You’re reading Zzyzx Road, a new experiment in interviews by Catherine Sinow. It will be published infrequently and deliberately.
In June of 2021, I went on a terrible date with some guy I met on Twitter. He was the opposite of charming and said some strange, disturbing things that were not appropriate for a first date or any date. Afterwards, the only thing I had left of him was a playlist he made me. It sucked except for a stunning first track by an artist named Theodore Cale Schafer. Determined to get something meaningful out of my unsettling outing, I wrote a message to Mr. Schafer, who most people call Theo. A bizarrely long amount of time later, we got on Google Meet for an interview.
Theo is a millennial with a name that appropriately sounds like that of a turn-of-the-century composer. He works in the styles of ambient, electroacoustic, and experimental. He’s also a professional freelance audio editor who works on podcasts. He’s lived in the Midwest, New Mexico, and now Queens, and he’s overall an unpretentious, everyday kind of person who you wouldn’t expect to make dense music. So I tried to interview him not as a musician, but as a man living in the United States of America.
Three things by Theodore Cale Schafer that are worth your time:
Recent album with dreamy piano
An even more recent album that gracefully picks up where Stars of the Lid left off in 2007
The fascinating track that was on my bad date playlist
And without further ado, Theo’s first text-based interview (I think)
Catherine: Hey!
Theodore: Hello!
CS: How’s our connection?
TCS: I’ve got this desktop and I just realized two minutes ago that it doesn’t have a webcam and I’m turning this computer on for the first time in a couple of months. Hang on, I’m looking for a lighter to open this drink.
CS: So you’re one of the one out of every two hundred people who can open a bottle with a lighter?
TCS: Yeah I know how to do it! Well, I was a smoker for a little while.
CS: Like, a cigarette smoker?
TCS: Yeah. When I lived in Santa Fe, pretty much everyone smoked cigarettes there, so it was a hobby.
CS: So, your Mac Mini. When did you get it, what was the purpose of getting it, and what was your previous computer?
TCS: My previous computer was a MacBook Pro, and then I have this old iMac that my sister’s ex-boyfriend gave to me, but it’s from 2013, and I can’t get it to work for all the plugins for my job, so I had to get a Mac Mini for my job, basically. The Mac Mini connects to any monitor.
CS: Did you get a new monitor?
TCS: No, I have one that my friend gave me ‘cause they worked at SnapChat.
CS: Where’s SnapChat’s headquarters?
TCS: I think it’s in New York?
CS: It must have been a remote working situation because they give you the monitor.
TCS: Yeah I think they were working remotely during quarantine for SnapChat.
CS: That’s a vibe. So, forgive me if I ask about your real career before your music career. But what is your current occupation, current day job, and how does it connect to your career in the music sphere?
TCS: Well, I work for this guy named Jack Wagner. But he’s not my main thing--I’m a freelancer basically. He used to do this podcast called Yeah But Still. It was a comedy podcast with him and this guy named Brandon Wardell. They’re these millennial-esque comedians, and I engineered the podcast. This podcast that I do now, it’s with the same guy, Jack Wagner. It’s spooky stories told by people that these events happen to. Like, supernatural things. It’s called Otherworld.
CS: I was going to ask about that! Cause, your link in your Twitter bio has no explanation about how you’re connected to it. And I was like, either this is something you participate in, or maybe it’s an ironic link, maybe it’s bad or something? I figured it was more likely the first one.
TCS: Oh yeah, damn, that’s so funny because…I guess I do stuff like that! I put the link in my Twitter because I assume that people will understand what I’m attempting to say. But I think I’m bad at interpreting how people will react with whatever information I put out there. But yeah, I’m their post-production engineer.
CS: Do you connect to the subject matter? Like, do you believe in paranormal experiences or have you had one?
TCS: I’ve had some spooky stuff happen to me in Santa Fe. And I’ve been ambiently interested in ghosts since I was a little kid. I don’t think about it much when I’m editing, I’m analyzing sentences and how they can piece together to form a coherent story. And it just so happens to be about people having weird experiences. I’m detached.
CS: So it’s like you’re more focused on the mechanical elements of the podcast’s sound.
TCS: For sure.
CS: Well that makes sense. Are you willing to talk about the spooky things from Santa Fe?
TCS: Uh, yeah sure. This is funny that this is what you want to know about.
CS: I have interesting ideas about what is interesting.
TCS: I’m down. So I was living with my friends Christian Filardo and Angelo Harmsworth in Santa Fe. We had a four-bedroom house but one of the bedrooms was a separate casita in the back. Angelo lived back there, so at night I wouldn’t really see him.
Christian had a new girlfriend at the time, so they were always at the girlfriend’s house. There were two weeks where I was sleeping alone at that house. I was staying up late. And I would start hearing what I thought would be the front door opening and closing, like someone coming home. But then I would check out my window and it didn’t seem like anyone was there. And then I would hear kitchen cupboards opening and closing loudly and aggressively at two in the morning. (But that wasn’t late for us because we were 22.)
It was consistently happening every other night, and I would go out to check and it would be no one. It sounded like Christian was walking around, heavy footsteps, looking in the cupboard for food or something. There was even one night where it was so loud and so aggressive that I thought there was an intruder in the house. And then I would see shadows moving around. I would see figures going through a doorway and I thought it was Christian, and I would call out to them and get no response back.
CS: It’s either a ghost, or an intruder that’s really good at being heard and not seen, and that doesn’t make sense.
TCS: It didn’t seem like an intrusion, nothing was taken, I was just hearing shit all the time. But that only really happened for like two weeks. We would also have people come through Santa Fe on tour like all the time, friends who said they were sensitive to that type of stuff, and they would always say the house had something going on. But that’s basically it—I haven’t had any other experiences like that.
CS: Well, that’s just proof that there was something supernatural in that house. Because if it was only happening to you in that house…
TCS: I think so too.
CS: Well, before I interview people I look at their social media, their LinkedIn and stuff, so…
TCS: You looked at my LinkedIn?!
CS: Yeah! I think it’s important. I don’t want to go into an interview looking like I don’t know anything. But then on the other hand, I don’t want to come off as being super creepy but ANYWAY what I mean to say is, it seemed you lived in Santa Fe for your job at Meow Wolf and I would like to talk about that, because I have an impression of it and I want to hear about your work experience there, beginning middle end.
Catherine’s note: Meow Wolf is an over-the-top “immersive art experience” museum with several locations in the United States, the first location being in Santa Fe.
TCS: I moved to Santa Fe in October of 2016 and I had no plan at all, I just kind of showed up to Angelo and Christian’s house and said “I’m here, can I live with you?” Then a couple days later, our collective friend Noah said, “I need to pick up a check because I did a mural inside of Meow Wolf.” We went into this back room there, Noah was collecting their check and this guy looked and pointed at me and said “Who are you?” and I was like “Theodore?” and he said, “Do you need a job?” and I was like, “Yeah.”
So I worked at the front desk of Meow Wolf for like a year. By then I had become friends with Sarah, who had been at Meow Wolf since the beginning. Sarah, Angelo, Christian and our friend Drew all ran this scary warehouse DIY venue in Santa Fe together. Sarah wanted me to do music and sound design. They were like, “Can you make a podcast or music for a video?” So I got put onto the Meow Wolf entertainment division.
CS: Damn.
TCS: I worked there for a couple of years doing audio, radio, film, and some other stuff. We did a 12 hour long fake radio station for an event at South by Southwest.
CS: That’s insanely cool.
TCS: I didn’t feel creatively challenged in any capacity. I was like, how do I make something that lasts for 12 hours that isn’t tear-your-eyes-out boring?
CS: I mean, that sounds creatively challenging, but I’m going to take your word for it.
TCS: Meow Wolf just has a very particular thing, and I think my take and maybe your take is that we aesthetically don’t fit in with that crowd. So I just did whatever they wanted me to. I became a cog in the wheel to keep the ship running and I didn’t necessarily put my own ideas into the company.
CS: I’ve never been to Meow Wolf, but someone I was friends with at college got a job there shortly after she finished her degree. I wouldn’t have thought of her as being Meow-Wolfy at all but then all of a sudden all her posts became Meow Wolf and she suddenly lives and breathes Meow Wolf and she got engaged to [one of the Meow Wolf co-founders, name redacted].
TCS: Oh you know Ray [that’s a fake name]? How do you know her?
CS: Yeah we were friends in college and I think that ever since she got hired at Meow Wolf she became a different person, so that’s sort of been my impression of the company. It takes people and turns them into something else. But I’m not going to claim to know anything about her life. Can you speak to that?
TCS: There’s a part of Meow Wolf’s philosophy where they say that they’re radically inclusive. There’s a lot of rhetoric about being a community. It’s very similar to any other startup where they say “this is our family.” It’s a very social job. When Ray showed up, a lot of people were friends with her very fast. I think people get very hyped up because it’s a job that’s slightly weird. The environment isn’t uber-corporate. All the offices are colorful. I was a little too cynical for that to happen to me, but I definitely watched it happen to other people.
CS: It’s not my scene, I think it isn’t so much your scene either.
TCS: I wasn’t trying to push myself too hard for that company.
CS: I support that. I think minimalism is better. Judging by your music I’m sure you’d agree to some extent. So you’ve got this new album coming out on June third.
TCS: Ninth.
Theo and I talked about his album Trust, but he also released another album shortly after called Our Blood for .S
CS: I know this is part of a three-album series for the label you’re affiliated with [called Students of Decay]. Do you want to talk about the making of the album, the creative choices and personal decisions?
TCS: Yeah! I’ve never been interviewed like this. My brain never goes into this mode of explaining my decisions. The first album I did [Patience] came out in 2019. I had made a bunch of tapes and none of them were longer than thirty minutes. When Alex Cobb, who runs Students of Decay, messaged me, I had to figure out what I wanted a record to be like. That album was me attempting to figure out the palette of sounds I have now: “what can I do to fill 40 minutes with this palette that isn’t super boring or I won’t cringe at it in 10 years?” I think I was successful on a couple of tracks but most of them I have a hard time listening to. This album in June is much more of a honing in on what I like about making songs. I wanted to make a better version of the first record.
CS: I think that’s exactly what it sounds like. The ideas are very realized and every song feels like it has an idea that’s developed. Where did you record this and what instruments did you use? What’s the workflow?
TCS: Some of the field recordings are from back when I lived in Santa Fe. I had hours of field recordings on an external hard drive. A lot of the piano stuff is from various places. I had a piano when I was a kid because my parents had one, but since I moved out of their house I haven’t had consistent access. So any time I have a friend with one I ask them if I can record something.
CS: With these pianos you’re recording on, how much time do you take with them? Is it improvisation?
TCS: Yeah I just improv record it and then edit it later. I’m fully aware of my limitations on the piano and I have a very particular style of playing that I fight against because I want to be better, but I never have the time. So I’ll have 45 minutes and I’ll record myself playing for that amount of time. And while I’m playing I’ll usually develop a melody that I can go back to.
CS: That’s really interesting because when people are serious about the piano, they try to practice every day and have their repertoire. Did you ever play piano in a more structured way?
TCS: No. When I was younger, I tried to learn a bunch of Kingdom Hearts music on piano.
CS: Oh, sick.
TCS: That was the hardest I ever tried.
CS: On the new album toward the end, the music gets more synth-oriented. Are you basically an analog or digital person when it comes to making the tracks?
TCS: I don’t care. I want to be able to make music that’s completely acoustic, which I’m attempting to do at the moment. [But] I kind of like anything that resonates with me. I’m not stingy.
CS: But you can work with all the tools?
TCS: Yeah. I’ve always been in the DIY scene if that still exists. I just never really had any equipment and never had anything expensive, so I just learned to make things with whatever I had.
CS: So, college. You went to college.
TCS: Kind of, not really.
CS: Oh I see. I think on your LinkedIn there’s a college there.
TCS: Yeah, I went to that school, Eastern Michigan University, for maybe six months.
CS: So, no degree.
TCS: Nope.
CS: I’m not judging you, this is not a job interview. Well, I guess I was going to ask how you got your audio engineering skills because people major in that. But you got the skills.
TCS: I study things a lot. I look up how to do audio engineering and music theory stuff. Every day I find some new information or some new way to be better at what I’m doing.
CS: Is your freelance work audio engineering oriented, or podcast oriented, or any and all?
TCS: It’s any and all. I’ve never done live audio, but I want to get into making audio and music for video games. I thought I would be someone who’s capable of making scores for films or movies and stuff, but every time I try to do it, it feels extremely contrived. Although utilitarian audio is something I really like.
CS: Film scores are temporally constrained. Is that part of what irritates you about it?
TCS: The way I’ve been making stuff for the first 10 years is by chance. I create something, and it just so happens to work with other audio I have. I’ve made very few pieces that were extremely composed or specific. And I’ve never been able to look at something visually and have a response to it musically.
CS: I guess games are different than that because it’s more about the energy and the movement than matching the visuals exactly?
TCS: Yeah. Also the pacing is extremely different because in a video game you can stop moving. The sound isn’t necessarily moving things along, it’s being with you where you are.
CS: For a game would you intend to keep your ambient style or do you have other ideas? And what kind of game would you score?
TCS: I mean, I would love to make music for a platformer. I have some little ideas for games that I’m going to attempt to be working on this year, and I’m kind of working with my friend to make a demo of a game this year and get funding. I think if I were to make a game, I would have an emotional aesthetic to shoot for that is already in my head. I think I would tailor the game around that.
CS: Can you describe this emotional aesthetic? Like, what’s your dream game that has your music in it?
TCS: I like music that doesn’t make you feel like you have to move along and feel a specific thing. I like it when music has a duality in it. I like it when it has something very obvious and nostalgic, but can be interpreted in a way that’s hopeful. I guess I like it when you can’t tell if something is meant to be sad or happy.
CS: Can you think of an example in someone else’s music?
TCS: I’ve been such a nerd lately…I’ve been listening to a lot of Morton Feldman stuff recently. I played at this festival in Asheville, North Carolina and, I forgot what year, maybe 2018? It was at Black Mountain College. This trio played [Morton Feldman’s piece] For Philip Guston, named after the painter. It’s five hours long. It’s constantly straddling two emotions and it never gives you a full plunge into either.
CS: Do you recommend anything by him?
TCS: It’s kind of hard to recommend something by him because what am I going to say? “You should listen to this string quartet that’s four hours long”?
CS: I have time.
TCS: I would recommend his second string quartet.
We take a break and during this break he gets another Topo Chico. We get into the topic of contacting people you haven’t seen for a long time because he had tweeted something about his ex-girlfriend.
CS: I’m always looking up people who I haven’t seen for ten plus years. I think contacting people has worked out a few times.
TCS: Oh really?
CS: Yeah. One time I reached out to someone after like, five years. We had only been acquaintances. And we’re really good friends now. I think he was receptive to me reaching out. That’s my success story.
TCS: That’s awesome. I’m jealous. At the end of high school I deleted my Facebook and didn’t talk to anyone. I’m from a really small place in Michigan. I cut everyone off except for one of my oldest friends, Dominic. And I’ve had no info about what’s happening to all these people I spent my childhood with. And I love snooping around and seeing what the fuck’s going on.
CS: Are you mutually following a bunch of them on Instagram? Do you make the move of following and making your presence known?
TCS: Oh yeah I just follow, I don’t care. I’m not following people who I didn’t like. I only follow people I remember as being friendly to me. By the end of high school I was a loner and would eat lunch by myself. At the beginning of high school…I wouldn’t say I was popular, but most people were chill with me.
CS: When you say it hasn’t worked out in your favor, what does that mean? Have people not been receptive to your warmth?
TCS: Yeah. I assume that because I’m really interested in what people are doing and rekindling these friendly encounters, that other people would be too. And for some reason that doesn’t seem to be the case for people I want to talk with. There are exceptions. But for the most part, people don’t want to chat with me.
CS: If I was someone you had known in high school and you reached out to me, I would be interested in the fact that you’re sort of living this music and audio-oriented life in New York. But since maybe they’re still in Michigan, maybe they’re just living a Michigan life.
TCS: They are! This is so cliché but a lot of them are married to people they were dating in high school and they own multiple cars and a house. And I’m living in an apartment in New York making music.
CS: I guess they’re living a middle American lifestyle. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but like, an average American lifestyle.
TCS: Where I grew up was fully the Midwest. It’s hard to call it normal since obviously everywhere is a bit weird. I used to want to have a life like my parents, and now I’m realizing that I don’t think that way.
CS: When I see your lifestyle, I don’t think your lifestyle is that weird. It’s very much “average artist in New York.” But your parents and rest of your family, are they weirded out at all by your life path?
TCS: I don’t really think so. My dad hates New York, he’s talking about how much trash there is and stuff. He loves being in rural Michigan, having a lot of space and alone time and quiet which I respect. There’s something about my generation where I really want to be around my friends still, like I want to hang out with “my buddies.” When my parents were my age, they’d had a child already. I don’t know how social they were then but they’re definitely not social now. I crave this almost college campus vibe where I can walk down the street and run into people I’m friends with.
CS: It’s this thing where people go into families and become a little family bubble and only talk to a few other families who are just like theirs because you relate to them.
Do you have a significant other? I got that impression from your Instagram.
TCS: Yeah, I’m dating the lovely Sydney Spann.
CS: She’s also involved in arts and music, right? What’s her deal?
TCS: Yeah, she makes music, I just helped her mix a record that she did for Sean McCann’s label Recital. Not sure when it’s going to come out or anything [Catherine’s note: it’s out now!]. But she’s from Baltimore and she lived in a warehouse that’s a community and living space. [Now] she’s going to Bard’s summer MFA program for music and sound.
CS: How long have you and Sydney been together?
TCS: Maybe around a year. We met when I moved to New York in February of last year but we didn’t start seeing each other consistently until that summer.
CS: Do you have any roommates?
TCS: My new roommate is Jade Guterman, she works at Blank Forms.
[Catherine’s note: listen to Jade’s music! It’s very good]
CS: Oh yeah, that’s the arts nonprofit?
TCS: Yeah that.
CS: So that’s just musicians working with other musicians?
TCS: We met because I saw her play and her set kind of blew me away and I introduced myself. We kept running into each other and getting along. And so when the room was opening up I just texted her, “Do you want to live here?”
CS: And she was just like, “Yeah”? I mean I guess it’s New York, it’s high pressure.
TCS: She wanted to leave her other place. It just worked out.
CS: I would be so scared to try and find an apartment in New York. It would be like, the scariest thing in the world.
TCS: I’ve gotten very lucky because when I first moved here I had a friend who just needed someone to fill a space and a similar thing happened with an apartment I’m in now. I’ve been very lucky and I want to hold onto this place as long as I can.
CS: Yeah it looks pretty nice with the crown molding.
TCS: The rooms are really big. There’s no living space, like shared space, but there’s two pretty large rooms.
CS: What do you mean there’s no shared space?
TCS: Well, there’s this room and on the other side of this wall is Jade’s room and the bathroom and at the end of the hallway there’s the kitchen. And that’s the entire apartment.
CS: And this is your room.
TCS: Yes.
CS: So what you’re saying is there’s no living room.
TCS: Yeah.
CS: I guess beggars can’t be choosers in New York.
TCS: No. Definitely not.
The only reason that Theo moved to New York and Santa Fe was because he had online social media connections that lived there. He “just showed up” and they welcomed him.
CS: So your song “It Isn’t So Bad To Be Alone.” Who is the voice actor on that song?
TCS: I don’t remember their username but I found a voice actor on Fiverr.
CS: What is Fiverr?
TCS: You can have people pay you disgustingly small amounts of money for you to do some kind of media service for them. So there’s a bunch of voice actors on there and you can send them a script to do in whatever voice they say they can do. You pay them like, five dollars. I paid this person five dollars to read these YouTube comments I had compiled and put into a Google Doc.
CS: Wow! Wait, those YouTube comments, were they from a specific video or from a bunch of them?
TCS: They’re from a bunch of ambient music that I consider to be “the classics.” Or stuff that seemed intense to me when I was younger, but maybe now cringe at or something. But, things that people have intense emotional connections to. I was really captured by people’s spilling of the guts.
CS: So what are these albums that are classic to you but also cringe?
TCS: It started with me taking comments from William Basinski [he pronounces it “Bashinski” and we have a tangent about this] stuff. If you go to Disintegration Loops and scroll down, there’s a lot there. Some Brian Eno stuff. Stars of the Lid—but I love Stars of the Lid.
CS: Top three Stars of the Lid albums?
TCS: I just listened to Avec Laudenum the most.
CS: Yeah…Avec Laudenum is very underrated.
TCS: For a long time I thought it was their best. I gave a speech about it in one of my community college classes [Catherine gasps significantly at this] and just talked about how much I like that album.
CS: Do you have the document still?
TCS: No.
CS: That album was my favorite album of all time for some period of time.
TCS: Me too.
CS: Wow, that’s amazing. I found that album in a record store. It was a random CD and I thought, “I think I’m gonna like this.” It’s just such an amazing album. It’s like almost nothing is there but it’s also the most powerful thing.
TCS: The first track has this pacing which I really like. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to excite you or win you over with how beautifully constructed everything is. It’s about the texture. Later in their career they walk more of a tightrope of having beautiful melodies, but [on Avec Laudenum] I think one of [the composers] was 27 or 28 when they made it, at the end of March, and I often mentally put myself into that context.
CS: Well with Refinement [another album by them], it’s definitely a “look at this beautiful thing we wrote.”
TCS: Yes.
CS: How do you feel about that?
TCS: Refinement for me seemed like the one that was most cringe. The aesthetic is so specific, and it almost overlaps with the indie scene. The cover reminds me of whatever year it was that it came out [2007]. That part was hard for me to get by. I listened to it a lot last summer. A lot of those songs are truly incredible.
CS: Yeah, like “Don’t Bother They’re Here.”
TCS: Yeah. I get really fucked up by…I have to look at [the tracklist]…
CS: Oh I can’t wait to hear your answer for this.
TCS: “Dopamine Clouds [Over Craven Cottage]” is one of my favorites. “Tippy’s Demise” is insanely good.
CS: Oh is that on disc two, the “dark disc”?
TCS: It’s darker, yeah. What was the question?
CS: I don’t think there was a question, I’m just excited about Stars of the Lid.
TCS: I go through phases of wanting to emulate that, but then I get to the point where I’m not me, I’m being a fanboy and I have to stop myself.
CS: But all ambient music that’s come out in the past 20 years is Stars of the Lid fanboy.
TCS: Uh, interesting. I wonder what ambient music you listen to. I’ve been thinking the opposite, that everything is trying to sound like it’s actually music for the club. I want very badly to make music that’s much slower.
CS: Do you mean made for the club like, it’s a rhythmic structure and chords that are similar to dance music?
TCS: I have a lot of friends who straddle this club aesthetic but have put it onto ambient music. And they don’t necessarily like orchestral music. I feel like what’s popular right now is [not in the style of Stars of the Lid]. I think what I’m talking about when I say club-oriented music is [lack of] emotional happening. Stars of the Lid has emotional narratives, where a lot of ambient music I’m hearing now doesn’t have narratives. It has an idea, it presents the idea, and the song ends.
CS: It seems to be more about the texture and the instrumentation of the song. You should do your own thing, but at the same time, Stars of the Lid is probably not coming back and we need a new one.
TCS: Thank you for even thinking I could be that person.
CS: You’re onto something pretty good. You seem like you’re at the beginning of your career and finding this really good sound, and the best is yet to happen.
TCS: Yeah, I hope so. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Probably because I just had my birthday and I’ve been thinking about age. I’m hoping the best I’m going to make is going to be ten or twenty years from now. I want to get better at what I'm doing and not feel like I’ll plateau. Since I’ve moved to New York, the incline has been steeper. I’ve made a bunch of stuff and I don’t know when it will come out. But even with the stuff I’m sitting on, the steps between each is very wide.
CS: Well don’t worry about if you’ll get better or not. I mean if you have so much stuff you can just stretch it across a 20-year period so maybe the masterpiece has already been made, and you don’t have to worry about making new things.
TCS: I wanna be 50 and still trying to get better.
Our conversation wrapped up around there, and my boyfriend then entered the room and juggled for Theo on camera because that’s just what he does. A month later, Theo and I met in Central Park because I happened to be on vacation there. I suggested we go see the place where John Lennon got shot because I thought it would be exciting, but it turned out to be awkward because there was a security guard there. We talked in real life for about an hour and a half. I was wearing sandals and the strap broke suddenly, and Theo encouraged me to awkwardly keep wearing the sandals, which turned out to be a good idea. My favorite part of the interaction was when he told me about his idea for a podcast. This idea was to press “random article” on Wikipedia and read it out loud.
“I guess some episodes would be two minutes long, and some would be two hours long.”
I was going to end this article by saying I was more excited about that idea for a podcast than future albums, but then I got around to listening to his July release, Our Blood for .S. It’s a classical-influenced drone album with real orchestral instruments, and it floored me. Furthermore, it really, actually does sound like Stars of the Lid, with a little original edge that keeps it from sounding like a copycat. Since SotL’s last album came out in 2007, I have been intermittently aching for new music from them, or for another artist to be a spiritual successor. I feel Theo’s new album picks up the torch in a very capable way.
Around two months after Our Blood came out, a Stars of the Lid member died. Brian McBride was 53 and was one of two members of the duo. I learned of it while trying to link Avec Laudenum for this article. Soon after, I mistakenly turned on my car radio while sitting in a gas station parking lot in rural Washington. In that quick time frame a radio announcer started talking about Brian’s death. It felt so unreal, like trying to run through water. The man’s voice was tired and serious; I took it that people in the ambient scene have been feeling a lot of hollowness.
It would be tasteless if I tried to forcefully spin Theo’s new music as a Stars of the Lid reincarnation. But in my heart, I cannot help but feel that this is still a little bit true. Whether it’s tasteless to say it or not, there is a real sense of continuity between the two musical acts.
When a musician dies and we never knew them, it makes all the sense to listen to their music repeatedly. Some artistic people take it in another direction; they make music as a response to a musician’s death. It’s simultaneously a tribute, self-expression, and a storytelling tradition.
Even though this album came out before Brian died, I think the torch-passing concept still stands. Maybe you could call Our Blood accidentally prophetic. But however you want to think of it, Theo makes it clear that music in the tradition of SotL is alive and growing, it’s here for us to listen to, and there’s so much more to come.