The Endless Sky
An Interview with Hammock
Well, it’s been a year since Trap Door Sun took flight. Over the past year we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing some unique people from all walks of life. So we’d like to offer up a tasty interview to salute our first year in existence.
To mark this milestone we offer you a glimpse into the band Hammock. We first heard of Hammock through a stray magazine review on their newest record Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow. We, subsequently, purchased one of their first EPs (Stranded Under Endless Sky) and instantly fell in love with their sound.
Perhaps some of you have heard them—if so, excellent! But for those of you who have not had the opportunity to become immersed in their soundscapes and epic compositions you need to do a few things before reading the interview. Click over to your favorite online music site and download Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow. Next, take your listening device out to the front driveway or back deck—preferably after sunset. Scrounge up the evening beverage of your choice, start a campfire and let the ethereal beauty of Hammock surround you.
You are now ready to read the interview. Here’s to another year of goodness!
TDS: Give us a little bit of the back-story of Hammock. Who are you guys and how did you form your little collective?
Hammock: Sure. Well, we just started getting together—Andrew and I knew each other—I’m a writer and have to produce a certain amount of songs for a company called EMI and I was just kind of getting burned out on that and started going over to Andrew’s place; started messing around with this ambient thing that we wanted to do. We didn’t really see it turning into anything other than just good musical therapy. Before we knew it we had something like 19 pieces. And we said to ourselves, “Why don’t we try to self-release it?”
Since then, it’s turned into a cool thing and creatively fulfilling.
TDS: Do you guys find yourself falling into a genre similar to Sigur Rós? Is that a fair assessment?
Hammock: Yea, I (Marc) think that’s a fair assessment especially with the last record—it has a strictly ambient quality. I guess some people consider them [Sigur Rós] post-rock and some people consider us post-rock. I don’t know what we are really. We’re kind of a mixture of ambient and the post-rock “thing” although we don’t really hold to the formula of “soft, loud, soft, loud,” that is indicative of most post-rock stuff.
Our new record (the one we are currently working on) is going to be a bit more organic and will probably appeal more to the post-rock audience. Whereas our last record (Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow) appealed to the ambient/home-listening-classical-style people. For this new one we are kind of piling it on, if you know what I mean. It’s just the mood that we’re in. We want to go in a different direction—keep things interesting.
TDS: Maybe They Will Sing For Us Tomorrow stemmed from a live show where you had certain limitations with regard to room size and gear.
Hammock: Yea, it [the room] had limitations for sure. The limitations were that we wanted to perform it live with just the two of us. To begin with we thought we’d just write some long-form pieces and they’d work for what the venue would allow with regard to space and such. And then we ended up writing an entire record worth—even more—of songs.
We think a band can really excel when they place certain limitations of themselves. The limitations challenge them to have to figure out a creative way of doing things. So for us, we wrote the songs that ended up being this record for the live event and then when we came back and listened to the recording we said to ourselves, “Well, this is a record.” We thought we were only going to use two or three pieces for the record but we ended up using most of it.
What’s been great is the broad appeal of the record. We’ve been able to open up for a band called Stars Of The Lid (one of our favorites) and it really fits nicely with their sound—more ambient. But then we also get people from the post-rock crowd as well.
TDS: How does patience factor into crafting your music?
Hammock: It really does require a lot of patience. We have close to 50 songs in the “out pile” now and we still have 25 in the “in pile” and not all of those are going to make it obviously. When we start writing we get a certain batch of songs and start developing them. Time is really important for our process because we like to see what pieces continue to hit us in a creative way and push our artistic buttons.
But if things start to fall out of favor we will sadly put it in the out pile. Plus we are all about sound, since it’s instrumental and we’re all about creating soundscapes; so it always takes time to find the right effects and each part needs to be in the right place and have the right tone. So each song takes quite a bit of patience.
TDS: Explain the draw to this genre of music, for you and others (listeners).
Hammock: I’m not sure … I do know, based on listener feedback that it “enhances.” For example, my wife makes the same drive to work every day. But when she puts on our record during the drive she, somehow, notices things around her in the outside world that maybe she didn’t before. It creates this space of slowing down and it almost enhances your attention.
Our music, based on the mail we get from people, helps people become more aware of their emotions or the impermanence of life; other people become aware of their outward surroundings and grow to appreciate their environment more. We find that aspect of our music to be appealing. So, maybe you’ve seen something a million times but the music helps to put you in a mindset to notice things you never noticed before.
Maybe in this culture, slowing down is appealing for people. Silence is hard for us to live in. I (Marc) often go up to a cabin for a four-day period—no music no nothing. The first day is always so difficult because my brain is going 90 miles an hour. But I find that by the end of the four days I am always so much more centered. And I hope that our music creates that kind of space for people.
Another thing we are finding is that people like our music for … (laughter) for love (more laughter). Lots of people like our music when they’re engaging in love. So that’s pretty nice too. So I guess you could say that we are the Barry White of ambient music (even more laughter).
TDS: There is an "otherworldly" sense when listening to your music.
Hammock: It’s weird … when I (Marc) was growing up I was enamored with stars and space and vastness and how big things are. I’ve always been into different kinds of “verb” (reverb) and delays, so I was always drawn to music that gave me a sense of space. If that comes through in our music I would say it's because its so engrained in both of us.
We both grew up in the south, we both grew up in wide open spaces; it wasn’t a busy city life so there was a lot time to sit and ponder or daydream; so I would say that is part of it. What do you think Andrew?
I (Andrew) would say that coming from those rural environments there was time to be present, without the rush.
TDS: Your music has a beautiful texture to it. Can you define beauty? Is it something that you aspire to or does it spring from somewhere else?
Hammock: It’s hard because some people can look at a Francis Bacon painting and say it’s grotesque and ugly. But it has a redemptive quality in the sense that this guy had so much pain in his life and he was able to get it out and paint it and put it on the canvass. And I (Marc) happen to like Francis Bacon and see beauty in his work. I don’t aspire to a superficial idea of what beauty is, that is to say an idea that it’s all sweetness and light.
I like the Zen aesthetic of seeing beauty in certain imperfections. I have yet to see anything as beautiful as a tree. I am still fascinated with how lovely mountains and trees can be. I mean … man did not have anything to do with that.
For me (Marc) I think we try to create beautiful music. I remember on our last record I was talking to our manager after feeling some discouragement and I said, “All I want to do is make a beautiful record.” I think that’s what it comes down to. And when I talked to Andrew, he totally agreed and we decided that we were going to make a beautiful record. To us what we did was beautiful even if there was a certain amount of sadness.
There’s beauty that comes out of sadness, there’s beauty that comes out of pain. There’s beautiful poetry that comes out of the holocaust. Where that comes from … I don’t want to go too deep into that. For me personally, I have a transcendent idea of what beauty is.
(Andrew) I think that sums it up in a lot of ways. The beauty and the darkness … you really have to be open to it and when it starts to flow you go with it. We do find that some of the most beautiful moments come from grief or pain or inner struggle. Even in the Christian symbol of the crucifixion, Christians find that to be both beautiful and horrific and maybe for some people who aren’t Christians they only see the horrific side of that.
So it’s hard to say objectively what is the final definition of beauty but I don’t think you can just go out into a field and make some ugly piece or thing and say it’s beautiful just because you have your own idea of what beauty is. I do think there is something solid to what that is but now we’re getting into difficult definitions and nuance.
TDS: What does your style of music offer in such a fast paced culture? Are you the antithesis to culture?
Hammock: (Laughs) Yea, we are. We try not to be in a hurry to get where we are going with the music. Things are so immediate, so fast; the gratification is there immediately in our culture. We feel there is an art to listening to music. A lot of us don’t do that anymore; we don’t take time to listen. We don’t buy whole albums; we buy one song at a time. So yea, in that sense we are completely the antithesis, we are completely countercultural in the sense that we are still trying to make records and still trying to make a whole body of work that requires you to sit down, shut up and listen.
For those music-heads that take the time to do that, it’s rewarding. And for others who can’t get into that mindset … they really don’t get it. Some people say, “I don’t get it, it moves too slow.” And that’s fine with us—that just means they’re not meant to be our audience.
TDS: Some people regard your music as breaking away from structure and rules. Is this a fair assessment?
Hammock: Well, we are not Frank Zappa and we are not Jon Cage. We are not that outside the box. However, it is outside the box in the sense that maybe it doesn't have a verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus structure to it. And actually some of the songs do have that form to it because we do have a pop aesthetic but we don’t feel like we are too far left of center and pushing certain parameters and boundaries.
I do feel like when some people think that we are stepping outside the norm, then that’s what it comes down to—what’s normal right now. So our stuff might be outside the parameters of what’s in pop culture but it’s not, necessarily, what’s outside the history of music.
TDS: What [bands, artists, writers] influence your work?
Hammock: For writers I (Marc) love Hermann Hesse and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. I think he is probably my favorite poet. Paul Celan … he was a very trouble poet—love his stuff. Actually there’s a title from “Losing You To You” from our Raising Your Voice record that I kind of took from one of his poems.
As far as music goes we’ve been influenced by Max Richter, Brian Eno, Arvo Pärt, Stars Of the Lid. As far as guitar players you’d have to say: Robert Smith (The Cure), Marty Wilson Piper and Peter Koppes from The Church, Johnny Marr from the Smiths, Robin Guthrie from Cocteau Twins, Lindsey Buckingham as far as the way he layers things and his production, and David Gilmore. We are definitely influenced by others; we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel we’re just trying to make music that we really like. We are basically influenced by the music that we grew up listening to.
TDS: Which one of your songs encapsulates the true essence of Hammock.
Hammock: Now, there are two aspects to Hammock: one that has the drums base and guitars and the other that has a completely beatless, soundscaping element to it. So, we would have to sum it up with two songs. “Blankets of Night” would be the one that has bass, drums and more traditionally pop instrumentation. It’s eight minutes long, it’s epic, it’s powerful, it’s moving and it’s emotional.
And then for the soundscape aspect we would say “Mono No Aware”, the one we just did the new video to. It’s very defining of us: you have the loop—the constant non-changing thing—we’re able to create dynamic just by doing certain layers with just our guitars, and layers with strings.
Mono No Aware from David Altobelli on Vimeo.
TDS: Can you explain the title “Mono No Aware”?
Hammock: I think “mono no aware” is Japanese for “the sadness of things”. So when we played Brooklyn, after the show David Altobelli approached us and insisted that he make a video for us. We tend to get this sort of thing a lot. Different film students approach us about using our music in a lot of their films and that’s cool.
So with David, we looked at his reel and it was really good. And then he started talking to us about the treatment of it. He started using phrases like “the impermanence of things” and “the fleeting nature of life” and immediately we thought, “Ok, this guy gets it. He understands what we’re talking about.”
The whole idea of the girl touching her hand on the glass, leaving her print and then it disappearing is, to us, the symbol of what the song title means—which is the fleeting nature of life and the sadness of things. That’s what we get from it. We don’t want to go much deeper than that because honestly we just love looking at the video and enjoying the imagery. You know?
TDS: What can people expect from you guys at a live show?
Hammock: (Andrew) What we’ve done up to this point with things has been very similar to what got us playing the live show and releasing the last record. It’s been purely ambient; it’s been Marc and I and Matt Slocum playing cello—a kind of small ensemble that we use to create the big guitar tones and the cool looping that Matt does with his string parts. I think we’ll continue to do that with this next record even though it will be a little more (I hate to use this word) “bombastic”; it will be a much more full-scale approach.
I think we’ll probably end up doing both approaches on tour. In certain venues we’ll go completely ambient and in other venues we’ll do the whole nine yards.
We have a gig coming up in October where we’re doing The Gatherings in Philadelphia—it’s a cool thing. It’s in an old church, Stars of the Lid have done it, and they want the ambient aspect of Hammock. So, in short, we can offer whatever aspect is appropriate for the venue.
As far as Matt Slocum goes, he’s practically the third member of Hammock. He’s been on every record and played every show except for one.
TDS: So when is that next record expected to be released?
Hammock: (Laughter) We don’t know. We’re still giving birth to it. The labor pains are intense on this one.
TDS: Is there anything else from Hammock that you would like us to share?
Hammock: Probably doing a record with Taylor Deupree. Taylor Deupree is an artist that we played with in Brooklyn. He owns 12K Records and he is also a sound sculpture guy. We’ll be collaborating with him.
We’ll be hopefully releasing a new album this year—we’ll see. And we have that October gig in Philadelphia we just mentioned—The Gatherings. We’re real excited about that. So if you’re in the area we’d love to see you out. We’ll be playing with Mico Nonet—they’re a really cool classical type group that will be opening for us.
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