Tim Story - Three Steps from the Moon

I'll start with a very personal note: you're basically the first musician I remember encountering in childhood. Being able to interview you here is something truly special! But it had actually been a while since I'd heard anything new from you… In the years between "Buzzle" and the two new collaborative works, what were you working on?

Both! I worked on "Snowghost Pieces" starting from sessions in Montana in 2012, and on "Lazy Arc" with Roedelius over about four or five years. Oddly enough, after such a long process, both ended up being finished almost simultaneously. It might look like I had a quiet spell, but the truth is these records took quite a while to complete!

These are two works made alongside both former members of Cluster respectively. A band with which I imagine you have a double relationship: an "indirect" one, as a fan of their music, and a "direct" one, given your long-standing collaborative history with Roedelius…

Yes, I'm both an admirer of their musical path and an artist lucky enough to have become friends with them. The projects I've shared with both of them have done a lot to strengthen our relationship. As for Cluster, though, I believe they were among the best artists of that influential German scene of the Seventies. They've often been somewhat overshadowed by the success and the cult status of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, but despite that they absolutely deserve a place among the greats, right alongside them.

With Roedelius in particular you've built a deep, lasting relationship, one that I imagine goes beyond simply making music together… When and how did you two meet?

In 1983, exactly! I had always been a huge admirer of his solo work, as well as of his output with Cluster, obviously. We exchanged a few letters, and once I finished my second album, “Untitled”, I decided to set everything else aside and devote myself entirely to music. I traveled around Europe for a few months, and Achim (Roedelius, ed.) was kind enough to invite me to meet him. I stayed with him and his family for a week, and it's wonderful that he's wanted to keep our friendship going ever since!

There's one thing about Roedelius that amazes me: the fact that, well past eighty, he still has the energy, the ideas and the inspiration of a twenty-year-old. What do you make of that?

Yes, he celebrated his eightieth birthday just a few months ago! He has what I'd call an absolutely natural connection with music and with sound in general. I think it's that approach that keeps his music feeling so fresh: he's not someone who gets trapped by habit, the way many others would at his age. He manages to "feel" music in a myriad of different ways.

I think both “Lazy Arc” and, especially, “Snowghost Pieces”, are decidedly complex, nuance-rich works, as well as two of the least accessible records to bear your name… Would you agree? How did they come about?

“Snowghost Pieces” started out as an open invitation from Brett Allen to record at his studio, up in the mountains of Montana. Jon Leidecker had already worked with him, and I'd long wanted to try putting something together with Moebi (Moebius, ed.), after the experience of Cluster's “Qua”. So it all came very naturally, the fruit of a wonderful opportunity. “Lazy Arc”, on the other hand, grew out of a series of tracks recorded with Joachim during the “Inlandish” sessions. We'd built up quite a few pieces, longer than the short, structured ones that ended up on that record, which showed a completely different approach on our part, and I wanted to work on them and bring them back.

“Snowghost Pieces”, in particular, is truly light years away from what has, over time, become your classic sound – a sound you've actually gradually moved away from since “Shadowplay”. What was your contribution on the compositional side?

It really was a collaboration between the three of us, through and through. I've always loved rhythmic music, and this was a great chance to step outside the lines and work with complex, really interesting grooves, and to engage with a new way of approaching music. Musically, Moebi is someone who loves to live in the moment, while Jon and I are closer to the "perfectionist school" (laughs)… So for me, what came out of it in the end was a great mix of brilliant in-the-moment inspiration and intricate, convoluted rhythmic settings.

What instruments did you use to create the soundscape? It's easy to imagine a very organic set of instruments alongside plenty of synths…

Brett's studio is packed with all kinds of instruments, all of them fantastic. There's a bit of everything on the record: guitars, piano, mellotron, tons of toys and various found objects, alongside synths and analog machines. It really is a fairly complex and curious soundscape!

Both records sit fairly close to the current trajectories of kraut sound, which in recent years seems to be getting rediscovered in its purest forms. I gather you've always been fascinated by that sonic universe, is that right?

Both Jon and I deeply admire the kraut-rock era, and we definitely both had those vibrations in mind while recording and working on the record. We wanted to create something with that kind of aesthetic, something forward-thinking and free-minded, something modern – I'd even say post-modern!

“Snowghost Pieces” comes out on Bureau B, a label doing incredible work rediscovering kraut gems. What do you think of what they do? Did you come to them through Moebius?

Yes, Bureau B has really done great things with all those reissues of wonderful records, and by promoting new music both from those veterans and from younger artists connected to that world. Gunther, the label's boss, is doing an excellent job and managing to open up new avenues for artists connected to those sounds. As for us, once we'd finished “Snowghost Pieces” it simply felt like Bureau B was the perfect home for it.

Going back to Cluster, some people have said and written that you were the real mastermind behind their 2007 reunion… Elsewhere, though, I've read statements of yours in which you admitted to having contributed very little on the sonic side during the making of the album. So what's the truth?

I think it lies somewhere in between. I believe both Moebi (Dieter Moebius, ed.) and Achim (Roedelius, ed.) had faith in me, and that's why I felt comfortable offering them ideas, suggestions, opinions. Knowing their sound inside out, I believed and hoped I could work well with them, and I tried to stay as faithful as possible to the aesthetic that made them great, while at the same time capturing the best of what they can do together.

In one of the earlier questions, I mentioned the major change of direction your music took after “Shadowplay”. What happened at that point in your career?

I suppose I was left a bit breathless. “Shadowplay” was basically the culmination of what I'd been doing across my three albums for Heart Of Space. All three started from similar premises, and on all three I'd developed the same ideas, and a certain kind of sound, in different ways. With “Shadowplay” I felt I'd reached the peak of that exploration, the highest point I couldn't go beyond. That's why I wanted to try following new stimuli, testing myself with new ideas that had evolved over time. I'll tell you this, though: I never imagined I'd end up straying so far from that sound, nor did I expect to stay away from it for so long!

In particular, I remember being almost shocked listening to “Buzzle”, a work I still consider a genuine breaking point between your past and what is now your artistic present. What did that album represent for you, and how did you arrive at such a different sonic substance from everything you'd done before?

I simply felt like exploring a series of new musical languages, more peculiar, more idiosyncratic, more geared towards a freer approach both in the sounds and, above all, in the rhythm. I'd gotten quite into certain electronic music that was going around at the time, and I liked the idea of trying my hand at it directly, testing out various combinations. I read it more as a return to the attitude of my very first works, with a whole series of differences tied to the variety of new sounds and instruments, which steered me toward equally uncharted territory. And yet, despite that, there's nothing chaotic or improvised about it! Even though the sounds tend to seem rather alien, what I wanted to do was rather to renew and “free” my idea of composition, enrich it with new meanings.

What (or who!) influenced you in this shift? Do you still feel connected to the music you made in the first phase of your career?

Honestly, I don't see all that much of a difference. “Lunz”, one of the records with Roedelius, for instance, is something of a synthesis of that sound and the more angular explorations of “Buzzle”. I think it also helped a lot to see that so many musicians of my generation weren't moving away from their usual style, and seemed if anything to just get softer as they got older. I wanted to make sure I kept pushing toward what really interested me, without falling into the trap of setting myself boundaries or limitations, or staying tied to those records of mine that had become famous and had “defined” my career up to that point.

By the way, let's jump back to your first steps as a musician… I've heard that you started out as a sound engineer: is that true?

No, actually it isn't, even though I've often read that in the specialist press too. I had a pretty crazy home set-up, which is what I started out with towards the end of the Seventies. As an excuse to build myself a proper studio, in the Eighties I did some work with TV and radio for advertising, but just to be able to have a bit of money and something to eat. My heart really wasn't in it, and that experience didn't last very long.

I discovered “Threads” after getting to know your other work, and I found it was something very different from what you did afterwards… How did the soundscape of that album take shape?

(Laughs) Out of the crazy home studio I told you about earlier! I'd managed to put together a bunch of electric and electronic instruments and I threw in everything: an old 4-track recorder, a few guitars, an old PAiA synth kit that my girlfriend's father at the time had assembled for me. And then, well, I used tape loops, mostly to slow down the guitar sounds, an old second-hand vibraphone and a bunch of kitchen utensils – basically anything I could get my hands on that could make a sound.

What were your points of reference at the time?

Well, it would be a long list: Robert Wyatt, Roxy Music, Bartok, Satie, Debussy, Elvis Costello, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Steve Reich, Can, Cluster, Popol Vuh, Kraftwerk, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Coltrane, and a million others I'm surely forgetting. I worked for a while in a record shop around that time, so I was directly exposed to a huge amount of wonderful music. It definitely had a massive impact back then, in getting me started down my own strange path.

From “In Another Country” onward, you began developing a unique musical style… What happened within you, and consequently in your music, between “Threads” and the records that followed? How did you arrive at that sound?

I think there were only a handful of tracks on “In Another Country” that really mattered to me – one, for instance, is definitely “On the Green Cays.” Developing an organic language made of rich melodies and harmonic interludes, together with rediscovering the piano, really pointed me down that road. “Untitled,” the following album, is probably the one that marked the biggest turning point, the one where I felt I was truly getting closer to the aesthetic and emotional feel I wanted to achieve.

I literally fell in love with “Three Feet From The Moon” and “Untitled,” two works I consider complementary, which have always seemed to me like the same subject seen from two different angles… What do they represent for you, instead?

They were important turning points in my career, “Untitled” especially. I finally started being able to hear these controlled, restrained compositions as true compositions. I spent an enormous amount of time trying to make them as concise as possible, picturing this perfect world made of tiny miniatures, like strange but organic life forms, where it was hard to tell exactly which elements were synthetic and which were acoustic. At the time I was heavily influenced by American minimalist composers, and I wasn't interested in building long odysseys of flowing sound with a few ideas scattered and lost over the long haul. I wanted to distill only the best ideas and channel them into direct, short pieces that were as perfect as possible.

Another pivotal moment in your career is the one that separates “Glass Green” from “Beguiled.” It was your first hiatus, only four years but still a significant one. Had something happened to you?

I think at the time I got a bit scared by the pressure of having to follow up “Glass Green,” because I'd put out a record on Windham Hill, a major, important label here in the States at the time! On top of that, in those years I was also working on the soundtrack for an animated film, “The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow,” which took up quite a bit of my time. And my first daughter had just been born. All in all it was a rather full period, and I needed a break.

“Beguiled” also marked an important evolution in your sound, and I know that a lot of people today consider it your masterpiece… What do you think?

I like it too! I'd finally reached the point of being confident enough to ask some excellent musicians to collaborate with me. Martha Reikow was especially key – she played cello with me and started contributing to my work right on “Beguiled.” I had the chance to take the dialogue between acoustic and electronic instrumentation to a new level, I'd say an “orchestral” one in a sense, certainly a very elegant one. And my skills as a composer, if we can call them that, had also developed a great deal.

Personally I love “Beguiled” a lot, but maybe even more its twin “The Perfect Flaw.” I consider them the two most complete culminations of the sonic exploration you carried out throughout the first phase of your career. Would you agree?

Yes, those are the works where I finally arrived at something I'd been trying to achieve for years. They definitely represent the deepest, most complete culmination of that immersive compositional language I'd been trying to perfect since the start of my career.

What role did bringing in genuine acoustic instruments play in your soundscape?

I think it was a huge step forward, one that made my sound much more expressive, organic and subtle. Technology had also made huge leaps since my early days, letting me get as close as possible to that idea of fusing electronic and acoustic sounds that I'd always been after.

Which instruments did you use in particular back then?

I always wrote at the piano, and I used synthesizers like the analog MemoryMoog, the Kurzweil K2000, a lot of samples I'd processed myself, and various effects generators to shape and mold the sound.

You released both of those records with Hearts Of Space, not just a label but a genuine hub where, over time, all the trajectories of American ambient music – and beyond – converged. What do you remember about those days?

I have to say I was always a bit of an outsider to all that. When Windham Hill changed ownership, and Will Ackerman, who loved my music, stepped down, the label took on a less adventurous direction and didn't want to continue our professional relationship. I knew about Hearts Of Space, but I lived in Ohio, pretty isolated from that scene, which had its beating heart on the West Coast.

One of the most interesting things about your music is how impossible it is to pigeonhole. It's a blend that manages to be so hard to define and yet so accessible, refined yet spontaneous. Have you ever become aware of this yourself?

Those are very kind words. Comments like this mean the most to me. All this "entertainment" going around these days seems intent on flattening every kind of correspondence: it manipulates the audience, making any deeper contact between artists and those who enjoy their art impossible. I've never wanted to make music that could be defined too easily, but what I like to think is that whoever's listening brings something of their own to it, finds their own personal connection with the music. It's music, moreover, in which darkness and irony coexist, always ambivalent, and I hope it's "open" enough to suggest more than it can explain. The art I love has a kind of troubled beauty, exactly like everything concerning human existence. It has a resonance in me that I can barely put into words, and certainly can't explain. Art like this can mean a whole range of different things to each person. When someone tells me they've listened to one of my pieces fifty or a hundred times and found it different every time, that's the best compliment I could ever get!

How much of Tim Story the man can we find in Tim Story's music?

I think I'm definitely more boring than the music! (laughs)

Where do you draw inspiration from for your track titles? And what relationship do they have with the music?

Titles are something instinctive for me, but definitely important. I hope they can suggest something about the music, but I certainly don't want to risk imposing a concrete image on the listener. My music isn't the kind that can be tied to a single place or event, it's more of a personal landscape. So the title can only offer one possible interpretation, a sort of poetic rather than literal connection. Usually they're phrases that are as interesting as they are elusive, which I hope manage to capture a feeling or a memory, or reflect an image that, like the music, won't be easy to describe. To me that's a much more interesting approach than calling an album "The Pacific Ocean Suite" or something like that.

Speaking of which, have you ever felt close to that musical movement some call "new age"?

No, absolutely not. I worked for many years and produced quite a few records well before that label caught on. At first I thought being associated with that term wasn't such an annoying thing, and I have to admit it actually helped me gain some popularity. But after a while, the differences started becoming obvious. I've honestly never cared for those tracks made of esoteric, spacey, floating textures where the music itself was essentially missing. And I consider them very different from the short, concise, intense compositions I worked on for years. The most annoying part is that after spending years and years trying to develop a musical style entirely my own, one that was hard to reduce to any single definition, along came the term "new age" and swallowed everything up, including my music. I think it was a truly harmful phenomenon, one that boxed people's interpretation into a dead end. It also put me at risk of ending up trapped in that limiting grip that forms when audiences start following you for the "name of your music" and for what they expect to find on your records. My music was tonal, melancholic in a way, and partly performed on synthesizers: so I ended up in the same watertight compartment as others – like Harold Budd or Wim Mertens – who made music that was just as evocative and melodic, and had just as little to do with new age. In the end it was nothing more than a sneaky shortcut for journalists, and it took quite a while before things were finally sorted into their proper categories. I have to admit it's really satisfying today to read reviews in which that term finally doesn't show up anymore!

Along with Roedelius, the other great partnership of the recent years of your career is certainly the one with Dwight Ashley. Did he also have some role in steering you toward a new stage in your art?

Dwight has been a great friend for many years, and working with him has given me the chance to let out the darker, more abstract and experimental side of my music. Like Joachim (Roedelius, ed.), Dwight (Ashley, ed.) has a completely different way of listening to music than I do, and that's been crucial in opening up new possibilities for me and introducing me to new territory.

You took your first steps alongside a generation of American artists who would go on to write the history of atmospheric music. Names like Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, Kevin Braheny and so on. Did you ever feel close to that whole American scene?

No, honestly not. First of all because I've always worked alone, miles and miles away from California. Second, because the aesthetic of those improvised space suites was something I wanted to distance myself from quite strongly, following a path more devoted to minimalism than to the Berlin School. I liked what Jeff Greinke was doing at the time, instead, on works like "Cities In Fog", and I really appreciated certain things by Michael Stearns, like "Planetary Unfolding". But in general I've always been more interested in personal space than in galactic space. The concept of ambient music, on the other hand, is so vast that being associated with it was never a problem. Especially since I was aware that immersive environments were a fundamental component of my compositions.

I recently saw some photos of you playing live with Roedelius and Ashley... When were those from?

We've played together quite a few times, most recently in Philadelphia, Detroit and Cincinnati. One of the best shows was actually the one in Philadelphia: me, Achim (Roedelius, ed.) and Dwight (Ashley, ed.) played together, then he played with Dieter (Moebius, ed.) as Cluster, then we all got back together for a shared encore. With Roedelius I've been lucky enough to play often, especially in Europe: London, Vienna, at the Big Chill Festival in London, even in Kosovo and Albania.

I enjoyed your performance at Ambicon from afar, the festival where Hearts Of Space celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. How was that experience for you?

Well, it was very gratifying, even though I was a bit scared! It was my first time playing solo live, and it's pretty complex to reproduce my music. I chose a set of tracks I could actually play, I wasn't interested in just twiddling some knobs and manning a laptop. Having Jeff Pearce on guitar helped a lot, though.

You played quite a few tracks from “Beguiled”… Was there a particular reason behind that choice?

Definitely because it was a Hearts Of Space festival, so I wanted to focus mainly on the three albums I released for them, plus a little something from “Glass Green”. Also because “Beguiled” contains a lot of my favorite and simplest tracks, which were easy for me to reproduce with Jeff as well.

You've never played in Italy, though. Will you come, sooner or later?

I hope so! It would be great to come with Joachim (Roedelius, ed.) and play something from my solo work and something from “Lunz”, maybe!

Are you planning any shows at the moment, maybe a trio with Moebius and Leidecker?

I'd like that, although we haven't talked about it yet! Nothing definite so far.

What other projects are you focusing on?

I absolutely want to make a new solo album. It's been quite a while since “Shadowplay”, and I'd like to revisit that aesthetic, adding in what I've learned over these ten years. The collaborative works have been very rewarding, but now I feel the need to shut myself away in my little room for a while and see what comes out of it.

At the end of this long chat, let me ask you the hardest and most pointless question, just for fun: what's your favorite Tim Story record?

I have no idea! I could give you a different answer every minute, although I'd probably always point to either “Beguiled” or “Shadowplay”. Then there's also “The Perfect Flaw”, which contains two of the pieces I'm proudest of, namely “Lydia” and “Broken Alphabet”. Finally, I'm definitely happy with “Lunz”, which I think has a strange, distinctive beauty.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google