Interview mit Dylan Neal von Thief

With “Bleed, Memory”, you have created an extremely multi-layered work of art, which was influenced by your experiences with your father’s dementia, among other things. Would you say it’s your most important album to date?
Yeah, at least in emotional relevance. It’s the album that is still most alive for me, partially of course because it is the newest but also because the experience with my father is still ongoing. All the THIEF songs are a part of me, but these are still “active”. It’s an interesting experience in that regard. I think I grew most as an artist on this record as well. For the first time in my life I had a period of burn out, so that was a whole new world for me. The production, too, I think, is the best I’ve done to date.

Such a serious illness of a close relative, which often overshadows everything, is certainly an immense burden. How did you feel about incorporating these painful experiences so directly into your music – was it taxing or even cathartic?
It was great to have a place to channel that energy, especially concerning the fear or anger based emotions. Those to me are the emotions that can really affect your day-to-day life and the well-being of those around you, so having a conduit for them helped me keep other things in my life from souring. I don’t remember the writing process being painful because of the content simply because the topic was already so alive for me.

People with serious mental illnesses such as dementia are often downright dehumanized – they are sometimes (although rarely openly) not considered to be able to lead a fulfilling life. How do you feel about this in light of your experiences?
My father at this point isn’t really able to lead much of any life. Sadly there isn’t anything he could “fulfill” because… well, he’d become confused or just forget what he was doing. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t live a meaningful life. My relationship with him has grown a lot since his diagnosis and continues to as it progresses, and I think that is very meaningful to both of us. I’ve been able to learn a lot about myself and how to be a better person and I think for the first time in his life he’s learning to let go of control as he’s fully dependent on me and his sisters now. I know it’s hard for him to not be able to do the things he used to do, but he has also lived a pretty great life up to this point. It’s imperative to give people with serious mental illnesses the same approach and respect as you would with anyone because they are still their own person, if not fragmented. He isn’t able to name a single movie, but I always ask him what he wants to watch. He isn’t able to manage his finances anymore but I still involve him with some of the decisions that I need to make for him financially. I think these little things are important because while his mind is not intact, his feelings are.

In some cases, dementia can also be inherited. Are you worried that you might one day develop it yourself?
Actually, growing up my biggest fear was losing my mind. It’s in the album on the track “Pneuma Enthusiastikon”. I had a bad acid trip and issues with panic and depersonalization for a long time after it and that little tase of a malfunctioning mind helped me have empathy for my father. I don’t think I actively carry that fear with me anymore, but it did awaken a bit as I started to project that fear onto what my father was going through. Luckily dementia doesn’t seem to run in my family so I don’t really worry about it at this point. Worrying won’t change the future and the best I can do is take care of myself now. I think now my real fear wouldn’t be dementia or insanity itself, but not having anyone to help me with it. You’re fully reliant on family or medical care once it sinks its claws in and I can’t imagine doing it alone. It wouldn’t be possible.

The album title “Bleed, Memory” seems to be a reference to Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiography “Speak, Memory”. What was it about this work in particular that so directly influenced your choice of title, and how does it relate to the concept of the album?
You’re right, that’s where I took the name from. I’m a big Nabokov fan, but that book itself didn’t really have much to do with the album outside of inspiring the title. It’s actually a bit of a boring read to be honest. (laughs)
Recently though I skimmed through it again and the first paragraph really struck me. It reads: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).”
In retrospect I feel like that does hold some of the album and myself in it. One of the struggles in dealing with dementia by proxy is that you’re losing the person, and that their life is probably going to be cut short. Isn’t it strange that we hold such a great fear of death, even though it’s a state as unknown to us as the blank state preceding birth? Looking at it this way brings me calmness.

Before the release of your new album, there were a few quite bizarre teasers that cynics would probably describe as gimmicky. To put it a bit provocatively: Was the artistic or the marketing idea at the forefront of the teasers?
Oh, interesting, I’ve never seen it as gimmicky. The main point was to deliver a message creatively. Any artist needs to create promotional material for their art. Whether it is music videos, social media posts, ads – you have to do it. So why not put your art into that as well? If I’m going to do it I have to do it in a way that is authentic and interesting. I think they’re great and they still make me laugh.

These teasers as well as your lyrics and music express a subtle, biting humor – even though you deal with extremely serious topics and create dark songs. What role does humor play in your life and in your art?
Humor is important, especially at the bottom of the pit. It’s so helpful when it’s done right. Nothing matters in the most positive way, and humor helps reveal the cosmic absurdity of it all. I remember reading this story about that actor Phil Hartman who was murdered by his wife and how at his funeral everyone was grieving and completely beside themselves. Someone said to John Lovits (his best friend), “I just can’t believe that she murdered him and he’s gone”, to which Lovits replied, “Oh come on, you’re making it sound worse than it was!” Everyone busted up laughing even in the midst of their grief. That’s medicine.

It’s noticeable that “Bleed, Memory” is a lot more compact than its predecessor “The 16 Deaths Of My Master”. Looking back, do you think that this album was perhaps a little overloaded?
I don’t know. I haven’t listened to it in quite a while. Ask me again in 10 years! I’ve heard people say it’s utterly perfect and others say it’s bloated. At the time it felt right and that’s all I can stand by. I went into “Bleed, Memory” knowing that I wanted it to be much more succinct and I think I accomplished that. “16 Deaths” was just a huge album and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having some fat on the meat. Sometimes people tell me their favorite song on that album and it’s a track that I never considered very strong. That has happened often. So, shows what I know. There’s a story about Tool while they were recording “Undertow” (one of my favorite albums) and the producer or someone wanted them to “cut a lot of the fat”. That’s crazy to me! That album is perfect. You go with what feels right.

The electronic elements of your music seem to become more eclectic and multi-layered from album to album. Do you still see yourself as learning?
Yeah, definitely. I’d still consider myself an intermediate in terms of production, mixing and synthesis. There are people out there who do way crazier shit than me that I couldn’t even possibly begin to break down. But that’s what’s so fun about it, there’s so much to learn and the technology moves so fast you’ll never be able to keep up with it, so it’s constantly humbling. Sometimes I’ll make something and be like “oh shit, this is next level” and then I hear some IDM track by a kid in his mom’s basement and I feel like a beginner.

According to your label, on your new album, you used a method called granular synthesis for the choir samples. Have you used this technique before or was it something completely new to you?
I’ve used it before on a couple ambient tracks but it’s the first time I ever used it in an actual song where it makes up the actual verse or chorus. It’s such a cool sound so I was stoked to find a way to harness it in that way. It’s kind of a chaotic and unpredictable way to use sound, at least in the context of a song. It’s always morphing and changing.

You chopped up the choir samples into extremely small pieces, layered them on top of each other and otherwise manipulted them. What was your approach in this regard – how were you able to assess in advance what each sample should ultimately sound like?
A lot of the time I have no idea what I want the end result to sound like. Instead I have a mood and maybe a technique I want to use as a tool to express it. It’s more the other way around where I will be spending time experimenting with sounds with no goal in mind when suddenly a certain sound or texture will spark an idea. The sound will dictate the song. I think this is how “Paramnesia” came to be. I really wanted to try and make a good sounding synth with some choral samples that had kind of a “witch house” feeling to it, so I just grabbed some vinyl I’ve collected over the years, throwing random stuff into the granular synth module until something sounded right and inspired a melody. Now and then I’ll hear a choral song and know exactly what I want to do with it, but I can’t get caught up writing in a way where I’m planning every detail in advance. I leave a lot up to chance and experimentation.

Your tracks are generally filled to the brim with small details. Would you describe yourself as meticulous and/or perfectionist?
Yeah, I’m a nut about that stuff. All that “ear candy” keeps the song fresh and interesting. Once the song has been written and it’s time for mixing and more production, I might spend 3 days on 1 bar of the song just refining and refining and refining. Like I mentioned, I don’t always know what I want, so I have to experiment a lot. The end result is always worth it though. I imagine this is how a writer might work. They have a pretty good sentence or paragraph, but they know it needs something more, so they’ll just continue to fine tune it over and over until it’s just right. Sometimes adding nothing is the right call. Sometimes it needs a total face lift. Or maybe sometimes the style is to remove things and leave it totally bare. My ADHD makes it hard to do that though.

Does this attention to detail sometimes make it difficult for you to complete your songs?
It definitely makes things take a lot longer, but the key is to know what songs call for that amount of effort. I will generally bring most of my ideas to some level of completion because I think that’s an important habit to have as an artist, but by the time a song is at the point where its time to bring out the scalpel and get really meticulous, I’ll usually know if the song is worth that effort or not. So it’s also a kind of wisdom, knowing what to expend your energy on and what not to. My harddrive is full of songs that never got released that I spent way too much time on. I’ve learned the scalpel isn’t for making okay songs great, it’s for making great songs better.

The album’s artwork is a distorted reinterpretation of El Greco’s “The Tears of Saint Peter”. Why do you think this image in particular was a coherent template for the artwork and to what extent is the original even significant for the result if this inspiration is barely recognizable?
It looks and feels like a representation of how the album feels, really. There are all kinds of parallels one could draw between Saint Peter and someone with dementia, but to be honest, I bought the artwork from Joseba Eskubi before I even knew what the original painting was and knew little about Saint Peter (other than that he denied Christ three times which is pretty metal). I just loved the sorrowful look. Maybe that’s how I feel inside about my father as I watch being crucified by dementia. On a meta level, I love Eskubi’s work and the way I feel his art and process mirrors my own. He takes an existing and oftentimes nearly ancient work of art and defaces it to make it new and unique. That’s sort of what I do with the choral samples, so I feel there’s a strong visual to audio connection there and I think that is communicated.

As an artist who works with a wide variety of electronic stylistic devices, you are certainly not averse to modern technology in a creative context. With this in mind, how do you feel about the controversial topic of AI in relation to art?
I hope that AI develops in a way that gives artists more free time to work on art rather than take away the artist’s job so that they can work more. In a utopian future, AI will be doing most of the jobs held by people so that we can pursue other creative/personal/spiritual endeavors. I’m not so sure that is the planned trajectory though. I think purely AI generated art is garbage and won’t have much staying power because, in my experience, people aren’t interested in art created by AI outside of the novelty of it. There’s no human connection happening. But AI tools can be cool. An artist can help “guide” AI in a way that opens up new creative doors. The way some visual artists use AI “artifacts” is really awesome, like if you’ve ever watched some of Connor O’Malley’s disturbing video shorts or seen Alan Resnick’s images. There’s a digital synth plug-in (the name escapes me) that uses AI to try and replicate a sound source you feed it. It doesn’t do a good job, but it does create some really interesting results that you can further sculpt.

What’s next for THIEF – and how do you envision the longer-term future of your project?
In the immediate future we’ll be doing a small US West Coast tour mid-July and then in September playing at Prophecy Fest in Germany, with probably a couple more dates around it while we’re out there. After that, I’m just going to lock the doors and finish up the next album. In the very long-term, I have no idea what’s going to happen other than creating music. I just hope I can grow in a direction where I can continue to have the means and the privilege to share my music with the world.

Now let’s get back to a little Metal1.info tradition: the subsequent brainstorming. What comes to your mind when you think of the following terms?
Identity: Illusion
Nostalgia: Temptress
Sleep Token: Still haven’t listened to them but they probably do suck.
Experimentation: Crucial
Feel-good music: Down’s “Nola”
Your biggest achievement to date: Sobriety

Thank you again! I would like to leave the last words to you:
Thanks so much for your support and taking an interest in THIEF! Be well and raise hell.

Publiziert am 24. Juli 2024 von Stephan Rajchl