A Conversation with Adam Arcuragi – HuffPost 2.1.12
Mike Ragogna: Your music has been described as “Death Gospel.” What do you think that means and is it the right description?
Adam Arcuragi: I think it is an appropriate label. Death Gospel is anything that sees the inevitability of death as a reason to celebrate all the special wonder that is being alive and sentient. That’s the hope with the songs, and how we would like for them to come across, that thing in all life that is fine and good. It is exciting that we can reflect upon it as intelligent life and do something to make that wonder manifest. The Gospel aspect just is a nod to the groove that got imprinted on me as a child. That 2/2 is fun to work in and makes it easy to work up into that good place.
MR: Who would you consider your contemporaries?
AA: In my opinion, the great thing about music is that we’re all joining in the tradition that is older than we can remember. We are all singing the same song, just in different ways. But if you’re asking who’s bringing that soul, who’s making the longing call to arms, right now? Neko Case is a visage of the divine Moon. There is so much ecstatic fervor in her music. The Flaming Lips sing of that same Death Gospel joy-in-being. Even as far back as their albumHit to Death in the Future Head, they’ve been celebrating the great human power. Jeff Mangum’s imagery is all very right on as well.
MR: What’s your own musical evolution?
AA: The process is always growing and continually provides a challenge. Without a static point anywhere, there is always a change to carry you away – the chain is the fun part of the language aspect. But I like to think of it as continuing the endeavor right where the previous generations have left off. My aim is to continue in the traditions of Bill Withers, Brother Claude Ely, Robert Graves, Darlene Love and Sergei Rachmaninoff. Sergei and Ms. Love are actually references I used in getting the sounds on this album. I told Duane Lundy, our producer, that I wanted my guitar to sound like Darlene Love’s voice and my voice to sound like Rachmaninoff’s piano.
MR: You’ve worked with The Lupine Chorale Society, can you go into that?
AA: The name of the band comes from the title of the previous record. I’ve always preferred the idea of the piece of music sharing the top billing along side the group performing it. So the whole title was my attempt to make it about the album being performed by an ensemble rather than it being “the band’s next record.” The name just stuck and is now the banner under which the revolving cast fights.
MR: You grew up listening to your grandparents’ old record collections. Which recordings most inspired you?
AA: There was something haunting about sound of the drums on old Glenn Miller 78rpm records. That was one of the first things on record that caught my attention. But there are so many records that I look to, in terms of their power in being close-to-perfect expression. If I had to pick a few that had the most palpable effect I’d have to say they’d have to beBlacklisted by Neko Case, +Justments by Bill Withers, The Goodbye Babylon Series, a field recording compilation out on the Dust To Digital label, Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff, the four known recordings of the maestro himself playing his own pieces, and New Morning by Bob Dylan.
MR: What’s your process for creating music?
AA: Songs generally come out in two ways. The first comes as an idea of a chorus, melody or turn of phrase that I can work with and build from. The other is for a song to pop, fully formed, into my head and need light nips and tucks here and there. In terms of recording, I lean more toward the idea of taking an aural snapshot rather than painting layer by layer. It’s that sound of frequencies mixing in the air that really grabs me. It was so much fun setting up the studio to facilitate the live playing of the ensemble. We took a whole day just to move around and see which instrument sounded best where. But once the microphones were placed and the room was set, we were able to focus a lot of energy on getting the performances to breathe and slip into that groove.
MR: Your new album is titled Like A Fire That Consumes All Before It… Before it what?
AA: The phrase is an ancient phrase that appears as being used to describe something that was “all consuming.” The ellipses come from the Cy Twombly painting; that is how it is written on the canvas. But I guess Cy Twombly was perhaps making a play on the idea that the fire is both all consuming and perhaps in a state of conditional existence. But if that was not his intention, then I’ll keep that with mine. Can you call “dibs” on a clever turn of phrase?
MR: What’s the song on the new project that is the most personal to you and why?
AA: I’m supremely proud of the record as a whole. I feel like we got a lot of the old school 2/2 passion and a whole mess of slow-rolling, deep groove that comes from playing live. Lyrically though, I have a soft spot for “Oh I See,” “You’d Think This Was Easy” and “Port Song.” “Oh I See” is one of those songs that just flowed right through me, and “You’d Think This Was Easy” shaped the record early on. It was the molar unit we used to calibrate everything else by, and was also one of the first songs that came together in one go, on the first take.
MR: What Advice do you have for new artists?
AA: Listen. One of the finest skills a person can have is to be able to really listen. Even though the auditory impulses coming into your skull are involuntarily culled and sent to the brain, real listening is an inactive thing that you have to work hard on to become skilled in. An old jazz player told me once, “If you can’t hear what I’m playing, then you are playing too loud.” Draw people in by listening and being aware. The more people that are engaged, the greater the thing is that is greater than the sum of its parts.