modsquare interview Who is Proem?
There’s something about the name that draws you in, but leaves you wondering where you might have heard it, whom you may have heard it from. To be informative, I’ll let you know that the word ‘proem’ actually means: A brief poetic introduction. Sort of appropriate when you hear the music that 27 year-old Richard Bailey is most known for.
"I pulled it out of a dictionary. It’s an actual word, which I figured was kind of appropriate. The label (the now defunct Hydrant Records) had initially asked me to change it."
Though Richard won’t say, despite some prodding, what his previous alias was, he explains how his first release, Burn Plate No. 1, (released on Hydrant in 1999) wasn’t the first foray he’d taken into experimental music. What many folks don’t know is that Burn Plate—which is even listed, though incorrectly, on VH1.com—might have never happened at all.
"I had set a goal for myself when I was 23 or 24, that if I didn’t have anything out by the time I was 25, I would stop. I think it was actually released 2 months after my birthday (March 25), but I had agreed to do it in January of that year," he says admittedly.
"I was pretty happy."
"Were there specific inspirations for that album besides just getting something out before you turned 25?"
"There’s a common chord in the stuff I listen to. I mean, I think a lot of the Autechre stuff is far too grainy, not melodic enough," he comments. "It just seemed like people were focusing on cold, rhythmic architecture instead of how the melodies fit together. I just wanted to make something to hum to that wasn’t like completely pop or an Autechre clone."
"Folks are always bringing up the Autechre reference," I remark, "which I’m sure you get all the time..."
"Yeah, that and Arovane, which is pretty ridiculous in itself. After the fourth or fifth review where it’s like, ‘ooh, Autechre...’ it’s like, ‘oh whatever’."
"Well, that’s the media for you," I admit, laughing.
"I mean it’s understandable; I just did a guest review spot for URB and it was really difficult to try to resist the urge to classify based on previous listening, which is all electronica has."
We don’t have "any pop idols", he says, not figures prone for mass media representation, with faces and voices. The culture of electronic music isn’t’ doesn’t accommodate the sort of pop sensation embodied by the bands we grew up with.
"It’s not a bad thing necessarily," Rich concludes.
This is where I have to interject. "So, I have to ask this before I forget, Rich. How do you name your songs?"
"It’s kind of like, I use a combination of sound and texture," he says, "or I use it to pinpoint a time of the week, or where I’m at right then and there. When it’s done and you’re like, ‘you know what this sounds like?
"It sounds like two weeks ago. Most of the ones on Burn Plate are weird little stories and stuff. It usually happens in the course of writing. I keep a running journal of random phrases, song titles and potential song titles, weird things I see on signs. I do the same thing with my design stuff; I’ll collect things that look interesting."
"So, were you born in Texas or are you an import?"
"No, I was actually born in South Bend, Indiana."
"Really? Go Midwest!" My unbridled enthusiasm somewhat silences the phone line...
"Yeah. I was only there for my first 10 years; I think my parents moved to Houston when I was almost 10 or just 10. I’ve been in Austin for three years now."
"And how is life in Texas?"
"Well, I don’t know anything else at this point", Rich states bluntly.
"I could tell you life outside of Austin in Texas is incredibly conservative and backwoods. Austin is kind of a small town but really urban. There is a giant hippie element and tons of vegan restaurants, which is helpful. And then there’s the whole tech thing.
"Texas," he notes, "and some of the southwest, got some bleed-over from the Silicon Valley, so we’re the ‘Silicon Hills’. We have AMD, Sun Microsystems, and Dell—
"With that tech-based foundation of people, how’s the IDM scene?
"I’ve heard it called ‘really non-trivial’. Actually, that was from a conversation I had with someone who had just moved here from LA to go to school, who was like "one of the reasons I came here was because I heard that the scene was non-trivial" and I was like, "what do you mean?"
He says, "Well you have a lot of artists here, and you have regular events, and they’re usually top-notch from what I’ve heard."
"Well," I inquire, "would you agree with that statement?"
"Oh yeah, one hundred percent. Nautilus is here, Neutral, myself, Stars As Eyes on TigerBeat6, and a couple of others on a German label called Ucover. There’s a decent scene and most everybody is involved with the Austin Museum of Digital Art, who does a showcase during SXSW (South by SouthWest), which is the southwest equivalent of the Winter Music Conference—it’s usually dominated by blues and rock artists. I played [the showcase] this last year. They always make it a point to fly someone in and it’s not just music; there’s digital art, short films; it’s a really top-notch organization."
"How did your relationship with the Merck organization happen? With all the remixes you do for each other, you must be a tight-knit group."
"Merck saved my life," Richard begins.
"Right when me and my girlfriend moved to Austin. I’d started...I met him through the Hydrant guys after they went to the WMC the year my CD was released. They just passed it out to everyone—said they went with 200 copies and came back with like, 12.
"Apparently, Merck got a hold of it through them and contacted me about contributing to a compilation. I said, ‘Cool’, then I hit him up for a full-length because I was ready to do one. All the stuff on Negativ was written in the two or three months after Burn Plate came out so it was a good year and a half old before I had sent it to them.
"After I’d confirmed that," he says, "He invited me and Machinedrum and the Illkae guys and a couple of other Merck artists to go and play the SiN Fest (Safety in Numbers Festival) in New York. I’d talked to those guys via IRC most of the time because Merck runs a channel. We all went to New York and 13 of us strangers shared a loft. We’d never met prior to hanging out; it was such a "Real World" episode. The whole Merck crew is such a really tight-knit group of people; we’re pretty tight, really friendly and will call each other out of the blue since long distance is free after 8 o’clock."
"Most of the remixes I’ve traded or done for people and who have done them for me, has been like ‘Hey, do a remix for my record’, ‘Okay, just return the favor later’."
"And how about the minidisc label," I ask, "the guys at n5MD?"
"I think he wrote and asked me to contribute to his second compilation. N5MD is based out of Oakland and Hydrant was based out of Oakland/San Fran, so he had immediate access to the stuff they took to shops.
"When he contacted me," Richard continues. "I was like ‘Man, minidisc is such a rocking format, I will always love them.’ I was surprised that he hadn’t had any full-length minidisc releases. ‘Well I’m kind of having a hard time finding willing artists," and I was like, "You’ve got one right here".
"There’s a lot of your stuff online. How do you feel about file sharing?"
"I mean, the file sharing thing, it gets kind of weird," Rich says. "That’s one of the reasons why I decided to do a minidisk—other than the fact that it’s a rocking format and it’s like, perfect for the genre—it’s just that it adds another step to...you know. I don’t have a problem with putting stuff out there to be found, but I have weird reservations about finding stuff that’s already on CD. I mean, since Negativ, I’ve done all my own graphics. Even the graphics for Burn Plate No.1 were pictures of a painting I did. I don’t think you can even truly appreciate this stuff unless you have a visual element to it as well."
"Well, there’s that," I concede, "and then there’s the question of compensation. How do you get paid for the work involved with the label and design and all those steps? I’m sure you eat some costs, but to online and see more mp3s than you yourself have put out..."
"Well, up until this year, I’d never gotten paid. Ever," he emphasizes. "And whenever it came up, I was always like, ‘we’ll deal with that later.’ The only reason I got paid this year was because I really needed the money... bad—
"I’ve got to ask," I interject, "What’s a standard release goal for the genre overall?
"Copies out the door...it’s about 1000. Everybody that I’ve worked with has said about 1000. Once those are gone, we negotiate repressing."
"So, 1000 in say, 3 months equals popping corks and"—
"Yeah, that’s unheard of," he laughs. "Like, the only Merck artist that’s completely sold out and had to go to repressing has been Machinedrum. And that’s because the Japanese kids are eating him up, which is really awesome."
"Well, with all the similarities to hip hop..."
"Yeah," he says, "that’s exactly why they’re so nuts about it."
"All that ‘bitches and ho’s’ stuff, right?"
"Which is why," Rich laughs, "my Machinedrum remix is ‘all bitches and wheels’—because that’s my opinion of hip hop or basically what it amounts to."
"It’s off the subject a little," I say, "but I’d like to talk about your work ethic a bit. You’ve got an amazing one, what with being so prolific with music an then doing the day job..."
Rich replies, "I figure that I didn’t do anything for like two years except make music. Before the Hydrant thing...it was just solid. I wasn’t doing anything. The response that I got from the Hydrant guys alone was like, "OK well, I’m on the right track and I just need to plow ahead.
"The whole ‘making music’ is...I don’t think I’ll ever stop. Even though—you know—people say, ‘Oh, he sounds like Autechre’ or ‘this sounds like Boards of Canada or Plaid’. I can’t do anything but what I have been doing. I get bored if something’s like, you know, four/four. I like something interesting or slightly twisted about it."
"Well, you have fun with it right?"
"Yeah, yeah. That’s what makes it fun: being able to make it quote/unquote weird and kind of twisted and still kind of bittersweet at times. Melodically anyway."
"One of our contributors asked about your later work and how it seems to have become more melody-driven and the melodies have become more complex and interesting as well. For example, "Cold Water (flat)", (Negativ), compared to "Tether" (Burn Plate). What marked this evolution for you? I ask despite the fact that Negativ came only three months after Burn Plate No. 1...which is actually kinda funny."
"It’s mostly just me being bored, he responds. "Like, I let something play for like, four or five minutes, then I’m like, ‘all right, I need to change it.’ It just kind of layers...it kind of puts itself together, basically.
"Sometimes I don’t even feel I’m in control of it at all.
"I think the melody-driven stuff," he continues, "is probably coming with age. And it seems like Schematic (the label) and Autechre are pushing towards intelligent noise. I seem to be leaning the other way because my stuff’s really melodic and kind of, poppy, I guess."
"But, I wouldn’t call it poppy," I argue, "unless you define it as having a definite beginning and end, which is what I think people enjoy most about you and the other folks like you. There’s a peak in almost every tune, like "Access Mike (Failure To Connect)."
Rich laughs, "That’s actually this dude who was online all the time. The name comes from the fact that way before the Hydrant record, I used to hang out in Yahoo groups and this guy was always online. His name was Mike—we used to talk up a storm, and anytime I would go online, he was on; it was like he never slept. So it was like, you could constantly ‘access Mike’."
"See, you wouldn’t get that from just listening to the song. "I mean, you listen to it," I stress, "and it’s melancholy, not just melodic; almost the perfect music for autumn or winter. Would you also classify it as melancholy?"
"My favorite times are winter and fall, especially in Texas, because it never drops below 50°. I take a more or less poetic approach to it. Not just musically, but in general, my own creations, I look at it as writing poetry.
"Sadness," I point out, "could be seen as the source of a lot of these musical themes, though. Do relationships, family, pain...do they have anything to do with it?"
"Oh completely. Without a doubt," he elaborates, "even down to the song titles. Most of that stuff comes from my life, events in my life or something someone will say to me. Like, there’s a track on that three-inch (No Carrier) CD called "hold you like I hold a job", which is something my girlfriend said to me. "Our relationship to you is like how you treat a job that you enjoy but you don’t always like it," she said.
"Essentially that incorporated itself into a song. It completely relates to my life because I have had a pretty interesting one. Family wise, both my parents were ministers—Presbyterian ministers. They were like the first ordained and married Presbyterian ministers in the whole country; I think they were one of the first ten.
So, growing up in that..."
"Then, my dad became a school teacher and my mom became a therapist after they left the church. And then, when my parents got divorced, my mom came out of the closet. From 18 to 20 (years old) I was off-and-on homeless for three months at a time."
I ask, "Was that in order to cope?"
"Not necessarily, it just kind of happened that way. I went on the whole drug treatment thing when I was 15."
"Incredible. I mean, that’s so early..."
"Yeah, I did most of that stuff really early on—like, when most people were learning how to drive, I was going to outpatient therapy.
"I have a tendency to do things backwards."
"Again, we have to do a bit of subject-changing. Do you set challenges or goals for yourself when you’re writing music?"
"Lately it’s been trying to learn software. Currently I’m using Kontakt," he says, "which is Native Instruments answer to their previous Battery product. It rocks; I’m so in love with the fact that I can just assign a time- stretch to an envelope without having to build massive ensembles in Reaktor. Believe it or not, I compose everything in Fruity Loops."
"No way..."
"And this one will really get you—Burn Plate was written on a DOS-based 486. It had a max. speed of somewhere between 33 and 66 mHz. I wouldn’t even install Windows; it ran too slowly. There was this program called Soundclub; it accepted 8 or 10 different formats and put out like 5 or 6. All I did was...all the instruments and stuff; I had one of those 24-bit guitar effects processors and split the channels so all the melodic stuff went through that and everything else was just dry.
"I’ve always been like, ‘let’s see how inventive I can get and accomplish my goals because I can’t, financially, afford the stuff I want."
"Do you rely on keyboards or is it all just Fruity Loops, Rich?"
"Currently," he reports, "I have a USB MIDI keyboard and a laptop. I’m completely software-based and always have been because it’s the easiest way to get the job done. I could probably benefit from having gear, but I’m so entrenched and trained on the whole software music thing that it would be like learning something new.
I could always use a new computer, but for the most part, I’m really happy. I’ve barely used the MIDI board."
"Would you tackle the different production options if you didn’t have the limitations?"
"The argument I’ve always given when someone has said, ‘I’m going to buy such and such a keyboard’ has been ‘Why?’
"Does your sampler send email," Rich asks rhetorically. "No. Can you load Adobe Illustrator onto it and make graphics between that and a music program? No. So, why would you want a sampler when you could just buy a computer and have a be-all-end-all machine you can do just about anything with?
"Well, Rich," I start, changing topics once more, "let’s talk about food..."
"Mmm, food. I’m vegan—since about four or five years ago. I was a vegetarian for seven years prior to that."
"Was it part of the fad, or did you really not enjoy the idea of eating meat any longer?"
"After doing the whole drug rehab thing, I figured, if I’m going to quit doing this stuff, why don’t I just completely purify everything and make it really difficult for me?
"I did that for seven years and then," he says, "just decided I was half-assing it since I was doing the milk and eggs thing. The only things I do are drink shitloads of coffee and smoke a lot of cigarettes. What’s funny is that my girlfriend is the exact same way. I had this thing where I said: ‘the day I meet a woman who drinks nothing but black coffee is the day I’m going to move in with this woman.’ And like, she refuses to drink anything but straight black coffee."
"Could you describe a typical day in your life for us?"
"I wake up at seven (AM) to be at work at eight. I deal with people asking me what the difference between Office XP and Windows XP is. Post-work, which is probably two or three, I hop on the bus and come home, sit in front of the computer until about 1 AM, then go to sleep. And that’s tossed between doing design stuff and audio stuff—more design lately.
"What about the relationship," I ask, "When does the time come for that?"
"Well, that’s all in-between. I cook all the food and we make it a point to eat dinner together. We catch up at the end of the day. Periodically, if I have my headphones on, she’ll throw little balls of paper at me and distract me. It’s really quite cute," he says.
"We’ve been together for about three years," he continues, "and this is the best relationship I’ve ever been in; she’s just wonderful. Every day she surprises me; she’ll say something weird or start dancing around—like, 10 minutes ago, she came in here and danced through the room and out the door without saying a word. Just did her little shuffle over to once side of the room, turned around and shuffled right out, just to let me know she’s still here. I wouldn’t have made it through the last 7 or eight months if I didn’t have her."
"What does the future look like for you? Do you have any collaborations planned with anyone?"
"There’s lots of stuff on the backburner. I’ve actually been working on a collaborative project done over NetMeeting with this guy in Holland. It’s almost all piano-based and percussive with marimbas, xylophones. He’s actually going to have a full-length release on Merck probably in the next year and actually did a remix for Among Others way back in the day.
"I just met Thomas Jirku, who was here for one of the AMODA showcases last month. He and I talked about doing a split 12-inch."
"Do you have any hectic stories about live sets you can share with us?"
"The very first AMODA show. This is a great story," Rich laughs. "It was about 30 minutes into an hour performance of me and the computer just dies all of a sudden. I’m looking around and everyone’s looking around and I’m just like ‘I don’t know’ and the showcase director figured out that it was Kid 606’s girlfriend who’d accidentally pulled the plug. They didn’t have it taped to the ground or anything, so she had just walked by and tripped yanked the whole thing out of the wall. The entire sound system was like out for five or ten minutes with five or six of us running around trying to find out what was wrong.
"It was speculated that she knew what she was doing," he continues, "and it wasn’t an accident because there’s some weird rivalry between the whole Merck crew—like Cex and Machinedrum get into it all the time and they just talk shit about each other. Actually, there was an interview I did with one of the guys from AMODA and he asked me something like ‘what do you feel is the future of the whole genre’" and I was like ‘I don’t necessarily see a Grammy category for the kind of stuff that I do, but if there was it would go to Kid 606, because most of those awards go to people who don’t really deserve them anyway’. I caught so much hell for that."
And with some laughs over the story, the interview comes to an end, the rapid beats of "Protobella" thumping against my floor as I hang up the phone.
Who is Proem? Hopefully, the answer to that question is clearer now. As always, especially considering the prolific nature of Bailey’s work, there is plenty of music to come, more news at 11, as they say.
listen
Proem presspack
![Proem - Proem_LiveMD[cd?]](releases/116/116.jpg)
