It is an absolute honor to chat with Rachel Evans, kief-style. Whether it is with her own project, Motion Sickness of Time Travel, or the blissful duo with her husband Grant, Quiet Evenings, Rachel is making some of the most beautiful music today. The pictures below are only a small sample of her prodigious output. Recently, Spectrum Spools released the incomparable Motion Sickness of Time Travel self-titled 2xLP. Easily one of the finest of 2012, it is full of "Def" sounds - sounds that make you feel. Throw a healthy dollop of kief on that bowl, fire it up, and blaze on with us :)
Glorius Bubba Kush Kief from fellow smokehound, Fadedfools! thanks for the good vibe and peace to you, bro :)
1) The diverse range of sound and ideas over four sides of vinyl
coalesces impressively. Could you please talk about the process of recording
this beautiful release for Spectrum Spools and your inspiration(s) for this
record?
Rachel Evans: I started recording material for the 2xLP in
early 2011. Initially I approached it the same way I've approached most of my
other solo releases, which is sitting down with my gear for an hour-ish at a
time and recording layers on top of layers of myself direct-in. I got a few
"finished" tracks out of this, but since I had so much time to work
on the album I just kept recording more for it. Throughout the process I decided
to record some longer "live" one-take tracks.
One of those takes became the C-side of the
album, and is one whole piece. I was really happy with it and liked the idea of
longer, side-long tracks for album, but I was still really attached to some of
the shorter tracks I'd recorded before and after that. So in January of this
year when it was time to decide what was going to make the record, I did some
post-editing and turned the other 3 sides of the LP into "suites",
mixing the shorter tracks together. I really wanted the album to have a more
continuous flow to it, without excess silence interrupting in between
"songs". I was really happy with the side-long "suites"
approach so I stuck with that as the final version of the album, and gave each
side it's own name.
As far as inspirations for the album goes, my
husband Grant had just bought me the "Promethea" books by Alan Moore
around the time I started recording music for the LP. In a weird way it's sort
of my soundtrack to my own Promethea-esque tale. The D-side title "One
Perfect Moment" comes from that series of books. About the time I was
finishing up the music for the album I was reading Murakami's "Kafka on
the Shore" (another book Grant suggested I read!). It was also a big
influence... the A-side title "The Dream" comes from that novel. I
had a couple titles in mind for the album itself when I started recording it,
but by the end of the whole process I ended up going with a self-titled album.
I'd never done that before and it just seemed right... nothing else seemed to
fit better than that. There were a few other inspirations for the album too...
I was listening to Grant's solo music (especially his double tape, "Winds
Over Silmäterä") a whole lot during the time that I was working on the
bulk of the music for the album. Also cats. Cats inspire so many things.
2) The label that you and Grant run, Hooker
Vision, has started the year wonderfully with many great releases. What can
fellow sonic travelers expect from the label in the future? Will there be more
vinyl releases?
Rachel Evans: Right now we've got a Sparkling Wide Pressure
LP in the works, and some more tapes too, including a Spectrum Tickets
cassette.
Our upcoming Hooker Vision tape batch, due out
the first-ish of June includes a new Aloonaluna tape, a Merryl tape, a
Crippling tape, Grant's first solo tape under his own name, and a new MSOTT
tape.
3) What kind of records/sounds are you diggin'
currently?
Rachel Evans: Probably one of my favorite records we got
recently is Phurpa on Idealogic Organ. So good... Also I never get tired of
listening to Grasshopper. And the new Discriminate tape sampler with Inez
Lightfoot and Night Lite is amazing. I especially love Inez Lightfoot's side,
perfection!
4) What does the future hold for MSOTT and
Quiet Evenings? Are you participating in any other projects?
Rachel Evans: We have a handful of shows coming up for Quiet
Evenings! We'll be playing Gainesville, FL this Thursday (May 17) as part of
the Pedestrain Deposit tour. Then Atlanta, GA May 22 with our good friends
Villages and Merryl as a part of their tour, and then Asheville, NC on June 2
as part of Aloonaluna and Roamer X's tour (also with Villages and Merryl on the
bill). We also just got word that Quiet Evenings will be playing Voice of the
Valley this year on a 905 tapes side stage. And later in the year we'll be
playing the Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh, NC. Quiet Evenings also has an
upcoming LP on Aguirre Records, due out this summer! And a handful of splits in
the works with Grasshopper, Former Selves, and Afterlife.
I have a new tape coming soon as MSOTT on our
own label Hooker Vision, called Chinaberry. It features some brand new stuff as
well as a couple tracks that were cut from the 2xLP, and will be out the first
week of June. I have another tape coming soon to Sacred Phrases that also
features some tracks that didn't make the 2xLP cut. And in February 2013 Grant
and I will both be playing solo sets at The Stone in NYC on February 1, and on
February 2 Quiet Evenings will be playing The Stone too, along with Afterlife!
As far as other projects... I've had a split/collab 7-inch in the works with
Lunar Miasma for some time now. That's still on my to-do list, along with doing
some vocals for some Emuul tracks. Grant & I are also planning to move out
of GA this summer, so that's a huge thing too.
peace to you, friends :)
peace to you, friends :)
