Libraness - Phrases Suggest Themselves in Random Places
How did you make your last album? If your name is Ash Bowie, you found some
old tapes of loosely written songs you recorded "for fun," and it became one
of the most eclectic, imaginative rock albums of the year. As part of the
unique and wonderful Polvo, Bowie created a guitar sound all his own, and
the strength of that sound is heard all over this album, Yesterday and
Tomorrow's Shells, creating an enjoyable listen even though the songs are
admittedly left underdeveloped. The release of this music serves to appease
old Polvo fans but, more importantly, it also is working as a catalyst
to Bowie's songwriting and recording as he moves to a higher fidelity for
his home studio and writes new material--possibly the best news of all for
those who rue the day Polvo died.
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| fakejazz:The album spans several years of home recordings. When you were making the tapes over those years, did
you think or expect that they would eventually be released? Or were your intentions more so just capturing ideas? |
| ash:Mainly I was just recording for fun, and not thinking about trying to craft nice tracks for some hypothetical album.
Obviously, the songs are anything but well crafted. After a while, I did begin to think that maybe I'd try to get
some of the songs released at some point, but I didn't really change my recording methods at all, and it
never seemed like the right time to put together an album of the stuff. I guess it didn't seem like a big priority,
since I was busy playing in bands, and also never felt like I had gotten around to recording anything really special,
which I was sort of waiting for as a prerequisite to doing a solo record. I still feel that way, but it's kind of a
defeatist attitude, and I'm glad that this first thing finally came out.
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| fakejazz:How do the songs span those years? Were there several main recording sessions, or is it fairly equally
distributed? |
| ash:There isn't a lot of real recent stuff on the record, to be honest. Most of the songs were recorded in '93, right
after I'd bought the four-track, and some others were done in '94 while Helium was recording the Dirt of Luck
album. The two songs with banjo were recorded a couple years ago. So these songs are pretty old, to me. I
have some more recent ones, but they didn't make it on this record.
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| fakejazz:After all those years of home recording, I'd expect you had much
more than 40 minutes of music recorded. How much material did you
have to work with when you selected the songs that make up this
album? Will more releases come out of this back catalog of tapes? |
 ash:Well, I think I only had about 25 songs I wanted to pick from, from that whole period--so obviously I wasn't
cranking out tons of stuff. In fact, I hardly recorded anything during the last five years. But anyway, it was
actually pretty hard to choose the songs and then sequence them. In a way, I wish I'd included a couple more
regular "rock" songs with more standard instrumentation--that style seems under-represented on this record,
maybe. On the other hand, I could've just picked a bunch of long, weird instrumental tracks. I suppose I was
trying to achieve a good balance with the different styles and make the whole thing flow somehow, at the
inevitable expense of some faves, which didn't seem to really fit anywhere. So I'm sure I'll use some of the
unreleased stuff on the next release(s), but I really want to focus on new material, and not release another album
of mostly old stuff--just a few strategically placed older tracks for variety would work OK, I think.
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| fakejazz:How much of a home recording geek are you? Are these recordings done on 4-track purely out of
convenience, or are you at all a lo-fi purist (e.g., Alastair Galbraith, early Sebadoh)? |
| ash:I used the four-track out of convenience, and also because it can be a lot of fun. There's no way I could've gone
into a studio and messed around endlessly at my leisure--costs money. I did mix all these songs through real
studio equipment for the record, in hopes that we could play around with the EQs and clean things up as much as
possible. But with regard to production, I'm not a "purist" of any kind. I do like the way lo-fi rock sounds, but I
was never trying to deliberately clog up my own recordings with lots of tape hiss and noise. A lot of it sounds
pretty cruddy because I didn't know what I was doing, as far as using mics and understanding general recording
principles (not that I know much more now). Of course, I was doing all this when the lo-fi sound was especially
in vogue (and I was definitely into all that Expressway stuff, Sebadoh, et al.), so it didn't occur to me that any of it
sounded at all "bad". If anything, I guess I eventually found recording on a four-track too limiting for practical
reasons, rather than sound-quality issues. It's hard to make room on a cassette for a lot of stuff without
screwing everything up. But now I have a pretty fancy 24-bit hard disk recorder, so I won't have that problem.
I'll have other problems, like being pretty dumb when it comes to using and understanding the new technology.
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| fakejazz:Were all
those parts where the sound is afffected by the fidelity of the
recording equipment (guitars are cut off, voices are warbled,
etc.) just "happy accidents,"
or are some of them planned or
exploited since several times this noise really seems to add
a different dimension to the sound? |
| ash:Well, as I said, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to craftsmanship. I mean, I'd typically build a song
around, say, a guitar track which sort of fizzles out because I hadn't decided on an ending. But it was usually
impossible to predict exactly how songs would end, since I didn't know what the other parts were going to be, so
I wouldn't worry about it too much. But as you say, these little details sometimes work out OK, and that's the
way I like to look at it.
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| fakejazz:One or two of the songs on the album remind me of Polvo songs.
Not to the point where I can name the corresponding song, but
enough that I drive myself crazy wondering which song the
Libraness song is reminding me of. To your knowledge, did
any of the songs (or parts thereof) go on to become Polvo songs?
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| ash:The only really obvious similarity that comes to (my) mind is "Totempole," which has a guitar riff that's basically
the same as the verse from "The Curtain Remembers," from the first Polvo LP--just in a different key. I think
maybe I started that one because the Polvo song didn't turn out as heavy as what I had in mind, which was often
the case, and I wanted to hear it as a noisier, more "rocking" song. By the way, the "Totempole" mix on the
Libraness record is really small-sounding and tame, unfortunately--but I didn't realize it until too late... Well,
I'm sure a lot of moments are pretty familiar-sounding to anyone who listened to Polvo. I tend to do the same
things a lot with the guitar--similar rhythms, similar chords, the note clusters, etc... I do try to avoid recycling
ideas, but there's a point where I just accept these recurring tendencies and follow my instincts and sensibilities.
I'm pretty self-critical during the process of writing the music, but ultimately it's all about how much I like
what I've come up with, and not how original--or different--sounding it is. But I think I have a fairly personal
style of playing guitar, etc. (probably mainly due to my three or four tunings, which I'm very used to now), and so
I feel like I kind of have my own thing--to some extent, anyway. I guess I don't mind if it all kinda sounds the
same.
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| fakejazz:When writing a song during that time, did you always set out
to write songs for a specific band or project, or did you write the song and then figure out where it worked best? |
| ash:I only used the four-track to "demo" songs for the band once or twice. I knew that once I'd started recording a
song on the four-track, I'd usually want to finish it by myself and leave it that way. When I had a song I wrote
for the band, I usually just played my guitar part in front of them and let it develop and evolve in the practice room,
with everyone doing their thing, especially during the "early years."
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| fakejazz:The songs on the album seem more personal than your work with
Polvo, for example, "Deformed Bridges." Is this accurate,
or is it just that the lyrics of Polvo songs better mask the true subject matter? |
| ash:Well, I really don't think there was ever a deliberate "masking" of subject matter, as far as the Polvo lyrics--if I
was singing, and you couldn't figure out what the song was supposed to be about, that was because I hadn't
quite figured it out either. I've never considered myself much of a lyricist (and certainly not much of a singer),
because I've never felt that I had much to say while singing along to music--at least not the type of stuff I hear in
other people's songs. I tend to write lyrics inspired by images and moods and daydreams--not stuff straight out
of my own private life, even though I've often tried to develop lyrics in a more or less "topical" or
personal-sounding way, to make them seem more coherent--because I'm not comfortable going the total
nonsense route either. Most of the time I pay attention to sounds and combinations of words as much as
possible and try to make the lyrics fit the melody, and not the other way around. Writing lyrics always comes
absolutely last for me, after all the music is finished, so usually I just hum along until some phrases suggest
themselves in random places, and then I just try to string some lines together and work out the
semi-metaphorical stuff. Thinking about it now, I guess I've definitely gone through a few distinct phases,
lyrically, trying different approaches and trying to express different things, but usually it just doesn't work in the
end, and I wind up instinctively going back to the images and moods. "Deformed bridges" isn't exactly
autobiographical, by the way--it's just an elaboration on a state of mind or set of impressions, not a deep
glimpse into my psyche or whatever. Anyway, it's hard to say sometimes what's "personal" and what isn't...
Maybe my next batch of lyrics will be different somehow, and hopefully "better", but probably not.
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| fakejazz:The album is very eclectic, much more so than Polvo was,
covering rock songs to sound collages. As Libraness becomes
your main songwriting outlet, are the new songs you're
creating as eclectic as the album is, or will you center more on one style? |
| ash:Polvo could easily have made more eclectic records--we definitely had some ideas--but we generally spent as
little time as possible in the practice space. But I think that's basically why our songs had all the rough edges,
which generally seemed like a good thing. Anyway, I'll definitely be experimenting stylistically and sound-wise
with my new hi-tech recording equipment, if I can ever figure out how it works, but I don't think I'll get too far
from (mostly) guitar-based music for the forseeable future. I do have some newish rock songs I'm anxious to
record, and some long, meandering guitar pieces. Hopefully I won't waste too much time making half-assed
ambient soundscapes or whatever. I would like to keep trying different instrumentations and arrangements, but
the ideas I have are still too vague to describe. I just hope I'm able to free up more time for music, and also find a
place to make noise...
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| fakejazz:The cover art of the album seems to be a good metaphor for
its sound, that things perceived as ugly (like dissonance and
off-kilter tunings) can be beautiful if you truly look at them.
Where did the images come from, and how did you choose this theme for the artwork? |
| ash:I took the photo(s) with my clunky old Pentax. I'd had the cicadas for a long time and wanted to set up that shot
for the record. Now, I really wish I'd gotten some better photography equipment and used better lighting, so that
the translucence of the bug shells would be more apparent, but live and learn... I did have a bunch of other ideas
for artwork, but settled on this one pretty quickly. I don't think I was really conceptualizing the image(s) as a
visual metaphor for the music, but it did seem to make some kind of sense when I thought about it.
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| fakejazz:Are there any plans to add backing musicians and tour with Libraness? |
| ash:I'd like to do that, but haven't really pursued it yet for various reasons. Maybe I'll try to work something out in
the coming months, but recording is going to be a bigger priority, I think. I will probably get other (types of)
musicians to help out on certain songs I'll be working on.
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| fakejazz:You've helped out in both Mary Timony's solo album and in
Helium but (obviously) had a bigger hand in the latter.
Are there any Helium recordings (or other more collaborative
efforts) in the works? Are there any other projects you're working on now? |
| ash:Mary and I have talked about writing some new stuff and possibly recording sometime, like later this year
maybe. I've played some rock with a couple friends lately, but we just make noise for fun. Otherwise, I've been
working with another friend on a project for an Italian audiobook (he's reading some Verga stories and I'm
composing some music and engineering). I'm also going to help out on this upcoming dance/theater performance
at the N.E. Conservatory, but my involvement is basically technical--editing a sound collage and programming
the lights.
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| fakejazz:Well, thanks so much for talking with me.
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