The Man From Atlantis Interview: “I have a solid idea of how I want the project to sound”

Michael Sill is one of many in the underbelly of DIY culture that is constantly spinning plates.

An active participant in Melbourne’s thriving underground scene throughout the ’90s that saw him involved in bands such as experimental noise purveyors, Ray of Creation, and later with the kraut rock-inspired duo, Imperial Leatheman, Sill has continued along the dark frontiers of outsider culture, just not in the city, but throughout Australia and beyond.

There’s no better example than Sill’s new label, Ramble Records that, for us, is the find of 2023. A label for the true outlier, Sill’s vision is clear: giving voice to those who struggle to be heard.

And while we have already touched on the majesty of Ramble Records throughout these pages, today we shine a light on Sill’s own creative endeavours; namely the Man From Atlantis.

Having released a steady body of work since 2017, the Man From Atlantis’ main concern lies within the realm of long-form, and that continues on Blues for Archie Shepp, which dropped last week via Ramble Records.

Featuring appearances from tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia and drummer Simo Laihonen, Blues for Archie Shepp is a tribute to the avant-garde jazz pioneer. It’s yet another release under the Ramble Records stable that will stay with you for months on end, undoubtedly coming into calculations where end of year lists are concerned.

Opening with the acid-fried raga of This Rain, alongside Nebbia’s narcotic saxophone and Laihonen’s splintered percussion, on the title track Sill takes us through a wonderful improv’ maze inspired by fellow Melbournians, Dirty Three (of whom Sill recounts a wonderful story below).

From here the album doesn’t let up, with the sunbaked acid blues of Lay Your Burden Down and You Better Run capping off an album that embodies the spirit of Sill’s label. The two facets entwining as a part of one big story.

In the lead-up last week’s release, we asked Sill some questions about Blues For Archie Shepp, his prior projects, and how he divides his time between the label and his own creative undertakings.

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Sun 13: Being the owner of Ramble Records, is it a case of wearing different hats between running the label and being a musician? What does your day-to-day look like?

Michael Sill: “To be honest since the label’s inception I haven’t had as much time to devote to my music as I would have liked. I still practice and play the guitar everyday but getting into the headspace for writing and recording new material has been challenging.

“Most of my material that I am releasing now and will release in the next 12 months or so was recorded during the COVID lockdown. My day-to-day activities revolve around getting more traction and people aware of the label… constantly hustling; contacting radio stations, blogs, magazines etc. and promoting the recent releases and liaising with artist on the release; designers on the artwork, mastering engineers and pressing plants on the final product.

“This is just the label side of things, with the mail-order it’s a completely different beast, with a lot of packing up records to post and re-ordering stock, so I guess most days are focused on promoting the label.”

S13: Can you tell us about the process behind Blues from Archie Shepp?

MS: “Most of Blues from Archie Shepp was recorded in my home studio during lockdown with some overdubs added later. I sent the tracks to Camila and Simo and they added their brilliance and sent them back. This process still amazes me! I didn’t need to offer any significant guidance for Camila and Simo; they are both brilliant and intuitive artists and what they added to the tracks was perfect.”

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S13: What was the most important thing you wanted to capture with this record?

MS: “Gratitude. I wanted to capture an overall ascetic that I felt represented my appreciation for Archie Shepp in a sincere way. I felt the most expressive way to pay homage to A.S. was to be open and as honest as possible; the style was not necessarily important but the overall feeling and intent. For instance in the track Lay your Burden Down which contains the shrieking Archie Shepp sample, I wanted to express a feeling of love and gratitude and essentially letting go; almost like a purge you could say.

“We are all get caught up in this ‘me’ focus and place ourselves at the centre of the universe and those around us need to adjust but it soon becomes apparent that if we behave like this, we become miserable and disillusioned. This recording while at its heart is a thank you to A.S. is also a series of tracks that highlight a shared consciousness or experience that we are all suffering, and my struggle is no different to yours but how we respond is important. Both You Better Run and This Rain are an attempt to articulate this.

S13: I feel like this record really encompasses the sonic ideology of your label, Ramble Records, too. Would you agree?

MS: “It’s hard for me being so close to every release to be able to stand back and accurately answer that but I appreciate your observation. I think this recording encompasses several areas sonically: psychedelia, spiritual jazz, post-punk, and blues of course. Overall, the ideology of Ramble is that anything pretty much goes sonically. I’m not overly interested in a recording being polished or blemish-free; as is the case for this recording. To me, it’s more about the intention and integrity or honesty of music; and overall releasing important music that is under-appreciated or unrepresented. A lot of wonderful music enters the stratosphere and is ignored, unheard, unappreciated including our own releases but I’m trying to change all of that!

“So, I guess, Blues for Archie Shepp encompasses the Ramble ideology perfectly. This record sounds pretty raw, some would say lo-fi but I’m not fond of that term because I find that it has a negative connotation… that it almost cheapens the recording if it’s considered low-fi. Sonically, I can confidently say that it vibrates with a positive rhythm as all of the Ramble releases do and that’s important to me; which makes me think of this wonderful Sun Ra quote, ‘The earth cannot move without music. The earth moves in a certain rhythm, a certain sound, a certain note. When the music stops the earth will stop and everything upon it will die’.” 

S13: The title track is evocative and very reminiscent of fellow Melbournians, Dirty Three. How did the collaboration with Camila Nebbia and Simo Laihonen come about?

MS: “Thank you, that is a wonderful compliment. The Dirty Three are national treasures. Before I answer that question, I’ll tell you a little story on the first time I was awakened to the Dirty Three. It was sometime in the early ’90s I think, and I had headed out with my buddy to catch some live music in Fitzroy, which back then was a thriving live music town, and you could pretty much guarantee seeing great live music seven days a week.

“This night was either a Monday or Tuesday and we were on the way home after watching a regular jazz gig when we heard this wonderful commotion coming from a very odd venue that I had never frequented. It was essentially an Italian restaurant and latenight drinking spot. On the blackboard read ‘tonight late the Dirty Three’. As we poked our heads into this incongruous venue, Warren Ellis stepped on a distortion pedal to unleash the heaviest feedback and riffage I had even heard from a violin and then I recognised the drummer Jim White and guitar player Mick Turner who had previously been in the legendary punk noise band Venom P. Stinger, so I knew this band would be something special, and they were. So, that was a surreal and memorable moment experiencing an extremely raw and raucous the Dirty Three in an almost empty Italian restaurant drinking cheap wine.

“But to answer your question about collaborating with Camila Nebbia and Simo Laihonen, I am in the fortunate position with this label to be in regular contact with many extraordinary artists who also happen to be wonderful people. I had released two wonderful records of Camila’s and two of Simo’s and was familiar with how they play and the spirit they bring to their music, so when I was thinking of guest artists, these two were first on my list for this project and I was honoured when they both obliged.”

S13: You’ve been heavily involved in the experimental landscape over of the past thirty years with Ray of Creation and Imperial Leatherman. Both weren’t necessarily in-step with ‘the norm’ at the time, and to me you’ve always been ahead of the curve. Is that something that you’ve looked back on over the years?

MS: “Ray of Creation was definitely ahead of its time, and I think if we had started 20 years later we may have been appreciated more. In the early nineties in Melbourne punk rock and grunge was in full swing and while we often played with these kinds of bands there was also a small group of outsider bands that we regularly played with, but it was a challenge to find a bill of like-minded acts. At the heart of Ray of Creation was an improvised and experimental aesthetic, we were also heavily influenced by punk rock, and I guess some of our material could be considered post-punk but essentially what we were playing was experimental art-rock/prog-rock and there wasn’t a huge market for it that’s for sure!

“With Imperial Leatherman, we essentially started as an improvising duo with a strong kraut rock aesthetic. There were very few bands playing kraut rock at this stage and gigs were scarce. There has always been a strong experimental scene in Australia but most of the acts like Grong Grong, Lubricated Goat, King Idiot, Practical Folk Music had ceased playing by the time we were gigging. There were also a handful of simpatico venues during this period that would welcome the weirdo bands but as is the case still to this day, finding gigs was challenging.”

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S13: Regarding your creative process. Has it changed over the years with the different projects you’ve been involved in?

MS: “Not really. I pretty much have always written my material in a solo environment either on a 4-track, or computer and is the case today even on a mobile phone. With the bands that I’ve been involved with, most of the songs were written by myself and each member would add their creative contribution to the composition. With the Man from Atlantis, I have a solid idea of how I want the project to sound; sometimes that involves including other players and contributors. In that instance, I will only outline the feel that I am aiming for and am always happy for each artist to interpret the composition as they feel.

“With Imperial Leatherman half of these tracks were co-written and the other half were already lying around in my endless database of half-written songs and ideas. The difference with the Man from Atlantis is that it is essentially a solo project with the potential for it to become more of a collective along the line of Sunburned Hand of the Man. The next recording Golden Light, which I’ll hopefully be able to release before the end of the year features five collaborating guitarists from around the globe: Kris Gruda, Hekki Ruokangas, Giannis Arapis, Chris Alford and Ernesto Diaz-Infante.”

S13: Having been involved with music for so long, you’ve seen the landscape drastically shift from how we once consumed music, particularly over the last 10 years, do think you operating on the fringes in the outlier sound world has made immune from these trends?

MS: “That’s an interesting question. Unfortunately, with the unfortunate rise of some streaming platforms it has certainly diminished the value of music to become another frivolous commodity. There is of course an upside to this and having a wider worldwide audience. I think all music particularly outsider/ avant-garde/ experimental music is affected by current tends because it’s not as pervasive as mainstream music, so it takes more convincing to get an audience to listen, support and overall pay for a release.

“At the end of the day, we still need financial support to pay bills and fund the next record. It’s also harder now on so many levels; there is so much noise on social media, so much competition, so much inane rubbish and somewhere in there you are trying to attract folks to listen to your music and if it doesn’t grab them in 10 to 20 seconds you’ve lost them. The attention span of the audience seems to have diminished dramatically. In Indian classical music 30 minutes is short raga. Try to convince a radio station to play your 25-minute track! A lot of our releases are for serious listeners and a track or album devoid of a hook and melody can be challenging for some folks.

“With physical copies you also have to convince record stores and distributors to buy into what you are creating; to believe in your vision… and most don’t want to take that risk. ‘Hey, I’m releasing my new record, it’s experimental and it’s influence by Sun Ra, Stockhausen and the Sun City Girls’, are you interested in taking some copies?’ ‘Uhmm, I don’t think so.’ I have a whole selection of funk re-issues and classics that I can sell by the crate load and the new Taylor Swift just dropped why would I take a risk on your releases?’

“While there’s a couple of stores that are supportive, the majority in this country are not sadly. In both the US and Europe, it’s a completely different story of course. Australia is an isolated place and there’s more competition than ever before for your music to find its place and become appreciated and unfortunately stores and distributors prepared to take a ‘risk’ on your vision are a minority.

“I guess anyone playing outsider or marginalised music will tell you, it’s always been difficult to find an appreciative audience, have people listen and buy your releases but with the further commoditisation and de-valuing of music with streaming platforms and their playlists, it has become even more challenging. I try and block all that noise out as best I can, and while I think my own music and the label aren’t necessarily immune from these trends, the best practice is to not participate in it all and generally I have a pretty low expectation about things like number of streams, likes, shares, and sales. It’s really out of my control! This may come across as being pessimistic but for me it’s simply the reality of current trends and to become pre-occupied detracts from the real goal of releasing challenging, inspiring and interesting music.”  

S13: Does Melbourne and its surroundings have an influence on the music you create?

MS: “Not really. If anything, it probably drives me to want to create music on a greater scale. Melbourne has always had a thriving live music scene but to me it’s always been a pretty parochial scene. There are certainly pockets of interesting music and musicians that inspire me but overall, I have never thought of any of my projects including the current one to have an Australian or Melbourne sound. I’m not really connected to any scene here and have to constantly hustle to find a gig. I am more influenced by the many great artists that the label has released and the many other labels around the world also releasing inspiring music. I used to find it frustrating; going way back to the Ray of Creation days and always longed to be a part of one of these so-called underground scenes but these days I’m happy to fly the flag for the label and essentially carve my own path for my music and the label.”

S13: Can you tell us about the Melbourne outsider scene? Who else should we be paying attention to?

MS: “Melbourne has a strong outsider music scene and there are a core group of improvisers and experimental artists that regularly perform at the Make it Up Club, a long-running venue for avant-garde and improvisation. Some of these artists who are honest purveyors of outsider music include Dave Brown and his various projects including Candlesnuffer, Paul Kidney from The Paul Kidney Experience also playing in Star/Time, Maria Moles, Nat Grant, Robbie Avenaim,Cat Hope, David Palliser, Stevie Richards, Tony Buck from The Necks, Chloë Sobek, Shoshana Rosenberg, Adam Hipwell, Clinton Green and various artists from his Shame File label. Other fine labels include Albert’s Basement, Extreme, NCTMMRN and Black Truffle.

“The Melbourne Hindustani Classical Music Society are wonderful supporters of Indian classical music and the Boite hosts regular inspiring ‘world’ music events. There is a great ‘home’ venue in Footscray playing improvised music once a month called 1000 Ears and the experimental co-op Liquid Architecture also host regular avant-garde events. There are also a handful of American primitive style guitarist and acid folk artists that I’ve performed with who are flying the flag for outsider music – D.C Cross, Adam Geoffrey Cole, Hana Stretton, Levi J. Burr and while not from Melbourne, Andrew Tuttle from Brisbane is an artist to look out for.”

Blues for Archie Shepp is out now via Ramble Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.