What does war sound like?

For those of us fortunate enough to have lived out of reach of direct armed conflict, we can only imagine the imitations of war we’ve witnessed in media—blockbuster action movies, harrowing video games, gripping TV series, and limited view news coverage.

Bullets crack, ping, and thud against their targets of stone, metal, flesh. Explosions trigger tinnitus reactions that ring in one’s ears like ten thousand teapots boiling over. Shouts and guttural utterances of pain, terror, and violence—all of this is the Hollywood horror we’ve heard.

But what if most of war’s reality sounds different? What if bullets began to sound different long after they were fired? What if the eerie silence—and the emotional turmoil—that follows bouts of battle sounds far more haunting than any media depiction could capture?

These are questions I began asking as soon as I encountered Battles & Silences, a collaborative work of experimental tape music composed by electronic duo Poulson Sq. (Anthony Fiumara and Mathijs Leeuwis) and performed live alongside Dirge Seçil Kuran and João Brito, members of The Hague/Amsterdam-based music collective HIIIT.

On Battles & Silences, Poulson Sq. and HIIIT have crafted sparse, ominous battlefields of noise where all that lingers is the memory of destruction.

Static and indistinct, metallic recordings clash and buzz. Dark drones loom beneath, then vanish, then reemerge to raise hairs and vibrate bones.

It’s all echoing together. Was that a rifle firing? A hammer striking something stout? The battle is close.

No, voices now—crying out, lamenting in the wake of the violence. Or is that the air moaning as a bomb slices through it during its descent?

Through all the progressions and recessions of noise, among the ashes of heavily processed samples recorded on analog tape, between the battles and the silences… I can hear a faint harmonic element. A centering, grounding sound.

A bell.

In 2024, 8 kilograms of Ukrainian bullet casings were melted down into bars in Kyiv, then shipped to the Netherlands and cast into a bell at the Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry. Weighing a total of 45 kilograms (just under 100 pounds), this new bell, the artists say, “heralds the beginning of a natural rotation: destruction becomes beauty once again.”

But this bell’s beauty is not detached entirely from the destruction that preceded it—it carries the weight of the battles in which its materials once flew around like hell’s hawks. It remembers. We remember. We must remember.

And we must appreciate the silence between the battles, which we often fill with melody to ease the memories that seep through in the silences. Redirect them into something like a song. Or something else...

Read on for my full interview with Anthony Fiumara and Mathijs Leeuwis of Poulson Sq. to learn more about their work and this soul-stirring record, Battles & Silences.

Meet Poulson Sq.

Please tell me more about the name Poulson Sq. Where did it come from and what does it represent about your musical identity as a duo?

Mathijs Leeuwis (ML): Valdemar Poulsen was the Danish engineer who developed the wire recorder. In current days aesthetics the wire recorder is an inferior machine. Despite all its technical shortcomings, it simultaneously contains so many artifacts that it pushes things to the fore besides the original message/information, that it triggers new associations and thoughts. Seen this way, the wire recorder forms a kind of template for how we often work as a duo: we try to give a place to the periphery of sounds, processes, instruments and sound worlds. A shift in perspective, prompted by the technical imperfection carried within our mostly analog set-up. This aspect of our compositional process feels so fundamental that we have chosen to give Poulsen, albeit slightly altered, a place in our artist name. The addition of “Sq” refers to our shared idea that we are working on pieces that try to place themselves outside of time. Not a linear story with a beginning and an end, but a sound structure in which you can dwell. A place, a square.

How long have you each been making music (both independently and as a duo)? What was one of your earliest memories of music that made you each want to become an artist?

Anthony Fiumara (AF): The short answer is that I’ve been involved with music for most of my life, though my way into it wasn’t particularly straightforward. As a child, sound fascinated me more than songs did: the hum of the refrigerator, the drone of traffic outside, the self-made electronic circuits that I connected to my stereo set, blending into something strangely consoling. Those were probably my first “musical” experiences, though I didn’t yet have the language to call them that.

Although I played in punk and new wave bands in my years in high school and early university, composers were dead people on clouds—out of reach for me as an ordinary mortal.

I started composing seriously in my early thirties, after exploring other forms of creative work. It was only then that composition began to feel like the natural way to think. Over the years, my focus shifted from notes and gestures to timbre, structure, and the physical experience of sound.

As for the duo, we began collaborating in 2020 when our shared interests in slowness, texture, analog processes and reduction revealed a common ground. Collaboration, for me, has always been a kind of conversation: you listen, you respond, and you let the space between things speak. That dialogue—between two people, or between silence and sound—is what continues to draw me to making music.

ML: Just as for Anthony, music has always been around. Mostly songwriters and classical music was what was played back home. My first profound experience with music was probably around the age of 14, when I started playing electric guitar: the loudness and recognition of the sound that referred to completely different worlds (at the time, mainly from bands like Nirvana) was a fundamental feeling. It was as if you could access another world through that instrument. From there, I started throwing parties with groups of friends, making electronic music, playing in countless bands, studying guitar. But almost everything took place outside of institutions, which meant that for a long time I felt a great distance from forms of institutionalised music. Ultimately, the question “what else can be done with sound” moved me towards a more formal musical study. Funnily enough, it was Anthony Fiumara who showed me that the experiments I was conducting for myself were part of a great tradition. I think Poulson Sq. is, in part, a practical elaboration of that idea.

Where do you live now and what drew you there?

AF: I was born in Tilburg (The Netherlands), the place where Mathijs lives and where I teach composition at the conservatory. At a certain point I moved to Amsterdam, because of my work as a music editor in a publishing house. I’ve been living there for the last decades, but I am moving to another city next year. Amsterdam is a good place to live and it is a cultural hub. But it is also a tourist trap and never silent.

ML: I was born in Waalwijk, close to Tilburg. I moved to Tilburg at some point. It is a city with some sort of a DIY mentality. You can get things done there. There is a mentality of absurdity and creativity. It is there that I run my own foundation/studio—Het Concreet—which focuses on artistic research through the use of analogue techniques. I feel supported by the local scene of musicians, composers and government.

Visit Poulson Sq.

What draws you to ambient/instrumental music? (can answer in the context of listening and/or creating)

AF: What draws me to ambient and instrumental music, both as a listener and creator, is its capacity to engage with sound in a profound and tactile way. Ambient music, in particular, offers an environment where sound can unfold slowly and spacefully, allowing the listener to inhabit a sonic atmosphere rather than following a narrative or melodic line. This aligns deeply with my artistic focus on what I call “the skin of sound,” which is about texture, timbre, and the physical presence of sound itself.

Creating ambient music lets me explore contrasts between stillness and movement, repetition and variation, crafting soundscapes that evoke emotion and thought without words. For me, it’s a way to engage with time differently—where every detail matters, and the experience is immersive. As a listener, ambient music’s openness invites reflection and a heightened awareness of place, shifting how I perceive space and sound daily. This quality makes it endlessly compelling and a rich terrain for artistic exploration.

ML: I must say I’m fairly all over the place when it comes to musicking. Nowadays I listen to noise, industrial and other types of sounds, often more on the extreme side of the spectrum. And this also reflects in my own current artistic practice. But one of the aspects which brought me here is the sense of texture or physicality in music, which is often strongly represented in ambient music. I think this relates to what Anthony describes as the skin of sound. In a lot of my musical upbringing the element of virtuosity was present as a leading principle (not that I ever come close). And I think that it was through ambient music that I got drawn to aspects as slowly unfolding timbral changes as a focal point. As such, ambient music holds an important place in my personal musical development.

What music do you typically find yourself listening to? Any favorite artists? Any records that inspired Battles & Silences or any of your other music as you were working on it?

AF: Typically, I find myself listening to a broad range of ambient, electronic and contemporary experimental music that emphasizes texture, space, and subtle transformation. Artists like Brian Eno have been influential, alongside composers like William Basinski, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman and also Iannis Xenakis, whose work explores atmosphere and the physicality of sound in different ways. These artists create immersive listening experiences that resonate strongly with my own approach to composing.

Regarding records that inspired my work, including the album Battles & Silences, the immersive slow unfolding of ambient textures and the thoughtful manipulation of silence and sound have been central. The process and the soundscapes of these artists informed how I think about space in music and the balance between presence and absence. Their work helped shape my interest in how minimalism and subtle changes can create profound emotional and spatial effects in music.

The album Sti.ll by was an inspiration for us. More process-wise than sonically. We used the idea of asking musicians to translate tapeloops, sounds and noise to their instruments. And Basinski’s disintegration of sound was also a starting point.

ML: The earlier mentioned Sti.ll by Taylor Deupree is specifically important for Battles & Silences. Mostly as a reference to approach the musicians we were working with. I noticed that it was very helpful to share this music with the people involved: a lot less words were needed to get to the point of understanding what we were going for.

Like I said: I’m listening to a lot of different things, running from noise to drone and free improv. One recurring theme in my listening is early (electronic) music. Besides my work as a composer, I also run the experimental lab space Het Concreet, which is completely built around the use of analog electronics to explore sound. As such I’m constantly researching historical techniques for the composition of electronic music. This ongoing research is also strongly reflected in the kind of music I listen to, so a lot of Bernard Parmegiani, François Bayle and the likes.

On Battles & Silences

What connection do you have to Ukraine that inspired you to take on the Battles & Silences project with HIIIT? How have your feelings about the sound of the album evolved from the beginning stages of creation until now? What does Battles & Silences mean to you?

AF: The artistic director of percussion ensemble HIIIT and I have a fascination for metal percussion and bells. The original idea to center a performance around bells came naturally. Like I wrote in the liner notes:

There are moments in history when sound becomes more than vibration, when it becomes the very material of memory. Bells have always carried this weight. They call us to gather, they mark time, they echo joy, they toll grief. But they also have a darker lineage. Across Europe, in both the First and Second World Wars, bells were silenced not by time but by fire. They were torn from towers and melted into weapons, their resonant voices recast as artillery. That transformation—from harmony to violence, from resonance to rupture—still lingers in the collective imagination.

The idea to make Battles & Silences a reversal of that story came from Fedor [Teunisse]. At its center is a bell unlike any other: forty-five kilograms of resonant metal, forged not from ore mined in silence but from brass that once screamed across battlefields. Its material began life as Ukrainian bullet casings, smelted in Kyiv in the spring of 2024, gathered in small bars of brass before making their way, under difficult circumstances, to the Netherlands. From there they traveled to the Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry in Asten, the same foundry where church bells for cathedrals across Europe have been cast for centuries.

Tell me more about HIIIT. What’s your connection with that group and what role did they play in bringing Battles & Silences to life?

AF: A couple of years ago, I did a project with HIIIT around Philip Glass, where I composed my own music and arranged some Glass pieces for percussion ensemble. That resulted in a CD Vitreous Body that was released by Glass’s own label Blue Mountain. Artistic director Fedor Teunisse wanted to work with me again, but then with Poulson Sq. So that’s where we started to talk about this new project around the sound of bells.

When the idea took the shape of Battles & Silences, Mathijs and I wanted to work with percussionists that would be happy to get into the making and experimenting process with us. We didn’t want to present a score the way a normal ‘classical’ composer would do, but we wanted to develop the sound world and form together with them. Fedor came up with João Brito and Dirge Seçil Kuran, two young percussionists who are both brilliant and prepared to think out of the box. From moment one they were completely with us on this idea. They were very valuable in the process, as they were able to translate our processed tape loops to their instruments. It was amazing to work with these fantastic musicians.

The title of this project seems to be reflected well in the music–there are the “battles” represented by the various segments of sometimes quite jarring and chaotic noise, then the literal “silences” between them. Tell me more about this overall composition of the project and your thoughts on the value of silence within musical pieces.

ML: After initially grappling with the fundamental question of how we, as composers, should engage with this instrument and all that it symbolizes, it quickly became clear that we wanted the bell to be ever-present without actually playing it. The delayed ringing of the bell intensifies its final impact. And what we also noticed during our workshops with the musicians: once it had been struck, it also seemed as if the bell could no longer be removed from the ensemble. The instrument is too heavy to use briefly for a sound experiment and then move on from the bell musically. It was like a kind of black hole. I think eventually this dictated the form of the piece: we processed the instrument in dozens (hundreds?) of ways to completely peel it in sound, with the physical characteristics of the bell in relation to our tape instrument being central. This process ultimately led to the playing of that one pure sound of the bell. In a sense, this process also felt like a genealogy of the material itself, in which beauty, violence and silence are all present.

Written in the booklet for the album is the following passage:

Can you expand on the meaning of this paradox?

AF: The paradox at the core of Battles & Silences – that sound can remember destruction and generate beauty, and that silence can be both a wound and a healing—reflects the complex, unresolved nature of trauma and memory. Rather than offering closure or a neat resolution, the music sustains this tension, allowing the listener to inhabit a space where loss and beauty coexist. The album does not try to erase or simplify pain; instead, it finds consolation in resonance—the shared experience of sound as a carrier of memory and emotion.

This means that silence is not simply emptiness but an active presence that wounds by its absence and heals by offering space for reflection. Similarly, sound can echo the violence and destruction it recalls but also create moments of unexpected grace and connection. This sustained paradox invites listeners to confront difficult realities without driving to closure, instead fostering a contemplative environment where sound and silence together shape an emotional and ethical engagement with history and loss.

This approach aligns with the project’s broader aim: to resist the idea of neat endings or easy consolation in times of conflict and uncertainty, offering instead a form of empathy and solidarity through attentive listening and shared resonance.

Do you have a favorite track on the album, and, if so, why?

AF: That’s a hard one to answer. For me the second track, Soft Explosions, is probably my favorite. Although, when I say this, I could also have mentioned any other track on the album. We worked intensively with the sound of the bell and its derivatives and disintegration via tape loops. Soft Explosions is the result of bell sound on half speed reel-to-reel tape loop, going through a filter with a tipping point. We turned these tippings manually, which gives the sound an organic feel, but also ominous, as if you are listening to the ghost of that bell. The conversation of that loop with the percussionists and their instruments made it a movement of eerie beauty. But then again, I could tell a similar story about all the tracks on the album.

ML: The piece Stone Rain is important to me. During the process of writing this music, it was the first piece in which content and form came together in a way that felt right to me. The creative process was far from easy; I wondered more often than ever whether we were the right people for this project. After all, why would two composers from the safety of the Netherlands be able to write a piece about a war that is so incredibly real? Don’t get me wrong: by the time this piece was created, we had already made, recorded and researched many beautiful things—the instrument, the bell, sounds fantastic. But it did not transcend the “flat” beauty of that instrument. At a certain point, we analyzed to the bone what we could say with this instrument, and where it touches our reality, where the universal can be found and how this connects to the origin of this instrument. The answer turned out to be right in front of us: the material itself. Just as the bell is made of metal, so is the material we work with—tape. And just as metal can be shaped into an instrument, so too can sound be shaped into something new. Based on that realization, we came up with the idea of not focusing on the primary sound of the bell, but rather paying attention to the background noises, the periphery of the recordings on magnetic tape. This created totally new textures, pulses and patterns that had a life of their own. We used these ‘peripheral sounds’ as basic material for Dirge and João to play. As such a loop of transformation formed itself, from acoustic bell sounds to magnetic tape, to musicians, and through performance as an ensemble with the bell, back to the bell itself. This change in focus (from writing for the bell, to a process-based compositional practice with the bell) came about in the creation of this specific chapter and proved to be the key to the rest of the piece.

Ambient music has often been described as both background and foreground—music that can shape a space while you focus on something else or be listened to with deep intent. Where do you see Battles & Silences on that spectrum?

AF: The performance of Battles & Silences lies somewhere between a concert and an installation. It’s designed to engage listeners not just through music alone but by interacting with the space itself, making the environment an integral part of the experience. The music shapes the acoustic and emotional atmosphere, inviting both focused listening and moments where sound becomes part of the ambient environment around the audience. The venue and its characteristics are crucial in how the sound unfolds and resonates, making the spatial aspect inseparable from the music’s impact. In that way, Battles & Silences creates a shared sonic space that honors silence, tension, and transformation simultaneously, allowing listeners to inhabit a dynamic and contemplative sound world. That being said, the general feedback of the audience was that Battles & Silences is an intense and sometimes overwhelming experience.

Production Notes

Can you tell me more about how you recorded and processed the sounds of the bell for this record? I’m aware you used analog tape–can you describe how the sound evolved?

ML: My whole artistic practice is based around the use of analog instruments. There are a lot of different reasons for this, but one of the main reasons for me to work exclusively analog is the fact that these instruments have a will of their own. They’re not hiding their physicality (you could also say ‘they are not perfect’). This turned out to be one of the key elements when we were searching for the connection between our aesthetics and the origin of the bell.

AF: I agree. The notion of ‘imperfection’ and ‘physicality’ as a sound quality is a really important aspect of our duo. It also asks for a way of working ‘inside time’, whereas working with a computer could evolve outside time, because of the visual and plastic way sounds present themselves in the UI. Working with tape and analog instruments requires a form of listening and interacting that very much takes place in the moment and is final. Like a painter working on a canvas.

Were there any other specific pieces of gear that inspired or played a major role in the creation of Battles & Silences? How did you decide on the electronics you wanted to pair with the bell?

ML: My good old Korg Stage Echo SE500 is an important piece of gear on this record. This device’s sound-on-sound function is a particularly often used option on this record. This is because the decay of the recorded material can be controlled relatively well (see the Basinski reference that Anthony mentioned earlier, for example). I have also modified the Korg so that it is possible to transpose the material on the tape loop in fixed intervals, chromatically for almost 1.5 octaves. This can clearly be heard in the “Voices” chapter. The voices of Brito and Kuran merge, decay and transpose in a way that can only be achieved with this machine, and it is so reliable that it can also be used live.

AF: I come from a contemporary classical background, more or less. In electronic music, I like to work with instruments instead of a laptop. I want to have the tactility, the performative aspect and the ‘analog’ way of working. For this project I mainly used Elektron’s Octatrack and Digitakt—the Octatrack being a mixture between a sampler, synth, modular system, mixer, and tracker. And the Digitakt used as a synth and generative system. In Mathijs’s studio, we worked a lot with reel-to-reel tape loops, analog measuring gear (filters, etc.) and his plus-sized mixing board.

Do you have a favorite piece of gear to which you’ve found yourself returning frequently, no matter the project?

ML: Not necessarily a piece of gear (if you exclude tape as an instrument—tape is always around, and I’m always transposing recorded material to create dialogues of different voices coming from one source), but I do have an ever-returning method when writing and/or producing music: the use of feedback. Sonically speaking, Battles & Silences is full of acoustic and electronic feedback. I am drawn to the poetic nature of the phenomenon (acoustic feedback can be understood as a system which gives a voice to your environment, and on the other hand electronic feedback can be seen as an auto-poetic system: the electronic circuit sounds itself, it demonstrates what its circuits are doing through sound), as well as its musical versatility and dynamic range. So when feedback is understood as a means of connecting the various elements present in a creative process and allowing them to sound together as one common voice, it is more than just a method for achieving a certain sound. It is a means of bringing to the fore the sum total of all the elements that are part of the creative process (i.e. from instruments to musicians and location).

AF: For me, it depends on the project and music that I intend to make. I am very fond of my Buchla Music Easel, the most punky synth I own. And I also like my Lyra-8 by SOMA. Both have a character and and serendipity factor that is joyful to work with. My go-to instrument would be the Octatrack, because of its versatility and portability, or the Digitakt, for the same reason.

As a duo, how do you tend to collaborate with each other? Any specific system or method, or is it relatively freeform? Live in a room together or remote?

ML: We work relatively freeform, but if I would have to name one thing it would be the method of staying with the trouble (Donna Haraway). I think we are good at tending to material for a long period of time. Giving it time to unfold itself. We are not too radical in the post productional phase, much of the work is done while we are working with the material, as opposed to working on the material. For me this is a very specific part of our collaborations. In a very practical sense we record almost everything in my analog studio, where we are both present. Mixing and technical preparations for digital release is done by Anthony in his studio.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about your production and/or creative process that other artists might be interested to know? Any other hardware, software, techniques, rituals?

ML: Be aware of your interface (any interface, from piano, to recorder, whatever) . It makes choices for you. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I think it is good to be aware of this ‘second composer’ at the desk when you are doing your musical work.

AF: I agree with Mathijs. This ‘second composer’ can be a strength if it brings you surprises and happy accidents—but it can also be a pitfall if it forces you to compose in a certain way. That’s why I only have a few synths and pieces of gear that I like to work with—mostly the ones that are ‘open’.

Final Thoughts

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

AF: Haha! That would be “steal everything,” an advice given by György Ligeti in one of my conversations with him.

Who or what are your greatest musical inspirations and why?

AF: My greatest musical inspiration must be Morton Feldman. His late works, like For Samuel Beckett, draw me in with their extraordinary sense of time and space – sounds that unfold with microscopic patience, repetition that feels both static and alive, creating a world where every timbre and silence holds equal weight. Feldman’s music taught me to listen to the “skin of sound,” that tactile surface where texture and presence matter more than melody or development, influencing my own approach to composition profoundly.

What fascinates me most is how he bridges music and visual art, identifying more with painters like Rothko and Guston than with traditional composers. This cross-disciplinary thinking resonates with my own projects, where sound becomes an environment rather than a narrative, inviting deep, immersive listening. Feldman’s ability to sustain paradox—beauty in sparseness, intensity in quiet—has shaped everything from my ambient explorations to Battles & Silences.

ML: I’m too fickle to give one definitive name. Over the last few weeks Aaron Dilloway has been very high on my personal inspirational list. I happened to attend one of his performances in Brussels a couple of weeks back, and he completely blew me away. It was the first time I had seen him play live and I was amazed by the degree of control he had within a chaotic world of sound.

What do you think about the current state of the music industry for independent artists and those who create in more niche categories like ambient? How do you approach publishing and selling your work? Any thoughts on the future of the music industry?

AF: The word pair music industry has always made me unhappy. The capitalist idea that music is successful only when it sells goes against my grain. I believe that there is a viable audience for every thinkable niche, and that music is about building communities more than about making money. In the current state of the music industry it’s not the musicians, but publishers, shareholders making money out of the artist. The future of the music industry would be a future without the industry. But I also realize that that is a pipe dream. I think every artist should create the art they want to create, regardless of algorithms. That can be tough at times, but there will always be people who believe in your art.

ML: There is the macro scale of Big Tech Bros which makes me feel helpless and flat out angry. On the other side there is the micro scale of people coming together around sound and sharing fundamental experiences with each other. It may be naive, but I truly believe that togetherness will always prevail over the emptiness of the content machine that has been built up. Of course, there are many caveats, particularly from an economic perspective, and I have no answer to that other than despondency. But I experience those moments—such as at the Dilloway concert—as very fundamental gatherings that cannot be expressed in monetary terms.

Anything else you’d like to share?

AF: I think it’s important that there are zines and blogs like this, that row against the stream, are curious for new sounds and build communities. Music should be precisely that, a network of communities—not a commodity for a few billionaires and their shareholders.

Where is the best place for listeners to find and support your work?

AF: Our music is found on all streaming platforms, but a better place for support is on Bandcamp. We have our personal pages there (AF, ML), but also both our duos Poulson Sq. and LOFAR are represented on Bandcamp. Apart from that, I think that a live concert is ultimately the best place to experience our music.

That’s all for this conversation—I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for reading, friend. Until next time.

Your friend,

Melted Form

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Anthony Fiumara and Mathijs Leeuwis for taking the time to answer all my questions in great detail, and to continue shining a spotlight on the horrific war of aggression still happening in Ukraine. Additionally, thank you to all of the folks at HIIIT and everyone else involved with bringing Battles & Silences to life.

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My eyelids lull, pressing together to induce a smooth darkness. Then…

Light. Color. Sound.

Lucid visions of shapes, flashing images, motion and texture all playing out before me, though my eyes are closed. The journey I’ve undertaken has sent me across the universe, yet I haven’t left the comfort of my couch.

Fueling my venture into the depths of my mind is the cerebral symphony that is Without Mind, a new album from Six Missing that released earlier this month on the iconic Nettwerk label.

A writer must naturally laugh out loud when they find themselves at an utter loss for words—this is my feeble attempt after somewhat recovering and partially processing and listening to this album for the third (fourth?) time. Truly, though, I’ve been struggling to put this article together because I have been balking repeatedly at the intimidating task of trying to contribute any of my own thoughts to this record.

Said simply, Six Missing—I’ll start referring to him as TJ from here on out—has created a portal (a term that you’ll later see TJ himself apply to music). Without Mind is a chariot to heaven, or at least some spiritual plane separate from this one—somewhere deep inside the mind of the listener. Parts unknown, yet vaguely familiar, like a home once lived in as a young child before memory kicked in.

The whole journey of Without Mind is that pitch-perfect-fuzzy-feeling-just-right blend of improvised electronics, ambient tones, and granular textures—the kind of composition that lets listeners lead with their hearts. It is what you want it to be and nothing more or less. Despite the computerized tone throughout, the album always retains a clear sense of humanity, a marriage of man and machine that expresses emotion no computer could ever experience or understand. Here, TJ played the role of a maestro working with his preferred toolset (modular, analog synthesizers) to convey a fluid, permeable state of mind—one taking the form of the person entering it, specific to their place in time and space.

There’s so much more I’d like to say, but truly, words feel cheap and flimsy to me right now. One reason is certainly the artistry on display within Without Mind, but another may be TJ’s gift for storytelling, demonstrated in his deeply compelling answers to my interview questions that you’ll see below.

So, for now, here’s what I’ll ask of you, friend:

1. Put on your best headphones and start listening to Without Mind

2. Meanwhile, read through my full conversation with TJ below

3. When you’re finished, let me know in the comments what you saw and felt while listening to the music and reading TJ’s stories

4. Then, consider the meanings of the things you don’t always have the language for

The Story of Six Missing

Please tell me more about the name Six Missing. Where did it come from and what does it represent about your musical identity?

The name Six Missing comes from something that happened while I was recording an album with my old band at a studio in rural Pennsylvania—just outside the Brandywine battlefield. The studio sat on this big, quiet property surrounded by trees, with a few buildings scattered across the land. The control room and tracking space were in one house, and the band stayed in a separate little cottage nearby.

One night, after a long session, I realized I’d left something behind in the studio and decided to walk back and grab it. The path between the buildings was dark—no lights, just the crunch of leaves and gravel under my feet. I didn’t feel scared, exactly—but something about the air felt... charged. Like I wasn’t alone.

I got what I needed and came back, crawled into my bunk, and tried to fall asleep. That’s when everything shifted. I felt an overwhelming stillness—not peaceful, but hollow. Then a sharp, cold pressure hit the center of my back and I realized I couldn’t move. Couldn’t turn my head. Couldn’t call out. It felt like something was there, hovering—not angry, just impossibly empty. Like a void with presence.

Somehow, I remembered this trick I’d seen on a ghost show years ago. I gathered what little strength I had and forced out the words: “Leave me alone.” As soon as I said it, the feeling lifted. My body unfroze. I could breathe again.

The next morning, one of my bandmates asked who’d gone outside in the middle of the night—he’d heard the screen door creak open and close again. No one had left the cottage.

That stuck with me. I started researching the land and learned that six soldiers who fought in the Battle of Brandywine were never recovered. Officially listed as missing. Six missing.

That phrase haunted me in the best way—like a quiet riddle. It felt connected not just to that night, but to something deeper. The idea that there are always pieces of ourselves—or of history—that never get resolved. That go unnamed. That hover just beneath the surface.

That’s what Six Missing became to me—a name for the invisible. For the spaces between memory and mystery. For the emotional residue we carry that can’t be explained but still shapes how we move through the world.

Ambient music lives in that same space—not demanding attention, but always inviting it. It asks you to slow down. To notice. To feel what’s unspoken. And that’s what I try to do with this project—honor the things we don’t always have language for.

How long have you been making music? What was one of your earliest memories of music that made you want to become an artist?

It started early—maybe around age 8—when I saw Marty McFly in Back to the Future rip into “Johnny B. Goode” with that red ES-335. That moment blew my mind. I didn’t know what a Gibson was, or even what distortion really meant—but I knew I wanted to do that.

Not long after, my uncle gave me his old Gretsch—a beautiful guitar that I still have to this day. I didn’t really know how to play it, but I’d sit with it for hours anyway, just holding it, learning how it resonated.

Then came a kind of musical treasure hunt. My grandma had all these dusty records stashed in her attic—Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Cream. I’d spend entire afternoons up there, flipping through sleeves, dropping the needle, and just soaking it in. The mystery and myth of those records—the artwork, the tones, the feeling that these people were tapping into something—it completely consumed me.

Eventually, I got into pedals, looping, ambient textures—but the root of it all goes back to that moment of being a kid with a guitar in my hands, hearing sounds that made the world feel bigger. Music was never just entertainment—it was a portal. And it still is.

Where do you live now and what drew you there?

I live in Austin, though I’m not sure I’d say it feels like home. My wife Hanna and I both grew up in the New York area—and after years in Astoria, we felt like we wanted an adventure. Somewhere new. Somewhere that might shake loose a different rhythm.

Austin seemed like the right kind of unknown—a place with space, light, quiet. And in a lot of ways, it delivered on that. There’s something undeniably beautiful about the big skies, the open feel, the chance to reset. But if I’m being honest, I’ve always been more of a sweatshirt-and-subway kind of person. I miss seasons. I miss the edge and weirdness of New York.

That tension—loving aspects of where I am, while feeling slightly out of step with it—has shown up in my music in ways I didn’t expect. Most of my recent work has been a way of trying to make peace with that friction. Not from a place of being stuck, but from a place of noticing. Of processing.

Austin might not be forever. But for now, it’s where the work is happening—creatively, emotionally, spiritually. And I’m learning to listen to that.

More About Six Missing

What draws you to ambient/instrumental music? (can answer in the context of listening and/or creating)

From a young age, I was obsessed with soundtracks. I’d buy the CDs from my favorite movies and listen to them on repeat, imagining entire scenes in my head. It wasn’t about lyrics or hooks—it was about how the music made the air feel different. How it could shift your entire emotional landscape without a single word.

Later on, I fell in love with walking in the rain in New York—headphones in, hoodie up, listening to The Social Network soundtrack. That score changed the way I experienced the city. Suddenly, puddles had weight. Streetlights meant something. I think that’s when I fully understood the power of instrumental music—how it doesn’t just sit behind a scene, it shapes the scene. It turns the ordinary into something cinematic.

At its core, ambient music feels like an offering—something that doesn’t demand your attention, but holds space for it if you choose to give it. That’s powerful. It can be deeply present or barely there. And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need—something that mirrors the complexity of how we actually feel.

For me, instrumental music has always been about emotional honesty. There’s no language to filter it through—just sound and breath and texture. It speaks to the nervous system. It slows me down. It brings me back to the body.

What music do you typically find yourself listening to? Any favorite artists? Any records that inspired Without Mind as you were working on it?

Truthfully, I don’t listen to all that much ambient music—at least not compared to what people might expect. I tend to return to the music I grew up on—The Beatles, AC/DC, Joni Mitchell. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time digging into the intricacies of The Grateful Dead—the looseness, the phrasing, the way they stretch time without losing the emotional thread. There’s something deeply alive about it that I keep coming back to.

I’ve always been drawn to storytellers—not just lyrically, but sonically. People who can build a world with just tone and timing. That’s probably why I also gravitate toward friends in the ambient space whose work carries that same intention—artists like IDRA, Clariloops (), and Gollden. Their music feels personal, like a transmission from some private emotional weather system.

When I was making Without Mind, I tried not to absorb too much outside influence—I wanted to stay inside the emotional architecture I was building. But there were echoes of Eno’s Apollo, the stillness of Harold Budd—that lineage is in me whether I’m trying or not. Also Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Surround kind of shattered my mind when I grabbed it on vinyl. I hadn’t heard it until recently and that’s a damn crime.

Follow Six Missing on Bandcamp

On Without Mind

Your new record was created out of improvisations aimed at scoring ketamine-assisted therapy sessions. Please tell me more about that! What led you to ketamine therapy as the backdrop for these tracks?

A friend of mine who works in psychedelic therapy reached out and asked if I’d be open to making music specifically for their sessions. I hadn’t gone through ketamine therapy in any formal way—aside from some psychedelic experimentations of my own in the past—but I’ve always been fascinated by altered states, healing modalities, and the deeper layers of consciousness.

I firmly believe in the power of psychedelic therapy—and in exploring approaches to mental health that go beyond the pharmaceutical status quo. There’s a huge need for gentler, more integrative options. The idea of making music that could be part of that kind of work felt meaningful.

The goal was to create sound that could gently guide people inward—without getting in the way. At the same time, I was doing a lot of my own internal work—meditation, float therapy, bodywork—and the idea of sound as a companion in non-ordinary states really resonated with me.

Ketamine therapy invites people to dissolve boundaries, revisit memory, and sit with themselves in a different way. I wanted the music to do the same—to hold space without prescribing how someone should feel.

Have you spoken with any therapists or patients about how the music has been used in sessions? What kind of feedback have you received?

Yeah—I’ve had a few conversations with therapists, and they’ve been really moving. Some said the music helped anchor clients through emotional waves. One person described it as “a thread back to themselves.” That one stuck with me.

I never expected to hear from the people on the receiving end of the therapy—I still don’t, really—but every now and then, someone reaches out with a story that completely floors me.

One message came from someone who had just lost a partner. They told me that in their final days together, they spent long hours in the hospital—waiting, processing, saying goodbye—and they used my music to help create some sense of peace in the room. Now, whenever they hear it, they feel connected to that memory. To that person.

That kind of thing... it levels me. It carries so much weight I don’t always feel worthy of it. But it’s also what keeps me going. Knowing that something I made could offer even a sliver of comfort to someone during the most impossible moments—that’s what motivates me to sit down and keep making music, even when it’s hard.

Touching back on improvisation: take me through your process of creating Without Mind specifically. What did your live sessions look like? Can you describe your emotional state when you’re improvising? Do you notice any changes to your sound when you take that live, improvisational approach vs a more brick-by-brick DAW build?

Most of the record was captured live in my studio—mostly improvised modular rack performances. I’d hit record, close my eyes, and try not to think. I’d usually start with a tone or a pulse and let it unfold from there—following feel instead of form.

There’s something about modular that invites surrender. It forces you to commit—to listen deeply and respond in real time. That’s where most of Without Mind took shape. Afterward, I layered in some Moog Matriarch and Minimoog textures for weight and warmth.

Much to the dismay of my Atmos engineer, Kyle Mangels, I only had minimal stems to work with—since the modular rack performances in my setup are printed live as a single stereo pass. I like committing to sounds as I write—shaping tone, texture, and movement in real time rather than trying to “fix” or isolate things later.

That was part of the point—the performances weren’t meant to be dissected. They were about capturing a moment as honestly as possible. What came through the speakers is what came through me.

Compared to DAW-based composition, it feels less like building a house and more like recording the weather. There’s less control, more listening. It’s freeing, a little chaotic, but ultimately more human.

Listen to Without Mind

The album evolved out of outtakes, correct? How did those fragments eventually coalesce into a cohesive whole?

Yeah—initially these were just sketches, exercises, and sonic meditations I was doing in response to prompts from the therapist. There wasn’t a plan to make an album at first.

When I collaborate with other artists, I usually find myself more inspired—there’s already something to respond to, something to shape and build from. And this project, in a strange way, felt like that. Like I was collaborating with a past version of myself. Time-traveling through these improvised performances and treating them as raw material—almost as if someone else had sent me stems.

Once I started thinking of it that way, things opened up. I began with the performances and produced from there—layering wherever needed, processing and sculpting the arrangements to reveal what was already hiding in the recordings.

It wasn’t so much about fixing or polishing—more about listening closely and letting each piece tell me what it wanted to become.

How have your feelings about the sound of the album evolved from the beginning stages of creation until now? What does Without Mind mean to you?

In the beginning, it felt very utilitarian—like I was just making music to serve a purpose. But once I stepped back, I realized I’d accidentally documented my own state of mind at the time.

The recordings sat on my hard drive for quite a while. They didn’t feel ready—or maybe I wasn’t ready to really listen to them. But when I finally came back to them with fresh ears, I heard something I hadn’t noticed before: they were delicate, but also strong.

Delicate in the sense that they were raw improvisations—the truest form of expression in that moment. And improvisation is risky. Things can go off the rails quickly, which gives it a kind of fragility—like catching lightning in a bottle.

But they were also strong. There was this quiet intensity, this energy rushing outward without apology. They weren’t trying to be anything. They just were.

Without Mind became a kind of mirror—not just for therapy, but for all the ways we try to quiet the noise. It’s about surrender, softness, trust. I didn’t expect it to become such a personal statement—but it did.

Do you have a favorite track on the album, and, if so, why?

Probably Sit Down and Play. That one came out in a single pass. The performance video that’s online—that is the recording. No overdubs, no screens—just me and the rack, fully present.

It’s rare to be that locked in—where the writing is the playing and the playing is the record. That’s part of why it resonates so much with me. It feels like a memory I didn’t know I had—something that arrived fully formed, without needing to be explained.

Speaking of… what was it like working on the video for Sit Down and Play? Tell me more about working with director Tatum Annan and the rest of the crew that brought the video to life?

It was a dream—and a brutal one, in the best way. We shot the entire video in one long day of direct sun, no shade, and a “feels like” temperature of 105 degrees. Easily one of the most physically intense days I’ve ever had on a creative shoot. And somehow, through all that, every single person on set brought nothing but focus, positivity, and grace.

It was my first time inviting an outside creative perspective into the visual side of my music, and Tatum just got it. She brought so much care and clarity to the concept. We weren’t trying to create a narrative—we wanted to evoke a feeling as soft and internal as the music itself.

The entire team—Jenet Celine (DP), Kyrstian Green (EP), the folks at EYEVY North and Creatives Future Collective—moved with such kindness and intention. I’m so proud of what we made. It doesn’t just look like the album sounds—it feels like it. A true visual companion. Also need to shout, Max, Niles, Preshus, and Ellie because my goodness everyone was a trooper that day.

Over the last couple of years, you’ve collaborated with artists like Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, The Album Leaf, SUSS, and Clariloops. How different is it working on tracks in partnership with other artists vs on your own? Do you feel like you’ve grown into a community of fellow artists or have these mostly been one-offs? What is one thing you’ve learned from these relationships?

I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some incredibly inspiring folks like Jamie Liddell, The Album Leaf, Clariloops, and the others you mentioned. I absolutely love working with other artists. It gives me a window into someone else’s creative mind—and I truly adore that. There are endless ways to approach a piece of music, and every time I collaborate, I’m reminded how rich and diverse those paths can be. Also, I got to hang with Jean from St. Lucia who did an incredible remix for me as well as KAS during SXSW of last year, which was a blast saying hi in real life.

Some collaborations make me more adventurous—pushing boundaries, embracing chaos. Others make me more deliberate, more focused on restraint. I find myself oscillating between those poles, depending on the person and the energy in the room (or on the stems). It keeps me flexible, curious.

Some of these relationships have grown into deeper friendships and creative kinships. Others were more like a flash of connection—beautiful, brief, and complete in their own right. I don’t think a collaboration has to be ongoing to be meaningful. Sometimes a single shared piece of music says everything it needs to.

And with SUSS—I can’t say much yet, but we’ve got something really unique in the works. It’s unlike anything I’ve done before, and I can’t wait to share it.

Ambient music has often been described as both background and foreground—music that can shape a space while you focus on something else or be listened to with deep intent. Where do you see Without Mind on that spectrum?

I think Without Mind sits right in the middle—which is probably why I like it. It can disappear if you want it to, or it can hold your full attention. It’s more about the listener than the music itself.

That duality is what I love about ambient—it doesn’t insist on being the main character. It’s content to just be in the room with you, shaping the atmosphere without demanding anything.

I’ve also been thinking more about how music interacts with the other senses. For Without Mind, I partnered with HYUNGI—an incredible incense artist—to create a custom incense blend designed to pair with the album. The idea was to offer a fully immersive listening experience, should you want it. It’s one thing to listen to music... it’s another to enter it. To breathe it in.

More about Without Mind

Production Notes

Were there any specific pieces of gear that inspired or played a major role in the creation of Without Mind? I know you made frequent use of your Eurorack modular synthesizer. How did that impact your approach and workflow for this record?

Absolutely. The modular rack—the eurorack system I’ve built over years—was the main voice of this record. It’s always evolving, and it’s already grown since the early writing sessions for Without Mind, but even then, it was central to shaping the tone and feel of every piece. The rack is where most of the textures, movement, and emotional imprint came from.

Later in the sessions, I brought in the Minimoog Model D, which I had just purchased around the tail end of the writing period. That synth added a beautiful weight and warmth to some of the final layers. The Moog Matriarch also played a role in supporting textures and melodic ideas. And the Roland RE-201 Space Echo and Boomerang III looper helped expand the space around everything—adding breath, decay, and subtle unpredictability.

Most of the music was captured live—no MIDI, no quantization—just ears, hands, and intuition. It was less about sequencing and more about sculpting in real time.

Do you have a favorite piece of gear to which you’ve found yourself returning frequently, no matter the project?

Probably the Boss DD-20—the 16-second looper mode has become a kind of sketchpad for me. I’ve been using it for years. It’s simple but powerful—and it never gets in the way.

But I also have to say the Minimoog Model D. It shows up on every single track I make in one form or another. I can’t seem to get away from it—and honestly, I don’t want to. It’s become my voice, the way I speak through music. I feel so grateful to have that piece of musical history in my studio.

And then there’s my Otari MX-5050 BII 2-track tape machine. I love dumping textures to tape, slowing them down, pitching them by ear. There’s something about the unpredictability and the way it softens edges that just works perfectly for the music I make. It brings a kind of warmth and blur that’s hard to emulate with plugins.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about your production and/or creative process that other artists might be interested to know? Any other hardware, software, techniques, rituals?

I meditate twice a day for 20 minutes using Vedic meditation. While I’m relatively new to the technique itself, I’ve been meditating for a long time—it’s absolutely central to my ability to focus and stay present in both life and music. It’s like a daily reset button, clearing space before sound.

On the practical side, my work in post-production mixing—which can be fairly rigid and structured—actually fuels my creative practice with Six Missing. It’s taught me how to set boundaries around time, which is surprisingly helpful. I’ll often give myself a fixed window—an hour, maybe two—and simply say, “Let’s see what happens in this space.” That constraint, oddly enough, opens me up. I become more playful, more willing to take sonic risks. And of course, some days the inspiration flows freely and I chase it. Other days, I just show up and play, and something unexpected reveals itself.

Final Thoughts

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

It might sound silly, but the line that’s always stuck with me is from Back to the Future—“If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” Marty says it, later inspiring his soon-to-be-dad, George McFly. That sentiment hit me hard as a kid—it was simple, hopeful, and wildly empowering. I’ve carried it with me ever since.

That said, I have to credit my parents, too. They’ve always been a supportive pillar in my life, quietly reinforcing that same belief—that if I worked hard, stayed true to myself, and followed what lit me up, I could build something meaningful. That combination of cinematic optimism and real-life support has shaped a lot of who I am and how I approach my work.

Who or what are your greatest musical inspirations and why?

Brian Eno, Jerry Garcia, and Trey Anastasio have all shaped how I think about sound, emotion, and play. Jerry and Trey especially—the phrasing, the bends, the freedom—they’ve been core to how I hear and how I improvise. And Phish—not just the band, but the ethos—taught me how to really listen, how to fall apart mid-song and keep going anyway.

Angus Young is another one—for playing with 200% energy every single time. I mean, I still listen to those earlier records with Bon Scott and am stunned at how tight of a band they were and still are, actually. AC/DC made me want to be in a band an play music, full stop. David Gilmour, for those soaring, aching solos that somehow say everything without words. And then there’s Tangerine Dream—I found Phaedra while flu-ridden on the subway, and it cracked my brain open. It showed me that time in music isn’t fixed—it can stretch, smear, disappear.

But at the root of everything are The Beatles and The Beach Boys. Their vocals, their melodies, their production—it’s all still endlessly fascinating and inspiring to me. I could listen to those records forever and still find new things. It’s endless.

What do you think about the current state of the music industry for independent artists and those who create in more niche categories like ambient? How do you approach publishing and selling your work? Any thoughts on the future of the music industry with a growing rebellion against platforms like Spotify?

It’s a strange time—and a delicate dance. Most people who find me do so through streaming, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. To have all of recorded music—the entire history of it—instantly available is still mind-blowing to me. I grew up in a world before Napster, when physical media was everything. That imprint never really leaves you. So even as I participate in the modern system, I still feel a pull toward the tactile: vinyl, limited editions, things that feel real. (oh by the way, you can buy my limited edition vinyl now, just sayin’ 🙂)

There’s more access now than ever, but also more noise—and artists, especially those of us working in slower, more introspective genres, have to navigate that with care. You want to reach new listeners, but not at the cost of watering down what you make or contorting yourself for algorithms. It’s a constant calibration—between authenticity and reach, depth and discoverability.

For me, the goal is to make the work as honest as possible and then find the right home for it. Sometimes that’s vinyl. Sometimes it’s a quiet playlist. Sometimes it’s a track playing in someone’s headphones while they grieve—comforting them after the loss of a loved one. That’s happened. And it reminds me why I do this. When the music finds its way into a moment like that—where words fall short—that’s everything.

Anything else you’d like to share?

Just a thank you. I’m really honored to have Without Mind featured in this way—and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of these questions. It’s rare to get to talk about the quieter corners of creativity.

And if I could leave anyone with a small ask—it’s this: keep searching. Look for music outside the algorithm. Shake it up. Push your boundaries. Find new voices—especially underrepresented ones. Buy records when you can. Share what moves you.

Thank you for reading, friend. Until next time.

Your friend,

Melted Form

Acknowledgements

Thank you kindly to TJ Dumser for taking the time to answer all my questions in great detail! Thank you also to George Chammas at Nettwerk for connecting us and providing plenty of background info on TJ and his record.

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I love noticing patterns and synchronicities.

I would wager most of us do—our brains crave them, and we are wired to look out for them. We frequently pick out images, like faces, in the natural world (likely as a byproduct of evolutionary survival instincts).

This phenomenon, known as pareidolia, is the culprit. Pareidolia is our tendency to perceive meaningful images (especially faces) in random visual patterns—think of what you believe you’ve seen while cloudgazing. Pareidolia is a form of a wider phenomenon known as apophenia, which is the human tendency to see connections and patterns between unrelated or random things like objects, ideas, or data.

When I first noticed that the 4 core tracks of Benoît Pioulard’s new album, Stanza IV, all neatly concluded at 11 minutes to add up to an even 44 minutes, lights flashed, smoke swirled, and buzzers went berserk inside my head (by the way, while track 4’s runtime reads 10:59 on Bandcamp, my downloaded file reads 11:00—my brain is now quite frustrated at noticing this inconsistency).

What is it about humans that we so enjoy little motifs like this? The fact that the fourth album in a series of Stanza albums by Pioulard—the American multi-instrumentalist, writer, and photographer—has 4 primary tracks running 44 minutes long just feels right. That’s not to mention the fact that the Stanza name is derived from the unit of verse in poetry which, often, has 4 lines—I suppose adding the word “quatrain” to the album title might have been a step too far for some of us.

All these nice little coincidences are satisfying, yes, but there is an opposing point of view that may be more enticing to us: humans love and even crave the beauty of imperfection.

I can stop at my appreciation for the intentions of artists who make each of the songs on their album exactly 11 minutes long… if I’m merely approaching their art with the monkey brain inside of me (it is strong, I can’t deny it). But as I tame the bonobo’s pull and look deeper, listen closer, I realize the true satisfaction of a record like Stanza IV lies in its imperfect compositions.

Within the bounds of these neatly wrapped tracks lie overlapping textures that were molded out of improvisation, coincidence, and happenstance. There is a rawness, an unevenness—4 lives lived within 4 tracks, joined together with each other (and the rest of the Stanza series) to encapsulate something greater. I remember that we are wired to appreciate the beauty of irregularity as much as any perfect pattern.

Humanity. That is what Pioulard has been able to record using primarily analog gear here on Stanza IV—imperfections and all. A real joy and satisfaction emerges with every listen thanks to the humanity I hear in these deeply complex environments. As I sit with them and explore their depths, their dents and divots, and their outer perimeters, I witness this artist’s unique human existence condensed into pieces of living music. For those who read my weekly series, they know that “living music” like this is exactly what I’m after.

Put simply, Stanza IV is a brilliant collection of ambient soundscapes. Each track is built from Pioulard’s signature ability to layer droning, pedal-modified guitar—among other components like voice, bells, and more—all fed through the magically warm finishing touch of tape. Taken on their own, these 4 tracks can provide listeners with endless space in which to situate themselves and look for pictures in the clouds or simply appreciate the blurry formlessness of these longform journeys.

Either way, the beauty of humanity is on full display in Stanza IV. In an age when so much media has been smoothed out by technology and carelessness—and when so much content appeals to our monkey brains before our human ones—a rough-edged record like this might just be the counterweight we didn’t know we needed to shift the balance in our humanity’s favor.

Read on for my full conversation with Benoît Pioulard about his new record, his production process, his community of collaborating artists, and more.

Background on Benoît

Please tell me more about the name Benoît Pioulard. Where did it come from and what does it represent about your musical identity?

At some point in 2004, I was taking a number of French language courses, and woke up one morning to find “Benoit Pioulard” written on my bedside notepad in some context that I’ve forgotten. At that point, I’d been making and sharing 4-track tape recordings for a few years without any kind of alias, and it never felt right to use my real name, so I started putting the Benoit name on CD-Rs of newer things that I was making, and here we are, twenty-plus years later.

How long have you been making music? What was one of your earliest memories of music that made you want to become an artist?

I started on piano around the age of five and, not long after, became obsessed by the ability to record on cheap, blank tapes with the little boombox in my room. It started with sounds around the house and the forest in my backyard, but by the time I was 12 or 13, I was making some very early, very rough musical recordings with drums and guitar on my dual-cassette deck, which allowed for basic overdubbing and multitracking. A billion people and songs have influenced my efforts, but having constant access to MTV in the first half of the ‘90s exposed me to a massive amount of weird, authentic, interesting music that really tapped into something deep at an early age, and gave me a sense of genre fluidity that was, in retrospect, pretty crucial.

Where do you live now and what drew you there?

I’m in Brooklyn, New York, with my wife, Molly, and our three cats—I moved here from Seattle in 2019, partly because of the built-in community of friends I had (most notably Rafael [Anton] Irisarri), but also for Molly, and for the chance to experience something completely different than what I’d known.

What draws you to ambient/instrumental music? (can answer in the context of listening and/or creating)

A lot of it is the deceptive simplicity; for me there is a world of distinctly compelling and emotionally resonant ambient work, and there is a lot that is only ok. As with anything, it’s all subjective, but to my ear there’s a just-right combination of textures, humanity, evocation, and harmony that sets my favorite works apart.

On Stanza IV

It’s been a decade since you released Stanza I, with volumes II and III following quickly after in 2015 and 2016. What brought you back to this series now?

The first three volumes represent a particular era to me, right after I turned 30 and was facing some hard questions about where I was at in life, what I wanted from myself, what I felt was realistic, that kind of thing. The ritual creation of those pieces worked as an accessible form of self-therapy and meditation during that time, and as I moved through that era and into the next phase of things, my attention refocused elsewhere. In the last two years, I’ve lost my father, overcome a pretty major health challenge, gotten married, and turned 40 – so again, a garden of forking paths was appearing, and I needed to just simplify my thoughts and make sound. The four pieces here emerged in sequence over about three weeks last summer, and it made sense to form them into an updated volume of that series. In that way, for me, it expresses that same need and possibility for self-interrogation, reevaluation, and aiming for something truly fulfilling.

I know that Stanza I also accompanied the Sonnet LP (kranky, 2015)--what is the connection between poetry and the music of the Stanza series and Sonnet? Were you inspired by certain aspects of poetry? Do you have a favorite poet or poem?

Simply enough, Sonnet earned its name from having 14 tracks, along with the word itself comprising six letters and two syllables, which was the trend with Précis, Temper, Lasted, and Hymnal before it. I also liked the idea of making the track list into a poem itself, where each line could stand on its own, but also make sense in the full context. My favorite poets are T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings, who are like two sides of the same coin; Eliot brings all the literary moroseness, while Cummings is the unabashedly experimental romantic. The track title, “Steeples Writhe”, is taken from a line in one of Cummings’ poems, and in general, I’ve probably nodded to his writings more than anyone else’s on the linguistic side of my work.

How have your feelings about the sound of the album evolved from the beginning stages of creation until now? What does Stanza IV mean to you?

The four pieces on this one are considerably more layered than those on the first three volumes, for one thing. The original Stanza album contained very straightforward, improvised, single-take guitar loops, fed through tape and a few effects. While the newer pieces are still held up at their core by guitars, I expanded on those main loops with voice, bells, bass, melodica, and a number of other things. I hoped to make each 11-minute piece its own full environment, while also fitting neatly into the whole of the collection.

Markus Guentner, arovane, Clarice Jensen, James Devane, MJ Guider, Viul–that’s quite a lineup of collaborators who contributed to Stanza IV. How much inspiration do you draw from the community of artists you’ve become associated with over the years? How have they impacted your work? What did they bring to Stanza IV?

It’s true—I’m incredibly lucky to have had each of those artists on board. I’ve always thought of myself as fairly separate from any kind of real artistic community, but when I took stock of things last year, I realized that twenty years of recording and touring have definitely brought me into a pretty remarkable stratum of creative people. Kindness and open-mindedness are the keys, I think, and everything else goes from there; I take lots of inspiration from all the creative people I know in different media, and am grateful there’s only support and encouragement to be found. James Devane was the only one of those six artists that I’d never spoken with before this record, but I was addicted to his last two albums for most of 2024, and kind of shot the moon by reaching out—since then, he’s become a proper friend, which is so great. As a whole, I’m completely blown away by what everyone did with my original pieces; each one is so different from the others, but I believe they fit together extremely well.

Ambient music has often been described as both background and foreground—music that can shape a space while you focus on something else or be listened to with deep intent. Where do you see Stanza IV on that spectrum?

I intend it to be more toward the “deep listening” end of the scale, but that thought is merely my own. The arc of each piece is pretty thoroughly considered, as is as the mixing of elements in a given passage, so I’d like to believe it rewards focus—but I’m also guilty of putting on some pretty complex albums in the other room, while vacuuming the apartment, so I embrace whatever works for the listener, however it might fit into their day or night.

Do you have a favorite track on the album, and if so, why?

No favorites here; each one has a particular personality and emotional vibration in my mind, and they’re kind of interdependent in that way.

The Humanity in Analog

I’m aware that you prioritize an analog approach in all your work, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on analog vs digital. What is it about analog that works for you? How did analog gear play a role in your production process for Stanza IV? I’m curious, too, if you think about “imperfection” or tangibility with analog that might give a different sort of character to your sound. What draws you to analog gear?

Yeah, that’s accurate. The unavoidable interference of different formats—tape hiss, vinyl crackle, the grain of analog film—are part of the “humanity” that I mentioned when talking before about some of my favorite music. Studio sheen and polish only appeal to me in very specific contexts, and in general I like to hear the fingerprints of production and the person or people behind a piece of work. Going to a gallery and seeing the brush strokes on a Wyeth, or the errant spatter around the edges of a Warhol silkscreen, those things are vital, and to a large degree I want to sound like that. Because there’s so much improvisation involved in these long-form ambient works, I have to embrace coincidences, accidents, and so on—and also be able to acknowledge when something isn’t hitting right, being unafraid to start over. Every element that went into the pieces of Stanza IV is analog, other than the fact that I arrange in GarageBand, and most things are treated and processed through cassette or microcassette tape.

You also do analog photography and shot the cover art for Stanza IV on Polaroid 600 film, correct? Have you noticed any ways that your photography and music have affected or inspired each other? Do you ever take inspiration from any of your photographs when making music or does the music typically come first?

I don’t usually have one thing in mind when working with the other, it’s more about building up a selection of images that feel cover-worthy, and waiting for the moment when one of them really stands out as an embodiment of something in the sound. I didn’t shoot the cover of this one until a few months after recording was done, and the image I’d set aside previously—a faint reflection of sunlight on a mountain glacier—was much moodier and darker, which I think would have cast a very different tone on the music, had I used it. I appreciate having those two passions, because it usually works out that when I’m not in a recording frame of mind, I can still exercise my drive to make things by taking photos, and vice versa.

Were there any specific pieces of gear that inspired or played a major role in the creation of Stanza IV? Do you have a favorite piece of analog gear to which you frequently return?

Again, the tape recorders are core to everything—a couple of basic, hand-held microcassettes, and a Marantz PMD201, sometimes my ¼” reel-to-reel as well. Pedal-wise, these longer arrangements are usually constructed using a combination of the EHX22500 looper/sampler and my old Boss DD20 looper, and each element was performed and tweaked in real time as I built the tracks up.

Is there anything else you'd like to share about your process that other artists might be interested to know? Any other hardware, software, techniques, or rituals?

It seems like the question I get most often is regarding how I get my guitars to sound how they do, and it’s very simple: one clean signal, and one tape signal layered over it. In mixing, I favor the lows and low-mids of the clean line, and the highs and high-mids of the tape. That, and lots of reverb, sometimes re-sampling the tape to get an extra bit of softness at the edges.

Final Thoughts

What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

I read an interview with Will Cullen Hart from The Olivia Tremor Control when I was a teenager, where he talked about how beautiful it is that, when you’re writing, a song can be literally anything you want it to be; he said something like, “If you think you should be adding a chorus, why not instead make it a swarm of insects?” I mean, conventions have their place, but I think that’s a wonderful thought, and I firmly believe that everyone should try writing a song at some point in their life, just to see what comes out.

Who or what are your greatest musical inspirations and why?

Musically, it’s a combination of Boards of Canada, My Bloody Valentine, [Brian] Eno, Kim Deal, and Lou Reed; spiritually, it’s the sum of all the places in nature that I’ve had the fortune to hike and camp in.

What do you think about the current state of the music industry for independent artists and those who create in more niche categories like ambient? How do you approach publishing and selling your work?

I’ve been at this since long before streaming was so prevalent, so my view is not exactly up-to-date. I have the benefit of a large catalog of things on DSPs (digital service providers), so while it’s not nearly a living, I earn at least a little bit that I can put back into studio upkeep, occasionally a new instrument, and that’s a huge privilege. Given the extreme oversaturation of the market these days, attention is so hard to come by, and I feel for those who are just trying to make a name for themselves amid all the noise, and especially now with AI. I do believe that really good work has a way of rising to the top, but there’s still a ton of music that I’m becoming aware of in random ways (and I admit, through the algorithm), which suggests the amount of quality stuff out there is essentially endless. I’ve always had to have a day job, and am about to go back to school for a masters degree in Special Education, but I know that I’ll never stop making things, even if they don’t see a life outside my home. Especially going into middle age, I’m highly aware of how necessary the creative act is to my well-being.

Thank you for reading, friend. Until next time.

Your friend,

Melted Form

Acknowledgements

Thank you kindly to Thomas Meluch for participating in this interview and sharing his thoughts and music with me. Also, thanks to for first sharing information about this release and, as usual, spreading the good word on new music!

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I often think how unnatural a connection it should be between electronic music and the natural world. And yet, these two entities seem to be inextricably linked. Opposite identities that can only exist because the other does too.

Mort Garson’s Mother Earth’s Plantasia. Hiroshi Yoshimura’s GREEN. Gas’s Pop. These are just a few examples of remarkable electronic albums that captured the sentiment of organic life through the manufactured sounds of synthesizers and field recordings. It’s difficult to determine precisely how the digital oscillations of machines can so obviously represent the diverse array of earth’s biomes and organisms. As I often find myself resolved to thinking when considering the abstraction of ambient and electronic music: it’s just another one of those things you know when you hear it.

It brings me great joy knowing that there are artists out there like Buildings and Food who continue to explore our natural world—a world that is currently in undeniable crisis—and take inspiration to create new electronic works that transcend the boundary between woman and machine, between the biological and the mechanical.

Buildings and Food is the independent electronic project of multidisciplinary Canadian artist Jen K. Wilson, who has released music under the Talking Heads-inspired moniker since 2018. Wilson is a classically trained pianist and self-taught multi-instrumentalist who also dabbles in visual art.

On May 9, Wilson released Provincial Park, her fifth full-length album as Buildings and Food. The melodic ambient LP, named after the many parks administered by Canada’s individual provinces, is a reflection of Wilson’s outdoor encounters with Canada’s backcountry, where she spends countless hours canoeing, hiking, and meditating in the serene quiet away from the bustle of urban centers.

Like the many nature-inspired electronic albums that preceded Provincial Park, Wilson’s new album does not feel concocted or prearranged—there’s an essence of nature’s ongoing renewal in this record’s DNA. Whether its the subtle details of the percussive textures that jitter behind the looping melodies on tracks like Weightless and Clear Skies or the unadulterated field recordings of Park Province, there are always new signs of life emerging within Provincial Park.

Read on for my full conversation with Jen K. Wilson about the record, her inspirations, her production process, and the reasons she feels drawn to instrumental music:

Melted Form (MF): What emotions, events, and experiences led you to create Provincial Park?

Jen K. Wilson (JKW): I travel through the backcountry in national and provincial parks in Canada regularly and have an awe-inspiring experience every single time. Connecting with nature is such a therapeutic activity; besides the fact that I simply enjoy it, its benefits are far reaching. With this release, I wanted to contribute a small part in raising awareness about the beauty and importance of nature, encouraging us to reflect on our role in protecting it. The current state of the world can be so discouraging, where the bottom line, and both government and business oligarchs, ignore the climate crisis and actually aim to make things worse rather than better. This theme of celebrating a small piece of nature evolved naturally from my concern for the environment and my great experiences in the wilderness: sleeping outside among the animals, climbing mountains, enjoying wildlife encounters, canoeing through amazing landscapes, and studying the minutiae of lake life, to name a few. I gather inspiration from all those things when immersing myself in these environments and I thought it was time I acknowledged this big part of my life through music.

MF: How have your feelings about the sound of the album evolved from the beginning stages of creation until now? What does Provincial Park mean to you?

JKW: For me, when a project is in the early stages of creation, there is always a lot of room for experimentation and a long period of sound exploration. I love creating new synth sounds and trying out the same chords with different sounds to compare the moods created. Very often a great sound will be a springboard to creating a series of pieces because I'll be inspired to follow that particular tone or mood and the sound alone can conjure up associations with certain memories or feelings. In contrast to this method, I'll write chord progressions on the acoustic piano and then play around with them in the studio with my synths to see how the piece translates to an electronic sound. As I was working on this project, memories and images from different experiences began to take hold and the album started to come together. To me, Provincial Park is a symbol of tranquility and wonder, an escape or therapeutic place to be. I like to think that the album can offer the listener a refuge, a peaceful bit of time/space to experience as you navigate your hectic, stressful day. It certainly was that for me, while creating it. I've previously described the album as a love letter to the Canadian wilderness and that's really what it feels like it to me. I'm very grateful for the time that I am able to spend there and truly appreciate all that it provides.

MF: I know there are themes of nature's many wonders in the album—what fascinates you most about the specific ecosystem of living things from which you drew inspiration, and how did that translate into music? How does your relationship with the Canadian landscape shape your identity as an artist?

JKW: It's amazing what you can see and experience, when you slow down and study the smallest spaces. You can be in one spot for a couple of hours and just drink in the plethora of sights and sounds in the space around you when immersed in the wilderness. The tiny amphibians, insects, and fish, as well as the larger land animals (bears, beavers, wolves, moose, caribou, deer, coyotes, herons, turtles, eagles, owls and loons, snakes, frogs and toads, grouse, turkeys, I could go on, lol.) I have a bit of a fear of bears when in the wilderness, which is why I carry bear bells when hiking. There is always the hope that you'll see a bear but at the same time you're hoping you don't. Then of course, escaping the concrete to be surrounded by a haven of trees is an amazing thing. My love of the Canadian wilderness and landscape does so much to shape my artistic identity. It encourages reflection and contemplation, allowing me to explore my own place in the world and express myself. It informs my personal narrative through my experiences and memories and helps me create a story that reflects my identity. I'm also a visual artist and have a really visual relationship with music. Melodies and patterns create visualizations for me and I often express something musically based on the visualization of something. I'd say the music on this album is a form of abstract expressionism, drawing inspiration from the natural world and interpreting it and my relationship with it. There is also some symbolism there, notably with Weightless and Weightless II, which open and close the album.

MF: Do you have a favorite track on the album, and if so, why?

JKW: Maybe Algae Boats... I think it captures the calm of canoeing on a still lake. Maybe Maps.... I'm a sucker for a waltz and I find it really dreamy.

MF: Who are your greatest musical inspirations and why?

JKW: I am inspired by so many forms and genres of music and it's always evolving. It's really impossible to list my greatest inspirations overall because the list of musicians is so vast. I can say that in terms of ambient music, Hiroshi Yoshimura is one of my favourite artists, as well as Susumu Yokota, Boards of Canada, and Dntel.

MF: Tell me more about "Buildings and Food"--did the name come from Talking Heads? What does it mean to you?

JKW: Yes, I took the name from the Talking Heads album, More Songs about Buildings and Food. When I was first trying to come up with a name I had no idea how my music would evolve over the years and I'm not sure how the name fits with the music I make now, but with my first album, the music was still coming from a pop sensibility. At the time, I was reminiscing about the impact that the album had on me when I first heard it. It was the first Talking Heads album that was produced by Brian Eno, whom I was already a big fan of, and I loved what his involvement contributed to the album. The name also created an association for me, of music being an essential part of life, like water, community, books, or buildings, and food! But really, "What's in a name?”

MF: Reflect on your work up until this point--what were your earliest musical experiences like and what are some lessons you feel like you've learned throughout your career as an artist?

JKW: I studied classical piano throughout my childhood and youth and taught myself guitar, clarinet, cello and drums, so I was really fostering a deep relationship with my instruments, while being exposed to all sorts of music, from classical, obscure jazz and blues to different forms of popular and world music. I've been writing music since I was a kid and those early songs were informed by whatever music I was listening to at the time. In my youth and as a 20-something, I was really trying to emulate music I loved but in my own way. It was challenging to avoid sounding derivative. By the time I released my first solo album, I had let go of that objective of trying to sound like someone else and I really think I found an originality in my music. Rather than focussing on emulating a particular sound, I was much more focussed on the writing and let my influences seep in peripherally. Over the years, I've also learned that allowing lots of room for experimentation and chance versus design can result in all sorts of happy accidents and new discoveries.

MF: Is there anything you'd like to share about your production process that other independent electronic/ambient artists might be interested to know? Feel free to touch on gear, software, techniques, etc. Were there any pieces of gear that played a major role in the creation of Provincial Park?

JKW: I have a pretty basic studio set up with a few synths, an acoustic upright piano and a mini modular synth. I have other acoustic instruments lying around but for Provincial Park I just used the aforementioned instruments and an electric guitar. All of the percussion and drum tracks were acoustic or hand played on my midi keyboard through Cubase. I mostly approached this album from a music production standpoint rather than from a traditional songwriting one. Although a couple of pieces were written on the piano, most of the tracks had beginnings in improvised sessions and sample creation, and there was a lot of experimentation with sounds and manipulation of recorded material with signal processing. Running synth sounds through an old tape recorder to align them with the aged quality of the field recordings I had was a fun way to distort clean sounds, rather than using tape plugins. I do love the ease of plugins but sometimes you just want to get your hands dirty and use machinery.

MF: Ambient music has often been described as both background and foreground—music you can ignore but also get lost in. Where do you see Provincial Park on that spectrum?

JKW: Provincial Park has elements of both, I think. Some of the tracks are definitely meditative and lean towards drone or soundscape, but others are more compositional. For the most part, I'm interested in creating ambient music that requires a more active role for the listener. I think it's just in my nature to be inclined towards writing melody and counterpoint and I really have to hold myself back a bit when making this type of music. With this album, I wanted to encourage contemplation, and create a sense of peace without necessarily making you want to fall asleep or put you in a trance.

MF: Lastly: What draws you to ambient/instrumental music? (can answer in the context of listening and/or creating)

JKW: I am mostly drawn to instrumental music due to the fact that, as you mentioned earlier, it has the ability to exist on multiple planes; it can exist as purely background ambience or be fully immersive, there for the listener to pay close attention to. Instrumental music in general has this quality that allows the listener to develop his/her/their own interpretations and emotional connections with the music. As far as creating the music goes, the process of writing and producing this genre is a blast and a balm. Like looking inwards or outwards, through a microscope or a telescope, anything seems possible.

Thank you for reading, friend. Until next time.

Your friend,

Melted Form

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Jen K. Wilson for participating in this interview and sharing her thoughts and music with me.

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Every Friday, I send out a newsletter with new music recommendations, including a handful of great new ambient records. I prioritize small label and indepedent artists, but I also share a list of major records I’ll be listening to from other genres like electronic, indie, alternative, jazz, pop, and more.

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I'm fascinated by the certain sense of timelessness that comes across more evidently in ambient music than in any other genres I like or have produced. When I look through my record collection, I find that an above-average number of ambient records have this timeless quality. Perhaps, just simply because it's pure emotion that doesn't follow any other codes—maybe that makes it more independent of the temporal component… it’s this sense of timelessness that draws me in.

That was Joachim Spieth, ambient musician and head of independent music label , writing to me about the primary reason he feels drawn to ambient music above all other genres. At his German-based label, Spieth has worked for nearly 20 years to create and promote independent electronic music, especially ambient and deep techno.

Tomorrow (April 4), Spieth and his collaborator Andrew Thomas are releasing their first album together on AFFIN: Nocturna. The record is a fresh example of a timeless sound sought by so many ambient and instrumental artists. It is an encapsulation of several dualities: light and dark, night and day, north and south, time and space.

Nocturna fits seamlessly into AFFIN’s diverse array of releases—one common denominator among the catalogue is that every record sounds like it may stream from outside the conventional boundary of time. It isn’t hard to disconnect from that fourth dimension of time when listening to AFFIN’s curated works, whether it is Guentner’s latest experimental dark ambient endeavor Black Dahlia or the recent post-rock electronica effort Aegis of Silence from London-based label contributor Rhubiqs.

Simultaneously, each AFFIN piece is painted with a unique sonic pallete by artists like Thomas, who works halfway around the globe from Spieth in New Zealand, or AFFIN’s album-cover-artist-in-residence and frequent Spieth collaborator Markus Guentner, who dwells nearby in Germany.

While an element of timelessness feels essential in the work of Spieth and his collaborators, time certainly played a large role in the long dawning of Nocturna. Thomas recalled a time around 2 decades ago when both he and Spieth contributed tracks to Kompakt’s Pop Ambient compilations, a series that has run since 2001 and featured prominent artists in the ambient scene like GAS, The Orb, Tim Hecker, and many more.

Then in the summer of 2023, Thomas began to spend his days recording freeform, ambient piano improvisations. He got in touch with Spieth about collaborating on a project, but AFFIN’s release schedule was humming along and the pair decided to work together when the time was right.

That right time arrived in the springtime of 2024, when Thomas finally sent a collection of piano recordings to Spieth, who was ready to tinker, rearrange, and combine with his own textural layers. Spieth thought back and described the production process:

I took my time to slowly familiarize myself with the material and match my sample racks with Andrew's piano parts. Piece by piece, elements emerged that I would start to place and spread out around the piano. My idea was to give the piano the necessary space it required to be the leading instrument in some tracks and then to place more emphasis on the electronically generated soundscapes in others. After working with this approach for a while, an organic overall structure emerged. Although it didn't strictly follow these guidelines—it allowed the pieces to breathe and it painted a coherent picture as an album. Throughout this process, we exchanged parts so that we were always aware of what was going on musically.

Thomas concurred with Spieth on the “organic” nature of their work together, explaining how smooth the transfer of ideas became, and how they felt naturally in sync as artists and musicians. Above all, their willingness to allow each other to explore and experiment with each other’s work was the key. Thomas explains:

I wasn’t precious about any of it. I was more than happy for him to deconstruct and reconstruct passages of the piano… more than happy if he didn’t want to use any of it. I was really interested in allowing Joachim the freedom to do what naturally felt right for him as an artist—much like I had done when I had created the ambient piano improvisations.

While it took decades for Thomas and Spieth to finally collaborate, Thomas is deeply familiar with collaboration. Since working with Kompakt and The Orb in the early aughts, Thomas has made a career as a composer and production designer for film, theater, and exhibitions. The way he explained his work in film seems to reflect the open push and pull between artists that the duo described:

The music tends to always have an influence and outcome of design to picture. And more often than not, this leads to obvious musical solutions for the imagery, which can work well, but sometimes, artistically, is not that interesting. When I’m composing my own music, I enjoy the freedom of expression, an artistic, personal expression. It’s important to maintain that in the film work if you can.

Perhaps it isn’t suprising, then, that his ambient piano improvisations for Nocturna developed a subliminal theme of the interaction between light and sound. Spieth picked up on this idea quickly, too—another example of their synchronization. Thomas remembered:

We started to understand early in the process where we felt the voice of the album needed to hit artistically, aesthetically, and emotionally, which was very exciting for both of us.

Spieth echoed this, sharing his desire to do justice to both sides of the music—Thomas’ piano and his own electronics. This commitment helped shed an even stronger light on the emerging themes, he explained:

I was fascinated by the interplay between the two elements, and how one provides a condition for the other. In the end, a balance emerges between the two that can be felt as a duality of light and shadow in the music. In regards to time, it is a weathering, perhaps, of Andrew’s pieces as they passed through my hands and I spent that summer last year working with them intently.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the track titles that give some form to Nocturna’s cerebral themes. Glide. Lumina. Flux. Shine. Lightness and luminance are evident in these words. Counter them now with the other four track titles: Falling. Cobalt. Amethyst. Nocturna. It’s subjective, of course, but to me, these feel a bit darker, colder, heavier.

This is the innate beauty of Nocturna I keep returning to—the duality of life. When I asked Spieth and Thomas about the tracks that resonated most deeply with them, they each mentioned very personal memories associated with the songs.

Spieth highlighted Lumina, which was crafted during a time when a close friend of his was going through a crisis. He reflected:

Whenever I listen to Lumina now, I return to that time and the conversations and walks we took together. It's not necessarily my favorite piece, but it left a very personal impression on me.

Thomas latched on to Shine for a similar reason:

[Shine] was composed when my wife Margy was not well. This piece really helped me to relax and get through those worrying times. And will always remind me of our very special love for one another.

In a way, the influence that these moments in time had on the final tracks represents another duality: the beauty and hardship of life. When you love someone so deeply, their challenges affect you just as deeply. You worry and you fret endlessly on their behalf. Life may give you beautiful moments walking and chatting with someone close to you, but you may also feel the emotional weight of supporting that person through a difficult time.

For so many of us, music is an escape from the dualities we experience in life. It can be draining to constantly look for the good when you’re surrounded in darkness, or feel darkness when you’re surrounded by light. Escape is often that search for timelessness that Speith mentioned several times during our conversation—ambient music like Nocturna is special precisely because it can hold both light and dark in perfect balance, without saying anything but possessing the ability to make you feel anything and everything. Upon deep listening, one can hear, see, and feel both. Or, the light or the dark can take over, depending on your personal circumstances—your own place in time and space.

Or… you can listen to Nocturna and simply drift away, escaping everything. At least for a little while, or perhaps a long while. With records like Nocturna, it’s hard to tell just how long you’ve been listening, but it’s easy not to mind.

Thank you for reading, friend. Until next time.

Your friend,

Melted Form

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Joachim Spieth and Andrew Thomas for participating in this interview and sharing their thoughts and music with me. Another big thank you to Karen Vogt for facilitating this written interview and providing images and background information.

Correction: In the original version of this article, I mistakenly stated that Spieth and his label AFFIN were based in Berlin. They are based in Germany, but not specifically in Berlin.

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Every Friday, I send out a newsletter with new music recommendations, including a handful of great new ambient records. I prioritize small label and indepedent artists, but I also share a list of major records I’ll be listening to from other genres like electronic, alternative, jazz, pop, and more.

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