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Life Toward Twilight

Daniel Tuttle began Life Toward Twilight in 1999 as a side project to explore more ambient material than that of his main project at the time, the heavy industrial act Ogun's Will. Although a small collection of tracks entitled Into Words I Have Fallen was released, it wasn't until Tuttle relocated to Detroit that work begin on Life Toward Twilight's first official album. Entitled Catayo, the album was based on a short story by writer and artist Elayne Safir and was followed by live shows with such acts as Iszoloscope and Larvae.

Tuttle completed a second album, A Subtle Dawn, in early 2004, but when his fiancée, clothing designer Laura Purdy, was diagnosed with cancer, Life Toward Twilight was put on hold so Tuttle could take care of her. Purdy passed away Jan.31, 2005, and Tuttle is currently working on a tribute album dedicated to her. To reignite interest in Life Toward Twilight, he has also reissued his second album with new tracks as a free download, entitled We Waited for a Subtle Dawn.

You've recently returned to doing music again after a long hiatus. Can you tell us a little about that, for readers who might not be aware of what's been going on with the project since 2004?

Tuttle: In January 2004, my fiancée, Laura, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer that was centered on her right lung. I was her primary caretaker and took her to most of her appointments, took care of her around the house, and even helped manage her online clothing design business, The Pale Court. On top of this, I was working a full time job and running a stage at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival that took place in May of 2004. She went through all the chemotherapy and in October 2004 went through a stem cell transplant. After that, she was exceptionally weak, and I had to run to even more appointments and pay more careful attention to her. The high dose chemotherapy administered prior to the transplant destroyed her immune system, so our loft had to be immaculately clean and free of all pathogens. Most of the latter half of 2004 I spent taking care of her almost exclusively, outside of work. In January 2005, when things seemed to be on the recovery, she took a turn for the worse. We took her to the hospital for breathing problems and some other minor complications. A week and a half later, on January 31, she passed away, as the cancer had resumed spreading, effectively destroying her right lung and rapidly spreading to her left lung.

Obviously, this was devastating. Between late 2003 and early 2005, I was too busy to work on music at all. After Laura passed in 2005, I was simply too traumatized to work on anything. It was midway through 2005 before I gathered enough willpower to recompile a release of finished material and start promoting my music again. I just recently started composing new material.

How have those events affected your creative process? Will your creative expression in dealing with those events lead to a change in the Life Toward Twilight sound?

Tuttle: While two years isn't a huge amount of time, it was enough time for a lot of my tools to become dated and many of my techniques to be lost from memory. I'm sure the depression and trauma didn't help much, either. I spent a great amount of time evaluating how I write music, and am redefining that process. I write music very differently than I did before, though I use many of the same compositional techniques.

As far as inspiration is concerned, of course I now have heavy demons and monsters to deal with. Music has always been a way to explore the darker sides of life for me, and needless to say, these events are about as abysmal and influential as anyone can imagine. Will the sound change? Of course it will, but it is difficult to say to what extent. I have always simply composed what is in my head, and it often sounds different from previous compositions. I suspect there will be a fair amount of tracks that are quite a bit darker.

The music on We Waited for a Subtle Dawn seems very bleak. How do the militaristic sounds and ominous textures portray what you were going through while you were creating this album?

Tuttle: That particular release was not really a reflection on anything I was going through personally. Most of that album was recorded between the release of Catayo in very early 2002 and midway through 2003. Most of the pieces are actually narrative, or storytelling. There is a specific idea behind each piece, and I was either trying to capture the tone of a story, or to score a story as I imagined it happening. I was not really telling any story from my own life, per se.

Is there a specific narrative connected to the album, as there was on Catayo?

Tuttle: Yes, there definitely is specific narrative, though there was never any intention to actually include the texts that formed the basis of the music. While there are stories I was trying to score, the album is not a concept album. There are a variety of stories being used and a variety of inspirations. Each track is scoring some sort of story, though in some cases it is just an abstract idea. My good friend Elayne Safir wrote the story for Catayo. She also provided texts that helped me lay the foundations for a number of the tracks on A Subtle Dawn. Elayne is an amazing writer, in my opinion. She creates these surreal yet passionate worlds that I can strongly visualize, and they make me feel something I can positively identify. It translates to my music very easily. She presents me a full, lush world that I can use to populate my own ideas. There has always been an interesting chemistry there, too, as some of the writings that inspired pieces on this album were inspired by artistic exchange between Elayne and me that had already occurred. So, it was sort of a circle of inspiration, where I would send her stuff, she would make something, send it back, and I would use it as a basis to create something new entirely.

Some of the musical pieces were based on some of my own writing, as well. All of this material has remained unpublished as of now. Maybe in the future I will make that more available, but at this point in time I have no intention of doing that. It isn't an insecurity of my own work that prevents me from publishing my writings. A lot of it is financial. I don't want to misrepresent my own work. Trying to create a really nice, big package with the actual CD, the actual album, is very expensive. As someone who has, up to this point, covered all expenses alone, without any help from a label, it just isn't possible to do this sort of thing. Following Laura's passing, I was left with a great deal of financial burden. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to do a really big release, I can find a label that would be interested in financing and helping me realize the whole project.

Some of your pieces seem almost Wagnerian, with the big orchestral arrangements and kettle drums. Who are your musical influences? Are you a classical fan?

Tuttle: Absolutely! I love Wagner, but he isn't any sort of direct inspiration. I love a lot of 19th century composers like Wagner and Chopin, but what really inspire me are the avant-garde composers of the 20th century, like Cage, Reich, Glass and Stravinsky. I do not consider myself any sort of avant-garde producer or composer, but these composers and their works fascinate me and inspire me to go out on a limb to do what I need to do in order to realize my own vision. Not that I am necessarily breaking ground, but I do not attempt to follow or adhere to any sort of conventions. I am completely without any sort of formal training.

I was listening to an interview with Steve Reich recently, and the interviewer asked him if he just plays around with material until he finds something he likes, or if he sets out to compose with something specific in mind. Of course, he said it is all intentional, even weird tape loops of strange voices and so on. He was explaining that when he heard a sound, it would spark a vision, and he would then proceed to capture that vision. This is how I work, exactly. I know what I am going to produce; it is just how I get there that is unknown. I use what tools I have. I've always seen it like taking a trip without a map. I know the coordinates of my destination, and I have a compass. I'll get there eventually with some work.

Cage often wrote in his books about experimental music as well. He explained that he doesn't experiment to create his pieces, though he would intentionally use elements of chance in the composition. Cage would often use things like the I Ching to dictate compositions, while he controlled the environment in which the composition played out. I think this is brilliant, and hugely inspiring, though I practice no such techniques myself. Everything is controlled and intentional. I have always felt the experimental term as applied to most 'experimental' music to be highly misleading, and find it somewhat inaccurate when people use it to describe my work.

I am also influenced by a lot of current stuff as well. I often list artists like Current 93 and Coil as influences. The amazing amount of poetic depth and mood in Tibet's newer Current 93 releases is hugely inspiring to me. I wish I could express myself so vividly. Coil has always blown my mind, and Balance's death was something of a shock to me as well. Some other artists that have been a huge inspiration to me the past few years, besides what is listed above, include Darrin Verhagen of Shinjuku Thief, Will Oldham, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Venetian Snares, Rachel's, Dark Muse, Sunn O))), Muslimgauze and Lycia. My inspirations are all over the place. It would be unfair to not mention bands like Skinny Puppy and all the stuff from the Wax Trax! days, as that stuff was a huge inspiration when I was much younger. I don't listen to Skinny Puppy much anymore, but that giant, dark, big epic sound with the larger-than-life live show has always been very influential to all of my ideas.

You've made We Waited for a Subtle Dawn a free download to help spread the word that Life Toward Twilight is active again. How has the response been so far?

Tuttle: The response is excellent. I won't go into Web stats, but a lot of data is pulled off of my server monthly. People are apparently interested in this. Many peers, however, are very dismissive of my sharing my music for free, and there is a sort of condescension that takes place as a result. It is as if I am not a real artist because I have not signed to a label and am trying to give my music away. I've received this attitude from labels, other musicians, and even reviewers. There seems to be this perception that if I am giving my music away, it has no commercial potential, and is valueless as a result. This is preposterous to me! I do not feel this practice invalidates my work in any way. The decision to offer my music for free via download was not made because I cannot sell my music. I do sell CDs, even when I offer them for free to download. My interests are not entirely commercial, and I get very enthusiastic about people hearing my music. I know it is good, presentable material, and I want people to hear it. I put a lot of work into my music. Sure, like anyone else, I'd love to make money from my music, but I have a decent day job, and my finances are somewhat secure. Making money from my music isn't a concern. So, I just give my music away. It seems like the most realistic approach at this point. My plans for future releases may not follow this free-for-all pattern, particularly if I can get interest from a decent label.

Despite the weird elitist condescension, the response to my free music has been quite excellent. On the Last.fm radio site, I've had over 1,000 unique listeners over the past six months or so. That's a fantastic number to me. My Web statistics at various times have exploded, with gigabytes worth of MP3 files being downloaded from my server monthly.

How did it feel to go back to performing live after the hiatus? Does it seem like the scene has changed? Have your feelings toward it changed since you've returned?

Tuttle: The scenes I am accustomed to have changed very little in two years. Some trends and micro-genres have become bigger, but not much changed. I've always been involved in scenes way out on the fringe, so the crowd doesn't change a lot over the years. There are always new faces, of course, but they are friends of friends, and still the same social circles. I am near Detroit, and there are some very cool, interesting things going on down there. Detroit is, after all, one of the most genuinely 'industrial' cities in the world. It is hard to find this sort of decadent, gritty and grey urban-ness anywhere. The FromTheGut people do awesome shows, and of course, Low Res is in Detroit. A lot of the breakcore guys, like Xanopticon, Larvae, and Enduser, come up to Detroit somewhat regularly to do shows. The vibe is super cool, and it is a lot of fun. I never feel like I fit in properly, but I make it work out somehow. I just like hanging around, taking photos of the shows, and chatting with other musicians.

Not that I performed out live much before my small hiatus. Life Toward Twilight performances prior to 2004 generally included my friend Brent Nicholas and me setting up a bunch of gear and making dark, earsplitting noise for a crowd of strangers. People were usually there to see someone else, or we were playing with noise acts much more established than us. I moved to the Detroit area in 2000, as did Brent, so we were both relatively new to the area. By the time I started to accumulate momentum, I had to bow out. I am still building a real live show. There isn't much music similar to Life Toward Twilight in the area, so I end up performing out of context. I generally perform next to breakcore, noise or industrial acts. I do like the breakcore guys do, and show up with my laptop and a MIDI controller and weave soundscapes on the fly, usually with some sort of interesting backing video. I modify my pieces to fit the appropriate context as much as I can. I often make percussion that is super epic, or add a very industrial edge, with big, heavy, distorted beats. It sounds cool, and these crowds seem to dig it for the most part. I would love to have a much more elaborate live act, and I am building that now.

What do you have planned next for Life Toward Twilight? Have you begun work on a new album?

Tuttle: I have a number of things planned. For one, I would like to reprint Catayo. I lost the original cover art, which was highly personal to me. I will need new cover art if I decide to re-release it. I have a bunch of material composed and half-produced. I am looking at doing a few smaller releases of 20 to 30 minutes in length. The new material is sounding much more polished than the older material, and is sounding appropriately darker. I am, of course, working on a tribute to Laura that may not see light for some time. It will have to be nearly perfect for me to release it. I have a vision of a huge release, so it will take time. Another small release I am working on is completely based on horror movies. It is a fun release. I am talking with Elyse, the vocalist I worked with before, who is also a great friend of mine. She is eager to contribute, and I intend to try to get her to add vocals to nearly all of my pieces. I love her voice. We just never had time to do more for the previous release. I have a couple other vocalists I want to work with as well.

My immediate project is getting the live set to look and sound great. I am working on a video for live performances, costumes and so on. I need the live set to appear as big as the music sounds. I'm hoping to find a good vocalist locally that can help take control of the live image, and works well with and understands the sound and mood I am constantly trying to achieve. This is always very difficult.