Untitled

Sidestep Complex

Interview by C. VanWinkle

May 10, 2022

What was the prompt that you two responded to? Can you describe it for me?

DAN: It was like a doodle of sorts. How would you describe this?

ELIZABETH: The art was black and white and gray, just a swirl of shapes, faces, gestures… We wrote about it. Do you want us to quote from our list of words that we used to describe this piece?

Yes, please!

D: When we first looked at the image, we wrote down these words: untitled, swirling, swoop, conversation, confrontation, springs, teardrop, onlooker, daydream, sudden jagged sweeps, carnival, jester, waves that never crash, twisted moonlight, and shadow dancers. So that’s what we gathered.

I love that. Your piece is instrumental, so to have this stream-of-consciousness list of words to back it up is really cool.

E: I don't know anything about this artist or what chain of events has led it here, but that's the context. Not all of the gestures to me seemed very friendly. I feel like the artist is going through a lot and might be feeling like I feel, pulled into this scrutiny. I don't know how they made this. It would be interesting to know what their mediums were and how they layered each, because some of it is very playful as well. Maybe this movement in the work is really the message here. There's just so much action in the foreground and the background. That’s how we began to put sound to it, kind of exploring it this way.

How did you get started?

D: You started it.

E: I started it.

D: We use a number of things, whatever we feel like using, for a given song. She started this on her phone. There's an app that Korg makes called Gadget, which we've used for a lot of our music. One of the really nice things about Gadget is that you can very easily share it into Ableton, which is one of the pieces of software that we use to make music on a computer. So we very easily just sent it from a phone.

E: …which is one of the first times we've done that. In our long history as artists together and the way that we create, not only did I start it – usually it starts with Dan – but we also went straight from program to program with great facility. So it was very easy to go with the stream-of-consciousness kind of flow, from receiving the visual art to translating it into words to bringing it into audio. The app has multiple devices that you can select.

D: It's got a number of synthesizers and drum machines and samplers, each named for a major city. There's Dublin, Berlin, et cetera.

E: What’s been on my mind and is bubbling at the front of many, many people's minds is the conflict in Ukraine, so I went with the one called Kyiv. It’s a spatial synthesizer within Gadget and it has a touch panel. I mimicked the artist’s swirling gesture on the pad of the synthesizer and that is where we came up with our first sound. I triplicated that for some reason, I guess because we have black, white, and gray. I don't know. That's how we started.

I love that! You physically put the movement you saw into the musical process.

D: Then we played with very basic motion. We started adding stuff here and there and then we kept taking it out, because it felt pretty natural the way she put it together. We’re a team, but honestly, my work was very minimal. I helped with getting it from there to here, and then doing some automation. That's not a bad thing; it's just part of the workflow with this particular piece. There's a lot of really slow automation, like slow volume raises, dips… Different, slight effects which, over the course of the song, you don't necessarily notice happening. If you listen to the beginning and then listen to the end, then you hear that they actually are different. They’re different volumes, sitting at different frequencies, or different points in the panning motion, which is stuff that we're massively into. It definitely helps for something like this, where we're trying to hone in as much as possible to this one element and do our best to respectfully interpret it, I guess you could say. It's a lot more intentional, since we’re trying to create something in response to something else.

I assume that when you are usually making music, it isn't based on a specific prompt, so you probably don’t have to try to follow something like that.

E: I'm a teacher and sometimes we talk about self-expression. Something that we grapple with as artists is when you have the liberty to do whatever you want, that can be somewhat overwhelming and slow you down. But if you're given a set of constraints, like a prompt to respond to, then all of a sudden it flows very easily. This is also very interesting because we are approaching a new album, and we have all these big questions, like “What is our next new sound?” It’s very general and we’re kind of reaching for it. It's very inductive. With this particular project, I think it was easy for us to just get into it.

I agree. Having some sort of prompt or parameter or mission is freeing for me, rather than restraining.

E: I wonder, if you were to poll a group of artists, would they all agree with you? Or would they be staunchly attached to the liberty of expressing themselves fully and totally, without any constraints?

I should ask that question in these interviews more often. When you're making music together, are there certain things that just one of you does? Do you both do everything? What’s the division of labor?

E: What I find unique about our partnership is that we are a convergence of the worlds of music theory and sound production. Of course, a lot of it is the same stuff. It’s all what you put in your ears, but the approach is very different.

D: Elizabeth is a classically trained musician and a very talented one. She can play violin in anything from classical to jazz to bluegrass. She holds it down in Irish folk sessions. She can also play guitar, piano, all of these things. I approach things from a sound perspective. I was not trained in music. I was trained in audio engineering, recording arts, sound design, stuff like that. I’m a big sound nerd. Our basement studio is a collection of live instruments, synthesizers, drum machines, old tape machines. On any given project, we’ll take something such as hand percussion and maybe loop it. She might start, I might start. We might use various software. Some songs are just acoustic.

E: We don’t necessarily start with melody or rhythm. Each piece is approached totally differently. But I will say that Dan is kind of like a sculptor. He’s like some, I don't know, sonic laser wizard who's able to envision the very particular sounds and make them real, while I am, as an instrumentalist, usually trying to emulate something. But when it comes to making music, making melody, that's very natural. That is my bread and butter. You set me going to a particular sound bed, and then I can create music. But Dan makes music, too! And as you can tell from this project, I obviously experiment with sounds. So we've learned a lot from each other. We've been together for a long time.

D: And it's all meshed. At this point, whatever happens happens on a song or an album. I think it started as me being a rapper and her being a violinist.

That's a combination that doesn’t necessarily belong together, but you’ve evolved to make it make sense. That’s beautiful. What are some things that usually inspire your work?

D: It depends, because sometimes I feel like writing and sometimes I feel like making. When I feel like making, I don't have anything specific in mind. I might have heard something really cool, like a Radiohead song, and I'll think, “Damn, that makes me want to fucking make some shit.” The fact that someone did that, so it’s doable, makes me want to do something.

E: The first things that I think of are flowers, nature, strong experiences at the museum, traveling…

D: Yeah, definitely traveling. We always make music when we’re traveling.

How are you with deadlines? Are they scary? Are they helpful?

E: Growing up, I was a terrible procrastinator, but these days, a deadline can be refreshing because you can pace yourself. It can help create the impetus for actually manifesting something.

D: Exactly. That's so true. A lot of things wouldn't even come to fruition without a deadline. Once you commit to it, especially if you start telling people, you're in it at that point. So it is helpful, so long as it's not going to prevent me from sleeping, you know, that sort of deadline. With work, it might be like, “I need this in six hours.” Those deadlines suck.

Bait/Switch is built entirely of collaboration. Do you like to collaborate with different artists?

E: We love to bring people in. On our last album, we had many cameos. We've had full collab albums, where each track is a different artist. It's in our nature.

D: Yeah, all types of musicians, all types of artists. It's not just something we like, it’s important to us. We’re all about it.

I have one last question for you. Now that you have participated twice, what's your advice for someone else approaching Bait/Switch?

E: Maybe this comes from studying communication for a long time, but I think it's important to consider the process and the mediums. Try to explore the art by envisioning yourself through the materials that the artist is working in.

D: Be open to it. It's fun! Our songs are very different from one another and they're also very different from the things we normally do. When we sat down and did it, it was fun! You know, being a couple and making music, things can get really tense. There's a dynamic that a lot of bands don't, by default, have. Some songs can be really hard to get through, but this was enjoyable. It was really easy to just vibe with and feel free.

Call Number: C71VA | C73MU.siUnti

Sidestep Complex is a married musical collaboration that creates multi-genre music by weaving the experimental composition & live instrumentation of Elizabeth Anaya Sheils with the intricate lyricism & music production of Scatterboxx. Writers of psychedelic romance, post-apocalyptic adventures, and the unfolding of the collective cosmic consciousness, Sidestep Complex blends a variety of influences to create their unique fusion of sound.