Conducted in December 2013. I interviewed Benjamin Duvall, of Ex-Easter Island Head, from as a follow up to our conversation in 2012.
From the piece:
Is music in general defined by its limitations?
Well I think limitations instigate resourcefulness and, in the case of plenty of musicians, innovation. Some people can have ten completely different instruments at their disposal and forty tracks of audio and know exactly what they’re going to do with that, whereas I wouldn’t even get started through indecision. Once you know that there are constraints in place, getting started on something becomes loads easier.
You seem to be trying to use a particular instrument in a way that sounds totally unlike that instrument.
That’s pretty much it — trying to create sounds that are completely alien but still identifiable as music. It’s not so much about trying to constantly hide the fact that we’re playing a guitar – it’s a beautiful instrument – but just being drawn to sounds and ideas that can’t be so easily cross-referenced from the listener’s perspective.
How many iterations of the “Mallet Guitars” model do you think you have in you? Is it something you’ll always keep in mind?
There was always a rough idea to do a trilogy of Mallet Guitars pieces and then to see where we’d go from there. We’re definitely not about to stop using the malleted electric guitar as a basis for sound making, but I think that releasing a record titled Mallet Guitars Four might set us up for accusations of predictability!
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