ANDREW TUTTLE

Hi Andrew and thanks for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology. Firstly congratulations on your amazing new record Alexandra. An album can be a lifetime worth of experiences concentrated and refined into a body of work that encompases many years and phases in life. Other times it is a snap shot, a brief period in time crystallized into a record covering a specific epoch. Was it a case of either / or for Alexandra?

Alexandra is a bit of both, in a roundabout way! Alexandra is directly inspired by the suburb of Alexandra Hills (in Redlands, approximately 45 minutes from Brisbane); where I grew up and where my parents still live. In late 2017, I was housesitting for a week with the intention of finishing off a new album. A catastrophic data loss (resulting in a 45 minute audio/visual piece being lost forever) made me want to get out of the house and to not stare at a screen for a while. This gave me some time to rediscover – and to also discover anew - both Alexandra Hills and Redlands in a way that I hadn’t done before. I’d always mentally thought of the area primarily as suburbia, but a few days of aimless driving opened up bush walks, nature reserves, creeks and native wildlife nestled in and around quarter acre blocks. I found it fascinating to have this nostalgia for the present, an almost HD sepia tone where I was finding out about what I was surrounded by for so many years.

The soundscapes you create in your work evokes many feelings and thoughts as one listens to the album and throughout the creative process, did you believe that you would be opening a direct conduit between yourself and the listener whereby what you are sharing through your experiences, becomes a shared experience that is imparted onto the listener or quite simply each track is its own work of art and the listener can make of it what they will?

Where possible, I’d love for people to listen to Alexandra in full, as the track listing was developed with care and after a great many revisions. There’s some music recorded around the same time that whilst I loved, it didn’t quite fit with the overall sequencing. With that said, I absolutely don’t want to be prescriptive about how people listen to music. The moment that the album went to press was a really freeing moment, as I no longer have control about how it is heard and presented. I made this album about a particular part of the world, but with instrumental music I’d absolutely love for people to transplant the music into their own lives as I see fit.

In what ways did your native Brisbane influence what we hear on the record?

This album was really specific, not even to Brisbane but to Redlands and more specifically to Alexandra Hills. I’ve made music that’s veered between the mechanical and the organic for some time now, but having the time, space and reason to discover a patch of suburbia really influenced me. I drove down streets I’d been on hundreds of times, but also discovered the most beautiful nature trails. I walked through parks and creeks with abundant native fauna and flora that backed right onto houses. I sat down at the local shopping centre food court to properly listen to the primary and secondary sounds there; and then mentally compared them to the inexact quiet of parklands.

Being your fourth studio album, in what ways did you want to push the sonic boundaries and for that matter, yourself?

I’d thought a lot about Alexandra before I’d written it, let alone recorded it. This was consciously different than some of my other records, which either came together gradually over time or were based around external travel. In the first instance this meant that I’d written most of the album, demoed most songs and for the first time tracked all of my instruments at an offsite studio with an engineer. The few days I spent at The Plutonium with engineer Aidan Hogg were an absolute delight. Given that I knew what I was playing on guitar and banjo, this freed us up to spend more time with mic placements and re-amping sounds. For previous albums I put the guitar/banjo straight into the soundcard and EQd after that, which works fine but I wanted to do something different. Having 4 microphones around my instruments resulted in being able to get different ‘blends’ for different tracks – plus also helped me to not tap my foot, breathe heavily or mutter during takes! Having completed songs (where previously tracks would regularly come together out of carefully edited improvisations) also allowed me to work more with other musicians on this album. Most of the sessions with Chuck Johnson (pedal steel guitar) Tony Dupe (cello, piano, pump organ), Sarah Spencer (piano), Joe Saxby (saxophone), Joel Saunders (trumpet) and Gwenifer Raymond (microtonal electric guitar, fiddle) were remote; but all resulted in fantastic contributions from these great musicians and people. Time and space were also important motivators for me on this album. I’ve been conscious that I haven’t had enough space in my music in the past and really wanted to write and edit so that this was forefront. Trying to have the discipline to sit in locations and just listen, to make demos and to bring structured songs to studio sessions; all of this made me reconsider how I make albums.

What were some of the challenges in putting this LP together and conversely what were some of the greatest surprises you experienced through the writing / recording process for Alexandra?

Fortunately, this album was a joy to put together! Zane Trow and Redland City Council were of massive assistance in the early stages of the project, providing me with commissioning funding to create the album. This gave me time, space and resources to carefully consider what I was doing. The actual album creation came together quickly too. Having two separate recording sessions (in January and March 2019) allowed me to record, edit, process, overdub and pre-mix; in repeat. This allowed me to radically alter some tracks (some of the more abstract tracks were pulled from songs which didn’t make the album) and to mess around with new ideas. The collaborative process with my friends was incredibly quick and easy too. I was incredibly fortunate to work with American composer Chuck Johnson in the mixing process. I’ve been a fan of Chuck’s music for years, fortuitously he was in Australia around the time of my first recording dates so we had a chance to hang out in person, see some koalas, make some music. Chuck’s done an amazing job on the mix and I’m so pleased to have him on board. Lawrence English did a wonderful master of the album, and between that, releasing the album and being a mentor for so many years I’m really lucky to have a friend and advocate such as him. As a contrast, for my self-titled album from 2018; I’d initially recorded it in two weeks in May 2016; but had fundamental concerns with what I was making was worth sharing in public. I’m really proud of that album, but it took three different masters, including 17 different songs, to get there.

Can you share with us your thoughts and design process for the album artwork as it is a fusion of colour blocks and a benign urban shot of any town Australia?

The album art was designed by Traianos Pakioufakis, who does most of Someone Good and Room40’s label art. Traianos has done artwork for most of my albums, and I love what he does so much. I’m not very descriptive at visual art, so aside from sending through some images and some loose ideas, the whole process is Traianos and all credit goes to him! I love the colours on Alexandra – and having the shopping centre where I grew up on an album cover is a cheeky delight too.

Is there a unique approach that you take in performing live when trying to replicate in a venue setting the wonderful soundscape and atmospheric compositions you have laid down on tape and ensuring a congruent experience?

I’ve been adapting my live sets over the years to try and create something that is engaging for the audience, but that remains interesting for me. I perform live with banjo, acoustic guitars, and various signal processing/MIDI controllers that run off the Audiomulch software program. The performance is very much live, I use the acoustic instruments to create audio beds to then perform variations of works from my albums. For quite some time I’ve been performing without any breaks in the set, which makes sense for what I create. It also provides a better listening environment for the audience. Whilst I never used to use pre-recorded loops, I’ve learned to let that hang up go and to have a few interstitial loops, field recordings and small audio passages to use as transition pieces during the set. These are used to slightly speed up and augment my existing live methods and to also act as a fail safe if ever required. In the past few years I’ve been incorporating video into my performances wherever possible, as this gives people an extra understanding of where my head was/is at with writing, recording, improvising and performing this music. As an added bonus, it provides something to focus on for audiences during transitional sections, instrument tuning changes and moments where I’m concentrating particularly intently. The music I make is reasonably insular and intricate, one of the main lessons that I’ve learned over the years is that if a show isn’t going to be conducive to my music, it’s probably best to wait on it.

Having performed with so many amazing artists over the years, has there been any words of wisdom spoken to you that really resonated with you and in-turn altered the way you approach your craft?

I’ve definitely been given so much wonderful, positive, frank and forthright advice over the years – but honestly I think some of the biggest moments that resonate with me are those which I encounter on record and onstage. There’s something that is so joyous, so challenging and so inspirational about some sets and some albums; that it inspires me to better things. Given that there’s so many amazing albums, old and new, to discover, and so many live shows to hopefully come in the future; that I’ll keep being blown away and want to pick up my game.

Lastly, on a philosophical level, what does music give you that nothing else does?

Through music I’ve made close friends, been fortunate to travel to a lot of interesting places, opportunities to both succeed and fail in nurturing environments and a whole lot more. Music also gives me the warmth of nostalgia and the thrill and surprise of the new!