089 | erin vanderhoof: conversation pieces
At first, I was thinking about pulling together a dynamic set of songs at mid-tempo. I’m fascinated by mid-tempo music because unlike, say, balladry or dance music, it has to use a subtle and limited set of tools to convey emotion. The more I listened to these sorts of songs, especially the ones that felt like fall, the more I realized that they all rely on a really particular sonic architecture. Bass, plodding or fleet-footed, works like scaffolding, guitar melodies are crystalline ornaments, and vocals weave in and out of them, sometimes stealing notes, sometimes pushing the song away.
I started to hear voices in everything, and little conversations happening here and there among the instruments, across time, like walking through a hallway with open doors. The mix is sequenced so you can hear them in miniature—a minor-key arpeggio being returned in reverse, a heartbeat of a kickdrum jumping from fibrillation to fibrillation—and in macro, certain themes returning and arguments being rephrased and refuted.
–Erin Vanderhoof
Twitter: @vanderhoofy