PACOL. - Their beautiful plunderphonic fantasy

Born almost by chance (the culprit was a Kanye West album that appeared to someone in a dream...), the collective PACOL. has established itself as one of the most interesting and original musical outfits of the year, thanks to "Everyone On Planet Earth, This One's For You. Let's Rock!", a proudly self-produced album that brings to full maturity the idea of plunderphonics/sample-based music, whose purpose is the recontextualization of sound material drawn from the most disparate genres and from everyday life. To dig even deeper into the secrets of a music as adventurous as it is mysterious, we got in touch with Carlos Arrazola aka Tau-9 and Noah Chalfant aka bphax, the collective's most active members. The result is a very long conversation in which, at a certain point, we found ourselves talking about trap, "Stranger Things", the pandemic, identity, "Twin Peaks", universality, and even Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow"...

Let's start from the beginning of your adventure: why did you make your debut with a "creative" remix of "The Life Of Pablo" by Kanye West?

It all happened pretty much by chance: on 4chan we came across an anonymous post in which some guy described a dream he'd had, in which he'd listened to a new album released by Kanye. The album in question was called "The Death Of Pablo", and the post also included information about its content, like the tracklist and the general mood of the various tracks. Pretty much everyone on the forum, including the current members of PACOL., thought the idea was interesting, so we decided to work on it and bring it to life.

What's your musical background?

Noah: I have no formal training on the instruments I use (piano, guitar, synthesizers, etc.), so I guess you could call me "self-taught". In high school I played in the marching band, mostly for social reasons, and I played trombone, though I've never used it on a PACOL. record (or at least not yet). When I started listening to music, I only liked electronic stuff (Boards of Canada, Autechre, the whole Warp Records catalogue), so I never really played in a band, except for a brief stint in high school when I joined an awful indie-rock band. That's probably why starting something like PACOL. felt natural to me: because, from the very beginning, I was on my own, apart from a few online collaborations even before it all started.

Carlos: My musical background is pretty broad and has developed a lot over the years. I started playing guitar when I was 14, and back then I played in programs where, together with other kids, we'd play rock music. After a while, though, just playing left me pretty unsatisfied. What I wanted was to create music, rather than play other people's songs. Later on, I also studied classical guitar for a few years, and I'm currently studying audio technology/engineering in college. So music has been part of my life (and probably will continue to be) even outside the context of making music. I mainly play guitar, bass and drums, but also plenty of other instruments whenever they happen to be within reach.

How would you define PACOL.'s music?

Basically, we like to think of it as plunderphonics/sample-based music. To broaden our sound in a meaningful way, we let ourselves be influenced by genres such as experimental electronic music, hip-hop, ambient and rock, but at the root of our musical vision lies the idea of recontextualization. From the heavy remix-reinterpretation of "The Life Of Pablo" on our first album, to the various samples, recontextualized field recordings and fragments of our personal lives that underpin "Everyone On Planet Earth, This One's For You. Let's Rock!", this is what we've always been about, so recontextualization is at the foundation of our music-making.

In what way has plunderphonics (a form of musical composition based on the use of pre-existing audio recordings, or, as its inventor John Oswald once called it, the "technique and philosophy of appropriation") influenced – if it has – your worldview?

Noah: It's true that our music took its running start from plunderphonics, and it's definitely a strong element of our sound, but we don't consider ourselves a band like The Avalanches or anything like that. Most of our latest album is built on original compositions, and even when we do use samples, they're either altered to the point of being unrecognizable, or they serve as the starting point around which we build a brand new track. Still, the idea behind plunderphonics genuinely interests us. As far as I'm concerned, I believe an artist has to take into account everything around them. Whether I like the way a tree rustles in the wind, whether I'm intrigued by some strange conversation I overhear on the street, or whether instead I focus on something more traditional, like, say, a great funk song, it all happens because, deep down, I know that anything can become music. To me, plunderphonics is much more about form than function. It's a state of mind that pushes you well beyond a keyboard or any given instrument.

Carlos: I'm very interested in plunderphonics and the various forms it can take, from radical reworkings of pre-existing material to create brand-new music, to subtler variations of the same, altering the conceptual structure underpinning a piece of music. That said, I think the way we approached plunderphonics on our latest album differs from how many other artists in this sonic galaxy tend to work, because our samples are usually used more as sources of timbre and texture than as sources tied to a specific chapter in music history. I love sampling as a technique, because it can reduce an entire piece of music down to a single sound; when that sound is set against or bound to other samples, the music gains a depth that no single instrument can replicate. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy using so-called "normal" instruments, though. I use them, for instance, to add more intensity to whatever sound I'm working on, or to make it more layered. Either way, the sheer material richness of a sample is something that, as far as I'm concerned, can't truly be replicated by anything else.

A lot of plunderphonics uses the context in which the source material exists as a starting point for the music, whether as a statement on the original music or simply as a source of inspiration. Many plunderphonic artists work this way, so a large part of the resulting music becomes a direct commentary on, or a development of, the original piece itself (the work of John Oswald or Negativland are good examples of this). This can also apply to some musical movements of recent years, like vaporwave, where the cheap, dated aesthetic of the sampled '80s music is exploited and developed within the creative works of the genre. In short, the music made by many artists using plunderphonic techniques draws direct attention to the sample itself and to its existence as a sample of something else. Sure, there are examples of artists and bands who work differently (The Avalanches come to mind), but most of them use samples in a very simplistic way, intentionally making them sound like "samples" — like something that has, in a sense, been "torn away" or separated from its original context to be dropped into an entirely new one. By doing this, and thus drawing attention directly to the fact that the track is built from something being recontextualized, the recontextualized sample ends up becoming a kind of commentary on the sample as it existed within its original context. In that sense, the latter becomes a sort of "next stage" of the former. Even though we find this approach incredibly interesting — so much so that we explored it directly on "The Death Of Pablo" — on "Everyone On Planet Earth..." we preferred to avoid it. That said, I don't think you can strip the "plunderphonics" label away from it, given that so many of its segments (probably most of them) rely heavily on samples or are built almost entirely out of them.

What kind of samples did you use on "Everyone On Planet Earth, This One's For You. Let's Rock!"?

For this album, we drew on traditional samples as well as field recordings we made ourselves. When we sample music, we alter the audio to the point of making it unrecognizable, effectively turning the samples into a genuine instrument. Some of the samples on "Everyone On Planet Earth...", however, are left relatively intact, and we're curious to see what listeners manage to pick up on. The field recordings, meanwhile, function both as vignettes and as structural elements of the album. To give one example: a section of the album features a sample taken from a choir concert Noah took part in a few years back. There are also various sound bytes and fragments of information about us as people (not as artists) scattered throughout pretty much the whole album. We often work a lot of personal elements into our music, almost as if offering others a kind of window into someone else's life. Sometimes recordings tied directly to our own lives say more than any written lyric could. Since "Everyone On Planet Earth..." took a long time to make, we ended up having to cut a good number of jam sessions, drafts and experiments. Some synth parts, and even a few segments of the album, are actually pieces of music originally written and recorded for earlier projects, and some of the older material dates all the way back to 2018.

What's the main theme running through the lyrics?

The theme of documentation runs through the whole album, from the samples to the lyrics. The field recordings are snapshots caught at a precise moment; once committed to record, they're meant to be preserved over time. The lyrics, on the other hand, often clash in tone or point of view, since they were written over the course of two years. All of this is intentional, though, since one of the album's goals was to become a document of one very specific stretch of someone's life: the transition into adulthood.

Many of the suites on "Everyone On Planet Earth..." deal with different themes. The sixth part ("Tuesday's Gone And Passed Away") is about interpersonal relationships, from friendships to romantic ones. The third ("The Remote Viewer Country Star") explores how technology shapes the way we perceive things. The fifth ("The Superheroes In My Brain Are Here, And They Are Dangerous"), meanwhile, focuses on questions and issues surrounding identity and how personal identity shifts over time. Another major theme is that of totality, or universality. All people go through more or less similar experiences, so even though the album only digs deep into the lives of a few people, we hope that anyone who has listened or will listen to it can find something in it that speaks to who they are too.

"Everyone On Planet Earth..." is split into eight parts. Can it be considered a concept album?

Noah: No, the way we develop ideas is too formless to call it a concept album. At the time we were recording it, both Carlos and I were going through similar experiences, and we were both fixated on particular sonic ideas, which definitely had an impact on the music. If there's a concept underlying "Everyone On Planet Earth...", it's that of universality — of people's attempts to connect with one another.

Carlos: I hate calling it a concept album, because I've always thought labeling things that way (at least as far as I'm concerned) is a bit silly, even though there are certainly guiding principles behind how the album was built, in a way that I think might differ from how Noah reads the record. I'm not entirely sure what the album was "supposed to be" when it was first conceived back in 2018, but by the time it came out, I had an extremely clear and defined vision of what the album was and what it contained. One thing that stops me from calling it a full-blown concept album is that there isn't really a precise narrative or plot tying the different suites together; rather, it's their individual vignettes of moments and collections of thoughts that, mostly drawing on my own life, end up finding a kind of connection. There's no precise conceptual thread linking the different suites, aside from the fact that they draw on the same source material. Also, as the minutes go by, the album generally tends to grow brighter and more hopeful. That said, the continuity within each individual suite is fairly well developed, whether it's a small section centered on my life or sections sharing the same emotional temperature.

One of the album's themes is identity and how personal identity changes over time. In your view, how does music shape our identity? Compared with other musical techniques, do you think plunderphonics has a more intimate connection to the ultimate core of our identity?

Noah: I think music amplifies what I'm already feeling and shapes how I perceive the origin and direction of my emotions. It gives feelings a foundation, so they can more easily develop into an identity. Plunderphonics, having a wider scope when it comes to pinpointing the boundaries of what counts as music and how music can represent human feelings, really opens the door to further experimentation on that front. My identity has certainly been shaped and marked by the music I've crossed paths with throughout my life. Like most people, when I listen to the music I love most, I end up mentally going back to when I was eighteen, and it's precisely that ability to generate such an extreme sense of identification that made me fall in love with it.

Carlos: I think almost all art is, ultimately, a reflection of the Self. That can be obscured and dodged (or at least you can try to do so) in plenty of different ways, but art will always tell you a lot about the artist. When I make music, one of my goals is, in a sense, to cut out the middleman, trying to be truly myself and open, so that listening to the music becomes more than a purely personal activity. This outlook is at least partly tied to the ongoing global situation: I haven't seen anyone my age in person (aside from the painter friend responsible for our latest album's cover) in almost seven months, so music has become, for me, a tool for connecting with others, even if only through discussions online. What better way to further that connection than to make the music itself a reflection of personal identity! I hope that, through our latest album, others can get to know us a little better. As for plunderphonics, even though that's not the approach we took in using it on "Everyone On Planet Earth...", as a whole it has an extremely intense bond with identity, since it's partly a reflection of human culture as a whole. This art form is inherently tied to things people have done in the past, and it's significantly less abstract in its contextual foundation than "rock music", since it's always tied to something concrete. The source of the sample already exists and carries its own history, so plunderphonics too often ends up (even if perhaps unintentionally) becoming a commentary on the sampled material. For "Everyone On Planet Earth...", we only used samples of music we love, so we feel our appreciation and passion for it already comes through in the sampled material.

What role did Ben Casey and Freeman Lattin play on your latest album, instead?

Carlos: Ben Casey handled a bit of production work on the first and last tracks (key production passages were sampled from pieces he'd put together in the past for those same sections). Freeman Lattin, meanwhile, played the various sax parts. Both of them also contributed some vocal "notes" used on the album, though none of them were recorded specifically for the occasion — they came from other contexts. The same goes for many of the vocal "notes" on "Everyone On Planet Earth...": few were actually written and recorded to end up in those grooves. While making the album, both Ben and Freeman (as well as Sam Hulme) proved to be great friends and were always there for us.

Noah: Yes, they're both integral parts of the album, though in different ways. The parts Ben contributed came out of a collaboration of mine with him, and as Carlos and I were gradually clarifying to ourselves the true nature of the album, it became clear that Ben's music was perfect for opening and closing it. I find Freeman's sax to be really important, because it gave the music on "Everyone On Planet Earth..." humanity and variety. Because of our inability to work with live instrumentation (aside from guitar and synth) or, in any case, to call on session musicians, I think any "performance" can prove important to us. All things considered, I love everything about PACOL.: I get to deal with guys who are true friends. Even if the collective's run were to end, I'd be happy just goofing around or twiddling my thumbs with them, and I'd love to meet them in real life. Their influence on my life has proven essential, not just for making the music on this album.

Did you record your second album, "A 55 Minute Message From The Pablo Collective", with the current lineup?

It was a lineup very similar to the most recent one: Noah handled production, Carlos helped him out and also wrote the lyrics and handled the vocals; Sam Hulme, meanwhile, lent a hand with production on one track, Freeman Lattin played sax, while Ben Casey made the album's artwork.

I really like the cover of "Everyone On Planet Earth...". What exactly does it represent?

Carlos: The album cover was painted by a good friend of mine, who also appears in the video for "Untouched" and whose voice can be heard somewhere in "Tuesday's Gone And Passed Away". The artwork was painted around the middle of 2018 (when we'd already started working on the album) and was based on a dream had by another friend of mine, in which the character on the cover dies during a theatrical performance. I've always been someone who trusts the intuition of dreams (my own life has been shaped by them, but so have many of the decisions regarding the album, as well as the inclusion in its tracks of certain material, including the description of some dreams themselves): so that painting was truly perfect for capturing the album's atmosphere, and I asked to use it for the cover.

What's your relationship with hip-hop?

Noah: We're all huge fans, and as should be clear by now, it was hip-hop that brought us together in the first place. The sound I love most is the Memphis sound, the stuff Three Six Mafia, Mack DLE and so on used to make. That stuff is ethereal and low-key, but I love all of it. And of course I love Kanye West, who for me is an inspiration both sound-wise and attitude-wise. Either way, when we launched the PACOL. project, our choice was not to make pure and simple hip-hop, because none of us wanted to be a rapper in the traditional sense and we didn't want to feel limited by picking one specific genre. Still, I think we love the ethos and everything surrounding hip-hop more than anything else: deep down, each of us feels like a b-boy and a punk. But even though we respect the tradition and put in the work for it, right now we don't feel like making hip-hop. For a while now, instead, we've been really interested in synthesizing the sounds of experimental electronic music (Autechre — we LOVE Autechre! — Stockhausen, Oneohtrix Point Never) with those of trap music, and we already tried to put that passion to use on the "Ckyou" EP we released last year. It's a long-running joke project, which sounds like we're trying to make 2030 music before 2030 even gets here...

Carlos: I started seriously appreciating hip-hop when I began listening to music on a deeper level (I mean, no more songs caught by chance on the radio or half-listened to in the car). What has always fascinated me about hip-hop is its capacity for musical invention and the importance it places on lyrics, and that's why I think it's one of the most interesting genres, sound-wise, out there today. Aside from the emphasis placed on rhythm, there isn't one precise hip-hop "sound". More than anything, it's a kind of sonic playground, where lots of different ideas flourish, drawing in various ways from all kinds of genres both past and newer. We've tried to synthesize hip-hop into our sound starting with the remix of Kanye West's "The Death Of Pablo", veering toward a more electronic sound on "55 Minute Message" and the "Ckyou" EP, but partly also on our latest record, as happens, for instance, on "The Remote Viewer Country Star". That said, "Everyone On Planet Earth..." is, so far, our least hip-hop-influenced work, mostly because there's more emphasis on "ambient" and more of a search for "soundscaping". Either way, my wish is to combine all of that with hip-hop music itself. Maybe in the future I'll try experimenting more with its techniques, but for now it's just a hypothesis.

I know you also run solo projects...

Noah: My solo project is a strange creature, because I've always felt closer to a producer than to a true "artist". I mean, I'm definitely both, but my sonic and aesthetic sensibility often takes precedence over songwriting. Still, I'm really proud of what I'm doing solo at the moment. I made a really dense EP ("NHRNSET/DRONED SECTIONS") that nobody has ever listened to, which reproduced a live set I was putting together at the time, but my most important work is the album "Stranger Things Volume Three" (2017), which is basically my personal attempt at recording a better (or at least new) version of the soundtrack to the TV series "Stranger Things", and since the second season was coming out (if I remember correctly) right around then, I decided to get ahead of the third season's soundtrack before it was even made. Obviously, the title is a bit misleading, but I wanted the name "Stranger Things" to catch people's attention, so as to get them to listen to the album. Deep down, I've always felt like a bit of a con artist, even though officially I make more "intellectual" music, whatever that means, because I'm not really into drawing such sharp distinctions when it comes to music. I just want to get my sound out there, and if I need to use a famous name to convince people to listen to it, so be it. That said, right now I'm working on a traditional ambient piece, but I'm already starting to work on more dynamic music. As happened on the latest PACOL. album, I'm pulling in more sonic elements that differ from one another, as well as a lot more reflections of my personality, thereby going beyond the boundaries of ambient or hip-hop. Sometimes I think my solo work is balanced between wanting to make a good album that satisfies me emotionally and sonically, and wanting to feel more like a soundtrack composer or a proper producer.

Carlos: My solo career is pretty limited at the moment. Before "The Death Of Pablo" I'd made a few things, but nothing on its level, so that album was, in a sense, my first real project. Since then, I've done other solo things, but most of my time and energy has gone into the PACOL. albums, because I felt those were the most interesting things I could devote my time to. However, after "Everyone On Planet Earth..." I plan to dedicate myself more to my solo projects, because I want to dig deeper into a new style/kind of music, maybe still influenced to some extent by what I've done with PACOL., though more focused on detail, on production, and slightly more accessible (though I don't intend to sacrifice my artistic integrity). I need to look beyond, because I want to fold a lot of experimental and sound-design-related ideas into a more pop musical canvas, so as to create something truly strange, but also fun and engaging. I still need to work it all out properly, but sooner or later I'll release something to launch this new project of mine.

Five albums you consider essential for understanding the last decade, and why...

Noah: Well, it depends on what you mean by "understanding". In a broad, historical and sonic sense, I think they could be:

Kanye West – "The Life Of Pablo": because it's highly dynamic, production-wise it's marked by a lot of chaotic quirks, and then, in its very structure, it mimics the artist's emotional state.

Oneohtrix Point Never – "Garden Of Delete", for that blend of rage and opacity.

LCD Soundsystem – “This Is Happening”, not just because it's simply fantastic, but because it also serves as a context for observing what's changed over the last ten years (no optimism, no notion of legacy).

Lil Ugly Mane – “Mista Thug Isolation”, for bringing the Memphis sound back into vogue and for blurring the line between parody and homage

Sun Kil Moon – “Benji”, for representing a return to sincerity against ageing and the wall of postmodern malaise.

Incidentally, I left out a lot of great albums (this is exactly why I hate making lists: it's almost emotionally difficult), but the ones I chose all highlight the way an artist generally chooses to represent themselves, and how this is precisely what shapes the structure of their work. From this point of view, “The Life Of Pablo” is the best and biggest example of all.

Carlos: This is a fun question! Here are my picks, off the top of my head...

Autechre – “Oversteps”: for introducing a style of electronic music that's melodic yet experimental, whose influence is still felt today on artists like Oneohtrix Point Never and everyone in the PC music/hyperpop scene (though its influence has reached other shores too).

Chuck Person (Oneohtrix Point Never) – “Eccojams, Vol. 1”: for being the definitive statement of 2010s plunderphonics and for spreading vaporwave around the world, a genre that, besides defining much of the underground in the first half of the last decade, influenced plenty of things well beyond its own borders, thanks to its aesthetic and its sound.

Playboi Carti – “Die Lit”: for creating an album that captures the hip-hop zeitgeist of the late 2010s, and for perfecting the modern phase of trap music, all while delivering an album that's coherent from start to finish, unlike other records in the same genre, which tend to be built more as collections of singles – as is trap canon, after all (Young Thug's “Barter 6” could also make this list of mine, but I think “Die Lit” is a bit more interesting).

Sun Kil Moon – “Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood”: because it's a wildly “open” and personal album, one that breaks the rules of what folk music is supposed to be. But also because it's defined by a new style of lyrical creation, which I suspect will influence a lot of people in the future (as it already has, to some extent, with me).

Kanye West – “The Life Of Pablo”: for perhaps being the single most perfect encapsulation of the 2010s as a whole, both culturally and musically, but also because it's one of the few albums that takes everyone right back to the moment it came out, when it immediately asserted its importance and iconic status.

Carlos, Playboi Carti's “Die Lit” is one of the albums that pushed me to dig deeper into the world of trap. In your view, from a purely musical standpoint, why is it so important within that genre (even though, admittedly, plenty of people turned their noses up at its minimalist approach)?

The great interest “Die Lit” holds for me comes from the fact that it's a hip-hop album entirely focused on the music. The lyrical content is incredibly de-emphasized (though there's still plenty of pathos within it), while the primary elements are the instrumentation, and especially the voice. I reject the claim, put forward by a lot of people, that the album is “carried” by the production and that Carti's presence is therefore superfluous. If it were instrumental, or backed by a rapper not as creative and exciting as Carti is, I don't think the album would be held in as high regard as it is today. It's minimalist in its approach, but it's not bare-bones, since Carti's lush instrumentals and melodies take center stage and fill out the tracks, stripping away a lot of elements that aren't considered so important (lyrical complexity comes first). I find it, on the whole, a fascinating album to analyze, but it's probably even more important than I can fully grasp. And besides, you can listen to it endlessly and it always gives you a ton of fun.

Let's stay in trap territory for a moment: far too many music fans think it's one of the worst (if not the worst!) musical expressions of recent years! As for me, I think it's actually one of the few “sounds” to have truly tapped into the zeitgeist of these troubled times...

Noah: Trap is unique more from a cultural standpoint than a sonic one. Sure, the classic trap hi-hats and Roland TR-808 sound are fascinating and all that, but trap really shines for its capacity to adapt. Right now, there's an unprecedented rate of experimentation happening within it, and that's something I genuinely admire. Within the same genre you've got PeeWee Longway (who's had a huge influence on us too) and Playboi Carti, two artists sitting at opposite poles. I know it's common to mock Carti for being almost incomprehensible, but that's exactly what I love about him: he's so impressionistic! Trap in general is super impressionistic, it's like a Monet painting of a bottle of lean1 , or maybe a Francis Bacon piece dedicated to Atlanta. Trap culture is still alive and well and has produced some genuinely experimental things. Like that song on “Die Lit” with no kick drum at all: it's so strange, but it works! Trap satisfies me completely, because it shakes up the boundaries of texture and structure while also pushing them forward at the same time.

Carlos: I love trap music and I agree with what you said about it properly capturing the zeitgeist of these years. It's basically the sound that dominates mainstream music worldwide, yet it's marked by a huge variety of individual styles. There's the classic Atlanta trap style, pop-rap with trap touches, more submerged things like drill, and you can even spot its influence in Memphis rap. And each has its own interesting qualities that make it unique. I like to think of trap as a macro-genre within the macro-genre of hip-hop, since the latter can be used to describe countless different sounds within a general ethos, and trap plays a similar role, even if the nuances within it are less pronounced. I think it's also important to highlight its roots and its culture: the rise of a platform like DatPiff and the concept of the free promotional mixtape still fascinate me, since prioritizing the music itself, the idea of “getting yourself out there,” of “putting yourself out,” took precedence over financial return (at least in the early stages of a career), and that's something genuinely interesting, something worth being influenced by. And then, to wrap up, trap just sounds great, with those deep basslines, the iconic “trap drum sound” of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, the importance placed on flow: all elements at the core of a genre that knows how to deliver pure fun.

If this pandemic were an album, which one would it be?

Noah: It might be a simplistic take, but it would definitely be Tomorrow's Harvest by Boards of Canada (who are also my favorite band). Listening to it now, in the middle of the pandemic, makes me wonder if BoC are actually time travelers. There's even a song called “Sick Times”! More seriously, though, that album is defined by a strong split between hope and despair, and finding hope within despair is something that, right now, feels incredibly powerful. As they said in an interview, BoC don't see what they described on the album as an apocalypse so much as (and I'm paraphrasing) a “necessary stage” set before our eyes. That's how I think about this year: a difficult, horrible thing, but one we have to face, hoping to learn something, to grow. That's the hope I carry in my heart, and the one that lives inside this album.

Carlos: I completely agree with Noah on this choice: “Tomorrow’s Harvest” is an album I'd always liked but never truly loved, until I listened to it on the first day of lockdown, when worry about the pandemic started to really set in. In that exact moment, I understood what the album had been building toward. Listening to “Reach For The Dead” while walking through a city that was no longer frantic, worried about a virus that, at least at that point, was still very undefined (even though I knew it could potentially cause chaos), is an experience so fitting it hurts — an experience that transformed my relationship with an album I no longer listen to for mere enjoyment. 

And if “Everyone on Planet Earth…” were a book (a novel, an essay, etc.)? Or a film?

Carlos: I think the album is more like a book than a film or anything of that sort. I've often thought of it as a scrapbook album, a collection of memories and “moments” pieced together following a thematic perspective rather than any kind of narrative structure. If it were a film, it would probably be pretty strange: more a series of vignettes than anything resembling a traditional narrative film.

Noah: Yeah, Carlos is definitely right: the album is so personal to us that it basically amounts to a collection of meaningful moments exemplifying what we consider important. I think it could be compared to a winding novel, something like Thomas Pynchon's “Gravity's Rainbow” or the like. The way Pynchon uses a myriad of cultural references and information to build the atmosphere of that novel feels, I think, a lot like the way we make our music. Show don't tell, and so on. So yeah, the album is either a postmodern novel in which we ourselves are the protagonists, or maybe it's one of the strangest episodes of season three of “Twin Peaks”.

Are you already working on the next PACOL. record?

Noah: More or less. A lot of us are about to enter a new phase of our lives. As for me, I'm planning my post-college life, which comes with a lot more responsibilities. Unfortunately, it's hard to put together another two hours of music for an LP if I can't just chill out in my dorm room! And if you add to that the fact that, as far as we're concerned, PACOL. is a platform through which the five of us can create using any artistic medium we like, then it's inevitable that the monikers and line-ups will change. Either way, there will definitely be more material under the PACOL. name, and personally I already have some ideas about what it'll sound like, but this is a period of change for us, so I don't know when it'll be ready. Right now, I'm trying to finish off a kind of second “Stranger Things” and I'm also working on demos for a new album that will feature a wider range of material. So yeah, a lot of things are changing, but there's also a lot to look forward to.

Carlos: My plans regarding new PACOL. material are pretty vague right now. I seriously want to take a long break from making music in a project like this (it took us two years to make “Everyone On Planet Earth…”: seriously exhausting!), so I probably won't be releasing anything with PACOL. in the near future. I'm not completely closing the door on it, because maybe further down the line, when I'm in the right mood, I'll want to do something new with them, but for now it's likely that PACOL. will keep putting out albums with greater involvement from band members who haven't been as active lately. Right now, I feel like I need to focus more on my solo work.

Notes:

1. The term “lean,” also known as syrup, purple drank or sizzurp, is used to refer to a recreational drug made from a mixture of cough syrup containing codeine, promethazine or both, combined with a soft drink. (Wikipedia)

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