Sonic Geometry has been honing and expanding his sound in the past few years in the Colorado music scene. His first official release on the Street Ritual label has catapulted him to a new level of esteem in the music world. Gracefully taking creative and compositional integrity back into the EDM world, his new EP Islands of the Blessed is a must listen for any fan of good music. The four-track future chill album features original sound design, lush textures, and a collaboration with another blossoming Colorado livetronica act, Second Species.
Listen to Islands of the Blessed below:
Contributor Cameron Crumpler sat down with Sonic Geometry himself to get a better insight into his songwriting process, intentions for his music and what directions he sees himself and the music community at large taking as we dive deeper and deeper into the future.
L4LM: Can you start by giving us an overview of your creative process and your inspirations for this EP and your style as a whole?
SG: When I sit down to write a new song, I like to start with some sort of nucleus, some sort of distilled idea that can be the framework around which I build a piece of music. I would call it a hook, but it’s not always the most obvious part; sometimes it’s a guitar riff, sometimes it’s a synth melody, and sometimes it’s a sample of something kind of random or it’s a step sequencer part that plays in the intro or background, but it’s always something that contains a large amount of the essential groove or vibe of the song.
I started experimenting with this style of writing using guitar riffs and recorded to a click track, and then I would write all the beats, synths, and whatever else on top of that riff to capture its groove while putting the arrangement together. I explored this technique a with a little more focus and intention with this EP because I wanted a liveliness and emotional character to these tracks that develops well with this writing style. Rather than trying to come up with the whole track at once, I started with a single idea that could be a sort of theme to each song and once I had that, the production flowed very smoothly and the ideas presented themselves very fluidly and easily.
To get a lot of the sounds on this EP, I recorded household objects and then sampled the sounds into midi sequences, or resampled and effected them for textures. I made a lot of use of recorded sound on this EP including beatboxing, sampling individual guitar notes, blowing on bottles, banging on different things, and even making stretching sounds with rubber gloves on one song. This added to the uniqueness of the music and helped breathe a vigorous life into the tracks that made them more inspiring and entertaining to work with.
L4LM: This EP in particular seems to be a departure from your previous work of more a glitchy, rock oriented sound, to a more textural, tropical, and in my opinion more unique sound. Tell us a little bit about how this EP came to fruition, and, to your knowledge, how this album will have an effect on future Sonic Geometry releases.
SG: I started writing the music for this EP when I was going through a phase of deep musical dysphoria. I had been trying to create a sound that other people wanted to hear based on years of taking different peoples’ tastes and expectations a little too close to heart. I felt hollow because I didn’t enjoy the music I was making, and since I got into music to enjoy myself and to be inspired, it was like music was pointless. I took a break for a few weeks from writing music and doing anything related to it.
After I took this break I wrote Plush Waves, which came about after collecting a bunch of random household objects and sampling them along with some beatbox sounds to make drum kits and melodic instruments. I first put together the beat and the melody, and the rest of the song just kind of formed around that. I loved the mood immediately. it was relaxed, not forced, and had this much more expansive feeling to it than all the funk and dance-oriented music I had been trying to produce.
Before I had really started communicating with Street Ritual about doing the EP, I knew I wanted to put together a collection of music like this. I was brimming with ideas of beaches in outer space, oceans that stretched for lightyears across the sky to celestial beaches, and I wanted to make a collection of recordings that followed this theme of aquatic outer space. Concept albums always fascinated me, and so I approached this release that way, and I really hope to carry that concept approach over to future releases and develop it.
L4LM: Priming music for releases, how much do you have the audience’s expectations in mind? It has always been fascinating for me to see how artists walk this tightrope of making unique, creative music that comes from within their heart, to making music that is appealing to the masses. Are you making music entirely for yourself, or are you making it to ‘share’ with the public, or a combination of both?
SG: I think these are really two sides of one coin.
On one side you have the matter of creating music for the simple joy of the experience, and I think this is the most important part of music making. For me, it is essential for it to be a joyous, fun, exciting, or otherwise overwhelmingly positive experience. It might not be all like this all the time, there will be times and places where I must sweat and ache for the music, but overall the creation must be something I enjoy and something that gives me pride and satisfaction in its creation.
On the other side I believe that music is meant to be a shared experience, and that it is meant to bring people together because it can put everyone on the same page and tune everyone in to the same feeling of joy that its’ creator tapped into during the music’s inception. Sharing music multiplies it’s power of positivity for everyone involved, because they are not only experiencing the ecstasy of the music but they are experiencing the ecstasy of togetherness and companionship, and furthermore the ecstasy of common understanding and common consciousness through music. Thus, the music must be enjoyed by its audience to have the fullest effect that it possibly can.
I know I’m not going to please all the people all the time, but I can please some of the people most of the time. I know the music I write is going to attract a certain segment of society, and it’s not going to necessarily have this mass appeal right off the bat like a pop song, but I know already that there are some people who seem to “understand what I’m saying” with this music (even though I don’t know what I’m saying with it half the time, but I feel like it is more the listener’s job than mine to figure that out for themselves). It seems like they have this feeling that they understand something about the music, that there were layers to it and they were able to see inside and connect to it in a deep way.
It’s these people I feel I write for the most, and all the people who listen to the music and feel something from it, though it’s not like I’m thinking of these people and writing music for them. It’s just that somewhere in our personalities we have some kind of a connection, and the things I create inspire you in some way, which inspires me, and now we have a symbiotic relationship of inspiration and creativity.
L4LM: Do you feel you fall into ruts or habits composing music? When you feel you run into creative blocks, what are some of the ways you bust out of that and create something fresh and new? Something like ‘Islands of the Blessed’ is such a contrast from your other work it seems as though some sort of artistic and personal growth took place in the process of its creation.
SG: I like to throw different techniques at the wall and see what sticks. I know that sometimes I am going to rehash chord progressions and melodies, but I don’t necessarily try to fight that so much because I feel like those are elements that contribute to a signature style. I think it’s more a matter of regularly introducing new influences and creative processes to the pool from which you draw naturally. Transcription exercises are a big way for me to expand my musical vocabulary, and using new plugins, editing techniques, or mixing techniques expand my sound design vocabulary. I might put a fresh sounding arpeggio over a recycled chord progression I’ve played with hundreds of times, like the chords in the track “Shipwreck” on this EP, and then all
On the track “Shipwreck” from this new EP, I had a chord progression I have toyed with hundreds of times, and have even used in other songs before, but when I played it over the synth textures and an arpeggiated marimba-type sound it took on this whole new energy, and then I added the whistling and lonesome guitar and it had this really emotional and evocative air to it and I loved it. This was a situation in which several existing and several new elements came together to make something slightly familiar and very refreshing.
This refreshing union of musical ideas happened a lot for me in Islands of the Blessed and it was an integral part of bringing the EP to life. It came from honest inspiration and a drive to create a believable musical universe. Through writing this EP, I came up with new ways to clarify intention and create inspired, thematic music that tells a story. That’s what I want to carry with to future releases.
L4LM: What is your opinion of the current state of electronic music? What directions do you see “EDM” taking in the next few years? More importantly, what part do you want to play in these changes?
SG: I hear this movement towards a more lush soundscape, one that’s really rich in textures. Lately, especially in the wake of SFX’s failure, I feel like we’re seeing this shift away from the big huge dancefloor banger thing and more towards an expansive aesthetic in electronic music. Even in the mainstream channels, I’m hearing these lush, melodic, and atmospheric elements come out in pop songs and people are dying for it. There’s a lot of soul and emotion coming back into electronic music that was missing for a while.
I feel like the music I’ve been writing lately fits in a lot with this, not because I tried to, but because it was this atmospheric mood music I was interested in creating all along. Fortunately, I pulled my head out of the sand and started producing music form the heart, not music based on genres and trends that are bound to dry up and whither away. I think musicians now have a unique opportunity to redefine not only what sounds are being made, but how they are made, how they are performed, and how we can translate the emotional character of this music in a life performance. I want to be part of that cutting edge that innovates in the way music is experienced.
L4LM: What artist(s) would you like collaborate with in the near future? What do you see said artists adding to the Sonic G sound?
SG: Lots of locals, honestly. That’s what’s on my mind a lot. There are producers around Denver, like JJ Evanoff, Homemade Spaceship, and Toy Box who I think are doing really cool things in one way or another and it would value us as musicians and the whole scene to work together to come up with new ideas. There are musicians who I want to record with, different players from different bands around town who have something special to offer. I would also love to work with Indian singers or any other musicians playing some traditional instruments that would add a totally different atmosphere and “setting” if you will to the music…and more fancifully I think it would really be cool to do a track with Shpongle/Simon Posford. Or Ozric Tentacles. Both of those bands get it on a whole other level for me.
L4LM: What is your intention for your career as Sonic Geometry in the next five years? How would you like to see all this work you’re putting in manifest outwardly in the world?
SG: My personal goals with Sonic G are simple. I want a self-sustaining career as a musician so I can put my working hours into music and eventually be able to spend more time enjoying many different aspects of life. I think the greatest thing about being a full-time musician is that not only do you get to put in the work you need to, but you are able to experience so many more things than just the day job and the moonlight dream job.
L4LM: Is there anything you would like the audience to know about this album that may not be apparent to them when listening to it for the first time?
SG: Just that they should listen to it and find a meaning in it for themselves. So much of the beauty of music is discovering new things as time goes on, becoming aware of details and sounds that were not apparent through the first listen, or the first five listens. The more you can go back to a recording and uncover more layers of mystery, the more mystical and inspiring it becomes.
Photos by Cody Deel, words by Cameron Crumpler.