Markus Mehr has just released his epic new album In, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed solo debut Lava, and the first in an ambitious yet perfectly realised trilogy, completed by the forthcoming On and Off. Markus chatted to video artist Stefanie Sixt about his music, her visuals, and their ongoing collaboration. Check at the bottom of the interview for competition details.

Markus Mehr: Although I work with you, Stefanie, I’m not physically with you when you start to collect material and ideas to generate the visuals for our collaboration. Please tell us more about this process and your approach on my piece ‘Transit’ (featured in part three of the trilogy, Off, to be released in January 2013)?

Stefanie Sixt: Well, the process is always dependent upon the subject and the sound. In the case of ‘Transit’, it all started with research about life, death and the question of a spiritual life after. Posing a thousand philosophical questions and reaching almost no answers, I had to make a decision about how to visualise an abstract field.

During my walks in nature with my dog, Sanzcha, I started taking fuzzy black-and-white photographs of light reflections. I’m using animation to create new worlds out of the footage, which in most cases aren’t reminiscent of the original shots at all. Turning the world upside down – that’s fun! Not everything is what it seems to be. We are just some narrow-minded humans, trying to understand a bit more of the world. Speaking of understanding, how did you get the idea to create a 50-minute piece comprising one repetitive mantra? Didn’t you worry that it would bore an audience to death?

MM: ‘Transit’ actually comprises two different themes, so the piece has an A/B/A/B/A structure. By the time we were talking about collaborating on a new performance, I was working on a piece of music that would later become the B section of the composition. This particular part perfectly fitted what we’d been talking about in terms of theme. It’s the harmonic, bright and friendly part of the track. It loops around itself very slowly. I call it an electronic canon! Cyclical sounds or patterns are something you can find in almost all of my music, especially In, On and Off.

SS: What prompted you to use your toothbrush to create sound?

MM: A sense of fun and curiosity! I’m still fascinated by people like Keith Rowe, for example. He experimented with using things on the guitar; I tried something on my own. Devices like shavers or ventilators held over a guitar’s pick-up can do some really interesting things and create nice noises. Combining these two patterns turned out to be my inspiration on ‘Transit’. However, in comparison to ‘Komo’ (from In) or ‘Synchron’, the work on the live version of ‘Transit’ was a much closer collaboration between the two of us.

SS: On our first project, ‘Cousteau’ (from Lava), we worked pretty much on our own until we got on stage.

Now we’re influencing each other while we’re creating the piece and rehearsing the performance. It’s much more complex, I would say. In your opinion, what do the visuals add that music can’t express?

MM: For our live performances, the visuals are very, very important. It opens up new dimensions, intensifying and deepening the viewer’s emotional response. Our work together is really falling into place. Not all visual work fits my music – and vice versa. However, when it comes to listening to my albums, the music has to stand on its own. My approach is to offer a package of sound, sometimes brutal and distorted, sometimes moody, melancholic and relaxed, when we play live. But following up on my first question, the visuals on ‘Transit’ have a very clear, almost technocratic appeal, but without being cold.

SS: Maybe it’s due to the origin of the visuals – it’s all organic. Within the process, the technocratic aspect is added. In the end, this might evoke the emotions people tell us about. Your sound compositions are similar, aren’t they? Even though your sounds sometimes build up into pure noise, there’s always enough melodic space to sink into. That’s why I’m into your music.

MM: Very often the starting point is a musical phrase I found somewhere. Most of the time a harmony or melody attracts my attention. Once I’m attracted by a phrase I start to play around with it and see if the idea for a piece emerges. A lot of the time I do reject things because nothing comes up at all. But when an idea starts to work, the excitement builds. Arranging, distorting and playing around with the fragments is a very satisfying part of the process. It becomes easy, once you have a vision. I hope people will like it.

SS: I’m convinced they will. Your music is like a dialogue, an inner journey. It’s awesome to add my visuals to your music, taking the audience even further on this audiovisual trip.

Markus Mehr’s new album In is available now in limited edition CD and digital formats from the Hidden Shoal Store. We are also offering a CD copy of Markus Mehr’s Lava for one lucky winner. All we require is for you to tell us the name of the 2nd track on Mehr’s latest release In. Send your answer to contact[at]hiddenshoal.com with “Markus Mehr Competition” in the subject line. You’ve got until April 21st, 2012.

People we have a treat for you. Chamber-pop experimentalist extraordinaire Liam Singer walks us track by track through his critically acclaimed 2010 album Dislocatia. Lots of wonderful insights and fun factoids from our man on the inside.

Before you go on, we’ve provided a full album stream via Bandcamp at the bottom of the post. You should also head here to a) download the three free (!) singles off the album and b) buy the album on CD or digital.

To co-incide with this lovely little expose Hidden Shoal have two copies of the CD up for grabs. Answer one stupidly simple question and be in the the draw to win. Send an email to this address with “Dislocation Comp” in the subject line and tell us which Cat Power song Liam Singer covers on Dislocatia. We’ll contact the winners on the 4th of November.

Dislocatia Track by Track

1. On Earth a Wandering Stranger Was I Born

I wanted this piece to have the feel of an old movie’s opening credits – that overture-like, technicolor sweep.  The title is paraphrased from an inscription by the side of the road that Werner Herzog recounts in his journal “Of Walking in Ice” – “On earth a restless stranger was I born/In mortal danger, though in the midst of life”

2. The Brief Encounter

This was a fun one to record with the children’s choir – having them sing the line “you are wasting your life” over and over again.  They were curious what the song was about.  One sort of spazzy boy came up to me afterward and said “It’s true, isn’t it?  What are any of us really doing here?”  So I think I gave him his first existential crisis.  I wrote the melody for this song while driving up the California coast from Half-Moon Bay to San Francisco, meaning that first line (“I was driving up the coast”) did, in fact, happen.  Not that the rest of it didn’t…

3.  Leave the World to Those Who Care

I could listen to Wendy Allen’s voice forever.  She should be famous.

4.  Mold Me Torn Fan

A very Nino Rota-inspired track.  I was happy with how this piece worked out arrangement-wise… Scott Solter and I played around with a lot of sounds in the studio.  The title is an anagram for Morton Feldman, who is a recurring character on this record.

5.  Winter Weeds

As this album was starting to take shape, I noticed that there weren’t many pieces based on musical loops… everything was very harmonically forward-moving, and I thought it would be nice to have something that was structured more in the addition/subtraction of elements.  I was very into the M83 album Saturdays=Youth at the time, so I thought I’d try to take the quality of the 80′s contrapuntal action I was hearing on that album and transport it to a 19th century quaker meeting…

6.  Dislocatia/Mouthmoss

I think a lot of people skip over this track, though it’s one of my favorites on the album – I love melodies that exist at the edge of tonality.

7.   Bellingham, WA and the Four Green Doors beyond

This song is about a road trip I took with a friend.  The Four Green Doors in the title are a reference to a piece I later saw at the Whitney Biennial by Adam Putnam called “Green Hallway,” which uses light and mirrors to project four green infinite passageways onto the four walls of a room.  The room felt to me like like a meeting place of past and future events, and of possible lives.

8.  Morton Feldman Holding Notes for Eternity

I honestly have no idea how I thought of this song… It’s a strange one.

9.  Dead Old Friend

I’ve been surprised by how many people really like this track.  With some distance, I can see that it has a sort of Edward Gorey-esque quality that sometimes seems to show up I my music.  I wanted body sounds for the percussion – I liked the mental image of a couple of old guys dancing around and clapping – so most of the noises are generated by Dave Flaherty, the percussionist, clapping his hands and slapping his belly.

10.  Victory Steps

One of the more difficult things for me to do is write a simple pretty melody without getting too clever or strange with it.  Thus, the main melody of this piece is a victory for me.  I did let myself get a little clever and strange in the middle section.  “Victory Steps” is a nonexistent victorian-era dance/strut that one does to this song, at least in my head.

11.  Cross Bones Style

I’ve always loved this Cat-Power song, and started playing it for myself on the piano.  As it evolved, I started bringing in Philip Glassy polyrhythms, and then envisioning the close harmonies that you hear Wendy Allen singing so beautifully.

12.  Words Make the Master

This is one of a couple pieces on this album that I wrote while living on an island in Maine for a little while.  You’d think a quiet place might result in quieter music, but I found the opposite to be true – my own thoughts became amplified, and I started indulging in the heightened craziness you hear here.

13. Erat Hora

Another piece that is very Nino Rota/Ennio Morricone inspired.  The title is the name of an Ezra Pound poem:

‘Thank you, whatever comes.’ And then she turned

And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers

Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,

Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes

One hour was sunlit and the most high gods

May not make boast of any better thing

Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

I like that, in between everything that’s difficult and impenetrable and cranky about Ezra Pound’s work, he wrote beautiful sentimental little things like that.

14. Into Tendril and Vine

I almost didn’t put this song on the album – at the time, I think I was a little embarrassed by how theatrical it was.  Now I really like it, which is a good lesson in not being afraid to go a little bit over the top.

15. From Fast to Slow/ Behind This World

Thanks once again to Wendy Allen’s vocal acrobatics, the tumbling counterpoint lines here really shine through.  I feel like this song contains the seeds for an entire approach to songwriting – one that I haven’t continued to explore, but would like to return to one day.

16.  Stinson Beach

Like “Dislocatia/Mouthmoss,” “Stinson Beach” is a track that is not immediately accessible and doesn’t get a lot of love, but that I’m personally very proud of.  It’s abstract and slow, but ultimately melodically driven.  Stinson Beach is a beach town north of San Francisco.  When I lived in SF I took a lot of trips there, and have some great memories of the place.