As Lonely As Dave Bowman - Sam Rosenthal's space odyssey

Eight years ago, Sam Rosenthal launched a brand-new project with the splendid “POD”, an outlet for two of his passions: ambient music and sci-fi, with the cosmos as their common denominator. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since that now-distant 2007. From flagship label of an entire generation, Projekt has turned into an increasingly artisanal record company, focused on preserving a roster of artists as thriving as it is well-defined. Alongside its interest in the more ethereal shades of dark music, there's been a (re)discovery of the more visionary side of ambient music: Steve Roach, Dirk Serries, Erik Wøllo, Alio Die are just a few of the names who have found a genuine second home at Projekt. Through all this, Sam himself stayed away from pen and keyboards for a while. Since “10 Neurotics” by Black Tape For A Blue Girl, we've only heard from him once, for a remix album. In between there was only a splendid ambient suite (“The Passage“) released under his own name, and a (lately scaled-back) effort to spread and organize a genuine “resistance” to digital piracy. And plenty of rumors that, today, in this interview, we're finally able to confirm.

We catch up with Sam on the very day of the surprise announcement: “POD” will have a successor, “MONOLITH”, already available digitally on Bandcamp and soon to be pressed in 300 physical copies, funded through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter that will wrap up on May 19th. We reach him, as we did last time, almost by chance, without much of a plan or carefully prepared questions. Sam isn't one to talk often, but when he does, he leaves a mark and always surprises. What comes out of it is a conversation packed with anecdotes, stories, revelations and answers that plenty of people had, until now, sought in vain.

Actually I've only read 6-7 of his books: the 4 in the “2001” series plus “The Lost Worlds Of 2001” (a collection of anecdotes that was sold alongside “2001: A Space Odyssey”), “Rendezvous with Rama”, and “Shadow on the Moon” I think. I then tried to keep going with the “Rama” series, but it was decidedly too “of this planet” for me, too many soap-opera-style characters and too little science fiction. I think this interest of mine comes from my childhood - ever since then I've thought about the possible existence of a world that's different from this one, that isn't this one, somewhere else, with someone else. A kind of escape from my boring life as a kid. I was already a big fan of “Star Trek” back then, and I also followed “Planet Of The Apes” quite closely.

Anyone who has followed the trajectory of Black Tape For A Blue Girl knows perfectly well how far back your interest in ambient music goes. Many Black Tape albums were dense with atmospheric passages bordering on ambient, in some cases even featuring purely ambient tracks... Where does this interest of yours come from?

I think that this atmospheric pull is, in every respect, what made Black Tape's music so different from that of many darkwave bands of the era. Dead Can Dance never quite got there, This Mortal Coil came close but without ever truly engaging with it. I come from the ambient of Eno, from Tangerine Dream and from Bowie's Berlin trilogy. My outlook is deeply influenced by the sonic revolutions of the Seventies. I put out 7-8 tapes of purely electronic music before getting to the first Black Tape For A Blue Girl album. And even after finishing “The Rope” I still didn't feel like I'd stepped out of that ambient-electronic phase, and in fact I wanted to go back to it shortly after with “Before The Building Fells”. Those sequencers remained my daily bread for a long time, and even on the B-side of “The Rope” they're front and center. There, I suspect Bowie's method of splitting his albums in half, with one side of songs and another of instrumentals, also played a key role. Eno, on the other hand, blended the two things together, as on “Another Green World”, and that's what I've done from “Mesmerized By The Sirens” onward, like in the middle section of “A Chaos Of Desire” with Vicki Richards on violin.

This new work under the name As Lonely As Dave Bowman arrives a full eight years after the first one. Why did you wait so long to go back into the studio under this name?

Well, I haven't got the faintest idea! Or rather, actually, maybe I do. I think the disillusionment with the music business that built up over the last ten years dampened my enthusiasm somewhat for going back into the studio and recording. A feeling along the lines of “dear, nobody's going to listen to your music anymore, get over it. Why on earth would they?”. Then a few years ago I wrote an erotic novel at a time when I could have been recording instead. And two years ago I started traveling and moving around a lot: both excellent distractions. I only recently decided I had to get my head back into it. Not so much about going into the studio and making music, but about reconnecting with everyone who wanted to hear my music. First I launched a Kickstarter campaign for the vinyl reissue of “Remnants Of A Deeper Purity”. Then this year I set up a fundraiser on Patreon: that allowed me to connect with people who were still moved by what I do, people who wanted new music from me. And that was a huge inspiration, no doubt about it. Connecting with these people was the decisive push to get back to working on new music. And from there, while mainly working on new material for Black Tape, a bunch of good ideas for Dave Bowman came along on their own. Within two weeks I said to myself, “wow, there's a lot more here than what's needed for a new record”.

What does this project represent for you, and what difference do you find, for instance, with the ambient works you've released under your own name (like “The Passage”)?

To me, Dave Bowman is a bit more piercing and harder-edged than the electronic ambient music I've released under my own name. Maybe the difference is imperceptible to many, but it felt right to me to keep them as two separate entities. Steve Roach has about five different styles of electronic ambient that he works in, and they all come out under his own name. Which makes sense in its own way. But, for example, “MONOLITH” definitely couldn't come out under the Black Tape name, even though that might sell four times as many copies. Each name corresponds to a specific sound - see also Revue Noise for my project with Nicki Jaine.

Regarding “MONOLITH,” what kind of images, experiences, moods and feelings did you channel into it?

I started recording the first track back in 2010, along with the first six and a half minutes of “Moon-skimmer.” These pieces existed on their own for a while, waiting for an album to take shape around them where they could find their place. The rest of the album, as I told you, came together in about two weeks, exactly like “POD,” which was born in one: it seems to be something of a constant with Dave Bowman. I like working within these timeframes because it allows the records to stay compact, it gives them that sense of cohesion. I also think electronic music doesn't need to be over-worked. As for the rest… there's desolation, isolation and solitude in massive doses in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Being so far from home, the uncertainty of ever getting back… I tried to capture all of that. And then there's the sound of space, of machines, of asteroids flying by. Finally, I tried to insert something human, Dave Bowman's feelings, miles and miles away from us. He is, after all, a fairly calm and rational character, someone who doesn't put too much emotion into what he does. That's why the tracks didn't take on an emotionally dramatic tone, but rather something closer to the epic.

There is, however, something different, to my mind, between “POD” and “MONOLITH”: where the former evoked a very nocturnal, cosmic soundscape, with slow evolutions built on a few elements and their shadows, here there are far more climaxes, scene changes, contrasts, almost like a stream of consciousness… Would you agree?

Yes. “POD” was built on very few elements and recorded with a single synthesizer that I then processed quite heavily. Whereas “MONOLITH” has about… 7 different sounds! (laughs). I “played” more here, not a lot more, but more, which is why there's more “musicality.” One of the things I enjoyed most, looking back, is precisely making music without having to actually play anything. All I had to do was find a sound, hit a few keys, and then process it and work on it. And you can keep evolving and changing it almost endlessly, so that no other sound ends up being like the one you get in the end. With Black Tape For A Blue Girl there's always that moment that goes something like “okay, so what notes do I need to play now? Will they even sound good together? Where's the chorus and where's the verse? Where's the refrain and where's the solo? Is there room for a vocal line here?”. Bowman couldn't care less about any of that, which to me is fantastic. It really becomes a form of sonic painting. And yes, there are a lot of climaxes and scene changes, because the structures are more complex than on “POD.” It's also a matter of evolving in how I use the instruments and express myself.

Speaking of which, what instruments did you use to work on “MONOLITH”? It struck me as an overall more organic soundscape…

The same stuff I used for “POD.” I never buy new gear (laughs). The most important one is the Eventide / H3000 – D/SX Ultra Harmonizer. It's a digital audio processor designed for guitarists, I believe. I've used it everywhere on Dave Bowman records. I think, in the end, it's actually its use that makes a track feel like it belongs to this project. I've used it on Black Tape records too, but in a more subtle way, for instance for that unsettling sound in “I Strike You Dawn” from “10 Neurotics.” On As Lonely As Dave Bowman records I first work on a sound, or on one or more tracks, and then I run them through the Eventide. Sometimes there are even 4-5 tracks running simultaneously, and that's what creates the spatialization effect. Then I try to fade them out one by one, timing it so they coincide with the entrance of new elements, a bit like flying through space.

The same goes for the organic quality. My voice actually appears at one point in “Moon-Skinner,” and my breathing in the final part of “A Bright Room With Air.” I used piano in one section of “A Memory.” At one point in the book, Dave reflects on his brother's death, who drowned in a river. I thought about him reflecting on that, and on his home, and… maybe there was a piano in the house! If so, he would have also remembered the organic sound of the piano, which would have accompanied him during those six months traveling toward Jupiter, in a surrounding space utterly devoid of life… That's why there's that piano melody running for about fifty-five minutes across the record.

An interesting aspect of “MONOLITH” lies in the choice made for its distribution… Why did you decide to give it away for free on Bandcamp as a first step?

I was curious to see whether the idea of “I can give the album away for free while asking people to back a Kickstarter campaign to get it pressed” could actually work. And the result is that… it works! People are doing both. The problem, unfortunately, is that nowadays a lot of Projekt artists sell at most 300 copies of a record, so it can only really come out as a limited edition. And for an artist who was once used to selling 16,000 copies with a Black Tape For A Blue Girl record, it becomes very… how should I put it… pointless, releasing a record for 300 or 500 people. A lot of artists end up just locking their ideas away in CDs that almost nobody will ever listen to. Giving the album away for free seemed like a workable solution to me, because there's no barrier to entry, no gatekeeping, no selection process. Anyone can download it. Giving it away on Spotify, though, would have been decidedly impersonal. I can't have any kind of connection with people who listen through streaming, and I get a dollar for every thousand plays… With Bandcamp it's different: there are comments, and I can even try to say, “hey, if you liked it, why not lend a hand and help get it pressed with a donation on Kickstarter?”. People are generous when you ask, less so when you demand. There are people who chipped in with donations of 100-200 dollars to the campaign (which will remain open until May 19th, ed.) when 50 would have been enough to get the limited plexibox edition! There are people out there who value music and art, and curiously enough, making the album available for free has allowed me to connect with them.

This choice follows a particular path you started building with Projekt's digital store, where you've released tons of EPs, tracks and samplers for free… How did you come to develop this approach?

For years I kept complaining and grumbling, saying “for people, the perfect price is having things for free.” And I said it with that “time has passed us by” attitude that a lot of artists still have. Then I started thinking about it more deeply: you can't fight progress. As you said, I fought for a long time against records being free. But that's reality: today you have to find a way – and artists first and foremost have to find it – to make music for free. I had a conversation about this with a friend who works in tech, and we talked about the many things that are going to change in the near future. I realized it's more productive to look for a way to keep things running well than to complain that they're no longer the way they used to be. You can't turn back time, and it neither can nor should be the last wisp of steam from a dying engine. “Something's got to change, Sam,” I told myself.

I've followed your battle against piracy for a long time. There's an interesting aspect to this: you were one of the very first people to champion the possibilities of the web and digital technology… back when they hadn't yet become the main terrain for “stealing” music. Since then you've thrown yourself into a number of campaigns to help musicians defend themselves, PETm chief among them (an acronym for People for ethical treatment of musicians, ed.)… Now you seem to have changed your mind again. What's your real position on this?

As Borg said in “Star Trek”: “Resistance is futile!” (laughs)

Ethically, I believe artists should be paid for their work. But Google won that war a long time ago. The battle is lost. Tech companies have wiped out the foot soldiers, and most people will keep paying hundreds and thousands of dollars for phones and internet access, but not a single euro for music. I can't keep fighting like soldiers stranded on some Pacific island. While 90% of the audience keeps drifting toward getting music for free, it makes more sense to focus on that 10% who still feel a connection to artists and keep supporting them. A lot of the artists I've worked with, in this sense, have blinders on! They still believe that if they keep hoping, sooner or later we'll go back to 1996 and start selling thousands of CDs again. The reality is that it's never going to happen.

You know, reading Thich Nhat Hanh helped me understand this too: suffering is a necessary fall that lets you see reality as it truly is. You can't fight reality, because reality is an illusion. And to escape suffering, you have to escape the illusion. Today's new reality tells us that, little by little, we'll stop being paid altogether. You have to accept that, so as not to suffer.

I wanted to focus this chat on As Lonely As Dave Bowman, but I can't help changing the subject for a moment… What does Projekt represent for you today? Which direction do you think it will evolve in over the coming years?

I've deliberately cut back a lot on the time I devote to Projekt and the number of albums I put out. As I told you, a lot of artists struggle to sell even 300 copies of a record. That's dreadful, and most artists will never admit it because it's embarrassing, but I'll be upfront about it, because I want to explain what the reality of being a musician in 2015 actually is. And of running a label in 2015. What's the point of releasing a band's album, after pouring in maximum effort, money and energy, if it wouldn't even sell 100 copies? None — at that point, it makes more sense to spend that time and energy making your own music. Or growing tomatoes in your backyard, which is definitely even more productive!

And… what can you tell me about Black Tape? I keep reading about “new stuff coming soon”, but in the end I lose track. And it's already been 6 years since “10 Neurotics”! Where are you at with the new material?

True, true! I just sent fourteen new songs to my Patreon supporters. Every month they get new material: almost all exclusively instrumental demos, some with viola parts. I don't expect all of them to make it onto the next album, it's still a work-in-progress. I already have an idea for the record, which should come out on double LP and CD. It'll be built around the concept of the LP's four sides, and I'm hoping to finish it by this autumn, though I don't know if I'll have the lyrics ready and the vocal parts recorded by then. We'll see what happens, but yes, something is moving and I'm working on new music. And on my tomatoes, which still take up time! (laughs)

What other, non-musical interests have you found the time to develop over these years?

Well… I think raising my son has probably been the thing I've spent the most time on. Then, well, I like meeting the people I care about, spending time with them, talking with them. Life isn't all about work, even if society forces us to see it that way. I moved to Portland eighteen months ago, a place that's a lot cheaper than Brooklyn, where I can relax more and work less. It wouldn't make sense today to spend 40 or 60 hours a week working, I devote a lot less time to Projekt now. That gives me a lot more time to unwind, to focus on music, to read. I've been reading a ton lately — a few weeks ago I reread “2001: A Space Odyssey” just to give it a refresh. Now I'm diving into “2010”.

Last question: will we have to wait another eight years after “MONOLITH” to see you back in action?

(laughs) No, I don't think so. My hope is always to put out a new Black Tape For A Blue Girl album every 18 months. Basically, I'd love to devote myself only to music. One of the biggest “problems” has been distractions. Whether it's Projekt, touring, promotion, or my son. Falling out of the rhythm of making music is the main drawback in cases like this. I find myself rusty and feel like I have to start all over again, like scratching an itch. But there's one key difference: I've gotten a lot better at making music. And I don't say that out of ego, but these days it's definitely not something heavy or overly demanding. For instance, last week I wanted to work on a transition for the new Black Tape For A Blue Girl record. I had this idea of doing a first side-one-of-four made up of a 17-minute suite, split into four movements. I needed a transition from the third to the fourth movement. I thought, “alright, let's find a sound effect. That way I've got something to start from.” I went back into the studio, dug out one of the CDs I've kept since the Nineties with all my sound-effect archives, rummaged through some sounds (frogs, crickets and wind) and started processing them. I added in some electronic sounds from my Korg Poly-61 and boom, it sounded exactly like Black Tape.

I think at another point in my life I would have struggled to pull through it. Now I have at least two “secrets”: first, I never overthink what I'm doing. Second, I believe in what I'm doing, so I just do it. I think both come from having become a more positive person, with intentions and energy. Qualities I lacked in the past, especially in Black Tape's first ten years, a period full of all sorts of hardships. Don't worry though, my songs still deal with anxiety and troubled relationships, eh! But I think I've become a much more functional person. And musician.

Yes, I've talked a lot, but to answer you: I can imagine another Dave Bowman album within the next eighteen months, yes. If nothing else, because I already have a ninety-minute suite ready, much closer to “POD” than to “MONOLITH”. No climaxes, no scene changes, just one long piece with the same mood. I could release it as a download right away, but I still need to think of a name, even though I already have the cover art. There are plenty of options, I can't complain.

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