8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

San Mateo: A Layer of Hiss

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As San Mateo, Matthew Naquin makes the music of nostalgia, dreams, and expanding subterranean root networks. San Mateo’s latest album — Exspiravit Luminaria — features a digitalized tree in its cover art, eerily suspended with its roots hanging like tendrils. The image is a handy approximation of Matthew’s sound and modus operandi. Exspiravit Luminaria‘s music is steeped in earthiness but also exists outside the soil, floating calmly in an unnatural digitalness. 

I’ve wanted to have this conversation for a while. For the past few years, my fledgling imprint 8D Industries has helped to release San Mateo’s steady and always compelling output. In email exchanges with Matthew, he’s given hints about his process. There’s usually mention of self-imposed constraints, of limiting the music-making tools he has access to, and how each new album has an intentional difference from the previous one. Matthew was immediately on my mind as an interview candidate for this blog’s series of conversations about the artistic process. I’m glad to present our chat to you today.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), our exchange is full of laughs. Matthew shares my curiosity about the creative process and the philosophical question of how art works. Of course, it’s hard to talk about those things without a sense of humor. Other topics include dealing with past releases we no longer enjoy listening to, imagining sequenced music as played by ‘live’ musicians, why playlists suck (or not), the benefit of enforcing constraints, and, as excerpted below, the younger generation’s unexplained embrace of tape hiss.

You can listen to the entire conversation in the audio player. Enjoy! (Also, I apologize that my voice in the audio is a bit crunchy. Editing this inspired me to purchase a new, better microphone.)

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MD: So, some years ago, I found myself buying a sound set of various tape hisses.

MN: I’ve actually got a whole file folder of tape hiss that I’ve created. I bought stuff like that before I started making my own.

MD: Yeah, as I’m buying this thing, I’m thinking: the 18-year-old version of me is screaming right now. He has no idea what I’m doing, wanting to actually add tape hiss. Back then, I literally was losing sleep over tape hiss when I was recording, I could not figure out how to get a good sound without losing my high end, unintentionally adding tape hiss, and everything going crazy. 

MN: It’s amazing. Thirty years ago, everybody searched for sonic purity, and now it’s quite the opposite. Like you were saying, your 18-year-old self would be like, “You’ve got this perfect DAW that records at 24 or 48 bits. And now you’re adding hiss back in.” 

MD: I also have these plugins that add hiss. I mean, they’re great. They sound amazing, but it’s just hilarious to me. And I use them. I love ’em, and I use ’em. But it’s so funny how that thing has come around. Why is that attractive, do you think?

MN: I think there’s something about that, the organicness of it. I was actually pondering this the other day as I was feeding noise into my signal chain. In fact, I’m working on a track where I have an emulation plugin running in the background, adding hiss. There’s no sound actually being fed into it. I’ve just got the tape function turned on to feed a layer of hiss into the signal itself. And I was thinking about that while toggling it back and forth, on and off. And yes, it’s digital, it’s fake tape — whatever. But it opens up the mix in a way that it’s hard to define. It’s almost like a gut feeling or something instinctual, where it adds some of this organic layer to things. When it’s dry, you just can’t hear anything like that. Also, one of the things I like to do is stick a mic out my window and just record that. That’s it. I think I did this on Sonnet Ring and Deepstaria — there’s an underlying microphone feed running through the whole album on both of those. You might not be able to hear it or any street noise or anything like that, but it’s the same with adding tape hiss. It puts you there, somehow or another. It puts you in the room in a way that I think a sterile digital environment doesn’t allow. I don’t know; I’m just spitballing here. As I said, I was thinking about it just yesterday, how noise adds character that opens up the mix in a way that isn’t there when it’s turned off. It doesn’t feel as good, you know?

MD: Do you think this effect is emotional, like an emotional reaction or a nostalgic reaction?

MN: It could be, but then it’s very popular with this current generation, and they wouldn’t have grown up on that. I mean, I understand with vaporwave or something like that. That genre taps into more guttural, nostalgic things. But tape noise — I can’t imagine that many people in the younger generation into lo-fi music heard tape noise growing up. Maybe they did?

MD: I don’t know. It’s like that phenomenon that was around for a minute of music that sounds like it’s in an empty mall.

MN: Oh, yeah! 

MD: There was a New Yorker article about the phenomenon and how a lot of the people creating these YouTube channels are too young to have actually experienced a mall in its heyday.

MN: I wonder if there’s something that gets ingrained generationally. If your parents experienced the empty mall, there’s something in your genes somehow, that nostalgia or that emotion that gets passed down. (pauses and laughs) Probably not. But, yeah, they’ve never experienced this. They’ve never experienced tape. So why is it popular right now? What are they nostalgic for?

MD: And even adding crackle and vinyl record noise to digital songs. There’s an instrumental hip-hop label I do some work with, and half of their catalog is like that. The artists, who are all very young, add vinyl noise to their digital productions. It’s funny to me, but it’s also cool. But I do feel there is a sort of emotional, nostalgic appeal to tape hiss. I do think that because tape hiss won’t work on everything. And if you remove it from certain songs, your emotional feeling from those songs will be different.

MN: I mean, Boards of Canada created a career on it, right?

MD: But that’s where it’s almost like it’s being passed down. Boards of Canada are a great example because they obviously grew up with tapes and weird educational films and things that had sonic deficiencies in them. They added these defects to their music, which may have been because of an emotional feeling it gave them. This feeling then attached itself to their listeners. And then suddenly, you have new listeners who may not have experienced the original sources but still catching on to the feeling that, say, Boards of Canada originally felt. It’s almost like this cycle of audio nostalgia.

MN: Well, I mean, look at Stranger Things. I’m sure the bulk of its audience is probably people that didn’t grow up in the eighties. Well, I’m not positive, but I would bet that’s the case. The show’s very popular with a younger generation. And then the sound of Stranger Things, the synth lines and production, and all that stuff. There are kids that have never heard that. But it’s the whole intent of Stranger Things; to hit a nostalgic bone, right? It’s supposed to have an eighties ‘feel.’ So, yeah, maybe it is generationally apparent to a child. This makes me curious about what sounds will get used 40 years from now. What’s that going to be? Will producers still use tape hiss and vinyl crackle? I mean, when we’re that far out, will it be something else?

MD: That’s interesting. But it’s interesting, too, when you think about how trends come around. Something that’s really scary to think about for anyone our age is Stranger Things is basically to now as Happy Days was to us in the eighties. 

MN: I haven’t thought of it that way, but yeah, that’s … (shudders)

MD: I mean, as far as the era that was being depicted and the music that was in it. But it seems like the eighties look and sounds have more perseverance then, say, beyond bands like the Stray Cats as an example of fifties music emulated in the eighties. So I don’t know; it almost feels like there’s something else going on …

MN: And then there was that weird swing revival in the nineties.

MD: Which we don’t need to talk about. (much nervous laughter)

→ Exspiravit Luminaria, San Mateo’s latest album, is available now on Bandcamp and all the streaming places.

What Am I Doing Now? (June 2020)

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I kept the /now page stuck in January 2020 for months. I was reluctant to update things as that January time capsule quickly transformed into novelty. Have you seen those videos where the woman talks to her future self, visiting the past from only two months ahead? It feels like that when I look at the plans I laid out last January. If my past self only knew what was in store and how those bold plans went right in the bin.

Rather than give an overview of the past six months (which would be daunting), I’ll keep this in the present. I believe that’s what /now is about, anyway. So here’s what is happening now:

Work:
• I was hired by a pair of businesses to create original theme music and audio logos for their content marketing. That’s what we call a ‘side gig,’ and I happily accept those in this time of professional challenges. It would be cool to do more of this, and I created a simple landing page explaining what I offer.
• I was a featured speaker for the Giants of Video online summit. I gave an hour-long presentation on sourcing music for video and the various legal considerations that appear when syncing music with visual content.
• I also guested on the Spot Lyte On… podcast. Host Lawrence Peryer and I intended to talk about music business matters but instead quickly veered into a fun and casual conversation about fandom and loving music. I got somewhat nostalgic, which is rare for me.
• There were two new 8D Industries releases over the past couple of months: San Mateo’s Deepstaria and Monta At Odds’ Zen Diagram. Both are excellent (OK, I’m biased, but I wouldn’t put them out if I didn’t believe they were) and available as ‘name your price’ on Bandcamp.
• Newsletters are tough. I’ve shipped 17 ‘episodes’ of Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care and took my first break this past weekend. I wasn’t happy about skipping the weekend, but now I’m glad I did it. It’s a reset — what do I want this newsletter to be, and where do I want it to go? I have ideas. Subscribe here if you’re curious. 
• The licensing and sync industry joined the rest of the music world in slowing down for COVID-time. Things are revving back up as we all get (kinda) used to how things will be functioning for at least the rest of the year. I’m focusing on 8DSync through the summer, making up for lost time and aggressively pushing our current roster. I look forward to immersing myself in music publishing once again.

Personal:
• I spent the last month helping my mom buy a house. She closed yesterday. It’s next door. That’s a good thing — quite wonderful, really. She’s going to love lake life, especially if we keep having sunrises like this one.
• Caroline got another memoir offer and hasn’t even finished the one she’s presently co-writing. That’s amazing — she’s well on her way to a career as a professional memoir co-writer (if she’s not there already). I’m super-proud of her.
• I saw a tornado. And we were visited by coyotes.
• I’m experimenting with increasing my effectiveness (not productivity, thanks). Following Twitter advice from Craig Mod (now deleted, as I guess he deletes tweets after a couple of weeks), I’m no longer checking email or looking at any websites until the morning passes. That includes any news. For the most part, I don’t look at any news sites throughout the day. It’s interesting how the most essential and meaningful news stories still find their way to me while the outrage-of-the-day stories are invisible. And I’m removing myself from Facebook sometime soon — I can’t take that company anymore, and I’m embarrassed I didn’t make this move before. I’m currently figuring out how to go about it — instant cold turkey or gradual retreat. I’m open to any advice.
• I’m all in on Roam Research. Finding a way to digitally replicate Ryan Holiday’s index card system was my ‘white whale’ for the past two years. After trying many different apps and techniques — Notion, DevonThink, Ulysses, many others — and getting almost there but not entirely, I stumbled upon Roam. Immediately I realized Roam is the perfect tool for this digital commonplace book/index card system. Huzzah! Bonus: I’m also using Roam as my task manager and daily journal and starting to implement it as a CRM tool. I will soon be able to eliminate 3 or 4 other apps (including a couple that have subscription plans) and get the same functionality in a single app. (This seems like it should go under ‘Work,’ but this change has more dramatically improved my personal life.)

Consumption:
• As a form of de-stress, before bed, I’m catching up on the fiction — mostly science fiction — that I probably should have read when I was younger. I read the Foundation trilogy (just in time for this, I guess), which I enjoyed, but not blown away like some famous people were. I’m checking out Philip K. Dick — reading Time Out of Joint right now, which is amusing and good. I finished Consider Phlebus and had a lot of fun with it. I’ll continue that series. I also read some non-science fiction from a sci-fi author: Ray Bradbury’s Green Shadows, White Whale. It’s excellent and hilarious. 
• In the mornings, I am concurrently reading non-fiction: Tiny Habits, The Longing For Less, and Stillness Is The Key are recent ones. Right now, I’m into So You Want To Talk About Race and plan to follow that with other recommended books about this mess we’re in (and that we’ve been in since the country’s founding).
• I can’t believe I didn’t see Wild Strawberries until last week. Fantastic — I can’t stop thinking about it. I recently rewatched Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and it’s still my favorite film of the last couple of years. And we started The Bureau and just finished the second season. The series has us completely hooked. Other than those, there’s not a whole lot on the TV and film list. I’m reading a lot more these days, and the 8:30 PM sunsets have us enjoying lake life rather than watching TV in the evenings.

Connect:
• Right now, you can follow and message me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or micro.blog. Or you can reach out through this page. I’m always happy to hear from others floating around in this convoluted world. 

What Am I Doing Now? (New Year Edition)

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This month seems like the beginning of a year of transition but, when you think about it, every new year is a year of transition. The flick-of-a-switch from one numbered timeline to the next is arbitrary, but the anticipation of flicking does inspire reflection and taking of stock. This one’s more potent as it’s the start of a new decade. The self-examination was particularly intense this time.

2019 felt like an ‘in-between’ year — like I spent it preparing for something. There were accomplishments and significant moments (like marriage!), but looking back, I see a lot of things getting set up for the future.

What am I setting up? Well, this is the year of 8DSync and going all-in on music publishing and licensing. It’s an area I’ve worked in for two decades but as a side-gig to other endeavors. Now with the help of my colleagues Miguel Bustamante and Craig Snyder, I have brought 8DSync to the forefront. The move makes sense — I am more knowledgable in music publishing than any other music business field, and it’s what I do best. Time to lean in.

Beginning the year, I’m in the process of redesigning the 8DSync website from scratch. Not understanding what I was getting into, I decided to do this redesign myself. The site is looking great, but it’s a work in progress as well as a time-consuming one. I’m adding many artist and release pages over the next few months.

Some of those artists represent new signings to the 8DSync roster. We start the year with these exciting additions: Kingston, New York’s psychedelic Shana Falana, the UK roots-rock act Swampmeat Family Band, Jonathan Brodeur and his power-poptastic Bird Streets project, and a lovely downtempo label out of Ireland called WeGrowWax. There’s also a new album from Scotland’s The Little Kicks on the horizon. That’s a lot of fantastic music to look forward to straight away.

Another of my projects due for a refresh is the 8D Industries label. We took a hiatus as the artists concocted releases, but now it seems likely we’ll have new music from Monta At Odds, San Mateo, and More Ghost Than Man before next summer.

But what about Q-Burns Abstract Message, you ask? I’m working on a new batch of songs, too. It’s all quite different, and I debate even using the Q-BAM moniker, though I probably will. I’d like to have a consistent slate of releases this year — perhaps a series or 3 or 4 song EPs — which will be a challenge. I must remind myself that we make the time, we don’t find the time.

And there’s a ton of writing in my future. The 8sided blog is an integral part of my life, and I enjoy working on it. I’m meeting cool new people through it, too (drop me a line anytime). I have internal debates over what this blog is exactly — is it a place for music industry commentary, or reviews and notes on the culture, or can I get personal, or can I get silly? I’m leaning towards it being all these things. But one thing I plan to examine repeatedly is how we’ve grown to rely on the biggest corporations in history for the dissemination of our art. How do we maintain our independence as the tech-giants chip it away? That’s the theme of the blog if there is one.

For over a year, I’ve been threatening to start a newsletter. All the cool kids are doing it, and I want to hang with the cool kids. Well, it’s ready to launch, and it has a name: Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. What’s that about, right? Just bear with me. The newsletter will be different than the blog though I’m not sure how yet. The first few ideas for issues are more personal, more story-oriented. I’ll base it on my experiences juggling all these things — the publishing company, the label, Q-BAM — and the trials of working in the music industry from outside of the music industry. I’m sure I’ll also write about interesting things I’m reading and watching and hearing, too. It will be good, and I’m setting the first issue free in a few weeks. Please sign up here.

What am I looking for in 2020? Well, besides the replacement of some of our world leaders (omg plz), I’d like more excuses to travel. I already have flights booked for returns to SXSW and MusicBiz, but would enjoy several more chances to ride on airplanes. I’d also like to pick up a couple more consultancy clients this year, whether artists or labels needing help with branding, positioning, and release strategies or companies looking for assistance with music publishing and rights management. And I’d love to advise and collaborate with a cool outsider artist, band, or label — one dedicated to a musical niche with no mainstream aspiration and struggling with being seen in 2020’s ephemeral information whirlpool. If that’s you and you’re willing to do the work, then feel free to get in touch.

One last tidbit: I mentioned SXSW above. I’m thrilled to announce that there will be an 8DSync showcase at the festival this March, featuring many of the artists mentioned above. I’ll have the details soon. I played SXSW a few times as Q-BAM in the past, but I’ve never been on the organizing side of a showcase. So that’s exciting.

OK, you didn’t ask for it, but now you’re up to date on my activities. And, as a byproduct of this ramble, I have a clearer idea of what I’d like to do over the next few months. 2020 is the year when all that table-setting in 2019 pays off. Now I’d like to hear from you. What are your big plans? Is there an opportunity for us to work together, or bounce around some ideas? I’m game. I have the feeling this could be our year.

An 8D Industries Update

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There’s been a bunch of activity in the label realm, so I thought I’d give a quick update on my 8D Industries imprint.

Terry Grant AKA More Ghost Than Man participated in Big Shot Magazine’s 2018 Rewind, answering a few questions about the past year and the present one. In response to a new year’s resolution, Terry quotes Gustave Flaubert:

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

More Ghost Than Man

(I also submitted to the 2018 Rewind if you’d like to check it out.)

More Ghost Than Man’s Everything Impossible Is Far Away album continues to fascinate, providing evocative instrumental soundscapes for your mind-movies. In 2019 Terry will release a long-gestating short sci-fi film using the album’s songs. Terry’s been dropping clues on Instagram — he’s built a city in his garage and created some sort of space-age sickbay.

We’ll be releasing the follow-up to Everything Impossible Is Far Away later this year.

Monta At Odds have been busy, building on the deserved hype for last year’s Argentum Dreams album and they just performed a bunch of New Order songs (as ‘Blue Monta’) at a special end-of-the-year concert. To keep the momentum going, we’re reissuing Monta’s 2005 debut album Unsuspecting. It’s currently out of print, and it shouldn’t be — it’s a terrific ride, and, though more on the ‘downtempo’ tip, isn’t that far off from the sound of Argentum Dreams. Two stand-out songs you can listen to now: “Disappointment” and “A Nick A Scratch A Scuff.”

Our reissue of Unsuspecting will be out on January 18. If you’re a Bandcamp user, follow 8D Industries there to receive a message once the album is available. Like all of our releases, it will be ‘name your price’ on the Bandcamp platform.

San Mateo delivered his just-completed album this week, and it’s fantastic. The cover art is stunning as well. I can’t wait to send this out into the world. Mid-April, perhaps? It’s the early stages of release planning — once Unsuspecting is out, I’ll have a better idea. In the meantime, dive into San Mateo’s previous work if you’re new to this expressive audio artist.

And an upcoming Q-Burns Abstract Message release? Stay tuned.