Balmorhea is a band that doesn't fit into only one category. They're instrumental, but not post-rock. They're as comfortable playing in the Renaissance cathedrals of Europe as they are in smokey American bars. They're music scales from the personal to the communal. It's meant to be experienced in equal parts solitude and community. Balmorhea has achieved the elusive goal of any artist: finding their "voice." When you describe their music to someone who hasn't heard it before, you don't describe a litany of other bands, you simply say, "you'll have to hear it for yourself." Balmorhea sounds like, well, Balmorhea.

Balmorhea stopped by the studio to track a few songs off their recently released Candor/Clamor EP, as well as try out a new, yet-to-be-titled song.

Ryan Booth then sat down with founding members Michael Muller and Rob Lowe to discuss the band, writing from a distance, and why so many songs remain untitled through their early iterations...


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RB: I find it particularly interesting the way that you guys are able to tour in Europe. What is the difference between playing shows in the states versus playing shows in the EU?

MM: There seems to be a greater infrastructure of arts programs, which because of government funding, have budgets to spend on music events, rather than relying solely on ticket sales. It makes touring a lot more comfortable. Also, it seems a lot of times people hosting shows don’t care who you are or why you’re there. They’re just having you play so people can come in and buy beers and then leave.

RB: Are you guys playing to more people in Europe than you are in the states on a typical tour, or does it feel pretty comparable?

RL: On average, I’d say in the big cities we usually play to two to three hundred people no matter where we are. Whether it's Paris or New York, that’s pretty standard across the board. However, small towns? I'd say that we probably play for more people in Europe than we do in the US. We can play in a tiny European town that we’ve never really heard of and can still have a hundred people come for some reason. There’s something about people in small towns in Europe. If they are going to host the show and pay you, they are going to invite a lot of people and a lot of people are going to come. In the US when we’ve played in Wichita Falls at a little coffee shop maybe five or ten people would come. Maybe we play to more people in small town Europe because its promoted better or maybe there’s some novelty to us being an American band touring over there that attracts more people...

RB: Would you say that the people who come to your shows in the US have heard of you and they're coming to listen to you specifically whether that be five people or a couple of hundred people. But in Europe the culture is one in which it's a priority to go to a show and they are going out to listen to music irrespective to the band that’s playing?

RL: Yeah, it seems that way. Particularly in Italy and Spain, we will go and play in a really small venue where the stage is barely big enough for us to sit on and people definitely are there whether or not they’ve heard of us. You end up with a lot of people who maybe aren’t "fans". Its not like they have all your records and that’s why there are coming to see you. Maybe they go to this little bar all the time because they host international music and they’ve listened to a track on myspace, and they are kind of familiar a little bit, but they are not necessarily fans. They come just because it’s a place they enjoy seeing live music. It just feels different than the States.



RB: Do you feel that its critically important for people to see you guys play? For me personally, watching you guys play the music versus listening to the record, there’s an entire other layer that you get out of seeing you guys perform it live. Do you feel like that for people to really get you, they need to see live?

RL: I used to not think about that too much, but over the last couple of years I think that I’ve started to realize there is a big difference between the music that we have recorded and the music we play live. They can be pretty different things. I think that a lot of the music that we play was written and recorded three, four five years ago, so many of these songs have taken on a life of their own over the years. They tend to change and ultimately, improve.

MM: And even beyond that, we have a new drummer and new cellist even the people playing the parts from the record are different from who plays it now.

RL: I think when we first started the band, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We’ve been recording and playing for a while now and I’m proud of what we do on our recordings and proud of what we do live. I think you are right that they are very different things and they have a different feeling to them. Going back and listening to the record makes me realize that even though it's still the same song in pretty much the same form, it can have a totally different feel in different contexts. I think seeing Balmorea live is pretty important in understanding what the band is.

RB: Everyone in the band is very multi-instrumental, something that becomes clear when seeing you play live. When you listen to the record, you wouldn’t necessarily know that when you see the song played live, the person that started out on the vibes is not the person who ends the song on the vibes. Is that a performance decision or is that fundamental to you guys being able to execute the songs as you hear them in your head?

RL: Totally fundamental as far as I know it. It wouldn’t have ever crossed our minds to make a decision like that based on the appearance. It’s too much work…

RB: I don’t mean that in a negative way as much as it’s a way to fully descibe who you are as a band; so seamlessly playing all these different instruments. I’m just curious how that kind of works itself out. Is that set in place from the time you record the song? Does it emerge in rehearsals before you start playing the song live?

RL: It's a relatively recent thing actually. We’ve been trying to write songs that sort of change and morph and have a little bit more scope than we have in more recent past when I would spend whole songs on the piano or acoustic guitar. I mean, we're a band that doesn’t have vocals and we try to play to the strengths of an instrumental band and that is really working with textures. We often work in sections where we might have an ensemble working here at the beginning and then it might change halfway through the song and we’ll rearrange for a different section. Maybe someone else will pick up another instrument to take the song in a different direction. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll do another record with just two acoustic guitars all the way through. But right now, the nature of what we are trying to say musically calls for a little more flexibility with instrumentation. Besides, it's fun to go play the piano for a while, then hop over to the vibes and play a line on that. Michael even plays a little bit of drums with the live set…

MM: And very well I might add!

RL: Sometimes we end up a big tangle in the middle of the stage of all the cords, but we work it all out. (laughter)



RB: You mentioned that you have "something to say" and that the way that you create textures with your instrumentation helps that. As a band that doesn’t rest on lyrics to do the talking, how do you have "something to say" with no words? It seems like a brave decision to allow so much to your audience's imagination, letting them participate in what you are trying to say.

MM: When you are writing lyrics, you are explicitly making a statement. Sometimes you can be a little more impressionistic with language, but for the most part words do all the communicating. We are dealing with a little more abstract form communication, and It’s a lot more open to interpretation. It's open for interpretation from the audience, but also for us. It's not like we are writing a song about a loved one dying. It may actually have been written about that sort of thing by the one who writes it; but really, it's just a piece of music that can and does mean different things to the people who listen to it - as well as to those of us who play it. As the years go by, the songs begin to take on a different quality for us. It's all very open.

RB: You guys have such a distinctive sound. I'd be curious as to who some of your musical influences are.

MM: I grew up listening to really heavy music if you can believe it. Heavy Metal, Punk, Hardcore... I was five years old and had every Black Sabbath and Metallica album. But then my family moved to Texas and people there listened to country and rap which was stuff I had no clue about. At some point my focus narrowed to a lot of instrumental music in the late nineties. Predominantly one band and their many side bands, called Tortoise. They're definitely my favorite live band.

RL: Tortoise has had a huge influence structurally as well. I don't have as long of a history listening to Tortoise, like Michael does, but that band is a huge influence on what I do. They are a band that has been around for a long time and has done all kinds of different things. Every record is its own thing. Every record is different. They obviously feel the liberty to do whatever they want and because it's so good they are given a lot of respect. It's given bands like us the permission to really push farther and do what it is that WE want to do. They've shown us it's ok to change from record to record. They're extremely open with their identity as a band and that's hugely inspiring.

RB: How do you guys push yourselves creatively?

MM: Rob has a very uncanny knack of seeing something very creative and unique, and then pushing himself beyond that to make things that I would never think of. At first glance it's kind of scary because it's so different, but often after listening back and put aside my own OCD, clean-and-simple way that I like to do things, I see that it really works. I think the difference in our personalities makes this band work, creatively speaking. Rob is always pushing the envelope and striving for something new, while I have a simpler palate and like things straightforward. I tend to act as a filter to bring back some of the ideas from the edge.

RL: I think there are so many things that I run into every day that are inspiring creatively. It'd be so boring to not try new things all the time.

RB: Now Michael, you live in New York now. How has that influenced and impacted the band? Would you say that the city itself is bringing something to the table as you're working on this new record? How has being there changed the way that you hear, write, and perform music?

MM: That's interesting. I'm not sure if there is something tangible or specific yet. But honestly, I'm sure it's something I'll realize fully later in my life. I've definitely seen and heard things here that I wouldn't have other wise. The other day, I saw this composer Nico Muhly perform an ensemble piece with the Brooklyn Youth Choir. It was beautiful and I know that seeing and hearing that is a function of being in New York. I haven't been exposed to as many varied kinds of art on my own time as I have here. I know that much. But as far as actually playing music, we have this one song that we're working on now, for example, that we've tracked and the song will just run through my head for days and days on end. A lot of times I'm thinking about the music without thinking about it. It's been interesting to hear our songs in my head mixing with all the crazy sounds in the city. I have amassed a lot of little field recordings of weird sounds in the city. Like an opera singer in the subway, for instance. They're all things that could lend to ideas in our own music.



RB: So one of the songs that you guys tracked with us was "Untitled." Curious if that has gotten a title or if it's officially become Untitled?

MM: Is that the one with singing on it?

RB: No.

RL: Oh, the strumming one.

RB: Uh huh. (laughter)

MM: That is still Untitled. We tend to not title anything until we absolutely have to. As in, we often wait until we're working on the artwork for the record and we're literally forced to decide.

RL: We tend to title them in our heads as we play them, formulating them as the "New Song." Or the "New New Song." Or even the "New New New Song." We're pretty bad about it. (laughter)

RB: Really? Why wait so long to title the songs?

RL: The songs on our records are often written very far apart. It isn't until you get to the end of making a record when we start thinking about how we're going to present this collection of songs to the world. You start taking stock of what you have and begin thinking about the common thread.

MM: Because a lot of our songs aren't really about something specific, you can really title them whatever you want. So honestly I don't really think about the name until we have all the songs grouped together. It's interesting because that process really adds another layer to the music, when the common themes reveal themselves.

RB: So the title can't really exist until the record is being finalized, in a way, given that it is relative to the song on the left and the right of it on the the record.

RL: A lot of times you get to the end of a project and realize there was a lot more going on than you thought while you were making the individual parts. Titles are about the collective.



RB: I think people sometimes have a hard time dealing with bands that don't have vocals in the traditional sense. It seems like people struggle a bit with how to describe the music and "post-rock" is the only nail they can see to hang their hat on, whether it's an accurate description or not. Do you feel like "post-rock" is a lazy description?

RL: I think that almost every musician is uncomfortable with being identified with a certain genre or sub-genre. "Post-rock" has such a specific vibe to it, it has such a specific image that you think of when you hear the term, the kind of band, the kind of fan. What's funny is that there really is probably only a couple bands that fit squarely into that category that we like at all. We don't really do the "rock" thing very much, though there are obviously elements in our music. But it just doesn't feel like us. If you were describing our music to someone who hadn't heard us and you used the term "post-rock," I'm not sure that the band in their mind would match the band they hear. Now, maybe that's total bullshit and we totally fit in that category and that's just me being arrogant hoping that we don't! (laughter)

MM: I mean, the format of our instrumentation doesn't really make sense for the genre anyways. I mean, we have piano, a string quartet, and acoustic guitars. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like the same as a band with bass, drums, two electric guitars, and a quiet/loud, heavy, driving quarter-note rhythm.

RL: You know, in the past we've had a few songs that were a lot more like that. Maybe they even have that "post-rock" sound. But it's been so long since we've sounded like that that it just doesn't fit. I mean, if you listen to our last full length, Constellations, it's quiet piano music. You can't really be "post-rock" and have these little piano songs. (laughter)

MM: Well, Tortoise is a lot of times considered "post-rock" but they absolutely don't fit that description. Tortoise is Tortoise. They have a sound all their own and you can't really describe it other than "you should just probably listen to it and decide for yourself." Sometimes music just isn't easily describable.

RB: Are you guys ok with not being easily defined? From an artistic perspective and from a commercial perspective, are you ok with people having to work to encounter your music?

RL: I am.

MM: Yeah, I am too. One of the joys of music, to me, is researching and finding out about the band and their members and past members and what bands they'd played in before. I love finding out their other collaborations and their influences. I think there is something intriguing about a band that isn't always so easy to figure out…a band with mystique. I do think that by nature, the style of music we play lends itself to a bit of mystery…

RL: It does make it more difficult not fitting into a specific "scene." It can make it harder finding other bands to tour around with, but honestly it just is what it is and I think we're fine with it.



RB: Something that has really emerged in the last several years is TV/Film and commercial placements. Your music is very cinematic and abstract, have you guys had success with placements at this point?

RL: We've had some success, but it's a weird thing that it is the main way that a lot of people in our world end up making any money at all. You just don't really make much of anything selling records these days. The audiences just aren't big enough. But placements feel so passive. You can't really do anything specifically to try and get these placements. I mean, you make your music and then someone somewhere might want to use it in a commerical? It's very strange. What's more exciting than liscensing is getting the chance actually write music specifically for a film or a piece of art. That's always sounded more interesting to me.

RB: Oh really? What is a movie that you've seen recently that made you wish that you'd scored it?

MM: Tree of Life was great. For music to go along with something so abstract and cinematically beautiful would be amazing...

RL: Though it'd be totally freaky to score a Terrence Malick film. You'd have to take a whole year off to try and write music that would be worthy of that quality of filmmaking. (laughter)


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CREDITS:

Music by:
Balmorhea

Music performed by:
Rob Lowe
Michael Muller
Aisha Burns
Dylan Rieck
Kendall Clark

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Directed by:
Ryan Booth

VISUALS:

Cameras:
Cody Bess
Ryan Booth
Scott Brignac
Andrew Hudson
Joey Mathews
Neil Sandoz

Edited by: Ryan Booth
Graded by: Ryan Booth
Titles by: Tyler Swanner
Photos by: Cody Bess

AUDIO:
Engineered by: Jay Snider
Assisted by: Ty Robins
Assisted by: Ashton Nagle
Mixed by: Jay Snider
Mastered by: Daniel Karr

Illustration and Design by: Tyler Swanner

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AUDIO ONLY