This series of blogs is called IN PASSING, and in it I'll be interviewing bands/artists I love and trying to shed further light (in the small ways I can) on their music to give anyone who may come across this a reason to listen to them. I want to focus on smaller music that deserves more attention than it gets. All blogs in this series will include an unabridged (yet, slightly edited) interview with the artists and a small write-up from me. As always, send music, shows, suggestions for artist interviews, and anything ever that you want to talk about or see covered to [ fosterhildingmusic@gmail.com ] or DM me on Instagram.
In March of 2024, Kiva and I, alongside Dead Mothers Collective were honored with the incredible opportunity to document a really beautiful show at Non Plus Ultra in Los Angeles, California featuring Apesma, August, Sad Gods, and Big Brown Cow. We interviewed August about his swelling post-rock and experimentation. This one is going to be a little shorter since everyone was unbelievably tired.
Since Kiva and I both asked questions--my lines will be left-justified and hers will be right-justified.
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| photos courtesy of August. |
What does the future look like for your music? August, Triage, any other projects?
So the future for August--currently I am beginning to write songs for my next album, which is tentatively called Flesh and the Devil after an old film from the 1920s. The songs that I played tonight are kind of beginning pieces to that. They're still in the process of being written, so I'm pretty early into that. It'll probably take me a year to do that.
For Triage, it's hard to say because there are a lot of factors involved in making that band function. Every member's in a bunch of different bands, so we're kind of all over the place all the time. Two of the members are in the band, Careen, who just came through here last week. But, there's definitely a trajectory with August that's going into bigger, longer-form songs, similar in style to Triage, so it's kind of coming full circle.
What role does improvisation play in August, and what does that look like during the recording process?
Improvisation has been kind of an interesting thing because the first five studio albums that I did are largely from the ground up demoed. I come in and I just play an idea, and then I build on top of that, so it's improvisation in the sense that it's spur-of-the-moment ideas put on top of each other. With this current series of stuff that I'm writing, I'm actually sitting down and thinking about each individual part before I record it, so it's a lot more methodical. Improvisation is still making its way in as far as the spaces from section A to section B, where it's like the amalgam in there.
How much of your live performances is improvised?
For this set of shows, I would say not a lot. I'd say it's probably about 25%. For previous tours I've done, it's show-to-show. Some shows I show up and it's a full improv set. I did a tour where I had a band with me on keyboards and vocals and then another keyboard player and then a drummer, and that was full improv. Every set we'd do was just a 25-minute improv set, and we did a whole tour like that. It really varies. It depends on where I'm at.
When you're writing new music, how much is in your head before you start playing it?
There's like a grand vision. Usually I come up with the idea of my album and what I want it to "look like." That starts with like names of albums, names of songs. I'll name songs before I write the songs and stuff like that. It's an interesting thing because I kind of look at it like a painting and all the songs are little details within the painting. The album itself is the big image at hand.
What do you feel is the ultimate communicator of emotion, instrument or lyric? What are the advantages and disadvantages of both?
About two years ago I probably would have said lyric. Right now I'm a little bit more on the instrument side. I've had a couple albums that are pretty lyrically-dense, but usually it's pretty instrumentally-dense. I kind of use that to communicate most of the emotions at hand. As far as the advantages and disadvantages, when it comes to lyrics I think that people--you can become too literal in your lyrics and then people can't find their own--there's no way to relate to the music, or you can be too vague and people are going to not see what you're trying to convey or be able to grasp their own idea of it. With instruments, I think there's a large portion of people who maybe aren't used to listening to a lot of instrumentally-dense stuff. For example, dissonant sounds, a lot of people are very quickly dismissive of it. Even though the tension, that discomfort, is an emotion itself. Yeah, that's an advantage and a disadvantage.
What is your favorite project you've worked on so far?
The Triage album (Paimon) is the one that I get the most response out of. People tend to come to me about that one the most. Even still, it's been like five years since I released it. It's still the one that people remember the most. I think as of my project with August, it's probably Heaven's Gate, the last album I released--just because I think the albums that all came before it were trying to do what it did. It kind of just hit the apex of it. After I did that I was like, "cool, I'm done with this vision. I've been trying to achieve for the last year. Now I can move on finally." It felt like I finally actually realized it.
Thank you, August, for the great music and your time. Thanks everyone for reading. You know the drill.
-Foster
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