Austin Sound

Ever since the release of last year’s stunning Rivers Arms, we’ve heralded Balmorhea as one of the best bands in Austin, a reputation even further enhanced with this spring’s third album, All is Wild, All is Silent. The band, now expanded from the original collaboration between Michael Muller and Rob Lowe to a sextet with strings and percussion, infuses a classical elegance to their compositions that drift between ambient folk and controlled, understated post-rock textures. Balmorhea returned just this week from their first European tour, and we took the opportunity to catch up with Muller, who discussed the concept behind All is Wild, All is Silent, an upcoming remix project of the album coming out later this year through local label Western Vinyl, and the band’s next record, which is already recorded. If you have yet to see Balmohea weave their exceptional sound live, the band’s show this Friday, May 22, at Stubb’s is a must. Locals Pompeii and Alex Dupree and the Trapdoor Band open.

Interview: Balmorhea

Austin Sound: Welcome back. How did the European tour go?
Michael Muller: Oh my gosh, it made me never want to tour in America again! [Laughs] They just treat you so well! I mean, we’re not a big band, we’re not that well know, but they would have full meals spread out, put you in nice hotels, cool houses. Everyone was just very excited about music there in a way they are not here. Some people are, of course, but just consistently across the board, almost every night we couldn’t believe it was real. We’ve already made plans to go back in October.

AS: Talking to a lot of roots and country bands, they say how there’s such a much deeper appreciation for their music than they find in the US. Do you feel that the same thing applied to y’all as far as being an instrumental band?
MM: Yeah, it really does. A lot of these places, people are coming just because they see “U.S.” after your name. So a lot of the people didn’t know who we were, but some came to see us just because they thought it sounded interesting. It was really amazing, just because almost every night it was just dead silence throughout the whole set. Around here you get that sometimes, with certain shows if people know you or something, but if you play a show in any sort of bar at all, it’s usually pretty noisy. There, even in bars, we would be talking amongst ourselves on stage and the audience would be laughing because they could hear us. It was just dead silence.

AS: That’s incredible. I can see where that spoiled y’all!
MM: We know that’s not normal and we’re not used to that, so we knew it was a special thing.

AS: Were there any significant highlights that stood out for you?
MM: We had a lot of shows that were near capacity, but probably the only show that was sold out was in this tiny little hilltop village in Eastern Italy near the Adriatic coast, near Bologna. It was a tiny little town with just a few thousand people, but there was this huge nature preserve and this big theater, and they put on this show once a year. It’s such a secluded area that there’s no parking, so everyone parks miles away and walks there on foot, from five year old kids to eighty year old men. It was unbelievable. It was wonderful, and we were sitting there selling cds for like two hours after our set. We sold more that night than we sold in like ten shows in the US.

There were a few bad shows, too. Both of the shows in England were in totally bizarre, non-fitting venues for our music, just like really dirty and grungy dive bars that remind you of Trainspotting or something. [Laughs].

AS: How did you and Rob first get together?
MM: Rob and I both worked at a summer camp years ago. That was when he was in high school, and he came to UT, and shortly after, I moved to Austin and we kind of got reconnected. We realized we kind of had pretty identical taste in what we listened to. It was, I guess, probably around the summer of 2006 that we first started goofing around, and it wasn’t one of those things that we thought about starting a band with, but by December we had a collection of four or five songs and thought we should really do this. So our first self-released album was just a collection of lo-fi home released recordings we made. That’s how it started, just totally organic, totally naturally.

AS: Where are you guys from?
MM: Rob grew up in Midland and I grew up in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.
AS: What kind of musical backgrounds did y’all have?
MM: Well, Rob kind of grew up with more classical and new age kind of stuff. He was a classical pianist since he was a kid, and I was a too cool, sixth grade kid with an electric guitar trying to figure out punk and hardcore songs. But around ’95 or so when I was still in high school, Mogwai and all these bands like that came out and started to tour, so I really got into that. So we both kind of have an appreciation for classical and experimental instrumental kind of stuff.

AS: That melding of the classical influence and that kind of post-rock instrumental sound really sets y’all apart for me. How would y’all kind of consider your music in relation to a lot of that post-rock stuff, whether you’re talking about Mogwai or Explosions or bands like that?
MM: I don’t know, I can understand that we’re instrumental and our music kind of swells and falls that same way, but I don’t really see any other characteristics than that. In Europe, especially, we got really sick of everytime there was a write up, it always talked about us being a post-rock band, and I guess it’s kind of easy to lump us into that, but I don’t think that’s true.
AS: Sure. There are those elements there, but in my mind y’all are so much more subtle that.
MM: Yeah. This last record had more rock and a harder edge to it, but when I think of our music, I think of more classical mixed with folk.

AS: With each album y’all have expanded the group and sound, like adding the percussion on the last album. Was that kind of specific to each of those albums or is it more of a progression for the band and a sound that y’all are evolving into?
MM: With Rivers Arms, we knew that we wanted to add the strings and we had been collecting field recordings and wanted to incorporate those. With this one we thought we needed something more driving. All the songs were written around this time last year, so it has that kind of spring and summer, bright feel to it, I guess. But we have already recorded our next one and it was all in this past winter, so it’s way more minimal and sparse and there’s only one song with drums.
AS: Yeah, I wanted ask y’all about the next album since I heard y’all had already recorded it.
MM: We don’t know when it’s going to be released. First we’ve had a whole remix album done with All is Wild, All is Silent.
AS: Really? Who’s remixing it?
MM: There’s like eleven different artists, just friends of ours from all over the world. They just picked a track and we sent them the files and they could do whatever they wanted. It’s going to be released on Western Vinyl in August, a double LP, and digital and CD.
AS: Who are some of the people y’all have involved.
MM: Eluvium is probably the biggest name. He’s on Temporary Residence and toured a bunch with Explosions in the Sky, but he’s just kind of an ambient, classical kind of sound. And we have locals Bexar Bexar and Tiny Vipers, who is a good friend of ours and actually sang on two of the tracks on All is Wild, All is Silent. And we have Peter Broderick, who is also a good friend and going to release his next album on Western Vinyl in July, and some other more obscure European ambient and instrumental musicians.

AS: With All is Wild, All is Silent, was that based around the historical journals [of William B. Dewees cited in the liner notes].
MM: Yeah.
AS: How did y’all come to that?
MM: Rob had read a book about Texas history – he’s a history major, and he’s like a true Texan, so he loves anything about Texas history – but he was reading this and just got taken aback by this guy’s journal entries about him leaving his family and coming to this new place. I’m not sure when it was, maybe the mid-1800’s, but he was sitting on the banks of the Colorado looking over it and uttered the words, “All is wild, all is silent,” just this wild landscape that is very frightening, but there’s this beauty and serenity in it, in the quietness. It really just resonated with both of us. We had visited Big Bend, just us to going camping, and we had visited Balmorhea a couple of times and been through there on tour, so it’s just kind of an homage to the early Texans. We kind of had a loose narrative of a fictional story we made up about this character, but it’s also allegorical, just a person going into something they’re not sure of, something that’s huge but also really beautiful, and being blown away by the experience.

AS: Is there a similar concept wrapping around the next album?
MM: Not really. It all kind of has the same feel and is cohesive in the way that it sounds, but there’s not a narrative really. It’s kind of a night time-feeling album. We also had a lot visions of water and being on a ship, kind of. So it’s dark and wintery, but also has a sort of nautical feel. I don’t know, it’s kind of weird.
AS: That’s interesting, your descriptions of the albums are very imagistic. Is it that way for y’all when you’re writing the songs?
MM: Yeah. I think with both of these albums we picked the cover art before the whole album was even finished being written. The next one coming out is a photograph that a friend of ours took, but it was kind of a night time theme.

AS: How does the songwriting actually work between you guys. Has the rest of the band been contributing more?
MM: Definitely. Especially on All is Wild, the string players – not the drums so much, but the string players for sure – had more of a part in writing their own string lines. But predominantly Rob or I will come up with an idea for a song, a couple parts or even just a simple melody line, and we’ll go to rehearsal and kind of flesh it out. Sometimes we have really specific, fully drawn ideas of this is what I want, and we’ll kind of direct that with the string part, but a lot of times we’ll just kind of make up things and get an idea and it’s collaborative. And with the drums, I guess we sort of had an idea. We’re having a hard time keeping a drummer. [Laughs] The drummer we had on All is Wild moved to China right after Christmas, so right now we have two different drummers that are doing different shows.

AS: I was really surprised with how well the drums worked, especially live.
MM: [Laughs] Good! There’s definitely a line between subtly and too much going on.

Websites:
http://balmorheamusic.com
Myspace