An Interview with High Places

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This is nice. An opportunity to interview High Places, the somewhat inscrutable duo of Mary Pearson and Rob Barber, whose totes proper debut album has just been released (and reviewed here to some large acclaim by THIS VERY WRITER WHAT IS WRITING THIS RIGHT NOW). Marvel as they give some really quite interesting answers to the questions I e-mailed in to their publicist.

What inspires you most, musically?
Mary: I’ve been really inspired by the recording quality of old blues recordings lately. I love how blown out and tinny those recordings are. Good hip hop beats amaze me in the way they make you involuntarily dance.
Robert: I love hearing different types of unidentifiable music playing really loud, but far away from me. I love the aesthetic of music mixing with the rest of it’s environment and bouncing around. I was at a party in LA the other night in a rather hectic neighborhood, and it was a bunch of really different sounding punk bands playing. Next door was an even bigger party featuring a Mexican dance with a twelve piece brass-based banda sinaloense. The pa they were playing through was enormous. We got there and heard a punk band playing, then suddenly, the banda started, but with just a vocal part. It was the loudest recorded vocals I have ever heard. When the sousaphone kicked in with the percussion, it was knocking over bottles. Then when the horns kicked it, it was the most powerful band ever. Hearing this band bouncing through the buildings and mixing with all the other sounds of people getting loose, will always be a really rememberable and inspiring experience.

How did you come together as a duo to make music? Do you have similar tastes and ideas or is your songwriting process more of a clash?
M: We were both performing as solo musicians and we wanted to try fusing our ideas into a duo. Rob and I were pen pals while I was finishing up music school in Michigan, and I moved to New York after graduation so we could start High Places. It was a very impulsive move, but one I’ve never regretted!
We have pretty different approaches to composition, but we have gotten really accustomed to writing and recording together. It is a very democratic process with lots of give-and-take and compromise. We are quite yin and yang in so many ways. I love immediacy, complex meter, and minimal ambience. Rob tends toward unconventional phrasing, major key melodies, and layered maximalism. Rob’s approach to music-making is often more like a visual art approach. He deals with colors and environments and textures. I am a bit more concerned with structure and time signatures and counterpoint. We listen to a lot of the same music, mostly because we spend so much time together.

If you could be in your ideal band would they sound like High Places, or something else entirely?
M: It’s too hard to be objective about my own musical projects. I could never listen to them and separate myself from the equation. My ideal band would probably have a female dancehall DJ, my sister Laura, Rye Rye and Steve Reich making some disjointed, minimal, repetitious, lyrically-driven dance jams.
R: I already am in my ideal band!

There is something about High Places’s sound that I can’t quite place in any real tradition- elements of sound from all over the place, immediately recognisable sonic signature possibly all of your own, where would you place it?
M: I think our sound is intentionally a sonic scrapbook. We don’t like to feel limited by instrumentation or tunings or subject matter. But on the other hand, we’re constantly returning to this idea of familiarity, and figuring out how to make a strange instrument sound expected and appropriate.
R: I think we don’t try to recreate something we hear and get excited about. I think we often work in the spirit of something in particular. We usually come up with most of our sound palette by experimentation and just generally messing around until something starts to peak our interest..

How do you feel your music has progressed in the time from ’03/07-09/07′ to ‘High Places’?
M: We’re learning not to force things; to let the compositions evolve in a more natural way. This has often resulted in slightly longer songs. I think of 03/07-09/07 as short experimental sketches, and the self-titled album as more of a complete work, like a novel with cohesive chapters.
R: I don’t think feel the need to embellish the songs with more and more layers, but still managing to keep it dense and enveloping of the listener..

Both ’03/07-09/07′ and ‘High Places’ have been about the same length, but do you think there is something about ‘High Places’ that makes it more of an “album” than its predecessor, or is it just all in the conception?
M: 03/07-09/07 was never intended to be an album. It was merely a way for us to catalog and to make available hard-to-find shorter recordings. We gave the collection the super dry title 03/07-09/07 to eliminate some confusion with that. The self-titled album is an intentional full-length; our first foray into the full-length world. We are such 7″ kids. It took us awhile to feel ready to tackle the intimidating task of crafting a complete, congruous longer format work. We weren’t interested in creating a concept record, but we wanted there to be an overall sonic and thematic tone to the album.

What was the writing and recording process for the album like?
M: We write and record simultaneously, so the album just kind of emerged out of the madness, taking on a tone and sound neither of us imagined before we began. Our process is quite meticulous and tedious. We would take breaks to walk around the neighborhood. As we got closer to finishing the record, the walks would get longer and longer as our insanity grew. I remember walking like 40 minutes (each way) to this ice cream shop that carries soy ice cream. We just had to clear our heads and talk about things other than music. We would often work into the wee hours of the morning; piecing together little snippets of sound, recording guitar duets, writing vocal parts, squinting at a computer screen. We both got new glasses when the record was done.

The cover art for your album is pretty amazing. Who did it?
M: That was a total Rob brainchild, although I believe I actually took the photo of the baby, and I might have initially suggested the ocean images for the inside gatefold. The back image is a self-portrait we took in a park in our neighborhood.

Mary – you appeared as a guest on the (IMO, fantastic) Hawnay Troof album recently. What was that like? What other artists are you particularly friends with/admiring at the moment?
M: VC (Hawnay Troof) is such an inspiration to me. That guy is always working so hard and he’s incredibly talented. I recorded that stuff while we were on tour in California and staying with VC. I feel pretty lucky to have a bunch of creative, prolific friends. It keeps me motivated and encourages me to work through my creative ruts. I recently recorded some vocal parts for Fred Thomas’ new project City Center. Also hailing from Michigan, Fred has always been this total musical powerhouse shaman to me. I would be interested to know just how many songs that guy has written. I know there was one day alone when he wrote 30 songs.
R: City Center, Silk Flowers, Soft Circle, Lucky Dragons, Crash Diet Crew, Grouper, KIT. THese are people who I have spent tight times with, and love and adore.

What’s your day-to-day life like as member of (Pitchfork-hyped, no less) musical sensation High Places? Amazing arty romp of wonder or fairly predictable grind?
M: When we are home, a typical day involves lots of talking to and snuggling with our cats, lots of food preparation and consumption, and lots of walking and biking around New York. We write emails and make phone calls and run errands like normal people, and that eats up several hours a day. We also collaborate on all kinds of projects: drawings and music and videos and paper snowflakes. We like to engage in some (incredibly mediocre, at least on my part) skateboarding. When we’re on tour, we try to schedule in days off to swim and hike and explore new towns. We like to sleep and take vitamins and eat healthy food. We’re totally not crazy ragers on the road.
R: I always feel like I’m trying to catch up to my brain, which is like 15 steps ahead. I feel overwhelmed a lot, but I am happy and stoked with my day to day life.

What are your plans for the future of High Places?
M: To continue to be best friends. To grow creatively together. To travel to crazy places.
R: New frontiers in vegan cuisine!

High Places on Myspace