Words by Sean Victory
missing scenes is Robert Osgood’s solo endeavor, a synth-focused project creating sonic vistas where the ear can take the lead, drawing us down Escher-esque hallways before our minds are delivered to a still and captivating light. Osgood has been working as missing scenes for a couple of years now, setting the project in motion with a collection of EPs built around and inspired by the full moon.
His latest release, who is this for? delivers a continuously unfurling world of reverberant spaces whose varying oscillations, humming in rise and fall, push the dynamics of these compositions downward into the frequency range of brain waves gently rocking our vessel this way and that. The subtlety of these pieces cannot be overstated. The movement of any one voice emerges or recedes in contrast and compliment to the other sounds around it. The music reaches out into the space, painting the room (or your mind, headphone-listener) with the patient undulations of these alien hues.
Off Shelf: I was really interested in your project where you were recording around full moons, creating with that as the limitation and the inspiration for the work you were doing. Can you talk a little bit about how you found that process and what that was like for you?
Robert Osgood: I think it was around late 2021. I was just feeling kind of aimless with my music and I was out on a walk one night with my daughter actually just kind of looking up with her at the moon, and I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to try and record an idea on every full moon and see what I can come up with in one go. Just try to shake things up, because I had been kind of at a standstill. Prior to kicking off missing scenes I had released one record as Occulted Sound about four years prior, and was working with Snares of Sixes (an offshoot of Self Spiller), but this is with a group of other people and it takes a lot of time — like probably five years between every release, just because of how many people are involved. I wanted to do something a little more streamlined and a little bit more for myself.
So the initial idea was to record a piece on the full moon and spend the month until the next full moon mixing it and all that. But what it became was more like between each full moon, realizing one completed piece of music.
I can hear some of those limitations in the pieces – though they add a certain charm.
OS: Along the same lines, I actually just recently got Moons Milk by Coil? I don’t know if you’re aware of that.
RO: Yeah. Coil is definitely a big influence on me, especially their late 90s, early 2000s output like Moon’s Milk or Musick to Play in the Dark. That’s the Coil period that I’m really drawn to. And definitely there are some echoes of Coil in my music as well. I was so happy to see Moon’s Milk get re-released as I sold the CD set when I needed some cash a few years back. Now I have it on vinyl. It’s a thing of beauty.
OS: I think one of the things that is interesting about your music is you use drone a lot. There’s always a lot of other stuff going on above it, but you tend to have this long tone that is at the base of everything. Do you use that as the foundational element to kind of get yourself in that space? Does it serve as a sort of self-hypnosis to kind of tune into, and then see what can bloom out of it?
RO: Yeah I think so. My music is meant to bring you into yourself, to give listeners a chance to dream while they’re awake. It’s a chance to meditate.
Drone is this cornerstone that you were talking about that all my pieces have. And I sometimes think of it similarly to how I think of a mantra. It’s a common focal point or point of return, but there is always a lot more going on above and below that. Not unlike the mind during meditation.
Swans have been a huge influence on what I do, and I’ve always appreciated how their songs can start with one chord that just builds and builds. It never gets boring, and that build up can be beautiful, if not the most interesting, harmonically. I unfortunately didn’t get to see them before they broke up in the 90s, but got to see them on their first trip through Portland after they reformed, and the music made me move, not like I was choosing to dance, but that I had to surrender to my body’s inability to be still during the show. The only other time I can recall this happening was seeing Bjork in 2003 in Seattle. What an amazing gift both possess.
OS: Even though you have drone as a central element, none of your pieces are like this huge static thing, you find a way to thread the drone throughout. On who Is this for?, it’s under it all. The whole album has an underlying drone element, and then you’ve kind of broken up every bit into sections and it keeps on moving. Is that more about consideration to the listener?
RO: I split the two long form tracks on who is this for? into multiple tracks for streaming purposes, but on CD, there are just the two tracks, one for “who is this for?” And one for “≈238,000 mi.” This is a generalization, but it seems that if you collect physical media, you’re probably someone who won’t mind a 20 minute piece, but if you only stream music, you might prefer to listen to pt. 4, but not need to hear pt. 3, etc. So for streaming, I’ll happily cut things up.
OS: So, when you’re performing live, what’s your setup like? Do you just use modular and kind of improvise? Do you bring a patched system, and improvise with it?
RO: I obsess about my setup, preparation, and ensuring I reproduce live what I do in rehearsal. So I’m rehearsing a lot. At my most recent show, I was using prepared field recordings, a Lyra 8, Make Noise Easel, a 4ms 64 HP pod with Sibilla, Knobula Poly Cinematic, and Make Noise Morphagene. I also created a video backdrop using some original video as well as video from the super-talented Kenneth Mellum. The music, sound design and video are all created to work in tandem with one-another.
The Easel and pod both have the majority of patching prepared prior to the show, but some minor patching occurs during performances. And the Lyra goes through extensive tuning prior to performing, though this last time that didn’t save me from some minor bum notes.
OS: So what’s your history? How long have you been playing music, where did you start and how did you get where you are?
RO: I started out playing guitar in a variety of crappy bands in the 90s. In ‘99 or so I started a project called Conversations About the Light, which was sort of an early precursor to what I’m currently doing with missing scenes, and gave me a chance to work with noise, drone, ambient, but all done “in the box” with a cracked Cool Edit Pro license. A lot of what I did early on was definitely just sitting at a desktop computer with a microphone and a death metal pedal, guitar through a variety of effects and mangled with whatever native VSTs were available in the DAW, or sequences built on the Yamaha QY70. Between 2000 and 2003 I recorded a ton of material in this way, some of which made it to EPs or compilations.
I met Jason Walton [Agalloch, Nothing, Sculptured] around this time, and in 2005 he put out my first full length album, Memories out of Context, on his Audio Savant label. Over time, we began collaborating on his Self Spiller project which featured a ton of amazing musicians [members of Sigh, Nero’s Day at Disneyland, Winds, etc.] and this collaboration continues today with Snares of Sixes. He remains a great friend and sounding board.
In the early days I rarely played live. I tried a few times, but in those days I didn’t have the necessary hardware to reproduce what I was doing in my recordings. But with missing scenes I am making a concerted effort to put together a compelling live show I can share anywhere that will have me.
OS: And then you started working on modular within the last few years, you said? What was your gateway drug? Was there a particular thing that got you into patching, or was there a person or artist that you connected with that got you thinking about it?
RO: I think I’ve always been aware of modular through my listening – Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Coil, but until I walked into Control Voltage in Portland several years back, I didn’t know modular was so accessible, and had no concept of the community and just how large the scene was. Seeing Clipping perform “A Better Place” using modular synth on TV in 2016 was definitely a gateway, as was hearing Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s Ears, which I discovered around the same time.
The first piece of gear I purchased that got me in the modular mindset must have been the BoredBrain Patchulator, as for many years I focused on composing on guitar, and that’s the first instance I can recall using the ⅛ inch jacks to rearrange “modules” – guitar pedals in this case.
OS: So when you were playing with other people, have you done a lot of collaborating with people in electronic music, or is it mostly in the context of like guitar music or?
RO: Most of my collaboration would be in the context of more guitar-centric music, Hollow Branches, Snares of Sixes, and now with Fauna Timbre, whose new singles and upcoming record I’m co-writing lyrics for, and providing sound design/synthesis. I’d love to explore any collaboration opportunities that present themselves, especially with filmmakers, authors, narrators or visual artists.
OS: Are there designers or manufacturers that you particularly connect with?
RO: Currently I’m really connecting with the Soma Lyra 8 – I’ve been playing that a lot. It’s beautiful to look at, play, and listen to. It’s also infuriating at times, especially with regards to tuning. I’ve been loving Sibilla from Clatter Machines, and I’m constantly enamored with Make Noise gear – in particular I love the Morghagene. I’m looking forward to playing gear from Torso, their S4 looks like an incredible device and the alt from cyma forma.
OS: So is there other art, literature, film, whatever, that you have drawn inspiration from or that continues to inspire you?
RO: Yeah, definitely. So the three pieces that I just performed live were very heavily inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s Dream. It’s such a gorgeous film, and has such amazing dialog, a few scenes from which I sampled. David Lynch is huge for me. He looms large and you know, there’s probably not a day that goes by that I’m not thinking about something from Twin Peaks, Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive.
Aside from films, I’m reading frequently, typically horror and weird literature such as Michael Wehunt, Thomas Ligotti, Laird Barron and John Langan – those are the ones I really and keep up with. I enjoy reading books on music history, and I’m currently reading “Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain From Doctor Who to Acid House”. It’s fascinating. I didn’t know anything about the history of sound system dances, and definitely didn’t know enough about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I’m sure volumes exist on each, but Dream Machines has started me down the path of learning more.
OS: Is there anything like any music that you’ve been listening to lately, whether it’s new or old or whatever, doesn’t really matter.
RO: Loma which started as a collaboration between Jonathan Meiburg [Shearwater] and Cross Record has a new record coming out, and I’ve been loving their single from that. Every time they release something new I’m psyched. Dark Sky Equilibrium by Moonbladder, which is Jason Walton’s first recorded output with this project. I’ve seen him perform this piece many times now, so it’s great to have it documented. Steve Lyman, he’s a percussionist and he just released an album called Spiral that—I mean he takes drumming to a different place and I’ve been really enjoying that. He’s actually working on sort of a reimagining of a piece that I played this last Friday so that’ll be coming out eventually. I’m excited to work with him. Adam Wiltze from Stars of the Lid just put out an album that’s really great. He’s another musician for whom I’m always excited when new music arrives. I revisit Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom every so often because it’s just such a great, unusual sounding record, and I’ve been enjoying listening to it once again, along with Pink Floyd’s first two records, which I don’t visit often enough. Aho Ssan, Lankum, Tom Waits, Scott Walker, Olivia Block, and many Longform Editions releases also are getting a lot of listens lately.
OS: Do you keep the audience in mind when you create? Do you keep a hopeful idea like will people tolerate this? Will people be interested in this? Do I need to chill on these aspects and maybe focus it more around, you know, something else?
RO: I’m not keeping anyone in mind when I create, for better or worse. There are definitely times when I know something is going to resonate with a few more folks than usual, but that is always accidental. But I’m also hopeful that it will resonate with others, for sure. Why release something if you don’t want anyone to share the experience with you?
OS: So what do you have on the horizon?
RO: I’m finishing up the EP from my live set and one of those pieces is the one that I mentioned Steve Lyman’s going to be drumming on. So that one’s pretty much done, but I’ve got to hammer the other two out, and there’s a possibility of drums and other percussion making it onto those as well. I’m also working on an audio book version of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. So I’m working with a narrator in New York called Linda Jones. She’s just fantastic to work with, and it feels very collaborative. I would say that the music is quite a bit different from anything I’ve done as missing scenes until now, but it’s a natural progression from the first four records.
OS: How did you get working on this audio book? That’s cool.
RO: It’s something I’ve wanted to do. I read that story in college, and it’s one of those ones that’s really stuck with me. It’s just brutal, sad and very weird. I just finally said, I’m going to do this. I’m going to score this, and I’m going to find a good narrator who can capture the spirit of the narrator in that story. I’ve also experienced postpartum depression and that sort of thing in my personal life with people around me. We’ll see who’s going to release it, or if it’s going to be self-released, or whatever. But it’s something I had to do.
OS: Did you come across this narrator organically, or did you kind of put out a call for this?
RO: Both. So, I had heard her previously reading Alice’s Last Adventure, a Ligotti story. But I also reached out to a narrator, Jon Padgett—another weird horror author. I asked him if he knew anybody that might be a good fit for this, and he suggested Linda. I was thinking about reaching out to her, but I thought she was too big to reach out to. I thought she’d say no, and she’s been so excited about this. She’s loving how it’s sounding. So, yeah, I mean, that’s good.
OS: Yeah. I think that’s one of the hardest parts about the solo electronic thing. You’re very much in your own world that you have created for yourself. Around your own gear and you’re living in your own head. It is hard to know. Does any of this make sense? I thought the album name—Who Is This For?, is that a personal question?
RO: That’s it. It is a personal question. I spend so much time doing this. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years. And I think more than half of my time has been spent working on something that pretty much no one gives a shit about. And it’s really hard to get anyone to even respond to an email. Like, you send out an email, like, hey, I’ve just put up this, you know, just poured blood and sweat. Here’s the thing, you know, it’d be awesome if you could check it out and then radio silence and so that’s sort of the album cycle for me at this point: work really, really hard on this thing, put money into it, put time into it, think it’s pretty great, send it out, radio silence. Then I just keep putting myself through the same thing over and over again, because I love it.