Photo: Peter Quincy Ng
Interview with White Hinterland
Originally posted: April 29, 2010
on
TheAmbitiousC Words: Peter Quincy Ng
It’s a bit of a long-winded interview but after their set with Dosh at the Drake, Portland’s White Hinterland hung out with me for the morning with a nice stroll down Trinity-Bellwoods Park. In a sunny yet windy day we sat down at a picnic table and chatted about everything from “chillwave”, “crimsonwave” or even “Wu Tang Clan” set to the sounds of crazy old men yelling distantly in the background.
We’re with Casey and Shawn of White Hinterland. Welcome to Toronto it’s not your first time here isn’t it? How’s the tour going so far?Casey: How’s the tour going (looking at Shawn)?
Shawn: Tour’s going great! It’s playing with Dosh every night is awesome. Those dudes are so great.
Casey: Yeah they are so nice and their sound guy is incredible.
Shawn: I think it’s a good fit sonically and they just keep getting better. So the songs they play at a lot of the bigger places, a lot of fun places, so they keep getting better. So they sound great.
So your record Kairos was recently released. It’s quite a mish-mash of genres and completely different from the last record. The songs to me sound like something between Toro y Moi and Ditry Projectors. How did you arrive at this sound in Kairos?Casey: Oh wow. Well the main of thing is that none of the “mish-mashing” was ever intentional. It was a very organic coalescence of ideas. I don’t think we intellectualized the process in any way but the two of us spent a lot of time after I had written all the songs we spent a really long time hashing out these arrangements together using what we had. At the beginning we didn’t have a lot of expensive equipment, we didn’t have a lot of samplers so we just kind of had to use our ingenuity and imagination to create a lot of the textures and instrumentation you’re hearing on that record so part of why things sound skewed is because we’re coming at it umm in an “imaginer’s” perspective especially with what Shawn is doing and then the way of using the voice as just a song instrument none of the vocals are not just one beat. Kind of prismatic blocks of vocals…
Peter: You mean like layering?Casey: Yeah they’re actually synthesizers. But I think a lot of it comes from the fact Shawn and I we love hip-hop. I love hip hop so much and R&B and none of these things were like a fresh piece that we thought was cool so we tried it coming out of interests which are apparently much deeper and a major passion at least for me anyway
Shawn: I think it was a very slow kind of evolution. I don’t think there was a point where we were like “Alright! Let’s make an Electronic R&B record right now”. It’s just like we’re like doing this way and we’re practicing things and jamming them and then like different things got introduced and we had to fill voids because of changes in where we lived and now its just the two of us and how do we deal with the rhythm session because neither of us are drummers
Casey: And I couldn’t when we were learning how to record we like instead of recording piano like on the older records was there a way that we would have the harmonic and melodic structure of a piano or keyboard without necessarily using one because they’re really complicated to record. And then we just started experimenting and realizing just because I can play piano doesn’t mean I need it on a specific song or any song. And I think what we did with our record is we took our ideas and then learned everything we didn’t know how to do to make those ideas the same. And that for me is the defining feature of the record is that was something we had to imagine first and then learn how to address the different requirements and complexities. It wasn’t like we could do our drum programming to begin with it was we had to have something that required it to do that. So we let the songs kind of guide us.
I heard a lot of people had trouble pronouncing your last name Casey. It’s pronouncing “Dee-nil” right?Casey: Yeah. It’s DY-NELL. I mean even that is not right it’s a malapropism (the substitution of a word for a word with a similar sound) it should be DEE-NIL in the old Bohemian and then I think it’s the short version of a longer name. But no one since I was 3 years old has ever pronounced my name right on the first go I mean I probably didn’t pronounce it right on the first go.
Alright I guess the next question is for Casey. Now that you’re together as a band, how are things different than the from the piano-jazz singer-songwriter material that you wrote earlier as Casey Dienel?Casey: Oooh… piano jazz! Oh I’m sorry I didn’t mean to tease you.
Peter: Uh what that’s what I heard from Wikipedia.
Casey: Well if Wikipedia says it… it must be true. How are things different? Well things are different in that Shawn is in the room really early on in the process, it just used to be me doing everything myself. With Shawn around it’s a lot more collaborative (and) I let him in on the songs really early in their infancy and I just to be a lot more protective of my songs which I didn’t want anyone them to hear them until everything actually was in the can and prepared just the way I needed it. I think with this feel really comfortable and open with him. So like hey here’s this half-finished song what do you think and I know for some people that doesn’t turn them on but for me that really helpful in terms of stretching your ideas outside of your comfort zone. Like the sooner that I give him something to have some kind of input or response that really triggers something. Like makes my ideas…
Peter: Like make it come together?Casey: Yeah exactly. I don’t know for you (to Shawn).
Shawn: I would say that’s an essential part. I need time to internalize things and figure it out; rarely does something make sense with me on the first listen. So it’s I’ll listen to it a bunch and go through ideas in my brain. Actually I’m not good at visualizing at things and I have to goof around with things for a long time. She’ll like send me a song and I’ll play it through my headphones, plug in my mixer and take my time to figure out what things are going on and what I can do rather than in the past, we’re in the studio with the first or second time of hearing the song it’s a bit trickier for me.
Casey: Where as I’m the opposite. I have a very clear visualizations but I need to figure out everything to get it to that point. (Which is) to take what I’m visualizing in actual tangible songs so it’s sort of like unlocking and painting all the things that are going into it and that’s how songwriting is for me anyway. So I have my ending and Shawn has to meditate on it for awhile and then somewhere in the middle of what we’re looking at and is what the song becomes. It’s never just how I imagine it or how Shawn imagines its, it’s where we meet in the middle it’s where the song has its providence.
White Hinterland is a pretty fascinating name. It sounds pretty wild and remote like a snowy forest or some sort of unicorn factory.Casey: (In amazement) cool.
Shawn’s a pretty big fan of nature isn’t he and I hear he’s big on drawing animals of all sorts.
Shawn: Sure. Well I always wanted to be a painter when I was growing up but I drawing realistically it isn’t easy. I can do it, but it just isn’t that fun or easy. Some people can just be like here’s a portrait of you picture-perfect, but I kind of struggle with that. I guess I I’m not meant to be a painter but I still have a good eye for composition, so I took up photography and went to school for photography and learned a lot of art history. I think it’s really similar about music, where there is a way to go about it. We were having this conversation last night there is a way to go about it where you learn all the rules and then you learn how to bend and break those rules. There’s also something to be said in this post-modern world just having an idea and doing it or like following what interests you and that creative energy just really drives you or at least me anyway. So I just re-examined what things I cared about and what things interest me and since I was very small animals and wildlife have been gigantic interests in my life. Like dinosaurs or things in the world that exist right now. I think that right now part of it definitely a desire to share things that are real and exist and are amazing in this world but that people not know or think about because so many us live in cities. People see starlings and pigeons and that’s what wildlife is to us and there are things in this world that challenge every notion of what we think a living organism should be. My interest is in representing those things in whatever kind of way it happens. Ha long winded answer there.
Peter: It’s a good answerThe last few months we can basically say that a new genre was sort of “invented”.
Casey: Oh really?
The so-called “chillwave”. What are your reflections on that word and does it apply to your music?
Casey: I have heard of this word!
Shawn: I like the crimsonwave though (interrupting). That’s my favorite of the most recent genres.
Casey: What’s crimsonwave (laughing)?
Shawn: Crimsonwave is like US Girls and Zola Jesus. It’s like females making noisy wreck pop.
Casey: I think I can do without anyone marginalizing women anymore.
Shawn: I think Zola Jesus made a joke in an interview and they took it the wrong way.
So going back to the word chillwave?
Casey: Oh God.
Shawn: Well I think chill does and wave has this sort of oceanic quality to it.
Casey: No I don’t think so.
I think the wave notion describes a trend and well no really wants to be just a trend.
Casey: Yeah. Well I guess I don’t know the whole thing about chillwave and I’ve heard about the whole anachronistic aspect of music. I really a love of older music from the 80s, 90s and 70s and even 14th century and having worked on music like our older that is anachronistic and our music now isn’t so much so, if that makes sense to you. But chillwave I…
Shawn: Don’t really care about it.
Casey: I totally understand the need to encapsulate the spirit of something that is new with nomenclature.
Well music these days is so hard to categorize these days with the blending of so many genres and so I just people just need to make up words for genres that may not even exist.
Casey: I think the other problem is with the internet is that every six months there’s this summer of chillwave, summer of nowave and now there’s winter chillwave. If we’re a wave I don’t know and in some ways it’s becoming harder and harder. In someway I think it represents a really positive thing that’s going on that maybe when we were ten or eleven people thought they could choose an emblem as a personality. Nowadays it’s totally cool if you like R. Kelly, Xiu Xiu, Smashing Pumpkins or Duran Duran. I don’t think anyone has that sort of defensiveness and I’m sure some people do. I think that’s great but that’s the energy we need right now especially with record sales down and I just love all these kids that look and talk so different from each other and the only thing they have in common is our music. That sort of panoptic view is so inspiring to me.
White Hinterland’s sound has always been somewhat experimental with little odds and ends like Justin Timberlake or Bjork covers. I’m sure you’re pretty satisfied with your current sound but do you foresee a change in the near future?
Casey: I never anticipate things I’m always open to it. I don’t necessarily think we have to change. I like the word yes. If something seems really interesting to me 9 times out of 10 that’s what I’m going to go with. I rather do something flamboyantly interestingly and maybe quite possibly impossible and fail at it than play it safe. I don’t really look at the choices we make, I just think of them as adventures. Like this record was an adventure or being asked to record a song by Bjork was a major adventure it’s awesome. So for us our evolution for our sound, it could stay like that for awhile or it could change I’m not sure. If I could start rapping…
Peter: Oh you should.Shawn: Yeah you should.
Casey: If Shawn wants to rap he can providing he does a lot of ODB because he’s awesome.
Looks like you’ll be touring for pretty much the rest of spring any plans when you get home?
Casey: Oh showering…. (with excitement), swimming in the Washougal River, hanging out with my cat who I miss a lot when I’m away, cooking (as) I like to cook, my friends. I think that’s the hardest part about being away is that I really miss my friends back home.
(Pauses while looking at disgruntled yelling man)Wow. That guy. He’s my husband (laughs).
Shawn: My best friend lives in Portland and I love living and hanging out everyday so I miss that. We DJ and have a radio show and I miss that while I’m on tour. Getting to working to work on this body of embroidery on this tour will be quite fun. So summertime.
Peter: You can knit on tour!Shawn: Yeah and that’s what why I started it.
Peter: I remember Au Revoir Simone knit while they were selling merch.Casey: Those girls are so crafty and they take amazing photos on tour. All I can do is read on tour. I can really cook on tour really often.
Peter: You should bring a hibachi or hotplate.Shawn: I used to bring a camping stove and bring it on tour.
Casey: But we never used it.
Peter: Don’t start any fires.Casey: Oh Shawn loves fire.
Peter: Oh he seems like the type.Shawn: I do smoke bombs.
Peter: (Casey and I laugh) that’s interesting. I won’t ask any further.Casey’s a big Francophile looking forward to Montreal. Bagels?Casey: Bagels, not speaking English for a little while, French sounds so good! Montreal is one of my favorite cities to play/visit especially if the weather is like this.
Peter: Toronto’s better.Shawn: Oh Toronto’s great.
Well take it easy and make some good music along the way for me won’t you? Anything to say to all the kids out there before I cut you off?Casey: Wu Tang is for the children!
Peter: Listen to Wu Tang kids.Shawn: Go pickup the new Ghostface/Method Man/Raekwon Wu Massacre.
Peter: Did you the see the new music video with the naked girls making cocaine in the kitchen?Shawn: Oh Pyrex Music. That was good. For a 1:45 seconds that was… Oh I was going to make some jokes.
Peter: Never mind this isn’t for kids. Thanks for taking the time today for speaking to me.
