Pelagic Swell: In Conversation with Adam Wiltzie

It’s hard to know where to begin with an artist like Adam Wiltzie. In between talk of Match of the Day and the impending departure of the Liverpool Football Club manager, Jürgen Klopp, Wiltzie smiles, hesitant that our readership might find such topics irrelevant.

It’s refreshing, revealing more than one side to someone who, alongside the late Brian McBride as Stars of the Lid, took experimental music in the ’90s to wonderful new places, and continues to with Dustin O’Halloran as the neo-classical duo, A Winged Victory for the Sullen.

Speaking to Wiltzie over Zoom a week after the release of his excellent new album, Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal, I ask whether he ever envisaged Stars of the Lid having such a big influence years after defining records such as 1995’s Music for Nitrous Oxide, 2001’s The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid, and 2007’s And Their Refinement of the Decline?

“No, of course not,” he says. “You never know when you’re creating something if it’s going to resonate with other people, so you have no idea.” 

Wiltzie has also spent the last four decades collaborating further afield. The height (while subjective of course), Aix Em Klemm – Wiltzie’s project alongside Labradford’s Robert Donne that saw the pair birth the stand-alone self-titled LP in 2000. The film score world has also seen the Belgium-based artist work with the late Icelandic composer, Jóhann Jóhannsson (The Theory of Everything, Arrival), as well as producing his own scores (Salero, The Yellow Birds, Iris).

Wiltzie is the master the emotive dreamscape. Distinct, rolling mists of sound that melt the heart, and in the eye of the vortex, he’s created compositions that can frame those defining moments in one’s life. Whether it be joy or tragedy, Wiltzie’s compositions form as an emotional crutch in navigating through the turbulence.

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With the sudden passing of McBride last year, many will draw a straight line to Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal’s opening track, the stunning Buried at Westwood Memorial Park, In an Unmarked Grave, to the Left of Walter Matthau. The piece is unrelated, however sonically it’s hard not to think of life’s darkest moments. Wiltzie has built a career by evoking reality through sound, and here he unlocks the gates that lead to another corner of his beautiful sound world.

There’s Tissue of Lies; a meandering pedal-induced soundwave where the reality tunnel of white light grows closer and closer. The sullen, string-led Pelagic Swell and As Above Perhaps So Below, and the poignant washes of sound in Stock Horror; songs that take you deep into peaceful enclaves.

The hymnal echoes of Mexican Helium and We Were Vaporised shore up the backend of Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal. Thought-provoking passages that are ethereal, radiating with warmth, and deep with emotional force. In many ways, they sum up Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal. An album that guides you to new places. Not that it’s a dark record, but like a lot of ambient music, it’s easy to correlate subtle euphoria with mute anguish. Composition tailor-made for the fault-lines, and Wiltzie continues to walk along them.

Our conversation begins by talking about one of the last A Winged Victory for the Sullen shows, which took place at Liverpool’s Utilitarian Church just before the COVID pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns. For those in attendance, it would turn out to be the last glimmer of grandeur for years. “I really enjoyed the show at the church. It had a very warm and inviting feeling,” says Wiltzie. “We went home, and we played in Brussels… literally the next day Belgium just completely shut it down.”

The world has never been the same since. With politics, conflict, financial struggle and technology all enveloping the world in frightening ways, at times the only solace is to escape. And there are few artists that deal in escapism like Adam Wiltzie.

Sun 13: What are your earliest memories of music?

Adam Wiltzie: “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Environment series?”

S13: No.

AW: “At the turn of 1970, there was the Environment series. It was basically to help people relax. And so my parents are in this circle… turn of the decade, New York City where I was born and raised… my mother’s obstetrician was a bit of a hip guy. At the time, they were giving Demerol to women when they had birth. I was almost 10 pounds when I was born, so my mom was on was completely high when she had me. But they were encouraging more and more to do these natural births; to take the pain and to use music to help soothe – not just with the birth process – but also after for the child to relax and help with crying and all this stuff.

“So those Environment records, I don’t think they were necessarily made for the situation. But it was the record I was listening to all the time before I realised I was listening to music. A combination of birdsong mixed with sort of, I would call it a cross between Gamelan and bell sounds, but very slowed down depending on how your vinyl turntable was playing. You could choose the speed.

“We’ll segue that into my father who was a really big Pink Floyd fan. I grew up listening to Dark Side of the Moon and Brian Eno and things like that. It’s hard to say: is everyone influenced by the records that their parents were playing? They’re either influenced or turned off. I wouldn’t say that they were really artistic people. My father worked for Wall Street, and my mother was a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue. But the records that they chose were part of my life. There’s also this part of the early ’70s that I’m familiar with the concept of soft rock. Are you familiar with Bread?

S13: Yeah.

AW: ”They were a really popular band and early ’70s in America. It’s hard to really describe. If you were to put it on, you’d think ‘Oh, my Lord, what the hell was he listening to?’ But it really had a profound effect on me. It feels like the soundtrack to a soft porn series.”

S13: With a lot of that soft rock, it’s the minor chords that get you in. The emotional intensity…

AW: “Switching back into the major from the minor just rips your heart out every time. It was absolutely a huge influence on me.”

S13: You were a tennis player at a younger age, right?

AW: “Yeah, my godfather [Charles Robert McKinley Jr.] won Wimbledon in ’63. He was my father’s best friend. He dated my mom. They were all in university together, small circle of friends, too. I was really into sports when I was a kid. The art stuff came later.”

S13: I read that you suffered a bad injury?

AW: “Well, yeah, I started playing when I was five. I was really going for it and my knee just gave out. I don’t know if you follow sports at all, but there’s a lot of great kids that show promise. There’s the promise of when I was a youngster, and then what it takes to make it as a professional. It was beyond my skin. You need this secret sauce, and your brain must have this killer instinct. That’s the difference between me who had some minor talent that was good… for a novice watching and you’d think, ‘Oh this kid can play tennis’. I still play, but to play on the level… for example, Andre Agassi was around my same age. He was on another level, but not just talent wise, just in his mind. It’s the incredible unknown of any athelete.”

S13: Do you think that translates in any way to music?

AW: “This is a subject that I find a bit nauseating at times, because unfortunately, the art world has become competitive. Maybe it always was. We have competition in film festivals and music, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Art is subjective. Okay, you can have your favourite player, but in the end, you have a league, you have a tournament or however you get there and you have a winner and a loser. That’s why I love sports, It’s the direct antithesis of art. Artists shouldn’t be competitive, but maybe I’m a bit naive.”

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S13: I agree. It’s good to have the separation between sports and art. I follow one to escape the other and vice versa.

AW: “Yeah, there is that. I mean, let’s use Liverpool, for example. That’s one of the most beautiful songs ever. Even Pink Floyd sampled the crowd chanting in Fearless. If you don’t [like that], you don’t have a heart. It gets me every time. So sometimes they can meet in a floaty psychedelic moment like that. You’ll Never Walk Alone is the sample the crowd is chanting, that’s just beautiful but that’s another level of transcending the two things when they come together.

“I was over in December to see Fulham play at Craven Cottage, because one of my best mates is a Nottingham Forest fan. That famous [Paul] McCartney song that they have adopted, The Mull of Kintyre. I’m not even that huge McCartney fan, but hearing that in the away stands, them screaming that, it’s just gorgeous. Fulham is a very neutral ground. It’s a beautiful ground, but they’re not like the Nottingham Forest or Liverpool fans; they’re just ravenous. That’s not to say the Fulham fans don’t love their club, but it’s just not the same atmosphere. Those Nottingham Forest fans are lunatics, screaming that was 10 times as loud as the home fans. It’s beautiful stuff.”

S13: Back in the ’90s with yourself and Brian as Stars of the Lid… Thinking about geographic locations and the kinship you had with Labradford, was Kranky the direct throughline to that relationship, or had you crossed paths prior to that?

AW: “Yeah, absolutely. They brought us both closer for sure. I never had any contact with them, although, they knew I knew the first Labradford record because that was right at the beginning of when Kranky started. That was around the same time the first Stars of the Lid recording was released. We were fans, and then getting to know Joel [Leoschke] from the label and seeing if they were interested.

“During the early touring and in the mid-’90s with Labradford, it was a really beautiful experience. We’re still friends. Mark [Nelson]. Bobby Donne. My mother is in a retirement home in Chicago, and every Christmas I’m there, Mark and I are hanging out. We usually go to a basketball game, or we go to eat, we’re still good mates. It’s a friendship that’s lasted a lifetime outside of music. I really love those guys.”

S13: How long had you been working on Eleven Fuges for Sodium Pentothal?

AW: “Not very long. I just bought a house in the countryside in Belgium three years ago. I moved out here, and I was in a new location, setting up my studio. It was the first chunk of music that came out of me. I knew there was going to be something that is a result of being in this new environment, so there’s not a big conceptual thing behind it. If you’ve worked on music, and you’re in a new studio setting, it always feels good. [It] doesn’t matter if you’re from Pittsburgh, Sydney or wherever, you’re going to be in a new space, and it’s going to be inspiring to a certain degree.

“Who knows how long inspiration lasts, but for me it did. It took the mixing process a little bit longer, because I brought in Robert Hampson from Loop. I wanted to mix with someone new; there wasn’t any problems, it’s just that we spent time. And this is also connected with the type of – and I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again – that working on really, really quiet music for me is more difficult in a sense. This is just my perspective, but moving volumes, changing it… you really hear it when you do the smallest thing, where in a lot of music you don’t notice it as much. We were spending time on it, and it was a really slow process, but I wanted it to be slow. I wanted to take our time and let’s see if we can bring something different out of the mixing process. We had all the sounds there; it was just about placing them.”

S13: It’s interesting, because when you mentioned collaborations, I wouldn’t have pitted yourself and Robert Hampson together, but it does make sense.

AW: “Especially he’s work with Main and music he’s done on his own. I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time. I thought maybe we would collaborate on some music together at some point, and this ended up being a perfect solution. He liked the tunes, and he contributed a lot of really interesting ideas to the project. It was a real pleasure.”

S13: Have you known him for long?

AW: “Yeah, I met him a long time ago, and over the years, he was living in London and he’d come out to shows, so we slowly became friends. He’s honestly one of the most friendly, easygoing, nicest guys you could meet. He’s ended up now in Leeds.”

S13: Speaking of moving, do you think that living in the countryside had an influence on the record?

AW: “Yeah, a little bit. But I knew it was here. I’m in the Flemish speaking area now in the north. Belgians are great, everyone’s really easy going around here. Obviously, the quiet… I’m a little bit older now and I’ve been wanting to move out to the countryside for a while. I love Brussels. It’s a great city, and I enjoyed my time there, but nothing lasts forever.”

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S13: Buried at Westwood Memorial Park… and Tissues of Lies are some of the most emotionally engaged compositions I’ve heard from you since early Stars of the Lid. Were these two pieces written early in the process?

AW: “No, it was just kind of all at the same time. It was just a bunch of music I was working on. The first one… maybe there was some bits that had sprung up when I was towards the end of Brussels, an idea, some of the textures. So I knew I was going to go out there and have this quiet space, and I was going to really be able to get into it. That one took me the longest because it’s also a long piece.

“I don’t know what people can hear, but there’s a lot of layers, it’s really a headphone record for me, because I’ve really mixed a lot of it – at least the pre-mixes were all done in headphones, so it feels like no matter where you are, you can join me in this moment in the countryside, and that we’re all there together.”

S13: …And the strings were done in Hungary?

AW: “Yeah, all the strings were done in Budapest. That was the end. I did the demos and all the guitar and texture stuff in the studio, and then we recorded the strings later. There was some demo string stuff I did with a couple of players, but they were recorded in Budapest.”

S13: The artwork is quite different to a lot of the other works that you’ve been involved with.

AW: “Yeah, I didn’t really overthink it. I found this this artist in Poland, [and] I just really liked his work. It’s actually all hand drawn. There’s no Photoshop involved. He is a welder that lives in this really small mining town in Poland, and he draws for fun. I contacted him, and it turned out he was a fan. I had no idea! I licensed the drawing for the cover.”

S13: From your work with Stars of the Lid, Aix Em Klemm, The Dead Texan and even A Winged Victory for the Sullen, I feel that this record ties it all together. I’m not sure whether that’s something you’ve thought about?

AW: “They’re all connected. Technically The Dead Texan was a solo record. Christina [Vantzou] just worked on the videos. Everything I do kind of sounds the same, but I believe there is an element of goo that connects all of it together. Yes, the sound sounds maybe a little bit cleaner at times, I don’t know what the adjective is, but this one is definitely closer to the older Stars of the Lid. There’s no piano; I decided to stay away from the sad piano vortex for this recording. It was fun to just make a simple drone record. It just felt natural.

“Other people in interviews, they’ve said that when they’re going into a record that it is so deeply conceptual… I don’t know if I believe all that. I’ve said this before, but when you’re getting into conceptual ideas, it can be a little bit complicated for the person that’s ingesting it. It probably means a lot to someone. I’m not saying it means a lot to me – it’s just something I did at the time – but some artists, when they’re creating something, it means a lot to them. But with the listener, I think a lot of it’s missed. Do they like it, or they don’t? I feel [like] that’s the thing. Are they engaged, or are they not? Conceptual stuff, I think it’s a little bit like swimming through some kind of muck for the listener, because they didn’t create it.”

S13: With a lot of ambient music, it just comes down to interpretation, I guess. Going back to major and minor chords and depending on where somebody is at the time of their life, if they’re suffering trauma or they’re happy, that can obviously have an influence on how that record shapes them.

AW: “Absolutely. Like anyone, where you listen to Eno or Harold Budd, some of the greats out there when you really just need to turn off your brain. There are these pieces of music that you connect with more than others. It can be a bit random, but they’re important, because they do something to your brain. All music does, whether it’s a Stevie Wonder record… Stevie could be good late-night music to me. Let’s just put it all in the same category, it’s just this thing that does something to your ears, that connects to your heart in your brain that helps do something for you that it’s important. It’s therapeutic. It’s part of your life that you couldn’t live without it. It does something good for you because it’s hard out there to navigate in the world. It’s crushing. Don’t act like it’s not.”

S13: Thinking about your song titles over the years, and you’ve never been afraid to hide your sense of humor, which I think is a good juxtaposition in experimental-based music, because there is a pretty big level of seriousness.

AW: “Yeah, but I mean, everyone could be a bit too serious. I’m serious about the work, but I’m not serious about myself. I have a hard time taking myself seriously.”

S13: Does politics influence your work?

AW: “Definitely not. (laughs) The opposite. They make me not want to make music.”

S13: Given your current location, you’ve probably had a closer eye on the Brexit implications over the last five or six years than most people in America…

AW: “England’s a huge part of my life. My publishers, the labels that I work with Ninja Tune and Erased Tapes are there. I’m always going there. I was there a few weeks ago… these guys were redoing my pedal board. It’s always going to be part of my life. It’s just so pointless and so sad, and I guess at some point… I’m not trying to say you need to get back with the European Union, but the country is falling apart. I was playing the Barbican last year: their funding was cut, the Barbican! Which is the crown jewel of council funded art venues, and they don’t even have money to repair their speakers anymore. You cannot tell me this is not connected, or that it’s a good idea. It’s absurd.

S13: Just from a touring perspective, so many bands from outside of the U.K. aren’t touring here anymore, because it isn’t economically viable for them.

AW: “There’s a lot less touring bands that you used to be able to see, or small bands that aren’t going to be able to do it anymore, at least for the time being until things get sorted out. We played two nights at the Barbican last time we were there. It was great, but it was taxing to say the least.”

S13: Do you have a set routine around writing. For example, do you write every day?

AW: “I’m currently converting my garage to a studio, so I’m not writing everyday right now. But as I’ve gotten older, I seem to have a little bit more of a scientific approach. Not every day, but four or five days a week, similar to office hours, doing a short three to four hours day, whether it’s composing or playing something. But it’s just taking a peddle and really dissecting it and recording something so that I am chipping away all the time, [and] I don’t lose sight of anything. It’s like having your morning coffee… you go into the studio and do a little work, and it doesn’t have to be a long day. Something I really love that opens my mind, and I find it very therapeutic.”

S13: Has that always been your approach?

AW: “Definitely not. [It’s] something that came much later as I’ve gotten older.”

S13: The way that people consume music these days, do you think the way that the change from physical product to streaming would arrive so drastically?

AW: “I don’t know if it was really that drastic and quick. I remember Napster was around even before I moved to Belgium. It’s not how I grew up listening to music. I had a shortwave radio, it was John Peel. And also, reading music magazines. I believe it’s become easier, in a sense, because of the algorithms. I don’t really have a problem with it because change is inevitable. You have AI now, that’s obviously going to change it again.

“But you could also counter that argument [by saying], ‘Okay, well that’s hopefully going to have a more of an impact on how important live music will be’. Because AI is never going to be able replicate that, so hopefully it’s going to bring more people out of their abodes & into venues because they’re going to want to see the real people do this. I’m not a dreamer, but that seems inevitable that if we’re going to see anything from the destruction of AI on the art world, at least we’ll have live music. You can have a robot on stage with you, but you’re still going to have people.”

Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentothal is out now via kranky. Purchase from Bandcamp.