Let the music become what it already is
Jeff McIlwain has, by his own admission, never been one to keep count of how many records he's made. Under the name Lusine, the Texas-raised, Seattle-based producer has spent two decades on Ghostly International operating between techno's rigour, ambient's spaciousness, and a melodic orientation that belongs to neither, thus never quite settling into one genre for long. Melting Days, his tenth album and first fully ambient record in almost twenty years, finds him working through grief and transition with the same patient and repetition-loving sensibility that's defined his artistic oeuvre from the beginning, and today sees the release of its second single, "Bird's Eye". He's less interested, he tells me, in pushing a track somewhere new than in letting it become exactly what it already is. I caught up with him in a recent conversation.
Approaching this album as someone just discovering your music, what would you want a first-time listener to know before they press play? And what does "ambient" mean to you on this record, your first fully ambient one in almost 20 years?
Honestly, I would be totally happy to have someone know nothing about me and hear this album for the first time. That would be refreshing. As for ambient, for me, it means adhering less to certain structures, a lot less beat heavy, allowing myself to linger on more sound design type ideas, which often means fewer tracks per song, but more focus on the tracks that are there. I question whether this is even an ambient album, but I'm leaning towards "yes." I'm definitely less of a purist when it comes to genre definitions.
You've said you didn't want to compromise on ideas this time. What does compromise usually look like for you as an artist?
Compromise might not be the right word, I don't know. It makes it sound bad. I guess what I mean is that when you collaborate with vocalists, you are trying to meld together two perspectives on a song. And when that works, it's great. It's greater than the sum of its parts. But, it puts constraints on you. I mess with vocals a lot, but I still try to be respectful to the vocalists for the ideas they sent me. On this record, I'm just doing whatever I want, within the bounds of a largely beatless record.
With such an intuitive, open-ended process, how do you know when a track is actually finished rather than just paused?
This is never really a problem for me to be honest. If I'm not sure if a song is done, it usually means it's not done. I usually just know if my tracks are done. I suppose it's just a matter of knowing my own preferences. I guess I've thought a few times about adding something else to my tracks, but it either doesn't work, or it's a pretty minimal addition to the track.
Tracks like "Intruder" and "These Walls" lean into repetition rather than pushing towards newer territory. Was that openness to repetition something you were seeking throughout? And is there, perhaps, a wrong way to listen to this record?
Yes, that is just what I like with music. Going back to your question about "compromise," I guess this is one area I felt like I could explore more than in other records. My fondness for repetition, and I suppose "minimalist" musical ideas. I like songs that have a sort of meditative, or hypnotic feel. For some of my more beat heavy, or "song influenced" tracks, I will do a test preview just from the speaker of my phone to see how it would sound. For this record, I'd say, just don't listen to it out of your phone speaker :) It doesn't come across so well.
You brought in other musicians on percussion and saxophone. What did those voices add?
Well, I was just curious to know what sonic ideas I could pull out of the saxophone. I was looking for a sort of breathy and "flat" or "less ornamental" style. I also really liked some of the loops I was finding in the sax stuff Bryan played for me. I like chopping up whole passages of music, so we were approaching the recording from both angles: getting interesting sonic samples, and getting musical passages that I could manipulate later. With Trent, I just have a bunch of recordings from him over the years. It adds a sort of organic texture to music that is hard to get with drum libraries. Not just sonically, but the rhythmically human stuff as well.
The album's tied to a period of grief and transition. How much of that comes through in the sound itself, versus staying part of your private process?
Well, I'm not really sure. I think it came through, as a couple of tracks reference this stage of my life a bit more explicitly, but I also think just in the sense that as I was making this record, I was processing some personal stuff as well. Maybe a bit more intensely than in the past. And once it was done, it did feel like kind of a record that was telling a story, so it made sense to me.
This is your tenth album. Does that number carry any weight for you, or is it just a milestone other people count?
Oh, no, I try not to think about that! I had to count them up to make sure that the press release was correct. For me, it's definitely about being creatively curious, although others might focus more on the idea of consistency.