen twice. The first time they did the DJ thing where a lot of the beats were off vinyl and with live vocals, and that was cool in it’s own way. Then the next time they came they’d been to America and they had slammin’ session drummers and session guitarists. The songs would start off with this beautiful atmospheric loop then just rock out as the ‘got-to-give-the-punters-a-show’ ethic kicked in. For me personally I don’t want to whack big drums over everything, even though that’s what most people do. I find it kills the atmosphere of what was beautiful about the track in the first place. So my angle is that I put the bones of the atmospherics into a backing, then bring it to life from there. I play live over the top. I love just sitting and grooving on rhythm keyboard stuff. Live bass, percussion, live DJ and live vocals. For me it’s bringing the essence of the song alive. It’s about connecting with the humanity of the song.

Are you nervous about how it’s all going to go?

Yes. We did some shows earlier in the year. Every single day I thought it was going to fail. My stomach hurt. Then every night is was like ‘wow’, the best show ever. Then wake up every morning and think tonight really won’t work. My nickname was Captain See Saw. It was so up and down. I find touring quite taxing on that level.

Having been through the process of recording the album, what have you learned that you will take into the next project.

To be much much more simpler. I have always suffered from melody overload. Too many conflicting ideas. That doesn’t mean I am going to dumb things down but more think about where I want the listener’s ears to go. Who are you following here? Everything doesn’t have to be bright and sparkly and that dark line in the middle is the one you want, the one you might not hear but you feel it. I have learned a lot on an orchestration level. Also I now have a real love of pop. I am not scared to do pop anymore. I have listened to more commercial radio than I ever have and even it’s something I don’t like, it’s like ‘wow’ that’s done well. I’m just developing an appreciation of different kinds of music.