Interview with Nick Zammuto: The Mad Scientist of Sound
By Xavier Veccia, Managing Editor
In a quiet house in Vermont lives a musician whose storied career could fill a novel, so when ACRN talked to Nick Zammuto, there was plenty to discuss. As founder and namesake of Zammuto and co-founder of The Books, Nick has received his fair share of praise for more than a decade now. However, between his many music ventures, Nick keeps plenty busy with many other projects. When Nick’s wife picked up the phone on this particular weekday afternoon, it led to an interview ranging from Zammuto’s latest album Anchor, the legacy of The Books, his son’s love of A Tribe Called Quest and even some insight on what his next album might sound like in a thought-provoking, intimate discussion.
Hi, is this Nick?
Yeah, how you doing?
Good, how about yourself?
I’m good. Sorry about the delay, there. I was out in the studio.
No worries, what were you working on?
A lot of different stuff. Getting ready for the tour and then also doing a soundtrack--well, not really a soundtrack but more of a sound design--for a dance company down in Philly for a show they're doing next summer.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, should be fun. We’re doing this down in a space called the Ice Box in Philly. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it, but it’s basically an old ice box, but it’s giant so the walls are completely covered with this foam material and it’s this giant rectangular box. It’s probably, I don’t know, 100 feet by 75 feet. The sound in there is just incredible. The reverb just goes on forever, so all of the sound design has to take that into account, so it’s interesting trying to make sure that everything works with the reverb.
How’d you get that gig?
Through-- I don’t know exactly. But I think a guitarist who was a fan of ours was asked to work on this project, so I think he got the dance company director to talk to me, and I was available, so I figured 'why not.'
So how’s tour been since releasing Anchor?
The first tour was a blast. It was great. I didn’t know what to expect taking off, but the shows were all really great. The audience was there; they were psyched. From my perspective, the show was better than ever. My band has really come together. It really started to internalize the set and by the time we got to the West Coast, it was just really locked in, so I’m looking forward to continuing that down the East Coast now.
What do you think has made your band more locked in compared to the past?
I think mostly just experience. And the new material is really geared toward playing live. Those are the two main things. My drummer [Sean Dixon] is really tremendous. I’m really lucky to have found him. When The Books finally ended I wanted to work with a live drummer. That was the one thing that I felt was lacking in The Books, I felt it was kind of a glorified karaoke. With a new project I wanted a live kind of sound. And I found a guy who is just tremendously creative and does stuff I’ve never heard anyone do, especially with the polyrhythms. That’s really kind of what my interest in rhythm is. We overlap well on that front.
Do you enjoy playing with a live band more than your work with The Books or is it just different?
It’s much more fun for me. You know, I’m not a particularly charismatic performer. I think of myself as much more a Wizard of Oz type. It’s like I’m just a shriveled white guy behind a curtain [laughs]. I like to hand off the attention as much as I can to other people who are more deserving. So having the combination of the four of us on stage, plus the video, keeps the attention moving in a really fresh way and you can really focus on the sound and always moving around. Sometimes it’s the percussion. Sometimes it’s the video. Sometimes it’s the guitar.
It’s sort of an electronic backbone that holds it all together in a very distinct way. Part of playing tight along with the video is being able to work to the quick track. It’s hard for some people to get used to, I think, but my drummer is really good at ebbing and flowing to the click, and we kind of follow him to the groove.
Can you go in-depth into the Indiegogo campaign?
It was kind of a realization. How successful records are any more, they’re just not a huge source of income. And because of that, everybody’s on the road now and you have no idea what to expect when you go on the road either. It’s just, you know, I have a wife and kids and in order to keep going in this crazy business I just gotta figure out ways to do it in a more sustainable way. And I think that the fact that crowdfunding can work for a band like ours was an epiphany.
It’s truly an interesting idea that you can get away with a somewhat smaller and more focused fanbase now than you ever could in the past. People are really into it and willing to sort of help you along, and you know we always give them something in return, whether that’s tickets to a show or records or--I’ve been working on a series of sculptures, and developing methods for other people to use in their own work like the scratch edition. It was a chance for me to share kind of another side of my work and also raise the money I need to make another record.
I feel like, in general, it’s like bringing back the middle class of music--of musicians, that is--which is kind of a beautiful thing. I feel like people are ready to make up their own minds about music now more than ever before, because there’s so much noise around it all the time people are just like, “Okay, whatever, I'm going to think for myself here.” And those are the kind of people we really connect to and, also, to keep going along those lines.
Can you go into more depth about “the middle class of music” that you mentioned? Like, what do you think the struggles are for that middle class?
I mean [laughs] it’s the same struggle the middle class in general is having right now. It’s like a lot of the money just goes to the top and unless you’re popular it’s difficult to make money. And we’ll go into the reasons people are popular and others are not--there are a lot of reasons for it. I feel like the middle class of musicians are--they’re the ones who are kind of...a lot of them are just too weird to ever be popular [laughs]. But they’re still doing really amazing work. And I feel like my band kind of fits into that category. I don’t want to have the hairdo [laughs], I don’t want to play that role. It’s not me. I just want to play music that I find really interesting. I think most of my fans are creative people themselves. I’m always amazed to see what kind of people are attracted to music and it’s people who are making music themselves or they’re visual artists who listen to a lot of music.
There’s enough of them to sustain us through this new system but, you know, it would never work through the old system.
You’ve mentioned on your blog how Anchor was a conscious effort to take a step back and focus on the essentials. What inspired this step back?
I don’t want to get stuck in that game where I always have to outdo myself, what I’ve done before in terms of energy level or complexity. I feel like what I’m really interested in at the core is the sound of things and I find when things get too busy and you start throwing everything into track after track after track, it gets too muddy and too cloudy. Like the ideas become weaker because there’s too many elements.
I really wanted to try to figure out with Anchor how I could get away with less and really have the elements that are in place lock together in a way that it creates a space, it creates a vibe and a concept and sort of purposefully let details ring out a little longer as well. I’m looking for more of a focused sound I guess. By that I mean more of a heart, in a way.
The only way I could achieve that is by tearing things back on this record, and I’m not done making insanely complex music, because it’s something that I’m still really attracted to, but this was kind of a conscious step back and I’m focused on, you know, bare elements. I think moving me in that direction always creates some contradiction because people expect more. But I think what happens in the long run is, that may be the response on the first listen and the second listen, but on the third listen it starts to rewire people’s ears a little bit and then they start to hear details they weren't aware of before. That’s really what this record is about: going deeper rather than going bigger.
So you went largely computer free on Anchor, correct?
Yeah, I think most of the tracking was done in an analog waym and I used a computer to put everything together but it wasn't used to create any of the sounds or the effects. It was used mostly as a recording tool than as a sound creation tool. All of the synths are analog, and I really have been focusing on signal change in general and how to record instruments and drums especially. A big part of recording this record was perfecting the drum sound.
So what kind of benefits and drawbacks did you find with this approach, especially in today’s society?
Let me see. Good question. For me, it felt much more tangible working on the record. I just love the feeling of twisting knobs. Because when you have knob--an analog knob--it’s just this feeling of infinity when you spin it. It’s like every single possible place in between you can get to with a knob. With the digital things it’s like click, click, click. You don't have access to every single place. And I think that it adds up over time, or at least it feels like it does. And then the sound quality itself I find to be much more inviting. The way elements combine in the analog state is a very organic sort of chaos that happens in the analog world that you just don’t get in the digital world. It feels different.
I think the learning curve is really steep. That was one drawback. Learning to use all this gear took awhile and I’m still learning. So the speed isn’t quite sure, but man I think the record sounds a lot better than anything I’ve ever produced in the past in terms of the depth of it, the amount of space and the amount of detail.
You’ve mentioned how you feel you’re a scientist at your core. As a musician, how do you think that makes you and your music stand out?
Like I’ve said before, the music isn’t about me. I’m not that guy. I’m not a front man. I just really love sound and the emotional side of it combined together. And I think one thing I wrote about is getting crazy ideas to actually work. It’s one thing to have a crazy idea but it’s a very different thing to execute it.
To get a really unique idea to work in music requires this kind of technical approach: experiments, mostly failure and then finally in the end you figure out how to make it work. It’s a totally unique moment. It’d be hard to do that without a technical background. So, yeah, I think that’s the difference. You know, I have different expectations of the music because I approach it in a non-typical way, and what I'm interested in doing is not being part of a scene at all, but sort of creating a full experiment, in a way, and it’s not always gonna fall into any category.
The legacy of The Books still seems to follow you. How does that make you feel? Do you embrace it or do you try to avoid it?
Well, you know, I love The Books. I was The Books. I wrote all that stuff and all of the tracks are my children. I’m not going to reject them ever. And I’m amazed at how deep that project was. It’s something you only realize over time--how much people enjoy those tracks. And I’m just amazed by it. I’m honored by it.
I wish, when I would read reviews of my new stuff, that there wasn’t a paragraph of The Books [laughs] at the front of each review. Because of The Books, people listen to the new work in a totally different way. And expectation leads to disappointment. Sometimes I wonder, if that legacy wasn’t there if people would listen to it in a different way. And my feeling is that they would. I gotta change over time and that’s what I’m gonna do and follow my instincts. And I could make The Lemon of Pink over and over and over again, but I just wouldn’t have fun. I already did that. Time to be something else.
You said before that you find your fanbase to be composed of “individuals” instead of a crowd. What makes your fans different from fans of other groups?
I don’t know if my fans, our fans, are different from other bands’. I haven’t been to enough shows to really know that. Except that, you know, I’ve been to some shows where people are there because that's where they’re supposed to be and that’s where somebody told them to be. Our shows definitely don’t feel like that. It’s about half males and half females, which is really great.
There are a lot of beautiful conversations that go on before and after the show. People are there to listen. They’re not there to drink. They’re not there to be seen. They’re there to enjoy the music. I remember countless times the bartenders would come up to me after the show and say, “Wow that was a great set. I hardly ever get to see a show. Nothing was at the bar, so I was able to watch the whole thing.” I love that kind of thing. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but that’s been my feeling when around on the road.
Your early experiences as a musician seem to be unique, such as your scratching of your own records. What drove you early on to music?
I think, early on, it was a combination of things. I think what drives most people to music is the fact that it’s relaxing. It puts you in a different space. It takes you away from some of your problems for the moment. And I would just get absorbed in records.
When I picked up my first record it was amazing. I would spend hours and hours and hours and listen to the same record over and over again. After the initial feeling of, you know, emotional clarity that came from a record I just got into the details. How is that sound made? How is that played? How is that made? And that kind of brought out the scientist in me. But it was a long time before I actually started making music. I was kind of much more interested in the visual arts and the sciences. When it came to the music it was late in my life actually.
Have you surrounded your children with music in a similar way?
Yeah, I gave the two older ones, who are eight and five, I gave them their first little iPods--those little nano ones that you have a button on it and you can press play, you can’t play games on there or anything. And that’s the only piece of electronics they really have access to whenever they want. I catch them all the time just listening to music, just kind of peel away and listen. And then it feels great to see. But in terms of music lessons, only if they ask for them, with time I’ll give it to them.
I don’t know if music lessons really help, at least from a composer's point of view. I think the kind of understanding in an innate way, what you like in music early on, is really helpful however you use it later. So I have one synthesizer in the house that I wasn’t using in my studio very much and my five year old is just really drawn to it. He figured out how the arpeggiator works and how the low pass filter works and he plays these really hilarious Brian Eno-like improvisations sometimes when we’re making dinner and he’ll just go on for a half an hour just playing beautiful little improvisations. Yeah, I think I might make a record with him actually at some point [laughs].
How else does music play a role in your family?
Let’s see, well we listen to music in the car as a family fairly often. My wife is on the violin right now, because it’s interesting...in a scratchy way. But I’m really glad she’s doing it. But I think the boys, now that my oldest is kind of old enough to stay out and see a concert he’s starting to get it more. He understands what live music is about. He’s really taken by it. But I think as consumers of music, we tend to lean back on the classics quite a bit. For a while, me and the boys were on a Police kick for a long time last year. It was a lot of fun. But when I gave my eight year old his iPod, he immediately went to A Tribe Called Quest. That’s all he wanted to listen to.
That’s quite an interesting choice.
Yeah, he memorized “Scenario” from front to back [laughs]. And he’ll just go around the house rapping. He did that for about three months straight. It was hilarious [laughs]. Just a little kid in Vermont. And for whatever reason he’s into skateboarding? I don’t know if he understands the culture that comes along with skateboarding yet. But he’s really good at it so we’ve been taking him to the skatepark and things like that. It’s a fun culture.
You’ve worn many different hats in your career from teacher to hiker to father to capenter. How have these experiences affected you as a person and as an artist?
I think, my interests are really broad. and the fact that I'm in music is sort of happenstance. I think I would be really happy as a carpenter. Like, my life would be good as a carpenter or a scientist. I love being in the lab. But I think doing more than one thing means you get--whenever you come back to something else-- you're kind of refreshed in a way. So I love working on something visual for awhile or working with my hands for awhile and then going back into the studio. I always feel like there are new ideas ‘cause I’ve used a different part of my brain for awhile.
Another thing is we live up here in Vermont, and it’s very kind of DIY style up here and we just never hire people to work on our house. We want to do it ourselves. It takes a lot of motivation to learn new skills all the time. Like, this is the first year we’ve had bees, so we just got about two gallons of honey out of our beehives. It’s some of the most delicious honey we’ve ever had. But it requires buying a bee suit and overcoming your fear of diving into a bee’s nest. But it’s really satisfying. And it’s great for the boys. It makes them feel like they can do whatever they want. They have the energy to do it.
Just to go back to music really quickly, I saw on your blog you mentioned there’s a lot of ground to cover for you in music as a whole. So are there any specific areas you're looking to cover in the near future?
Yeah, I haven’t discussed it too much outside of my family and my band, but I really want to try something to go back to my electro-acoustic roots, try something that’s kind of more instrumental and more based off of objects that I’ve built as a start for the sound world. And really make an instrumental, well, mostly instrumental record that is really compelling not in like an electronic music framework at all, but more, almost like a Baroque record in a way. Where the structures are more, either surrealistic or there’s like a heavy counterpoint or a heavy polyrhythm through the backbone of it, and there’s kind of like an inner-logic that transcends most EDM and most electronica.
I would love to see if I could make that work for part of the live show as well. Yeah, an instrumental approach where I can incorporate visual elements in a seamless way--actually videotaping the things that are making sounds and embodying them. That’s my thinking now. That’s where I would love to go next.
You know, with [Anchor] with the lyrics, I really wanted to focus on writing lyrics with this record, and now that I’ve done that I wanted to take a break from my verbal mind for awhile and really focus on more abstract and melodic stuff. We’ll see if people are willing to go there with me.
What made you want to access your “verbal mind” and go in a more lyrical direction with this album in the first place?
I think I have this love-hate relationship with words. I think I said in the blog, “words feel like an uninvited guest in my mind a lot of the times,” but they’re what we have to make meaning. It’s what we have to do. So I wanted to find a more...you know, The Books was kind of about verbal trickery in a lot of ways and I had a lot of fun with that. It was great. And I wanted to focus on language that was more meaningful to me and deeper and darker and internal. I felt it was something I had to do.
To develop those skills is going to help me no matter what I do as a teacher, I think, to be able to get down my words in a way that satisfies me. There’s just such a long tradition of lyric writing to do. I feel like I could tap into so many sources that I could look for that I could never do with an instrumental record or a sample based record. Writing for us is really fascinating to me. And I’m proud of songs on this record. They’re still saying what I want them to say.
[Zammuto is performing at Southgate House in Cincinnati, Ohio on November 4 and at The Basement in Columbus, Ohio on November 5.]
