You’ve described your work as something that “recalibrates the listener’s ears,” and it seems that this idea runs through pieces like esstends-esstends-esstends (2012) and Metal Fatigue Music (2012). Could you tell us more about this concept of “recalibration”?When I started working on pieces where the morphology of the sound became as important as harmony/melody/rhythm I feel like I became a much better listener. I could listen into the sounds I was producing in a new way. I think this is what I mean by recalibration. Making work that foregrounded this kind of engagement opened up a lot of space to experiment with sound as sound—just enjoying seeing how weird and fucked up I could get sonically.
Metal Fatigue Music took this further by creating a listening situation (a sub bass boom car that my collaborator Jeff DeGolier installed in a Toyota Previa) where the full-bodied physical reception of sound was undeniable. I mean, it was both really intense but also fun and maybe a little overwhelming. At that time I was thinking about sound from an almost sculptural, three dimension approach. It was a way of refining the decision making in the compositional process since the aim was to how the sounds were behaving more than how the composition was developing.
Right now I am not making work that is as overtly engaged in these considerations but I think, because it was such an obsession for a while, that it still exists in the work—just sort if hidden deeper inside.