SOLOS’ Spencer Seim on His and Aaron Ross’ Excellent New Project

The seeds of SOLOS were sewn around 2007. That was the year Nevada City freak-folk troubadour Aaron Ross rounded out an unlikely five-man partnership for Hella’s fourth full-length, There’s No 666 in Outer Space, providing vocals to a band internationally known for its aversion to much beyond breakneck time-signature gymnastics, sizzlingly technical guitar-and-drum patterns and explosive live shows. And while Hella’s been on a hiatus of sorts after its last LP, Tripper, was released in 2011–much of that having to do with drummer Zach Hill’s quiver of spectrum-spanning projects, such as the hugely popular Death Grips–guitarist Spencer Seim sought a crisp creative direction to aspire toward. There was only one person he considered to fill the half of that whole he was looking for.

“There’s just something about what Aaron does that I’m really into,” says Seim. “I’ve seen him play around town for years and there’s never been a single time I’ve seen him where he’s up there playing at a coffee shop or a local venue that I haven’t gotten goose bumps many times. I don’t know many other musicians that I get that with that consistently.”

So began the process of sussing out SOLOS, a new collaboration between Ross and Seim that’s already yielded probably the best, most imaginative and most sonically ballsy album of 2012 in their debut, Beast of Both Worlds (set to be released Sept. 11, 2012 via Joyful Noise Recordings). As hyperbolic as it felt to type that, it’s a rare occasion to verbalize a reaction to an album with repeated, “Holy fucking shit”s while kneeling in front of a Netbook for the entirety of the record. But Beast… is really that good. It’s brimming with enormous power-psych hooks, thick drums and the kind of sonic alchemy that seems totally unfair to other bands trying to make noise with instruments. Albums that sound this great, of course, take a lot of time to put together.

“It’s the way things work in the music world unless you fully plan everything and know exactly when things are happening,” says Seim of the year-and-a-half-long process to release the record. “But this was by the seat of our pants–kind of a more punk way of doing it. We just did everything on a budget and had a lot of people helping us and loaning us gear.”

Seim and Ross began writing together about two years ago, hoping to forge a unique hybrid wherein Seim’s progressive drumming would complement Ross’ seismic melodies, powerful guitar and witty, weird lyricisms. They performed around Nevada City and Sacramento under the working title Amaranth to demo songs in a live setting and dial them in a bit.

“The songs just needed a little boost I guess,” explains Seim. “Sometimes you write stuff and it comes out kicking ass in exactly the way you want it, but sometimes all the ideas are there and it needs some more working through. Playing it live in front of an audience, in my experience, changes songs quite a bit. Usually for the better.”

As Amaranth, Ross and Seim composed the songs that would reside on Beast… in about a month-and-a-half, and after playing out for a few months, they began the arduous task of talking with labels. But the duo didn’t get many responses to their work. Frustrated, Seim showed local producer Josh Henry their demos, who then passed them on to sought-after Abbey Road Studios engineer Guy Massey (Radiohead, Spiritualized, Depeche Mode) in England. Massey was immediately impressed by the group, who were now going by SOLOS, and invited them to travel overseas to make the record.

Seim was initially hesitant to work with a big-time engineer or producer, especially since without label support the duo were financing the record entirely themselves. On the strength of the demos, though, SOLOS seemed to already have their first number-one fan in Massey.

“Josh and Guy weren’t just hired to do this and try to make it sound as good as possible; they both did it for no money, just for the fun of the project,” says Seim. “They both had amazing ideas that we both really respected and enjoyed. There was no ego or anything involved, it was just all of us trying to make the best record we could in 21 days. It was different than I had expected, but way better because it wasn’t this big time producer telling us what to do. [Guy] was this super level-headed dude with rad ideas, sitting Indian style on the floor surrounded by guitar effects dialing stuff while [Aaron] played, blasting stuff through amps and basically trying to get weird sounds that none of us had ever heard before.”

Considering Seim’s instrumental pedigree with Hella–as well as with Nintendo-core crew The Advantage–getting weird sounds he hadn’t heard before would seem a pretty daunting task. But after hearing Ross’ mystical guitar progressions, and the overall haunted funhouse vibe of opener “Jung at Heart,” the Zeppelin-ish follow-up “All My Tribulations” and the excellent closing cover of Michael Jackson’s “They Don’t Care About Us,” you begin to understand just how far down the rabbit hole SOLOS was willing to travel.

For Seim, it was about channeling his musical sensibilities outside of the chaotic math-noise of his other projects, and allowing room for Ross’ songwriting talents to hold equal footing on Beast… After all, for Seim, two heads have always been better than one. Or three, or four or five for the most part.

“I’ve really enjoyed working on projects with just one other person in the past,” says Seim, “just because it’s two minds, and the way they fit together can make something really cool, especially if they’re very different. Even though Zach and I were making a very specific type of music in Hella, we’re both very different and have very different ideas about music. It was much more of a rhythmic connection we had there. With Aaron, we have more of a melodic connection.”

Seim and Ross were also careful to strike a true balance between their seemingly disparate styles for SOLOS.

“We had both just come from a band [Hella] that was very technical and was really trying to innovate in time signature and the way songs are arranged,” explains Seim. “With this project, we’re really just trying to do something new, something we haven’t heard before. But obviously, we don’t want to overplay in areas that aren’t necessary. We just want the beats or guitar parts to be interesting on their own and not have to be interesting because they’re fast or they’re in a strange time signature.

“We want it to be one entity and want you to be able to hear both of us in it, but not sound like us playing separately together, if that makes any sense.”

SOLOS began work on an even newer album six months ago, adding fellow Nevada City denizen Jeff Schmidt into the fold, officially making the band a trio. The timing of this addition is fortunate for the band, considering the instrumentation they included on Beast of Both Worlds and its impossibility to transfer live with just two people. Schmidt is taking on a kind of bass/keys hybrid with baritone guitar in helping compose the band’s new tracks, as well as during live performances.

SOLOS is only just now dusting off the soot of all that recording. They’re booking local shows in and around Sacramento, San Francisco and Nevada City for now, and are mulling over fall and spring touring options, though nothing has still been announced. But with another record 90 percent finished, perhaps the best is still to come.

“We’re just starting to get back into live band mode,” says Seim. “We’ve been in record mode for basically a year now. This is our first album, and we really plan to get out there and make a lot more.”

Beast of Both Worlds will was released Sept. 11, 2012. For more information and for touring and live performance updates about SOLOS, visit http://www.facebook.com/solosband, or http://www.joyfulnoiserecordings.com/artists/solos.

Neal Morgan’s Impulsive New Record a Raw Delight

You’re likely at least a little familiar with Neal Morgan, even if the name doesn’t quite ring a bell right away. Fans of Joanna Newsom or Bill Callahan will recognize the name as belonging to the drummer responsible for holding down percussive duties on their respective tours the last few years, as well as on record–notably Newsom’s Have One on Me, and Callahan’s Apocalypse. But Neal Morgan, the solo artist, is something of an anomalous alter-ego to the drummer heard on those recordings. His 2009 debut solo record, To the Breathing World, premiered a symbiosis of voice-and-drums-only compositions, created largely from first impulses to a cassette boom box in his Portland, Ore., garage. The result was a unique, primal offering of polyphonic voice melodies cooing over sometimes-frantic, sometimes-structured drumming. For his newest album, In the Yard, Morgan has also added a spoken word element, a new passion he hopes his work evolves naturally toward.

The self-released In the Yard is out Jan. 24, 2012, with distribution help by Drag City. Morgan is returning to the Sacramento area on the heels of the release, and took some time to speak with Submerge regarding his muses, his music and his hatred of poetry.

Is there anything special about getting into the mindset of making a solo record for you, as opposed to your more regular gig of drumming for other people and being part of a unit?
Well, everything I do is based on first impulses. So even arrangements I’ve made for Bill’s music or Joanna’s music start as first impulses and then it goes from there. But those first impulses when I’m arranging for someone’s record are based on some amount of conversation in advance–what they might be hearing for a particular piece and talking about the piece itself, and then arranging for that. I guess having a blank slate is the major difference.

What draws you to want to create on that impulse, and to have the final product be a really improvisational vibe?
For my own artistic enjoyment, it’s most fun to just be playing and just to do it without thinking too much and editing while I’m working. I tend to like listening to records where it was clearly the first pass that someone made at something. I always love my friends’ demos more than their records, for example. Really early on, I didn’t know how to make music of my own. I thought, “Well you make some demos and then you make a record.” Why make demos? Just make it. Get in the garage and just start and end up in something. Not always, but most of the time I love the thing that happens first, when I wasn’t thinking, the fresh impulse. But after a certain point, I’m a heavy, heavy editor. I spend 20 percent of the time tracking and then 80 percent editing. It definitely flips; it goes from being this impulsive thing into this heavy cerebral experience.

Of the songs that aren’t improvised like “Father’s Day” or “The Evidence,” how do you reconcile getting into the mindset of arranging or composing those songs that are more structured?
Sometimes the first thing you did is just exactly what it needs to be. Sometimes that’s just what happens. There’s a need for further tracking and re-recording of initial impulses. There are a few moments like that on this album, like “Father’s Day” happened fairly quickly. Those initial impulses really just kind of happened. But there are a couple songs on the second side, one in particular–“Thinking Big”–I’d had that drum beat kicking around for a really long time. I decided I wanted to make a highly structured composition. But then the two spoken word pieces [“On Tour,” “I Stand on a Roof”] happened after I thought the record was done. I went away [on the summer 2011 Bill Callahan tour] and came back, and [the record] was very clearly not done with fresh ears. I recorded those in 20 or 30 minutes. It was exactly what the record needed, and I finished it right then.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and give it space…
Yeah. Do you know the painter Philip Guston at all? There’s a response on the record to him, and his painting is on the cover. I think about him a lot and read a lot of his writings and interviews. He talks about being led during the course of painting, and I think that happens. As these things start to show themselves, they kind of tell you which way to go.

What is your recording process like? I read you recorded some of the album on a boom box.
I have a cassette eight-track, and an old boom box that has a microphone. I have a digital program, but I’m not good at any of that stuff. I just wanna hit record and play. Side A [of In the Yard] is really a foreshadowing of what the next record is going to be. Side B is really a wrapping up, I think, of a lot of the ideas that started with the first album. The next one’s gonna be spoken word.

You mentioned you hadn’t really done any spoken word before. How did you get into that?
[I was] in Atlanta [with Bill Callahan], and I was opening the show there. I had just written something that I really liked, but I didn’t really have a melody or anything like that to sing it. I decided just to say it. I just tried it and I loved it.

Was it liberating? It takes a lot of confidence to release music that’s based on first impulses, but also to speak naked words that aren’t under the veil of a melody and just saying it.
Yes, it did feel that way. I think that maybe that’s what continues to draw me to spoken pieces. The next record will be that, because you’re right–it’s the barest of the bare. That show, for me, was an incredible show. My shows are almost always improv. I’ll just decide to play a song at the drum kit one night, or instead I’ll just sing that song. This was a night where I did four or five really new things that I’d never done.

What topics interest you most to write lyrics or spoken word pieces about? Is that also coming from an impulsive source?
I have a notebook, and I’m often writing. You write when an idea comes or something happens that you think is interesting, or you come upon a way to express something that you’ve been curious about. I do a lot of writing and no editing as I’m writing. Zero. I think that’s so important. Then I will look at it some time later, and sometimes nothing resonates for me so I don’t act on any of it. But sometimes pieces of it will resonate and will connect to other ideas I have at the moment. Maybe drum ideas, or they’ll connect to other things I’ve written. Now my process includes speaking those written words in the editing process, because I’m now thinking that way for live and for the next record–hearing how it sounds and seeing how it feels to speak particular lines and then making editing adjustments based on that.

Like working on cadence and intonation?
Yeah, which is all stuff that I’d never really explored before. But it’s all very rewarding for me right now. I also don’t have a lot of frames of reference necessarily, and I want to stay that way.

In terms of spoken word artists?
Yeah, and just for the written word. I don’t have a lot of writers who are heroes of mine in that form. I’m kind of limited in that way.

You haven’t gravitated toward spoken word artists, now that you really enjoy it artistically for yourself?
No, I haven’t done that. I’ve read some more poetry in the past year, but I like so little of it. It’s really wild. But I also don’t devour it. If I read a lot more, I’m sure I would find a lot more I would like. But I really hate a lot of what friends have given me and said, “Oh yeah, this is a great poet, a great book.” I just don’t like it, like 90 percent of it [laughs]. When I’m working on music, I tend to not want to hear much at all. I just want to keep those first impulses what they are without having other ideas flying around.

Neal Morgan performs at the Milk Gallery in Sacramento, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. The show is all-ages and has a $5 cover. Show starts at 8 p.m. Morgan will also play at the Haven Underground in Nevada City Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012 (also a $5 cover). For more info, go to Havenunderground.org. Both shows feature Aaron Ross opening.