Austin Sound

When Silent Land Time Machine first began creating music in his room, he had no idea how receptive Austin would be to his style. After a long journey of teaching himself to play a variety of instruments and recording full-length tracks, SLTM has recently joined the live music scene. He employs found sound, violin, guitar, drums, accordion – and anything else he can get his hands on – to create a musically layered sound. A little bit of sad mixed with some upbeat, SLTM brings a tasteful, electronic personality into the shoegaze genre. His first album, & Hope Still, is scheduled for release in spring 2008. The often-bearded man was gracious enough to discuss his beginnings and philosophy with Abhinav Kumar, whose radio show, Tons of Fun, you can tune in every Thursday evening from 8:00-8:30pm on KVRX 91.7FM. Silent Land Time Machine headlines at Emo’s this Tuesday, January 29 with The Tiny Tin Hearts and Hey La La.

Interview: Silent Land Time Machine:

Austin Sound: You’ve been recording for a while, but when did you first decide that you wanted to perform music live?
Silent Land Time Machine: My stuff is kind of hard to play live, the way it’s recorded, because I never recorded it with the intention of playing it live. But the reason I started doing live shows was because some friends of mine who are in a group called Please, Please, Please in Missouri were going on tour last summer, 2007, and they were coming to Austin and wanted another place to play at besides the Red Eyed Fly. Anyway, they said, “Why don’t you play before us?”

I kind of hadn’t really thought about it, and them just suggesting that, I said, “Okay, I guess that would be pretty cool. If I did, I could just perform here at the Pearl St. Co-op.”

AS: Why is your music difficult to play live?
SLTM: A number of reasons. Because it’s really reliant on lots and lots of layers, which are really hard to produce live. With multi-tracking computer software, you don’t have many limits, but in a live context, even with a looper, you are constrained. I just can’t really do that much stuff at one time. You have eight tracks coming in at one time, and you can’t really do that live unless you have a computer - a laptop, and I haven’t really wanted to perform with one.

AS: You’ve got a show coming up on January 29th at Emo’s. Is this your first time to perform there?
SLTM: It’s not; it’s my second time in two months. They invited me back after the first show, which actually went very well. I played with This Will Destory You and Unwed Sailor. It was a real pleasure to play before those guys. My amp fucked up on the last song, and I didn’t get perform it; luckily, they liked the performance that they did hear, and they invited me back.

AS: And you’re headlining?
SLTM: Yes, yes, I’m headlining this time. It’s two local groups that are playing before me; it’s “The Tiny Tin Hearts” and “Hey La La.” I’m getting to headline, which seems kind of silly because I’m one guy, and there are four people in the first band and seven people in the second. And then there’s one guy with a bunch of shit and a table. But it’s cool. I’m really happy that that’s how it’s working out.

AS: Has anyone come ever come up to you and told you that your music sucks?
SLTM: No, not yet. Actually, I think there may have been an off-color comment from someone at the Pearl St. Co-op, but I’ve had basically exclusively good things. But there’s this Oscar Wilde quote that makes me skeptical; it’s something like: “When people agree with me, I fear I must be wrong.”

Sometimes I wonder about that, but I generally trust people with their tastes. So, it’s been mostly good, and I’m happy about that.

AS: You’ve got an album coming soon; could you tell us a little bit more about that process?
SLTM: Sure. I’m coming out with an album on CD and LP in spring this year. I don’t know when exactly because this is the first thing I’m doing, and we don’t know when everything’s going to be done. I just sent the final mix out three days ago to Time-Lag Records. Time-Lag is a really small, independent label in Maine that’s done a lot of really good work for about eight years now, and I got turned on to them several years ago when people were mentioning record packaging in an AlmostCool.org forum, and that Time-Lag had the coolest packaging - almost everything is super-art intensive and very hands-on. So, I sent them a demo a while back, just for them to hear, and they actually really liked it. We started talking, and we thought we would co-release something.

My good friend Magera Holton did the layout and packaging for the album. It actually looks really cool; it’s this photo negative from Brazil, and it’s really neat. Her designing made me excited about the project all over again. Working with Time-Lag is the best case scenario in my eyes, and then Magera is this amazing design person. I could not possibly have dreamt that this thing was going to look as good as it does, and the artwork really reflects the music.

And before I forget to mention, it’s [album] called “& Hope Still.”

AS: How did you decide to name your album that?
SLTM: It’s from a liner note from an album that I really like, but I guess it has a lot to do with free will, choice and the human condition. The thought sprang from a…I forget his name now…[laughs] I forget the fucking book’s name now too, but it’s about a guy who was in concentration camps. He was a doctor in the camps in Poland, I believe. The book is called “Man’s Search for Meaning.” The book is largely about, that no matter what the circumstances, one always has a choice to choose how they’re going to react to a situation, and in this gentleman’s case, it was being in concentration camps. And if you let go of that hope, which was basically all they had, that you would die without the belief that you would make it through. It’s a reflection of free will and choice, and the choice to make something good, despite the circumstances.

That’s kind of a shitty explanation.

AS: You’ve got the album; you’re playing shows. But you’re also a senior at UT. Is it tough to handle something as potentially boring as schoolwork and create music at the same time?
SLTM: Yeah, if I was fully involved in both simultaneously. I’m taking a little break right now, not just for the musical projects, but just for other personal reasons. In some ways, going to school was really stimulating, and this whole first thing was recorded while I was in school. The second track is called “I Shouldn’t be in School.” That song was largely made one afternoon when I was supposed to be in math, and I didn’t feel like going, so I didn’t go. I came back and made what I think, and what a lot of people seem to think, is a pretty good song.

That was kind of symbolic in a way to me. That’s really what I wanted to be doing, and I kind of saw it as a sign that that was a good idea. I don’t mean to encourage people to drop out of school or anything.

AS: When your album comes out, are you going to go on tour during the summer?
SLTM: I’m hoping to. I would really like to. I don’t really know the first thing about doing it. I mean, I know I just have to send a lot of e-mails to venues and such. But yeah, I would like to go on a tour of sorts in the U.S. and preferably also Europe because I know that I lot of responses I’ve gotten through that Internet have been largely from overseas and from Canada.

AK: You’re pretty young.
SLTM: Yeah, I like to think so.

AK: You already have an album coming out co-released under a label, and you’re doing all this stuff with your music. Do have another goal for where you want to end up with your music?
SLTM: Part of what’s exciting about this is that in releasing, like you said, we’re co-releasing it. So it’s going to be a Time-Lag and “blank” release. That “blank” is going to be the name of a record label slash production company that me and my friend Matt Dayton are going to make. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while, but it was just not really attainable. I really wasn’t doing anything musically; he wasn’t doing anything musically, but now we’ll kind of have our foot in the door because with the Time-Lag name, it’s very likely that a lot of people will hear this. I’m hoping there will be a good response. I’m planning for this to be a springboard to hopefully launch other projects that are very of high quality or have sincerity on their sleeve and promote an awareness of world events that I feel like you don’t see very much with music.

You really can’t ever forget how fucked up things are, and I think that’s important, even though this record that I’ve made is completely apolitical besides the process in which it’s made, which is largely independent.

I’ve basically already been writing, whatever that means, stuff for another release after this one. I’ve just been trying to get this out, and then my computer crashed a week after Time-Lag wanted to do this project together. That was a two-month ordeal where I may have lost this album that I was working on for about a year. So that was all kind of stressful, but it was funny because the album title kind of came into play. I thought, “I guess I should remain pretty positive about this and maybe just try to make the best of it.”

AS: What would have done if you hadn’t been able to recover all of your recorded music?
SLTM: That’s a good question. It was a silly, silly, silly ordeal where anytime I was looking for something I really needed, it wasn’t there. I had all the songs, but I didn’t have WAV forms of all of them; I just had MP3’s. And then I looked for the WAV forms, and they were there but they wouldn’t play and were corrupted. A good friend of mine, Tyler, tried to recover them to the best of his efforts, but it was really messed up. He couldn’t get most of it back. I was considering just re-recording it completely if I couldn’t recover anything. So it was either radically reinterpret the whole album, fill in the gaps even though it wouldn’t sound the same. I don’t know what I would have done; I would have been very upset. That would have been the first thing that would have happened.

AS: Do you have anything else you want to add, especially for this show coming up on the 29th?
SLTM: I hope my amp doesn’t fuck up on the last song or any of the songs. That’d be neat. Thanks to everyone who’s been supportive. I think sometimes people who are very self-critical, you listen to your stuff - even now, some of the stuff I just sent off to be mastered, I’ll think, “Ah, this sounds like shit.” Maybe it’s me; maybe it’s just silly confidence issues I have, but a lot people, their support has been kind of what’s kept me motivated. I’d like to say thank you to those people. I think I’ve been particularly lucky to have run into the opportunities that I have, and I’m very, very thankful for that. The day-to-day support of good friends is probably got to those opportunities in the first place. So, thanks.

Website:
Myspace