spaceseer is an artist I’ve been listening to with admiration over the last couple of years. He is creating a reality supported by multiple forms of expression, all of which stand on their own but coax you into taking deeper dives into his imaginative world building. I came upon the live track from the Moab (see below) and I was entranced: it was awesome that one man was making so many lovely sounds, and that quote caught my attention. Then I started listening to other music they were doing and there was a great deal of versatility with elements of prog, metal, drone, dungeon synth, electronica, and improvisation. It was my great pleasure to talk with spaceseer and to have the chance to share his work with you.
CR:
I see that spaceseer has been going since at least 2017. Can you talk about how you got started? What other projects have you been involved in~ I'm assuming, based on the quality of your first release that you've made music before this. What's your backstory?
spaceseer:
spaceseer started in a frustrating void of creative confidence in 2016. I had been creating a fictional world to tell short stories and comic books within; basically a creative well for which to always have drinkable water.
This would only be satisfactory if I was able to create concept albums from this well of a sci-fi narrative. In 2016 I was recovering from a deep lack of creative confidence. Two years earlier I was in an instrumental Prog-post band called Temples (Provo, templesmusic1.bandcamp.com). I had a bit of an identity crisis as the demands of financial security pulled me from being an active and happy contributor to this band. I was in bands before Temples but it was here that I was proudest of my musical work. I left in hopes that they could find someone and continue stronger than what I could give them. It’s a tough decision that changed everything, but I am happy at the state of things now with them and as a solo artist. I worked with them on their album Youth, which we made into a double LP vinyl set.
At some point I realized my decision to leave was a wrong one, or perhaps a reason to find my creative confidence. I believe this is when I had a thought that if humans were to ever communicate with aliens, whether that’s ever possible or not, it would be through music. I decided that I needed to learn how to record my own music, so I enrolled at the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, Arizona. This experience gave me confidence and more to accurately capture the music of another world I kept hearing in my mind.
I graduated in 2017 and moved back to Provo to pursue my craft. I met back up with old band mates and made a few records. Leading up to graduation, I wrote, mixed and mastered my first EP as spaceseer in Tempe, AZ. The name of the EP would be the name of the sci-fi overarching story as a whole: A Thread Between Friends.
CR:
Can you tell me about the sci-fi narrative you are crafting? What inspired your vision~ not just in a general sense, but also your idea of presenting the world of stories using a multimedia approach?
spaceseer:
Of course!
The narrative "A Thread Between Friends" is a Terran translation of another planet's cultural conglomeration of sources, collected by spaceseer (us). The inhabitants of this planet are either Kylyy (plant-sentient), Fulgen (fungal-sentient) or the Colossi (automatons propelled and powered by a single force of electric-will, at least that's the theory throughout the narrative).
This planet is known to its inhabitants as "The Body". In a sense these inhabitants worship their planet as a mother figure, though many religions exist to explain or justify their power's actions in defense of Her Body Incarnate. The first collection is known as "The Qyo Historia," which we have been adding to for some time now. The history of this Historia goes like this:
A king of massively Great historical importance commissioned a collection of his people's Historia from an unbiased and outside source, in the form of a silent stranger known only to us as The Scribe of Grandmaster Paiq. While one would think this makes for an unbiased telling, the Grandmaster Paiq himself does interfere from time to time to become angry at the truly-unbiased-nature of his Scribe, who seeks out sources of other perspectives for key events (at Paiq's great annoyance, as Paiq is an empirical tyrant who wants his people to love and support his regime.) Many of our records are direct pieces of The Qyo Historia, told as unbiased as The Scribe can make it with the resources he can get ahold of.
This planet is known to its inhabitants as "The Body". In a sense these inhabitants worship their planet as a mother figure, though many religions exist to explain or justify their power's actions in defense of Her Body Incarnate. There are races of Kylyy, races of Fulgen, and they either coexist or oppress-one-another based off of their leader's prejudice or desire of conquest.
For instance: The Qyo Empire is heavily pious and typically oppressive in their dealings with their neighbors, with a keen prejudice towards the Fulgen (mushroom people). This can be observed in our record, Roses of War (730-731 AT). In this story, a Qyo authority is responsible for the murder of a Fulgen family byway of death-by-flight, on the back of a fly. One member of the family survives and is saved by a Qyo peasant who flees her oppressive homeland, North to Sarracennia, where Kylyy nomads have domesticated and bred massive Moths for travel, hunting-and-food gathering and warfare. The Sarracennians sympathize with the Fulgen, so they decide to goad Qyo into armed combat to answer for their crimes.
This is a really long-winded way of explaining that the first book of ATBF, known as the Qyo Historia, tells the story leading up to Grandmaster Paiq's reign. We actually wrote an Overture record for this story in our album "Rooted Hate Entangles Copper Veins," where our character Grandmaster Paiq can be heard giving a propagandist's speech to his people in "A Fistful of Bismuth (Great War of Dominion, Part 1)"
Over the next few years the story of "The Qyo Historia" will be told.
Inspiration:
I have always wanted to write an extensive story with strange and detailed worlds. My literary influences include Herodotus, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler. It is really important that this story exists within the physics and sciences of our universe. This story is my way of observing how sentient people of other worlds have similar problems to our own, but in their own unique contexts. As far as the short-story format, I really enjoyed Ray Bradbury's episodic novel titled "The Martian Chronicles". I found this was a great way to show how the world of Mars was inhabited by real and different people with different morals and goals. I also found that this was a nice way to write concept albums. This allows me to write an album with a specific theme or flare and narrative specific to itself, allowing the music to stand alone from our other releases. Our most recent release "Colossi Perpetual Factory" simply represents archival recording of a Lipid-Kylyy observer inside a Colossi Factory. It is certainly a sound unto itself. This also allows us to explore endless avenues of the musical world, which we really enjoy.
All of this said, we do write our music in hopes that people will listen and disregard the story entirely. It is a dimension of the music that keeps us primed and ready for creation, but either dimension of our work should be enjoyed on their own as well as together, if we are doing our jobs correctly. Time will tell.
CR:
I really appreciate the depth of what you are creating. I find it interesting to think about how that depth can be completely ignored by the listener while still adding so much to the music~ I can't imagine that it doesn't do so. When I've listened to your releases in the past, I've done the occasional dive into your website and checked out the written side of things. I think that knowing that it is there adds to my experience with the music, even if I haven't absorbed it in the same way. I think it is a really cool approach.
How do you craft your music? How has your craft and approach progressed through your history? I'm a geek in this regard, and I find that I learn quite a bit from people's answers, so feel free to be detailed in your answer. I've seen pictures of your set up during some of your live recordings and would love to have a rundown.
Spaceseer:
I've always found comfort in really exotic and discomforting musical experiences. Hailing from a family of motorheads, I've always felt somewhat out of place or incongruous trying to hang with everyone while they geek out on dirt bikes and ride. As a teenager, records such as Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd really opened my ears and mind to what is possible with musical storytelling. It was a really moving experience, and I think I've been chasing how to provide experiences such as that for others ever since.
The process of our music changes depending on what we are trying to tell, as well as whatever equipment we have at the time.
Our first EP was more of a desire to write a contained end-goal for the story as well as use the studio space at the Conservatory in AZ while I was there. I love recording to tape, so most of “A Thread Between Friends” was recorded to 2-inch tape. This EP stands alone from the rest of our heavily-modular work, as it consists simply of synth and key layers, programmed drums (Superior Drummer 2) and bass guitar. Bass being my favorite instrument to play, it has always had a prominent role in some of our bigger releases (such as Rooted Hate and Roses of War), so bass has been fairly constant from the beginning.
As time has passed we have accumulated a modular eurorack setup. An instructor at CRAS named Scott Murray (Majestic Dubs on instagram/SoundCloud) held a clinic where he blew everyone’s minds with this little wonder-box. Before this clinic I had never seen or heard of modular synthesizers, and I pretty much immediately saw it in my mind as something I wanted to get into. spaceseer owes a lot to that clinic, as well as the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences as a whole.
The spaceseer synth rig has been in the works since 2017, technically beginning with the Moog Mother-32 semi-modular system. I pre-ordered the DFAM shortly thereafter, which I still love. I used this combo to make a dry-bones, looping-sequence modular EP titled "Where It's Always Springtime" released Spring 2018. Later that year this same setup was used for Coffin Comet (Mother-32+DFAM, this time + Avalanche Run Reverb/Delay). In January 2019 I performed Coffin Comet at an open-mixer set, though this included what we had of our TipTop Mantis case setup. Alongside our Moog semi-modular setup, we also filled our first TipTop Mantis Eurorack setup. Enter Mutable Instruments (can’t live without Clouds), Make Noise, Malekko (Envelator rules), the works for a neat storyteller background.
Through this project I have discovered a love for programming beats. Also in 2018, a Digitakt was added to our mix, and our sound seemed to have really solidified with the addition of our first tried-and-true drum machine. I love the Digitakt more than my synth rig, probably. If I may tangent a moment, in 2022 an accident occurred that resulted in the power port being ripped out of my Digitakt, and shattering my heart entirely. I talked my wife into buying an immediate replacement, while also sending in my broken original to be repaired. Now I have two Digitakts, and I must say that two is better than one. The double-Digitakt threat can be heard in our newest EP "Colossi Perpetual Factory (2022)". More on that later.
Throughout 2019, "Rooted Hate Entangles Copper Veins" grew into fruition. Using the power of MIDI and a merger box, the synths were following the clock of my Digitakt, which followed the clock of Logic Pro. For this record the Mother-32 acted sort of as the lead guitar. This was written very much as a heavy-psych mind trip. I wrote a lot of the riffs out on the Mother-32’s sequencer in those days and moreso on this than anything. It’s all about switching sequences in time and together with the Digitakt. I have better stuff that does that with less headache now, however I do like how that record turned out. This record also featured our first two spoken-word tracks, “The Lament of Hibis Hyace” (voiced by Angelica Canaan) and “A Fistful of Bismuth” (Paiq voiced by Jake Ben Suazo). These were great fun to write and record, and present a nice challenge for musical storytelling, writing/editing and performing. We will do more of these in the future, hopefully with some new guest voice artists. “Rooted Hate” was released in November of 2019.
To end 2019, we released “Betty Andreasson & The Blue Book”, among the first of our non-concept musical works. We took the spoken-word description of an alien abduction experience and performed a drone-epic to back it. Weirdness ensues. Mostly inspired because we share a similar last name, we found Betty Andreasson’s experience to be riveting to say the least.
In 2020 we released a long-form drone album titled “Re-Sonante 12069102”. This record is heavily conceptual, although the music is a direct tribute to Eliane Radigue, master and synth-Goddess supreme.
“Colossi of Kahryatt” is another pandemic-era recording of ours. Heavily industrial, we found some really nice samples and put the Digitakt to work, while also utilizing our new Make Noise Wogglebug and Doepfer Spring Reverb modules to add more space-chaos to the mix. We really wanted to make this the first of many releases to showcase what our Colossi constructs might sound like in motion, for an audience of course. If one were to wonder, this is the first "installment" of the Colossi series of standalone works regarding the mechanical constructs themselves. Our new EP "Colossi Perpetual Factory" is the second in this series, though oddly enough the moogs were set aside for "Colossi Perpetual Factory."
"Wanderer of Antiquity" followed. This is a simple synth-drone spoken-word song, the first of which I myself performed the voice acting. I'm pretty sure I was really into David Lynch movies at the time, so naturally I tried to have an air of Lynchian mystique in my delivery, also to (not really effectively) mask my own voice. No digitakt, although this is the first use of the Arturia Keystep Pro, which has really evolved my songwriting and live performances. This is a nice showcase of the Mutable Elements module, one of my absolute favorite voices. It provides the main melody throughout. I always think I don't like this song looking back, but I just listened to it and actually I really am proud of what it is.
"Re-Sonante 9210152" is the second part of the Re-Sonante series, released May 2021. While this is a tribute to Madame Radigue (praise Radigue), we did have a nice minimal Digitakt beat set up for it. The drone is really big, which seems to be the theme so far for these tracks. I'm fairly certain that this was achieved with crossfading two sine wave sources, matching their LFO rate to motor against each other but just enough to avoid going shrill. One of those sine waves have note information being sent to it, and the Elements module has its time to shine in the beginning of the song. Wogglebug can be heard stressing out underneath the pleasant weight of nightmare forests. Insufferably long drone epics are something I love very much. I think I enjoy contributing to the musical conglomerate for people to use to get them through their day. I really enjoy this series, and listening to this again makes me want to make another one.
Since the beginning of 2021, I've wanted to make a truly epic narrative with all the hallmarks of our sound: big synth drone, bass guitar riffs, epic prog drumming (a'la Digitakt) and even spoken word. This time, I wanted to showcase the Northern Sarracennian-Kylyy and their Fulgen friends, and a war that breaks out between them and the growing power of the Qyo Empire, who are flaunting their religious rites all over any disagreeing inhabitants. This ended up being a full audiobook at the end of the day, and I don't see us doing something quite so involved anytime soon, however it was great to write and record. Nothing new gear-wise was added between the last Re-Sonante and this album.
What I'm especially proud of with "Roses of War" is that it is the first time I made a fully-playable, one-person album for a live set. And I did just that for Far Out Fest 2021, where we debuted a few of these songs. While the mix seemed to be a little rough, it was overall a really fun (and exhausting) experience, one that we hope to recreate more and more as time goes on.
We have arrived at Feral Moon! The first spaceseer Halloween song is also the most collaborative yet, as it features guest performances by Nathan Richardson on guitar (of Utah Provo band Temples) and Raven Jezzannah Timm on spoken-word. This song was literally written-and-performed in a two-day period. One morning I felt compelled to make something truly discomforting and scary, and invited my old bandmate Nathan over to provide some of his epic and tasty drone-tones. We then went to a Halloween party and showed everyone our instrumental track, and everyone seemed to dig it. I quickly wrote a new character to add into the world of The Body and hired family-friend Raven to fill the role, and without any prior experience she absolutely nailed the hell out of this song. This would easily be a top 5 spaceseer song for me.
A yuletide spaceseer song would end 2021 on a pretty-big high note with "Ave Maria." This is the only cover I've ever released, may ever release, but only because I was tasked with restoring some old tapes of my Great-Grandmother and Great-Aunt performing Christmas and otherwise lovely Vocal and Piano accompaniment songs. I did so and was touched by this lost tome of my dearly departed family members, so much so that I added synth and keys to their version of "Ave Maria" by Franz Schubert. It's also one of the shortest spaceseer songs, so that's nice in and of itself.
2022: a pretty big year. I wrote "The Climb of Celastra Campsis (564 AT) in January as a desire to write more playable-live epics. Nothing too fancy gear-wise here. A few root notes to nail and a lot of room for improv makes this my new favorite song to open a set with, though maybe other people don't agree. There's nothing more fun than playing big, crunchy bass to the living end.
We made a beastly collab album with instrumental Platonic Post-Metal band Thumos throughout the spring of 2022. Having found and fallen in love with Thumos and their record "The Republic", creating a pen-pal record with them was an incredible honor. We found some nice Ancient Percussive packs online somewhere and made great use of them for "The Course of Empire." This record is really important as it really captures the weight of historical existential-turmoil that I try to write into ATBF. Working with Thumos really emphasized and showed me how to better bring this story about, and we're thankful for this opportunity.
That brings us to "Colossi Perpetual Factory", our newest record and one full of surprises. Throughout the year we recorded a bunch of shop sounds from our dayjob as a machinist. I cut and uploaded them into my Digitakts, which gave me an arsenal of crazy acoustic metalworking sounds. "Perpetual Factory" was born. As we said earlier, double-digitakt action paired with swelling and filtering synth atmospheres made the environment for my bass guitar to stomp all over the place, Colossi-style.
The recording of this took place during a really busy and stressful summer, where I finished mixing and mastering my other band Catahoula's first record "Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Dog" released in June 2022. I somehow found time to write these three songs while also promoting the collab with Thumos, Catahoula's first album, and planning a vacation to Europe with my wife. Also, my cousin passed away of an auto accident towards the end of August, which took my attention away from creativity for a while.
This is where my friend Randy Cordner (other guitarist and mixing engineer of Temples) stepped in to mix my record through his wonderful studio. So many tubes and tape heads zapped this record into life. After playing a couple shows in September, the wife and I made it to Greece, and in Athens I had my record mastered by Alex Ketenjian of Unreal Studioz. Hearing my music blasting out of the windows in Athens is an experience that I'll never forget. It's because of these two friends that this record sounds as good as it does. When I got home Randy had purchased a Revox G36 tape machine, so we gave the record a final divination through it, and now it's the most solid spaceseer record to date (probably).
So that's a pretty detailed runthrough of our releases so far! We have gotten some nice new gear including the Instruo Scion for integrating biological signals into the mix, as well as a return to the Roses of War storyline, and thus musical theme. I'm hoping to have an actual band at some point soon, but I will always be happy crafting and performing with my one-man-band synth rig, as long as it will last me.
I forgot to mention that my friend Randy performed the lead key solo for Treasury of Kahryatt. A lot of people think it’s guitar which makes me smile, but it’s awesome to have powerfully talented friends to feature in music.
CR:
Outside of possibly expanding into a band some day, what else do you see on the horizon? What can you tell me about your plans for the near future and what are you willing to share about your long term dreams?
Spaceseer:
Our focus for 2023 is to try and weave my different strands of storytelling into a physical book release. I’m desperate to put actual narrative tracks down, so that my release output will follow more of a linear narrative, for the sake of marrying the two for better cohesion moving forward. I’ve wanted to release a book for years, this is the year it happens for sure, or at least have it ready for 2024.
My ultimate goal really is to just tour and make friends abroad. I’m not really sure how feasible touring is anytime soon, though I do love playing live and have pretty neat ideas for elaborate shows. Touring internationally is perhaps my biggest realistic goal, though I always see ancient amphitheaters around and dream of playing there to really seal the existential my-life-hasn’t-been-a-total-waste dreams of success. Spaceseer: Live at the Odeon would be a dream come true.
CR:
I'm excited to learn more about the book! I can completely see you playing in ancient amphitheaters and I definitely think you should figure out some international touring. Are there other artists whose work you follow or feel particularly inspired by? If people like what you are doing, who else do you suggest they check out?
Spaceseer:
I am currently head-over-heels for Arthropoda Music, a noise/experimental/minimal electronic label from Spain. The "Tagma EP" by Art Uro is a masterpiece of illustrative and musical sound-design. I hope to make something half as rad as their music since discovering it.
Snow Wolf Records and their roster of champions are really inspirational, and I'm thrilled at their willingness to work with us. I find myself listening to a lot of Lycopolis, an Egyptian black metal band, a whole hell of a lot. Telesterion is fantastic, of course Thumos among many other legends housed under that great label.
Here in Utah County I have a good amount of friends who are all incredibly powerful and creative. Nate Richardson and Randy Cordner (Temples U.S.), Tree Smith, Pippin Ward (Catahoula) among other close friends influence me on the daily. Far Out Cassette Club and White Rabbit Death Omen (sells cassettes as Sault Vault Records) deserve a mention as well for putting out incredible tapes of archive-material as well as originals all their own. Everyone deserves to have friends as cool and talented as I have. So check them out for sure!
CR:
Could you speak for a moment about the people who support your creativity? I keep forgetting to ask people about the people who nurture and love them, and the roles they play.
And as a last question, what are things regarding you and the different facets of your work that people never think to ask?
Spaceseer:
I have really incredible parents who were very young when I strolled up. They didn’t get along on a marital level but after their split they became good friends. Both parents, my siblings (both creatives as well) and my incredible grandparents as well, have always been patient, kind and supportive despite whatever wacky venture I found myself in. I don’t know how I deserved to have such a nice and caring life.
I think a lot of people are intimidated by the weird world of music I have adopted. Friends and family find the eurorack setup cool but intense l, so much so that they leave the engineering and synth stuff to me. I don’t get asked about it a lot however. Everyone seems to be happy letting me do whatever I do. People are a lot more caring than they get credit for. If I had a question that was asked more, it would probably be more story-centric details, although I believe time and patience will reward me with more questions than I can mentally handle.
I am full of thanks for spaceseer taking the time to detail his work and his creative process. The link above is his latest release, which features Krang the Lion’s Mane Mushroom. For real. It is amazing work, unsettling in the best of ways. As always, spaceseer is an inspiration.
Here is his website, which is full of interesting material: spaceseer art.com
You can follow him here and here and here:
spaceseer instagram spaceseer bandcamp spaceseer twitter
spaceseer soundcloud spaceseer spotify
Also, having followed spaceseer over the past couple of years, I can tell you that he regularly donates the money made from selling his music to good causes. Right now it is going to help out the people in Turkey and Syria who have experienced the recent earthquakes.