GRACE PERIOD
Interview from LOOP
Chris Ott y Julie Gedalecia producen una interesante mezcla de rock
y electrónica, cuya producción ha sido editada en Audio
Dregs.
The Grace Period está compuesto por el norteamericano Chris Ott
y la inglesa Julie Gedalecia, quienes producen una interesante mezcla
de rock y electrónica, cuya producción ha sido editada
en el sello Audio Dregs.
Información en thegraceperiod y en audiodregs
On "Dynasty" you have a combination of rock and electronics. How did you come out with this particular music, singing in French and loop based electronics?
Chris: “I've been playing the drums for about 13 years, so I'm
very focused on how drums are produced and how they're positioned in
a recording. I'm also really impatient with drums; I want them to break
up the rhythm more than they do in a normal 4/4 pop song or in a lot
of dance music. I think people are drawn to the parts in songs where
the rhythm changes, which people often call a "breakdown".
Whether it gets quiet or not, when the beat changes, people react. And
then as far as melody goes, I've always been drawn to far away sounds,
sounds in the distance of a song, like when a song is fading out - when
that's done really well, it actually sounds like the song is walking
away from you. A lot of the artists that people talk about in reference
to IDM or electronic music - My Bloody Valentine, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin
- my favorite thing about them is how carefully they layer sounds, how
they'll mix sounds in at very low volumes to expand the stereo space,
and to throw off your ear. I've always strained to hear those distant
sounds because the main tracks are so easy to get used to, they're controlling
the song. So The Grace Period's sound is a combination of those two
obsessions. I've had to learn to make songs more full, a lot of our
early material, and even some on Dynasty, is too empty.
As far as French singing goes, I didn't realize until the songs were
all done that I had used French dialog in most of them. I really had
no idea. Julie had just come back from a summer in France and said to
me "You have a real French thing going on here, don't you?"
and that's when I stopped and looked at all the stuff I'd done and it
all had French samples of Julie or Sarah in there. In one case there
is a sample from a French film I'm quite fond of, but I won't say which
one!
When and how did you form The Grace Period?
Chris: “I had been making ambient pieces, just messing around with equipment, since 1995. Before that I was in punk rock bands, and in post-rock bands that sounded like Slint and The Dismemberment Plan. Around 1997, Eric (Mast, E*Rock) was putting out a lot of tapes in Portland, Oregon USA and getting the Audio Dregs label up and running. We were in bands together in college, but I knew he was getting into electronic stuff a lot more, so we put together a really long tape, probably 80 minutes, with the best stuff I'd done between 1995 and 1997. Eric released that as "The Grace Period", that was my first tape. Soon after that, I did a 10-song tape called "Música Por Los Fachas" which he put out, and then the best things from those two tapes were released in 1998 as the "Bekampa Tramset" CD-R, on Audio Dregs. Julie joined the group right after that, before she went to France. Three or four songs from that time (late 1998, early 1999) ended up on "Dynasty". The rest were done over the next two years in Boston, Massachusetts USA with Sarah Owsley, and me who is from England. Sarah quit the band early in 2001”.
The way you play guitar is quite unique, with a blend of melody and distortion, two aspects which are very different that work very well mixed up. Which is the idea behind this sound?
Chris: “The layering is the only way I can make a sound move far away in the mix, like I was saying before. I like to push the sounds far away from your ears so you are hearing things as if they are an echo in a valley. Tracks that are recorded distorted, or loud, and then mixed at a quiet volume, these tend to give me the best results. I don't use any music programs. I do not like ProTools or Cubase or any of that; I only use a sound editor, like a .way file editor, with an equalizer and a compression algorithm. I like this because I have to make all of the sound effects using the space and volume instead of what the program does - when I tried to use those software packages I felt like it was doing too much for me, it was controlling the sound. Also, those programs will not let you make drum hits out of tempo, which is very important to me, because no human being has perfect rhythm - not even Stephen Morris from New Order! - so computer music always sounds robotic to me because the drum tempo is too perfect. All of my songs are done by hand and are often out of time in different places, in little ways”.
What are your plans for the near future?
Chris: “Static Caravan in England have just released and sold out a 7" we did, "Mod Killer" is the A-Side and "Sunny And Share" is the B-Side. The songs are similar to what we did on "Dynasty" but I used a lot of strings on these to make them much prettier and more cinematic. It's like bonus tracks from "Dynasty" in a way because my style has not changed much, but there is more technique and better production on them. The label's website is staticcaravan and opalmusic still sells this 7". Right now we are starting to get work done on our next full-length album, which we want to release early next year. It will have a much more full and orchestral sound than "Dynasty", and a lot of it will probably be about the music scene, in terms of the dialog and the vocals”.
Words Guillermo Escudero
thegraceperiod.com (official Grace Period site)
from Tone Phix
Zine