Something Unintended, Perfect and New: Music and Sound of Damian Francis Wagner.

(From Tape OP March - April 2008)
By Bren Davies
 
He has been able to fly below the radar for most of his career. That is all about to change. Musician, engineer, producer and sound designer Damian Francis Wagner now enters the fray. His influences range from Killing Joke to Kraftwerk to Beaver & Krause, from Thelonious Monk to John Lennon to My Bloody Valentine. His production work can be heard on Madonna’s Ray of Light album and he has edited and mixed live tracks for a variety of well-known artists including The Stooges, Pharrell, Mary J. Blidge. More recently Mr. Wagner has begun to make a name for himself as a creative sound designer for avant-garde multimedia audio and video installations in museum spaces. His work can be seen (heard) in such well-traveled halls as New York’s PS-1 and the Museum of Modern Art.  It was mainly about this particular twist on his career path that I recently spoke with Mr. Wagner.
 
   Q: Having started as an artist and multi-instrumentalist, what led you to engineering and production?
 
One of the first jobs I had was working in a music store in  Minneapolis, selling guitars and synths. I made some contacts there and I started engineering for the Fairlight Series III. The orchestral libraries we produced required me to hyper focus on the recording and engineering aspects, which helped to discipline and develop my ears in a new way. I was then asked by some friends to design their recording studio, which was based around a Synclavier. I stayed on at that studio and ran the Synclavier for a few years, until I moved from Minneapolis to L.A. to work for Virgin Records as a house engineer/producer. I still love the Synclav – great sounds! After three years working for Virgin on L.A., I was ready to work on a wider variety of projects, incorporating music and sounds that aren’t necessarily music in the usual sense. I started Sound Furnace Inc. to do just that.
 
   Q: A lot of your more recent work seems to be in the form of avant-garde sound installations and museum pieces. What sparked your move into this arena?
 
It all started in college really. I used a Simmons EPROM blower to make a mannequin respond by striking it with a drumstick. I think it said, “Please have a mint”. Several years ago I was approached by my friend, well-known artist Doug Aitken, to create the sound for his three-screen epic installation entitled “Interiors”- which is now in MOMA’s permanent collection. It’s a piece about chaos and harmony and about how rhythms and musical time can come together and then separate, like the collision of sound from a passing car interacting with your own voice to create something larger and in some cases, quite interesting.
 
  Q: Describe this a bit more. I’m trying to imagine what kinds of sounds you are talking about.
 
This particular piece is comprised of four scenes cycling over three separate screens. Each scene follows individual actors {one of whom is Andre 3000} through different landscapes and spaces. I started with real sounds to match each scene and slowly began to process and warp the sounds to soften the edges and create something more tailored. The music was created by matching the tempos for each scene, and then sequencing the more organic parts of the instrumentation to fit with the sounds. As time passes while the observer is watching the piece, the actor’s worlds begin to intersect and sync up with each other, culminating in an intense piece of music composed of a tap dancer, an auctioneer, a handball player and a rapper. Three separate stereo music and sound mixes slowly fall in time with one another at certain key moments. It’s like a wave breaking. The sound starts very simple, and then slowly develops into a wild crescendo – only to go silent and begin again. It’s very hypnotic. It took me about two months to finish this particular piece.
 
  Q: It must be an interesting experience creating a sound installation for a museum space, as opposed to the typical hip hop, indie rock or singer-songwriter music that most engineers and producers are involved with.
 
It is, because that environment is such a totally different way of experiencing sound and visuals. It’s almost like being in a holy place or a cathedral. You’re going to a specific place to experience something with no real expectations other then that you will be part of that environment for a certain amount of time. Usually the spaces are very large, so managing that can be challenging. Carpet and other sound absorbing materials are generally used. This tends to create more intimate and pleasant spaces. With this piece that we’ve been discussing - and I don’t plan this, it just ended up being a sort of happy accident - the observer hears the sound as he or she is walking towards the gallery and then once inside, they see the picture and the actual scope of what is being presented to them, it’s quite surprising. You can hear the subwoofers kicking out low-end frequencies from farther away and as you get closer to the room, more frequencies come into focus. The way the spectrum of the sound changes and becomes fuller, more vibrant, as you approach the piece and then thinner, less powerful as you depart, has a lot to do with the impact of the work – particularly when it all combines with the video portion to create the “something greater” that we talked about a moment ago.
 
   Q: What are you working on currently?
 
Installation wise, I’m working on a sound pavilion in Brazil. At the center of the pavilion is a small hole that reaches deep into the earth. At various points in the hole, very sensitive microphones pick up signals that are in turn fed to a number of speakers back at the surface. The sound heard inside the pavilion is quite literally an amplified live feed of the earth’s interior at that location. The sound frequencies picked up by these microphones will automate certain parameters, faders or events, creating an endless stream of sound that will be hypnotic, and at times even aggressive. The earth will “play itself”, so to speak. I’m also creating a music engine for a restaurant in Venice. “Sound and Architecture”, a redefined and determined environment created live each moment by its occupants. It is totally automated and will never produce the same music twice. The sound and music will rise or increase in intensity with the number of people occupying the space. I just finished creating the sound to accompany Doug’s monumental MOMA piece, “Sleepwalkers”. I’m also working on restoring a number of experimental musical devises from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – like a biofeedback music machine that creates music from alpha, beta, and theta brainwaves. The devise can accommodate four separate people (or brains) at one time. A brainwave chamber ensemble! It’s totally sick! It’s alive.
 
   Q: Let’s switch gears for a moment. Tell me about your record label, Sound Furnace Inc.
 
I keep hearing about the music infrastructure collapsing. I think it’s actually expanding – or evolving. Creating a label is a response to that situation. It’s a way for me to release music I’m involved in and enjoy – and to have of a say in how it’s presented. As a blueprint, I like to think of 4AD records and what Ivo Watts-Russell was trying to do. All of the bands on that label complimented each other, but were different. The Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Colourbox, Clan of Xymox, Dead Can Dance- they were all defiantly amazing! I’m going to keep it small. I want to help bands I like. I still produce and engineer quite a bit. I’m working with several bands at the moment. I like to keep it interesting so they really are quite varied. So it’s an interesting mixture…..I’ve also started to write the follow up to a record I did in 2006 with my wife called “Love Goes”. We have a group together called The D&A. I should be finished with the new record by summer. We’re at a weird time with the music industry right now. I think the most important thing is to create good music - good sounds. Something that causes an emotion, something that makes the chemicals in your body change in a certain, real way. It’s about pain, sorrow, happiness - the whole gamut of emotions. You can experience every emotion you’ve ever felt through music. And good sound can relate to things other then music. Like the way that the air conditioners rhythm is interacting with the way our waitress is speaking – all while we are conducting this interview. That’s good sound. I like it when I’m in my car at an intersection and interference from someone else’s car stereo blends with what I’m listening to in my car to create a moment of something bizarre and interesting. Something unintended and perfect and new.