10 Questions with Microfilm By: Aaron Z. Lee
I had the opportunity to ask Matt Mercer and Matt Keppel of the Portland, Oregon electronic band Microfilm and here are the results!
1. Your earlier works are very minimalist and German inspired, while the later works still work in this vein, your new work on the Slingshot Orchestra leans toward more of a synth-pop aesthetic. Is that a latent taste that you guys have always had or did you guys have an epiphany and start working in that direction? And if it was an epiphany, can you tell us about that?
Mercer: It’s been an organic evolution. My solo music is more angular and fragmented, sometimes a bit harder, and the earliest Microfilm tracks are more a reflection of this; I think these new tracks are more collaborative and have veered into something more lush.
Keppel: I don’t know if it was an epiphany or even a discussed decision, I think we just started writing songs that were a little more musical, more complex, maybe a bit softer then the first album.
2. How did you guys arrive at creating a cover, that I think is better than the original, of Sufjan Steven’s song “Chicago”?
Keppel: Better? Well, thanks for that! We’re both fans of Sufjan’s music and decided we wanted to do our first cover version and I think I suggested ‘Chicago’. I think we wanted to cover a song that was a completely different genre and try to make it fit into an electronic, dance realm. It wouldn’t be very interesting for someone like us to cover, say, the Pet Shop Boys.
Mercer: We both liked the song, and it represented a moment in time for us, being enthusiastic about our city of residence… ironically, not long after we decided to leave for Portland! But with that cover we really strived to recreate all the various layers of the original arrangement, but in new and different ways. For instance, I played a lot of piano parts from ear and then cut it apart into fragments, and we recorded numerous layers of vocals to give it a different harmonic sensibility…. but we felt that a good song is a good song, and we didn’t want to rewrite the song itself and wanted to honor it as much as possible.
3. You also worked on a cover of “The Desperate Things You Made Me Do” for a Magnetic Fields cover album. How did this come about?
Keppel: We saw a post on the blog The Music Slut about a Chicago singer/songwriter who was compiling a covers album of Magnetic Fields tunes and he was looking for submissions. We’re both big fans of Magnetic Fields and so we wrote the guy and asked him if he’d like a submission from us and he said yes. Pretty simple.
4. Out of all the songs by the Magnetic Fields, what made you choose that one?
Mercer: I’ve always been more interested in Stephin Merrit’s earlier, stranger synth-pop flirtations. I like the weird sounds he uses; they all sound sort of cheap (in a good way). This one seemed the most dancefloor-ready, something we could have fun with without removing it too far from the source. It’s actually a relatively complex song and it was fun to dissect it… plus, it has one of the more memorable pop choruses of our time, in my opinion!
5. Your vocals have a very signature sound to them, sometimes they are processed and sometimes not. What kind of processes do you guys run your vocals through?
Mercer: It varies. Sometimes the vocals are more “naked” where we just add some reverb to them and let them shine on their own; at other times we add a lot of effects to give it some more edge. Early on we experimented a lot with the detuned unison effect that you hear on tracks like “Paris”, where Keppel’s voice sounds slightly disembodied… this is a treatment we continue to explore as a unifying element.
6. There are many classical instruments heard throughout “The Slingshot Orchestra”, including piano and violin. Where did this idea come from?
Mercer: Part of it is sheer intrigue of what’s become possible via software. Almost all of those instruments are digital instruments, and I “played” them using a midi keyboard. We liked the juxtaposition of hard and soft, synthetic and organic. That sense of contrast is, of course, nothing new, but I think we struck a healthy balance between those two worlds.
7. Do you guys have a favorite classical composer?
Mercer: I studied classical organ and piano growing up, and my favorite composer was always Chopin. I listen to more adventurous 20th century neoclassical music as well as a lot of stuff in between, but Chopin will always be special to me for reasons that are hard to articulate.
8. Who exactly is Johnny X and how did he lose his girl to Erlend Oye?
Keppel: It’s just a character I created for the song. Haven’t really been that specific with characters in my lyrics yet, but thought I would write one of those “name” songs. The title supposed to be a bit Ramones-y. I thought it was funny that this guy would lose a girlfriend to someone like Erlend Oye, who seems a bit bespectacled and kind of wimpy; he’s an anti-hero of the un-cliched variety.
9. What song or artist is stuck in your head today?
Keppel: Good song? ‘Old Fools’ by Magnetic Fields. Bad song? ‘She’s Not Me’ by Madonna; a terrible, terrible song.
Mercer: A handful of artists I’ve really been enjoying lately are Booka Shade, Andy Stott, Grouper, Alias, Mountains, Lindstrøm, James Din A4… the list always goes on, but those are some current favorites.
10. There’s been a lot of snow hitting the ground up here in the North East United States, Does it look like you guys will have snow over there in Oregon for Christmas after all?
Mercer: Yes, and neither of us is happy about it.
Keppel: Well, I like it from the inside, but it needs to all melt come Dec. 26th.
Thanks for doing this interview and Happy Holidays!
Microfilm – We Are Terribly Sorry For Your Loss
