Its not every day that a girl gets to hear from one of her favorite musicians. But that day happened recently when I snagged an interview with Julian Lynch. In case you are not familiar with this supremely talented musician (I’m clearly biased), he is associated with the Underwater Peoples label and has worked with other New Jersey bands like Ducktails. He’s also pursuing a masters degree in Ethnomusicology. If you like ambience, psychedelia and unique instruments played in challenging ways, then Lynch’s music is for you.
The Bus Is Leaving: I read that you grew up in Ridgewood, NJ. What was your music education like growing up?
Julian Lynch: I did grow up in Ridgewood. There are many opportunities and privileges available to kids who grow up in a place like that. The public school system is very highly rated, and there is an emphasis on music education. Although neither of my parents are musicians, nor do they take much of an interest in music, they encouraged my brother and me to take music lessons from a very early age. I am very conscious of the fact that private music lessons are a luxury, and I’m very lucky and grateful for the chance to study music in an intensive way early in my life. I started piano lessons in second grade, and clarinet lessons in fourth. I played in school bands and orchestras. Once I got into high school, I switched clarinet teachers and stopped taking the instrument as seriously, which is a shame. On the bright side, I started learning the guitar, and for a few years of my life I was not able to put it down. I really fell in love with playing the guitar, but kind of burned myself out by college. In the past few years, I’ve slowly been rediscovering the clarinet. I could list many clarinetists that I know who possess much greater technical skill than I do in a formal sense, but I’ve been trying my best to re-learn.
TBIL: There is something very studied and intelligent about your music. What drew you to the field of ethnomusicology?
JL: Thanks! My undergraduate major was in a related discipline, cultural anthropology. I actually started out as a music major, but pretty quickly changed my mind. Towards the end of college, I was writing papers occasionally that sort of peripherally involved discussions of music, but I couldn’t really figure out how to write about music in a way that I was comfortable with (I’m still not sure I have!). After graduating, I worked for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, and was exposed in a very limited way to some ethnomusicological literature. More importantly, I was exposed to a lot of music recordings that I really liked. I knew I wanted to go to grad school, so I applied to programs in both anthropology and ethnomusicology. I figured I’d be happy either way. I haven’t actually told too many people about this yet, aside from close friends and my family, but I just got accepted to a joint PhD program. I’ll be straddling the School of Music and the Anthropology Department here in Wisconsin starting next fall, which I’m really excited about.
TBIL: How many instruments do you play?
JL: I always feel weird answering this question, like I need to qualify it somehow. There are a bunch of instruments that I’ve used to record music, that I don’t feel comfortable saying I actually play, since people who might actually play those instruments would probably think I suck at them. The instruments I use most often when I make music are clarinet, guitar, drums, keyboards, and bass. But I physically have played many more. I’ve been learning Great Highland Bagpipe (which is actually an important part of my Master’s thesis), and also I play in the gamelan ensemble at my university. Compared to some of the more senior members of that ensemble though, I would say my abilities are pretty limited. But I’ve still used the instruments and the rehearsal space to record (I think I’m allowed to do that?). Those recordings are being used to score this movie that my friend Amy Ruhl is making about Mata Hari. I think I have one track up on my myspace, and a couple more on my blog.
TBIL: People have described your music as “blissed-out”, “psychedelic” and other words that describe nebulous sound. How would you describe your sound? What is your goal, sonically, when composing and recording?
JL: As for the first term, “blissed-out,” I’ve got to say it kind of annoys me. I mean, why not just say “blissful?” Anyways, that’s a language issue and not so much a sound issue, and it is as amusing to me as it is irritating. I think probably any description you or I could might up with could easily be scrutinized. It is really hard to describe musical sound or style in an effective way, for me especially, and a lot of times I just avoid doing so because I rarely find a need for it. I’m not sure I have any concrete goals when I record. Usually, that is. I guess I could say that I just record music that I like the sound of, but that probably isn’t so true always. The Mata Hari stuff is a good example. I made those recordings for a definite purpose; I made them for a film that already was partially completed. Amy asked certain things of me, like, she asked if I could musically reference Strauss’s opera Salome. So one of the tracks adapts some melodic material from “Dance of the Seven Veils.” Being that Mata Hari was quite the orientalist herself, and given the scene in Amy Ruhl’s film, it made sense to engage 19th century European orientalist works [Julian’s edit: Salome was actually written in the early 20th century!], and emulate their musical style in a way. But combined with the images, I think it could be interpreted as a sort of critical engagement, among other things. Strauss, and other composers who were writing operas at the time, were thinking of certain sounds as being “oriental” and gendered/feminized, the bottom line being that many of these composers had intensely racist and sexist attitudes. I figured that if I made some recordings that sounded like some of those works in some way, going so far as to actually borrow melodies from them and use gamelan instruments, then juxtaposed with Amy’s images it could open the possibility of interpretations that might be concordant with Amy’s overall vision. I’m not really doing a great job describing this, haha, but I think maybe it might make some sense if you see the movie or happen to talk to Amy ever. Also, I don’t want to misrepresent Amy’s movie in any way; these are my own ideas about what is going on there, and I’d be just as happy if someone listened to those recordings and thought something very different.
TBIL: The instrumentation in The Flood Excerpt is striking: I’m not sure but I thought I heard a talking drum and some droning instrument. I love it! Can you explain which instruments you used in that piece and why?
JL: Glad you like it! I used tabla, which I’m “choking” to get the sound that I think you are talking about. Also, I played this wind instrument that I made from tubing from a hardware store and a clarinet mouthpiece. That’s the low droning sound. I used it on another track too, called “Just Enough” which will be on the new album. There’s my old broken bagpipe practice chanter being played in part of the song, keyboard, and some percussion instruments. I think that’s it. I was taking tabla lessons at the time, and was just goofing off really, recording stuff. I added some other instruments and liked it, and the track ended up on my first LP.
TBIL: Another of my favorites is “In New Jersey”. It begins with this series of clicks that sound like tree frogs. When the melody begins it sounds lazy and hot, like a summer night in August, complete with the little creatures bustling away in the trees outside. Obviously, the beauty of music is that the listener can always draw her own conclusions. But what is the song about?
JL: The lyrics kind of got clipped for the recording, but originally they were about growing up and developing an understanding of moral justice and a picture of how the social world must work, only to have that picture disintegrate, and, in the wake of this, attempting to figure out a way to reconcile learning and experience and find a way of being in the world. That is more or less what most of the lyrics on that new album are about. I don’t really expect people to understand the words I am singing, and I generally don’t have a problem cutting off lines if it fits the melody (I didn’t write words and music together on the album at all). I’ve heard/read a lot of lyrics and poetry that I like way better than my own, and I don’t feel confident about my abilities as a lyricist. So I don’t blame you if you think all of that sounds stupid!
TBIL: Finally, in “Venom” (and some of your other pieces) the guitar sounds like it’s being played underwater. Purely from a performing/recording aspect, how do you do that? (I’m guessing pedal, but it is such a great effect!)
JL: Hey thanks again! I’m using a univox tape echo machine that I bought on ebay in 2008. Ever since I got that, I’ve used it on almost every project I’ve worked on, I love it that much. So, if you listen to Born2Run or Birthday, and then Garden is Adventure and everything after that (Orange You Glad/Ducktails split/Mare/Mata Hari), you’ll hear that tape echo in all of the later stuff.
the bus is leaving 