Words by David C. Obenour
It’s easy to feel lost in these times. With so much volatility, when everything feels challenged, uncertainty compounds to worry, and worry finds its way to anguish. These are all real and valid responses to feeling lost. However feeling lost doesn’t need to completely unravel into anguish. Lost is a current experience. Anguish is a projected state of the future.
Finding her own grace and means to navigate feeling lost, Macie Stewart has created “a love letter to the moments we spend in-between” on When the Distance is Blue. Field recordings, strings, and piano weave together to create a soundtrack for evolving vistas glimpsed outside of the window. The travel continues. The scenery changes. Maybe the destination does too. But beauty and stillness can often still be found in the moment.
Off Shelf: It sounds starkly different on first take but what do you hear from When the Distance is Blue that feels like a continuation of Mouth Full of Glass? What do you hear as most evolving since then?
Macie Stewart: I was just talking with someone about this the other day. I don’t think my process or like… concept for making music has really changed but it’s so interesting that the outcome sonically can seem so vastly different.
I think it’s a continuation from many of my projects – exploring something familiar by tweaking it and making it unfamiliar. I’m always trying to seek out new perspectives within my own creativity, and see what happens as a result. I think my confidence has evolved since my last record, I feel more capable of sitting in silence and taking care that each texture feels intentional. I feel comforted to know that I can create beyond the structure of songwriting, and look forward to taking that knowledge and applying it back within myself for whatever I make next.
OS: Admittedly, Bandcamp diving, but I was so taken by your single with Jeremiah Chiu. Beyond just asking you about Neon Lights I wanted to ask your thoughts on these stand alone digital singles. How they do and don’t exist alongside albums with physical releases as a part of your discography?
MS: Ah, thank you! I’ve loved Kraftwerk since childhood, and Lia [Kohl, cello] actually suggested this as a fun cover for us to do live – and then it just blossomed into wanting to record a cover with Jeremiah as well because of our mutual love for Kraftwerk.
I honestly think stand alone digital singles are just a fun way to share work in a low pressure environment. When I craft an album, I think heavily about how things work together, what fits, what is the mood, what makes a coherent throughline. With a digital single you’re able to explore wildly different ideas and they don’t necessarily have to relate to anything. There is a freedom in that which I really appreciate!
My band, Finom, does a lot of singles as well. There is this immediacy that comes along with making and releasing a single that simply cannot happen with something like an album, and I think it’s important to give yourself that as an artist. But also as an audience member! It’s just nice to know what people are making as they are making it.
OS: Can you tell me a little about how you chose Zander Raymond’s piece as the cover for When the Distance is Blue? How do you feel it relates to the music? Having lived with the songs before arriving at it, has it affected how you experience the music now that it’s a part?
MS: I’ve really loved Zander’s art for a while, and met him through Lia at a few dinner parties / breakfast hangs at her house. Zander and I had talked about wanting to collaborate with each other, and when I was thinking of album art for the record – my mind immediately went to his work. I feel like his technique with physical collaging and laminating felt intuitively similar to the way I was approaching the music on the record. There were all of these found sounds and melodies and improvisations that I was cutting up and overlaying on top of each other, so I approached Zander about making something together for the cover.
I visited his studio, and we talked about elements we wanted to include and went through some of his art archive for inspiration. I was going to come back the following week to make something together, but then Zander ended up finding a box we hadn’t looked at yet. The moment he picked up this piece out of the pile we both went “Holy shit. That’s it!” and ended up going with that for the cover.
The more I look at it, the more I can connect with the music that it is representing – it’s honestly been awesome! When I am making something, and even when I’m done making something I don’t often “know” what it is I was trying to say. I was following some sort of thread and direction with a vague understanding of why it all fits together. I think this piece cements in me this feeling of being in the middle of something. You are not at the beginning, but you also haven’t arrived at your destination yet. There are so many ways you could go, and it’s almost stressful to think of the decisions you need to make to get there – wherever “there” is – but at the same time… wow this is cheesy, [laughs] but it’s just about enjoying the road. Being present in the process of life because that’s where the good stuff happens. It’s so easy to miss when you have lofty goals and expectations for yourself and thoughts about “where you should be” in life, and I just feel encouraged to practice presence while looking at this piece and embracing the unease that might come with it. I strive always to find peace in the uncertainty. I’m sure it will come to mean something entirely different in a few years, and that’s what I truly love about making things.
OS: Going with that, you’ve described the music as “a love letter to the moments we spend in-between” – what moments do you mean? How do you feel this music connects with that?
MS: Yes, yes, yes! This is a great question. I got really obsessed with the book “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit. I was going through a period of a lot of uncertainty and I was just feeling so lost in life. This book does a really beautiful job giving grace to the feeling of being lost, whether physically or emotionally. At the time I got the book I was dealing with a lot of internal conflicting feelings, and was going through some big life changes and I think it just hit me at exactly the right moment. Being lost can be uncomfortable but it’s not a bad thing. There is courage in taking time to figure out the direction you want to go – both if you are physically or existentially lost – and what it is you really want.
OS: Field recording is such a fascinating and immersive source of sound. What draws you to it? What do you feel translates to rich recordings?
MS: I was so inspired by listening to music by some of my friends like claire rousay, Marta Honer / Jeremiah Chiu, and Lia Kohl – and realized I had actually been collecting little snippets of sounds on my phone for the past few years without intending them to be anything but a sonic diary. I’m a big journaler, but sometimes words just can’t cut it- so being able to document memories and emotions with sound is really important to me. I think there is so much richness in a field recording, and so much personality – it honestly makes me teary eyed to think of the field recordings from my friends’ records and how I can actually hear them and their personalities within the sounds they’ve documented. I still feel like a baby within the world of field recording, but the past few years I’ve really begun to explore it as part of my personal creative process. I think what really translates to a rich field recording is just being interested in what you’re recording! Even recording quality from an iphone is honestly pretty incredible these days, so if you encounter something that feels exciting to you, then I think it will come across that way to others.
OS: Can you highlight a few you have on When the Distance is Blue? Why you choose them and what you like about how they work with the songs?
MS: The first one that appears on the record was recorded at the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan. It was the first time I had ever been to Japan, and it had been a dream of mine for about 20 years – my mom lived and played there for a year in the 70s and so it had always been floating around in my head as a goal for myself. I was interested in just recording the sounds of places I was experiencing for the first time – so I recorded water, crowded markets, storms, just walking around through a city, animal noises, you name it! I love that you can hear the environment around me, but you can also hear the friends that I’m walking with. Hearing laughter on a recording tickles some deep part of my brain. I like hearing life happening around me, without necessarily actively participating in it.
The other larger field recording that appears was taken at the Osaka Airport in Japan. I was sitting in the middle of the waiting area and people / families were walking by and living their lives traveling somewhere and because I was early – classic – I just had all this time to really take in the comings and goings of people. It’s a transient space, and the only thing you can really do while you’re at the airport is wait around until your flight gets called. There’s some sort of surrendering to the moment you have to do while you’re there – I just felt drawn to the sounds of traveling. The sounds after you’ve left one space and before you’ve arrived at another. It felt really central to the core of the record to me.
OS: Can you talk about your approach to string arrangements on When the Distance is Blue? What are the dynamics you have to consider when balancing a quartet? Did you push those normal considerations in any ways on the album?
MS: I am in love with strings, and have been for a really long time. I grew up playing violin – through mediums like orchestra, Irish music, and chamber music. I knew that I wanted this record to involve strings in some way because they are deeply tied to the way I make music. However I didn’t want it to be a “super traditional” string quartet arrangement so instead of two violins, I traded one for an upright bass to have a little more low end.
What I love about a string quartet is that it is its own contained organism. You can make so much sound and connect deeply with whomever it is you are playing with. I wanted to get a maximum amount of sound without needing an outside party or multiple layers of takes. It kept the improvisations intimate, and made it possible for the written music to feel that way as well.
OS: Spring Becomes You, Spring Becomes New has some really amazing percussive sounding effects at the beginning. Can you talk about those, how you came to them, and how you liked using them?
MS: Yes! I prepared the piano using dimes, and a contact mic attached to the inner body of the piano and routed through some pedals and a guitar amplifier. I was drawn to using coins via Bex Burch whose record I played on a few years ago. She had prepared a piano with various coins and it resulted in a sound that really reminded me of a gamelan rather than a piano, which was exciting to me! I figured out that dimes were easiest to fit into the piano strings and move around, so I opted to use those. Depending on where they sit on the strings you get a different pitch, and combined with the guitar pedals and the amp, the overtones were so amazing. It made me excited to see the piano with fresh eyes and fresh ears – and it enabled me to approach it as a different instrument and from a more textural perspective.
OS: From the very beginning, Disintegration is such a rich album closer. Can you talk about how you sequenced it there? What it means to you as the album’s conclusion?
MS: The main theme of Disintegration is a melody that I was playing around with throughout the making of this record. It appears multiple times throughout – on piano, with vocals, and with the string quartet at the end. The end of the piece literally disintegrates into itself – lowering in microtones as a group before landing at its final note, back in a familiar tonality. I’ve shown this piece to a few people and have gotten vastly different reactions because it’s a really disorienting feeling to listen to it. That being said, I think there is a really present feeling of nostalgia, love, and curiosity that’s present there and feels warm to me. This piece feels like returning to a place I’ve been and loved after many years away, however the place itself is not different. I am the one who has changed in the process.