environment, do you think, to listen to ‘Here’ in? Oh boy, I guess like a living room with some food and maybe some wine, a nice stereo system, maybe even listening on vinyl or something would be the nice thing to me. Maybe some rugs or a carpet or maybe even a fire, y’know, even though it’s the summer. Tis album to me is sort of a meditative sort of more subtle and in some ways it’s a very powerful album for me, I think, in its reflective sort of confidence, to be able to speak from a place with very powerful words I feel. In some ways it’s not really a party album, it’s more of a get together album. It’s the first half of one part of a double album and the second half will be coming out later on this year, in November, most likely. And that half is quite a bit more rambunctious, so for that album I would say, I don’t know, get together with your motorcycle gang blasting it out your stereo - it might be a different get together but this album is more of a get together than a party.
It’s interesting you mention listening to it on vinyl, ‘cause in an increasingly crisp and digital recording age you buck the trend by allowing real life, little smatterings of real life into your recordings, which has been really refreshing for me. Do you feel like you are an analogue guy in a digital world? In a sense, I feel a little bit of disgust at the aim of progress, especially aural progress; I think it’s a bit misguided and I think even visual progress is a bit misguided. I was watching Star Wars the other day, 1 and 2, and I was showing it to my girlfriend and it was so terrible. In Star Wars, because it’s the new edition, there’s these new DVD CGI computer-generated animals in the background and shit and that shit looks so fucking terrible with the real objects that were actually there as models. I think with listening and with audio, a similar thing is going on where things are getting produced nicer and better and cleaner, all in quotations, but the problem is we are losing some of the most important qualities of music that music ever invented, which is primarily dynamics and the ability to
When people are like, ‘are you gonna come back and play for us again?’ and my answer is usually, ‘well if the earth is still doing its thing’.
hear something soft and thenloud and all of that. I think in our… almost retaliation in the other way, it’s almost to prove a point. You’re right, I will allow people talking to be in the back of the track or off time tamborines and the sound of the room to be there because in some ways it’s just to remind ourselves and everyone else listening that this is really happening.
You once said “I became self- destructive, but that attitude isn’t sustainable, so I found my way back to brightness and more constructive ways to live, both reactions to the same thing: death.” Death is not something I personally ever quite believe, or can get my head round, but I wondered how you felt living in this supposedly apocalyptic age, according to the Mayan calendar? Hahaha, well I think in some ways it’s probably quite wise not to believe in death, but there is the disappearance and the transforming of things before our eyes in the physical world: the death
of this conversation we’re having, the death of the day, the birth of the night, all of these things. I used to cry at every sunset because I was that emotionally disturbed by the death of things. It’s a tough call, but what I’ve experienced and what I would prefer is that we live on. What I’ve experienced, particularly through one friend dying and then communicating with me – because communication verifies in certain ways – I do believe the spirit lives on, and obviously the atoms live on, and the energy. As far as living in an apocalyptic age, I do take that into account when people are like, ‘are you gonna come back and play for us again?’ and my answer is usually, ‘well if the earth is still doing its thing…’ I think the most important thing is to try and seize the day, as they say, and try and remember that it really could be your last day on earth, and you should live your life to its fullest. It’s about doing what you can, and we can do so much.
Emma Garwood
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros perform as part of the Latitude Festival line-up from 12th – 15th July. For tickets, go to
www.latitudefestival.co.uk. Read the full version of this interview on
Outlineonline.co.uk
14 /June 2012/
outlineonline.co.uk
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