Panoptique Electrical: Emotional Landscapes

Panoptique Electrical’s Jason Sweeney may be partial to the odd bit of furniture music, but that doesn’t mean he’s anti-pop. He speaks to DOUG WALLEN about his thematic new album 'Yes To Fear, Year To Desire', his love of melody and his shift away from being a studio-based project.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] From last year’s Let The Darkness At You to new album Yes To Fear, Year To Desire, Panoptique Electrical has evolved from an outlet for Adelaide musician Jason Sweeney’s scores for film, theatre and art projects into a proper recording outfit. And it’s evolving still as Sweeney enlists guitarist Jed Palmer, cellist Zoe Barry and electronics twiddler Tristan Louth-Robins for live shows and future albums.

Instrumental and wonderfully sweeping, Yes To Fear, Year To Desire evokes a swelling warmth with its mediations on the themes of, yes, fear and desire. The compositions exists someplace in the narrowing gulf between classical and ambient music, with ghostly piano operating as an anchor. Familiar to some for his work in projects like Pretty Boy Crossover, Luxury Gap and Mist & Sea, Sweeney has made Panoptique Electrical his central focus without sacrificing a quite prolific and well-rounded life in the arts.

Why did you split the album into thematic halves around fear and desire?
Well, I’ve been working on a film- and sound-based project with a writer over the last year, based around the idea of fear and desire. And I continued [working on those ideas] while I was away on an artists residency at the end of last year in Perth. It just seemed to unfold, really. And when I sent it to Steve [Phillips] at Sensory Projects and explained the themes, he came up with the title. Then it seemed really clear that the album could be broken into two parts. I don’t think it’s an obvious thing, and it’s not a concept album or anything. It’s just a subtle shift in thinking about the record.”

When you brought the album to Steve, had the tracks already been named?
No, they came after. As with the first Panoptique Electrical album, I handed them over to Steve. As well as doing the artwork, he comes up with all the titles. There’s usually one or two that I already have names for, and they seemed to work in the mix of titles that Steve [thought up]. It’s a way of letting go of control for me. It’s surprising to me, too, because he’ll come up with names I would even never think to apply to these pieces of music.

My favourite track is ‘The Queen of Iceland’. The title really fits this shivering quality of some of the tones.
I think he was dedicating that one to Björk. [Laughs] It’s a nice title, and again, I would never think of that.

Is ‘Hyvonen’ a reference to the Swedish singer-songwriter Frida Hyvönen?
Yes. It was interesting because I had never heard of her. I got to go back and listen to the music she’d done. It was a nice surprise. With the last album too, Steve referenced artists whose work I’d never heard.

How did this album come together in comparison to Let The Darkness At You?
This one was written very much as an album, as opposed to the first one, which was a kind of collection and rediscovery of music I’d made for people. The first one made the idea of Panoptique Electrical come to life. It was actually the name I applied to my very transient studio. Because I’d begun writing these other pieces at the end of last year, I realised that this could be an ongoing project. I’ve also invited three other musicians now, after writing that record. This was definitely written purely as an album. Except for one piece of music [‘Some Rooms Become Us’], none of them have actually featured in any other [forms]. But the great thing about doing these records is that people often hear them and ask to use a [track] in a dance piece or film.

Do you play everything on the album?
I do, yeah. [Laughs]

As you write pieces, do you keep in mind how they can be played live with the band?
I worry about that later. Well, I didn’t worry about it at all, actually. [Laughs] Because it’s so multi-layered in terms of the instrumentation, I haven’t really been interested in it being more than a studio-based project. The live version of Panoptique Electrical is something quite different, but definitely reflective of that music. The tour we just finished was [simply] a reference to [Yes To Fear, Yes To Desire]. It became its own thing, and new pieces started to evolve out of pieces on the album. It’s not, for me, as enjoyable to have something replicated in a live context. I’m much more interested in it being a listening experience on the record. And then the live thing would be a different experience.

“At the end of the day, I just really love melody and the way it works with harmony and structure as much as I love drone music. I just can’t escape from wanting to make something tuneful and something that can be refrained.”

And the live lineup is guitar, cello, keys, and various electronics?
Yeah, exactly. And that’s pretty much the setup from this point on. With the other three people, it’s kind of formed a quartet now, for want of a better word. The next phase of Panoptique Electrical will be the four of us [Jed Palmer, Zoe Barry and Tristan Louth-Robins] writing and recording together, which is good for me because it will shift away from being purely a recording process in a studio.

In this past, how have you gone about constructing each song?
This record was really built around ‘Some Rooms Become Us’. I started to write a whole series of pieces based around the chord structure I’d used in that piece. I was using pretty much the same chords, but I would reinterpret things or change the key. Two of the pieces were extracts of another piece, which then built into a new piece. It’s a process of experimentation and building and listening, without it being a prewritten or preconceived idea. It happened quite gradually and intuitively, I guess.

Is the piano crucial to those early stages?
Yeah, it really is. I’ve always been a frustrated piano player. [Laughs] Any time I had access to a piano, I’ve definitely sat down at it and tried to write on it or use it as an instrument to experiment with. Definitely with this record, it seemed to be a stronger element for me. And I think it’ll probably be the instrument we’ll go back more and more [when] it’s the four of us. Even in other musical projects I’ve done, piano or keyboards has been the instrument I’ve been more interested in writing with. In some circumstances, I have actually have a real piano [to play live], which is nice. Or else it’s a recreation of that sound, as authentically as possible.

The compositions on Yes To Fear, Yes To Desire are often quite short. They have a lot of scope to them, but they’re succinct.
It’s partly to do with [not] dragging on for a long time. It does happen instinctively, where it says what it needs to say and I don’t need to keep going. I also like the tension of writing something that feels like it’s going to keep going somewhere, but then it stops or fades and moves into another piece. And I’ve always loved really short piano pieces. In a way it’s like the Erik Satie way, like furniture music. Just short pieces that are evocative and moody but sort of have their pop structure of three minutes and 30 seconds or less. It’s interesting, a couple of people have been frustrated because the pieces didn’t go on long enough, but I think sometimes with experimental or instrumental music, it takes its duration to extremes. I was conscious of doing a mix on this record, where there were longer pieces mixed with, like, refrains, rather than 12 seven- or eight-minute pieces.

It’s funny that you should mention pop, because the album could already be viewed as classical, ambient, or even shoegaze. Do those different styles inform it at all?
Absolutely. My background, really, is in pop-oriented music. Even with Pretty Boy Crossover, it’s still very much instrumental, but using a verse-chorus structure. At the end of the day, I just really love melody and the way it works with harmony and structure as much as I love drone music. I just can’t escape from wanting to make something tuneful and something that can be refrained. I suppose it’s all really subjective. Like that track ‘Hyvonen’. Someone said they were humming it around the house all day. [Laughs] That’s great. It’s what happens with a pop song, where it hooks into you. Again, it’s like the furniture music thing, where it’s kind of like pop music but taken up by classical music.

There’s still a great deal of open space and subtlety to the pieces.
Yeah, that’s right. But I think I definitely listen to things in a way that’s closer to pop structure.

Do you listen to a lot of scores and soundtracks?
I do. I’m a big fan of particular composers. There’s a guy called Mychael Danna who does lots of soundtracks, particularly for the filmmaker Atom Egoyan. And Angelo Badalamenti, who does [David] Lynch’s soundtracks. When I go and watch films, I’m very attuned to how sound is used or not used. When people ask to use bits of music I’ve done in films, I’m always conscious of [the music] not interrupting the film [but rather trying] to inform an emotional response. When it works, it really works. Those two composers in particular are great at being able to do that. They definitely had an influence on Panoptique Electrical.

Along with Pretty Boy Crossover, you’ve worked in the projects Luxury Gap and Mist & Sea. What’s the status of those, and how does each compare to Panoptique Electrical?
Mist & Sea in particular is a pop project, really. It’s with [Underground Lovers singer] Vincent Giarrusso. It’s a casual thing. It happens when it happens. We did an album two years ago, and we’ve been writing recently. But probably the closest project, and the one that’s an ongoing concern, is Pretty Boy Crossover. I often think of Panoptique Electrical as Pretty Boy Crossover with all the beats and core electronic elements taken away from it. I suppose what I do in Pretty Boy Crossover is the melodic keyboards, and Cailan [Burns], the other half of it, is very much beat- and sample-oriented. So it’s been a way to extract myself from the temptation of using beats or those elements. Luxury Gap is a project I do with a Melbourne-based woman called Nicole Lowrey. That’s more like an art project, where we get together and make short films. [The projects] all have a theme. Compared to Panoptique Electrical, they’re floating at the moment.

And you told me earlier that you’re headed to Brussels?
Yeah, for five weeks. I’m going there for an artists residency. I work with a group called Unreasonable Adults, which is a collective of artists. One of us is based in Brussels, so we’re working on a sound- and film-based project over there. I’ll have access to a grand piano, which I’m very excited about. The other thing I’ll be doing there is working with a Belgian sort of dance/theatre company. I’ve been composing music for them. I’ll be there for the final stages of rehearsal, to offer feedback up to the point where they open the show in Brussels. It’s pretty exciting.

+

Panoptique Electrical’s Yes To Fear, Yes To Desire is out now on Sensory Projects/Inertia.