Wally De Backer, or Gotye as you, me, and the rest of the world knows him, is difficult for many to define. Does he sound like an ’80s pop artist, perhaps? An indie rocker? A more melodic Philip Glass?
Who or whatever you think Gotye sounds like, his oddly catchy “Somebody That I Used to Know” was an inescapable force this summer, spawning so many parodies and tributes and covers that instead of getting litigious, Wally himself mashed them into a spectacular sound collage remix:
But De Backer wouldn’t have it any other way, really. He loves brand-new takes on songs and sounds, and that’s a major focus in his music. Whether he’s pulling an twinkly hook from an obscure, self-released vinyl LP from a thrift store milk crate, or using a musical fence in the outback as a rhythm section, Gotye is all about the collaboration of sounds. When TVD chatted with him just before the West Coast leg of his world tour, the affable Aussie’s thoughts on music came tumbling out. Drawn to the new, obsessed with the obscure, Wally had lots to say to us about his songwriting processes, going “thrifting” for old records, and his “overnight” success.
You turned your Macbook into a massive digital Mellotron by virtualizing lots of acoustic instruments and sounds. When did you decide that that would be an integral part of the way you were going to record Making Mirrors?
[Laughs] Mellotron! It just sort of happened. I guess every record of this Gotye project has had a fairly heavy element of sampling in the way the songs are written and how the sounds are put together. I’ve just had to self-impose a more rigorous method every time in a way, or at least a method that forces me to work harder and to make sure that more there’s more of my original work. When I was making my first record, Boardface, I guess I was piggybacking more on whole grabs and loops of records.
It’s not that easy to do to weave twenty different samples from different records and periods together and queue them up and make them make sense in a sort of new sonic space. I guess with my current [record] I’ve tried harder to use more micro-elements, but I was still working in a setup that involved me having one hand on a mouse, sitting at a desktop computer in a small room, shifting small colored boxes around on a screen and having them have musical results. Whereas here I wanted there to be a more tactile relationship with some of my performing interests and abilities – like being a drummer and percussionist and keyboard player – to be able to have an impact on how I would make melodies and riffs.
So virtualizing acoustic instruments – or even if I was just taking a break from a record, chopping it up into bits and yeah, putting it on a kind of triggerpad a little bit like a sample Mellotron – meant that I could approach it in ways that you wouldn’t expect when you have the slower process of going, “Oh, here are these bits, what happens if I shift this box around here and stretch it there and do that?” as opposed to just having it at your fingertips or near a drumpad, you can kind of just hit it and see what happens. So, that was quite integral to the way a lot of the hooks and melodies and chords were arrived at for this album.
Do you think that being a multi-instrumentalist or being open to multi-sampling opens you up more to different genres of music?
It’s a bit of both. I’m definitely inclined to make varied-sounding records. I like plenty of musicians who have a – I wouldn’t say “limited,” but a defined and refined aesthetic in terms of what they do sonically or songwriting-wise, and I love that about them. Maybe it’s partly just being someone who’s very curious and eclectic in my listening tastes. Yes, when you’re a sampler, you’re exposed to all sorts of potential sources. I’ve unashamedly become a genre-jumper/bender [Laughs], but I do love some bands who specifically go out there and do that. I’m a huge fan of Ween and bands like that. I’m a huge fan of Nick Zammuto’s work in his new eponymous band. It’s great to be listening to another shameless another genre ignoramus in a way [Laughs] or genre-jumper! So, some musicians could be more adventurous when it comes to trying different things. They could fail, but I think that when you fail trying a lot of different things, it might mean you strike upon more interesting possibilities.
That’s not something you see a whole lot of in mainstream music – being unafraid to experiment.
I just think there’s all different ways of working. Perhaps in the past some artists who were quite chameleon-like, up until maybe the ‘80s… it tended to be a more album-by-album thing. The people moved with the times and some people did that, perhaps, more successfully than others – like managed to take on a new production aesthetic that was a response to how the music world was changing around them, but doing it in a way that felt true and convincing, and other people felt that they were piggybacking onto whatever was big – “Oh, so glam is big now? Now we’ll sound glam.”
With this kind of fracturing and, especially in the last decade, the huge access to the history of recorded music and the technology that could allow you to consume it rapidly, and store it, and manipulate it, there is an inevitable compulsion for songwriters and musicians to respond to that and to be very varied and incorporate this patchwork quilt of influences and materials. I think on some level some contemporary artists very consciously respond against that.
Interestingly, to me, as a result of that great access to some more obscure parts of music history, they can sometimes find these moments – these pockets of music history – that aren’t very widely known and mine that specific period – they find their “golden age” of production or music and use that as a basis for their aesthetic. I think for some people it might be more calculated. For others it’s purely a passion and their natural response to the kind of music that resonates the most, or the kind of mode of expression that allows them the most truthful expression of what it is they want to say.
I was fascinated reading this book called Retromania by Simon Reynolds and he discusses all those things with incredible insight and ingenuity. He’s kind of lamenting on the one hand… he kind of suggests that there hasn’t been any genuinely new music movements that have excited him [in years]. He wonders whether that’s because he’s a bit older and he’s come through those periods when he felt so excited — not necessarily by one specific artist — but by a whole new music scene or change or shift that feels like it happens broadly.
He feels like and maybe that’s not even possible anymore. Even though you might have individual artists with voices or personalities or auras that are so undeniable in what they do, he feels like… is there genuinely new music being made? Is it that people not trying hard enough or is it that actually there’s a ton of new interesting music being made, but as an older guy he’s not feeling it much because he feels like he [knows all] the reference points and the way they’re being combined and recombined?
Do you ever feel that way yourself — like there’s nothing genuinely new? Or is doing what you’re doing, which is combing lots of different things in unique ways, the way to make “new” music now?
I’m drawn to make music that is genuinely new. I guess it feels like I’ve never heard it before, and yet I know part of my process counters that completely because [I’m] using existing materials on some level… I guess I hope that some of the ways I manipulate things mean that you hear them in a new way — or that just by being re-contextualized, there’s a twist on them that brings about a fundamentally different way they resonate [compared to hearing] that quite similar sound on an ‘80s record or a ‘60s record. How successful I am in using that process of taking the old and re-contextualizing it and combining it so that it becomes new, I don’t know.
Especially with [Making Mirrors]… it’s maybe not as experimental as some of the places I was hinting at on the last album [Like Drawing Blood]. I feel a bit compelled, especially in response to the huge success of “Somebody I Used to Know,” that maybe I really need to challenge myself and try to make… whether it’s a record or it’s a project that exists in some medium, I don’t know. But I want to do something that feels like it stretches me more and really challenge myself.
I know I can write pop songs and I can even write strange, left-of-center pop songs that are reasonably unique at times and quite different. But is that enough? It has to sound more “new.” Yeah, I don’t quite know whether I’ll fail. That’s a huge challenge; there really aren’t many artists that are able to do that! [Laughs]
You’re going to be touring extensively for the next few months. Is that inspiring to you as far as writing music, or do you need your dedicated time and space to get creative?
I’ve been very focused on developing the live show and trying to make it the best thing that I can present, so that this world tour is really enjoyable for me and everybody in the band and the crew, and we’re playing a show that we think is musically really great and dynamic and the visuals are fantastic and the production is really together. I’m looking forward to enjoying it and giving myself over to that routine and making the most of it. And so I’ve kind of put off the idea of making new things a little bit until early next year.
But I’m gonna take my VHS player with me. I haven’t really spent time really thrifting in the US, so that could be really fun to get out in every town I go to and find thrift shops – especially because I think VHS is now at that moment where there’s so much discarded because everything has gone so digital that even DVDs are being left behind. There must be incredible treasure troves of interesting experimentalia on VHS residing out there somewhere.
I think you’re right. VHS right now seems to be where vinyl was about twelve years ago, when people were starting to lose interest in CDs and were selling them off, and vinyl was in a lull where few were listening to it.
I feel like that might be the central tension in what I do. I guess I could happily go on just trying to find new ways to manipulate sound and collect existing source materials – whether it’s on discarded cultural materials like VHS or looking in the world to find more weird and wonderful instruments – like the Winton Musical Fence – or other similar things that I can virtualize.
That fence is amazing!
It is cool, but I do sometimes wonder does that inherently mean that I won’t be finding genuinely new sounds? It’s hard for me to know. It does feel a bit like there’s a burden of knowledge. There’s so much amazing experimental playing with sound and music happening out there, knowing that I’m someone who’s drawn to make pop music, but make it be as fresh and strange and different-sounding as possible. How do I balance those potentially competing tendencies? I don’t know. Maybe sampling any kind of existing source is inherently not going to result in continually new sounds. Is it just in the way they’re presented that you can actually express something very new?
You could argue that some of the things you’ve sampled in your music have been heard by a miniscule fraction of people in the world.
That’s true, and I’m very much more drawn to sampling that type of stuff rather than well-known records.
Given that you love such obscure stuff, vinyl at thrift stores must be a treasure trove for you. Is there something more to searching out those stores as opposed to just digitally accessing the vast amount of music that’s available?
Yeah, well it’s more tactile, I guess. And it has maybe somehow more mystery because you have to kind of imagine the story of the artifact, of the record itself. [For example], how did this Polish banjo record arrive at the thrift shop at the beach in southeastern Victoria, Australia? [Laughs] It’s a different aura than if you just went to a blog and downloaded someone’s high-quality rip of a reasonably obscure, but in that community well-known – exotica record from the ‘50s; you maybe have a conversation with a guy who’s a massive enthusiast, and that’s kind of cool too, because it gives you a personal context of another enthusiast for that period of music production. But yeah, dollar bins have been my main shed or something! [Laughs] “I’m going to my shed! Aw, look what I found in my shed today!” [Laughs] That’s the music fan in me – and not just music! It’s more so music than other things.
As much as I like to look at all the t-shirts and strange ceramic pottery and bits and pieces I might just take home and be fascinated by; the kind of detritus of culture that gets left behind in thrift shops – it’s usually a record that I find most fascination with, I don’t know, just that potential. It’s something about curiosity with the as-far-from-mundane potential that could be residing in some super-obscure record that no one’s ever heard of, especially if it’s some kind of private pressing some guy did and you’ve uncovered this huge potential story that no one’s ever really heard before. I find that really fascinating.
As excited as you get talking about searching through record bins and the curiosity you have about music in general… that really seems to transfer to your own music. You obviously put a lot of thought into each song.
I’m really excited you think so. That is the way I try to approach making records. I know some producers, especially with pop material, there’s sometimes a more functional approach as long as you’ve got the vocals sitting in a certain spot and holding people’s attention, it almost doesn’t matter what synthesizer’s providing those three layers of chorded backing, because as long as it’s fulfilling that functionality and filling that frequency space and not getting in the way of a little guitar hook or kick drum, then it fulfills its role. That’s very different from the very peculiar decisions I will think about… like, Oh, yeah! That kind of fits in that space and does that, I’ve never quite heard that; that gives me a particular feeling or something.
I do feel heartened when people will let me know about some of those details because I feel like sometimes the more critical responses to what I’ve done on record, they don’t hear the details. It’s funny – I have taken notice that what I feel like are self-styled arbiters of cool – often these blogs are holding up music that I think is fantastic, like it’s more obscure and generally a bit indie, and it’s the kind of music I hear and think is generally amazing, and wouldn’t it be great if it had a wider audience? It deserves a wider audience.
And then some of those blogs then just completely disparage my records and say they’re complete bullshit, and they’ve got no focus, and say, “Look at this song – it’s a bad Motown rip-off of Martha Reeves!” It just feels like when I read that stuff, often what they’re seemingly choosing to ignore or just haven’t noticed is that this weird kind of weird dubtrack samples from a record from Hong Kong on it, and some kind of bells samples from here… that’s kind of either ignored or is even more denigrated by them, like “This is so weird, I’m not even gonna bother talking about it.” I don’t take it personally, but I kind of say [makes sad sound] and think, “That’s the stuff that I actually think is the most interesting in what I do!” [Laughs] It gets even more skewed when people start focusing on the more pop aspects of the record.
There seems to be a lot of envy out there, since it appears that you’re sort of an overnight success.
It’ll come across like that to some people regardless, and there’s a part of me that gets self-conscious about it and wants to stand up for myself and go, “No, you know! I’ve done it right!” [Laughs] “I’ve been in lots of bands! I’ve been in a van for months on end, years on end!” [Laughs] It’s not really worth it to spend too much time on that. Just keep doing what you do with integrity and exploring what you think is interesting… I’m very lucky that I’ve had this real breakthrough commercial success, so yeah! I’m not going to get too excited about the potentially more perplexing aspects of it. [Laughs]
One last typical music journalist question: Would you rather record the perfect album or play the perfect show?
[Laughs] It would be the album. And I think that’s because I want to be… I’m a huge music fan, and I love the transcendent, kind of escapist potential when music really transports you. I guess I want my music to even do that for me, and that’s a big call for any artist to make. You can never lose that sense of self-consciousness or how close and intimately involved you are with the process and your experience of making something that you can never let it really wash over you the way it will potentially hit someone else.
But I still want that, you know? And that’s why people say, “You must be a perfectionist if you’re doing seven mixes of the song. What is it that you possibly want from that mix that you didn’t get the first time?” I guess I want to put that song on that I’ve heard a thousand times before already in different formats and in bits and pieces and yet still be able to sit there, several months later and hear it for the 1,001st time and go, “Wow! That was an experience!” That took me to that place the way that someone else’s music – who I don’t know personally and don’t know the process of – moves me intellectually or emotionally. I guess in that regard that’s why I’ll always be drawn to make a record.I’m maybe be blessed and cursed with the ability to make these documents that kind of stand outside of time –that’s an incredible thing, I think.
I do think sometimes about if I was born decades earlier, with technology at an earlier stage, I might not have had the ability to have such control over crafting these moments that exist outside of time and have all this resonance in this life for you. I’m very grateful to be able to engage with [music] on any level. So yeah, the album! And if at any stage I was tempted to say the live thing, it would probably be, “Yeah, but I want to document it so that I can hear it back and enjoy it.” [Laughs]
GOTYE TOUR DATES:
08/24/12 – Chicago, IL – Charter One Pavilion at Northerly Island
08/25/12 – Milwaukee, WI – Riverside Theatre
08/26/12 – Minneapolis, MN – Target Center
08/28/12 – Edmonton, AB – Shaw Conference Centre
08/29/12 – Calgary, AB – Stampede Corral
08/31/12 – Burnaby, BC – Deer Lake Park
09/01/12 – Seattle, WA – Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle Center
09/02/12 – Troutdale, OR – McMenamins Edgefield Amphitheater
09/04/12 – Los Angeles, CA – Greek Theatre
09/06/12 – Berkeley, CA – Greek Theatre
09/07/12 – Las Vegas, NV – House Of Blues
09/08/12 – Santa Barbara, CA – Santa Barbara Bowl
09/09/12 – Berkeley, CA – Greek Theatre
09/14/12 – Kansas City, MO – Richard L. Berkley Riverfront Park
09/16/12 – Cleveland, OH – Jacobs Pavilion At Nautica
09/17/12 – Columbus, OH – Lifestyle Communities Pavilion
09/18/12 – Detroit, MI – Fox Theatre
09/20/12 – Toronto, ON – Molson Canadian Amphitheatre
09/21/12 – Montreal, QC – Jacques Cartier Pier
09/22/12 – Boston, MA – Bank Of America Pavilion
09/25/12 – New York, NY – Radio City Music Hall
09/26/12 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena
09/27/12 – Brooklyn, NY – Williamsburg Park
09/29/12 – Camden, NJ – Susquehanna Bank Center
09/30/12 – Columbia, MD – Merriweather Post Pavilion
10/01/12 – Raleigh, NC – Raleigh Amphitheater
10/03/12 – Nashville, TN – Ryman Auditorium
10/04/12 – Tuscaloosa, AL – Tuscaloosa Amphitheater
10/05/12 – Atlanta, GA – Chastain Park Amphitheatre
10/07/12 – Miami, FL – Klipsch Amphitheater At Bayfront Park
10/08/12 – Lake Buena Vista, FL – House Of Blues
10/10/12 – New Orleans, LA – Lakefront Arena
10/11/12 – The Woodlands, TX – The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
10/12/12 – Grand Prairie, TX – Verizon Theatre At Grand Prairie
