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An Interview with Isaac Glendening and Vince Guzzardo of Cesium_137
Posted: Saturday, August 25, 2007
By: Michael Wozny

Isaac Glendening and Vince Guzzardo of Cesium_137 are very pleased. It's not without reason. Proof of Life, their challenging new release, exceeds the high standards and levels of innovation that they established with last year's Intelligent Design. Proof of Life manages to navigate genres and sounds that would seem incompatible. The classical elements of trance have been fused with EBM—not into mere futurepop, but something startlingly unique. At one moment, Proof of Life will be deep dance, the next navel-gazing bedsit introspection, the next aggressive club music, but it is always wholly original and wholly musical, each track a well structured song, not just beats. Proof of Life is exactly that: proof that there is life left in this genre, if you are willing to take the risks. This is the moment—this distinctly satisfied moment—that we have chosen to meet up once again with Cesium_137.

Proof of Life is being released a quick 18 months after Intelligent Design. When did work begin on Proof of Life?

Glendening: We had completed the previous album about six months prior to its release, so that gave us a little bit of a time buffer before, and once we finished touring for Intelligent Design, we started working on Proof of Life. We talked a lot on the road while touring about what direction the next record would be heading in and what sort of themes we were going to introduce. We decided upon a concept while listening to some 'Twilight Zone' audio dramas I bought for the longer trips, and we both found ourselves really inspired by 'The Lateness of the Hour,' which was written by Rod Serling.

With each Cesium_137 release, there is an evolution in sound. Is there an ideal sound you are striving toward, and do you feel pressure to improve and change your sound with each release?

Glendening: I think we take turns with the pressure. At some point, each of us has a sort of mini-meltdown and the other one picks up the slack. It's become a very symbiotic friendship in that respect. I think this time I had the bigger freak-out. [Laughs.]

Vince has a more ideal sound in mind than I usually do. Most times, I just want to show off whatever skills I have picked up or perfect ones I wasn't thrilled with on the last release. I honestly think that Vince is completely obsessive-compulsive when it comes to these things.

Guzzardo: What we've been doing is creating a completely new genre of alternative dance music that incorporates elements of epic trance, which has heavy classical music influences in it, with the more traditional EBM, and putting it in an easy-to-understand pop music structure with vocals. We've been working towards this since the end of Elemental. Different reviewers call it different things; I just call it Cesium_137. The only pressure I feel in regards to our releases is sounding like other bands on our label or in the electronic music scene. I like the fact that we are a unique entity, and I wish more musical artists in the underground music scene would try to have their own sound, rather than copying each other and trying to look cool. I have no desire for us to fit into that category. If it means we don't sell as many CDs as other bands, then so be it.

The intricate layers and seemingly effortless fades suggest the work of a meticulous perfectionist. Would either of you consider yourselves perfectionists?

Glendening: I have my phases where I am over the top on production and writing, and then I half-ass things, knowing that 'Hey, I own this studio; I can come back to it. What's the big deal?' And we always come back to the things we aren't satisfied with. I used to be crazy and act like everything I was doing was being committed to on the final product, and Vince would tell me to chill, and we would get back to it. I couldn't accept that. Now I can. I still think he is nuts, though, right? [Laughs.]

Guzzardo: Yeah, when it comes to electronic music I am obsessive and nuts. That is pretty much all I have listened to over the past 15 years, and I love it now just as much as when I started. When I write, I want the listener to do what I call the 'wow effect' at least once or twice a song. I compare our songs to a roller coaster ride, with peaks and valleys. From my experience, that's what makes a classic electronic song. With that comes the demand for high quality production and oftentimes pulling out all the stops. Those fades and other tricks you hear often took hours, if not days.

What was the writing method for Proof of Life, and how did it vary from previous releases?

Glendening: Not very much in terms of how we both handled the various tasks, more so in terms of what tools we used and how difficult we purposely made things for ourselves. There was a time during the last days of production on Intelligent Design where I just sat back and said, 'This shit has just gotten too easy to produce.' So in the following months, I traded some gear with Vince's studio space, updated my own, rerouted signal flows, and added more analog to the whole recording end. We both armed ourselves with a lot of new tools and began to seriously learn them, not just pop open a plug-in and start messing about. I am one of these freaks that buys the unofficial expanded manuals that dig real deep into what these audio 'wares do. This is just the kind of work ethic we both have. It's one thing to be good at what you do, but it is better to improve upon that and become great. Regardless of what people think of our music, I know that we are on a constant quest for greatness in terms of impressing ourselves. If that sounds arrogant, then so be it.

Guzzardo: One major difference for me this time around was that I finally allowed myself to use software synthesizers for writing purposes. I was always a big skeptic of them, but I now admit I was wrong, and they have been a great addition to the process, as long as hardware-based keyboards are still involved for the thick sounds. Rob Papen-designed software synths are an absolute joy to use.

Proof of Life is a somber release. When did you realize or decide that it would be so somber? How did writing something so somber effect you? And how do you feel about it now that it's complete?

Glendening: I think it is our best work and a completely fresh album. I don't feel that it's somber, but that it rides peaks and plunges down in tempo a few times to reveal something within the programming. We have written some of our most aggressive tracks in years on this thing, and I felt like I tapped into the feelings we were going through when we started out with the Advanced/Decay record. It was a rebirth of sorts in terms of styles and direction. The end of 'Flight' really brings me back to our first single, 'The Fall,' which is why I think I pushed so hard for it to be the first single of this album. Oddly enough, there is an interesting dichotomy between those two singles, not just in their titles, but in the aggression; then again, it could be all of the MMA fights I watch. Who knows?

Guzzardo: I think this is our most well-rounded and best release to date, because we are able to switch gears in writing style and production better than we ever have. I think we both have the primary Cesium sound down to a science now, rather than discovering it like we did with Intelligent Design. Since we used a lot more sustained big pad sounds and big classical music style progressions this time around, it was our final decision to go with a CD image that dealt with something big and vast. We both love science fiction, so we went with a sort of lost in space concept.

Glendening: Well, not 'Lost In Space' like all 'Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!' More like 'Oh shit, I am stranded, and maybe this transmitter I have still works. Let's try to send some messages back home.' I often feel isolated, and that the world is just so huge beyond me. There's so much I don't feel I can say, so I let it all leak into the music. Truly, everything came together this time.

Elements of romantic classical music have become increasingly prevalent with Proof of Life. How did you discover that this element would mesh so naturally with the Cesium_137 sound?

Glendening: I think it was always there; we just got better at writing it, and now it has become a prevalent feature. When I was at Drexel University, I was taught how to write four-part harmonies for voice and strings, and over the years I have rearranged a lot of the strings and voices that Vince would put on the table. This time, we worked on a lot of those together. 'Distance' actually came about as an exercise one of my professors had shown me that I shared with Vince in the studio. We built these parts up from the soprano voicing, constructed harmonies around them, and then pulled them apart to assign different sounds to them. 'With Fire' first started out with me listening to too much Depeche Mode and Aphex Twin while trying to merge the two styles with our own. Then Vince came in the studio and took it up quite a few notches.

Guzzardo: It's always been our objective to incorporate that into Cesium, because a lot of electronic music really lacks that nowadays and always just stays on one or two chords the whole song. We get bored too easily to write like that, so I'm always pushing myself to become a better writer in the melody arena. I am quite pleased with the results on this CD, in particular with the song 'Stranded,' which has become my personal favorite.

On 'Sighted' there are three different types of vocals; what are the roles of those vocals and what do they represent?

Guzzardo: Well, typically when I write, like I have said, I go for the 'wow effect,' and I thought it would be neat to try something like dramatically changing vocal effects between the verses and chorus to accomplish that on that particular track. The transition from verse to chorus on that track, programing-wise, was almost so smooth, we felt a dynamic shift in the vocal department would work better than some long drum roll and a crash.

'Inhuman' uses a hard house beat. How did you select it, and how does a beat change when you replace its context?

Guzzardo: Well, we actually used an old '80s tom-tom sound for the fill and got the idea from old '80s style minimal industrial. I just thought it would be neat and sit well with the '90s feel of the track. That song is unique because it sounds like it almost could have come out 10 years ago, but the real change in context is the psy-trance element of the guitar and bridge area. We thought that would do well to give it an almost futuristic feel, like the track could be released 10 years from now and fit into what was going on.

Glendening: Yeah, 'future pop.' From a production side, a lot of that was the Jomox X-Base 909 and ER-1, I think. An analog drum machine for that thick thump of a kick that I ran through an LA2A compressor to max it out. Those two pieces together sound massive and like nothing else I have ever heard. I like to glitch out the high-end with stutter effects and insane time-stretching on the hi-hats to sound like they are more complex than they really are. I don't know if the house music guys do that, but its something I got from artists like Lassigue Bendthaus, LFO and BT.

Two reoccurring themes in Cesium_137 are struggle and release. What would you tell an inquisitive therapist if confronted about those two reoccurring themes?

Glendening: This music is truly a chronicle of where we both are mentally when we write it. I think there is a lot of empathy going on when we are working together, and it helps the process along, keeps us on the same page. We had both hit some really high and low points in the year or so of time we spent writing Proof of Life. I wanted to be more honest with the lyrics, especially. Too often in the past I would hide the meaning by littering the lyrics with a lot of obfuscating terms and illustrations. I needed to break free of that Lovecraftian spooky bullshit this time around and just get it out there. I have a really strange ethnic and religious background and some of the songs touched upon my feelings towards these things. Being half Indo-Pakistani in America is a social stigma at times and has been made worse by both sides of my genetic line. At the same time, I am still very much in love with my wife and child, so there is always a bit of light shining through even in the darkest of times.

Is 'Keep Me' about fatherhood? How does being a father influence how you see the world?

Glendening: I had that melody pop in my head before my son went into surgery. It wouldn't leave me, and so it found its way into a song. Obviously, for a one-year-old to go into any kind of surgery is an ultra-serious matter. To be strong for my family during that time was one of the hardest things I have ever faced. I never thought I could be that strong, emotionally—mentally—and actually impressed my own father. That rebuilt my fortitude to a degree.

Beyond that, at times I feel like my son was born on the 11th hour of earth here. Looking at the newspapers, I almost feel guilty at times for bringing a child into this. Then I realize that a lot of good still happens here, that a lot of great people are born every day, and that it is my duty to contribute to the future by raising my boy to someday be a good man. Not a great man—that's up to him—but a good man can work miracles when all hope is lost just by simply being. I want my son to have the same type of relationship my father and I do, based on honesty and support. I want him to know that he can always lean on me when his legs can't carry him. Even when I am no longer here on this earth, I want him to know that my love for him will endure and carry him through if he believes in it.

A few months ago Cesium_137 posted Thomas Dolby's 'One of Our Submarines' as a MySpace bulletin. Can you name other electro pioneers who have influenced Cesium_137, who you believe deserve more recognition?

Guzzardo: I love Vince DiCola's '80s movie soundtracks first and foremost. His music from Transformers: The Movie and Rocky IV got me into electronic music to begin with. Others are Nitzer Ebb, Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, and a myriad of modern day trance music producers.

Glendening: I am more of the classic electro guy in this band. In my family we have a random 'Kraftwerk Sunday' where we drive around or out to my brother's place in the deep country and listen to Trans-Europe Express. Stuff like 'The Hall of Mirrors' is just immensely articulate and complex, and yet all most folks know is Kraftwerk's 'The Mix.' Thats like the damned 'Kidz Bop' version of their music. I mean, it's cool and all, but the original recordings are beyond compare. I think Dolby is sorely overlooked as a one-hit wonder when the man has written volumes of amazing songs. The same goes for bands like The Human League and Information Society. I also felt that the Nerve Filter debut album was brilliant and still it doesn't seem all too popular in the scene. When this happens I wonder what the hell is wrong with people in 'the scene.' All of those silly clothes and hair products must be warping their brains. I also think that every budding electro artist should listen to Information Society's Peace and Love, Inc. album. That stuff is pure genius, and those guys didn't have an eighth of the accessible computer widgets we have today.

How will you promote Proof of Life, and what are Cesium_137's future plans?

Glendening: We wanted to tour this fall and will try to get a few dates out there then. The big tour will come around the springtime, and we are really looking forward to getting out on the road. We met up at the beach the other day and we all had the itch to get back on the road. We always have a ton of fun and make the best of any situation. By the time we make it out, we will be more than ready. In the meantime, we are working on a couple of side projects and will begin writing another Cesium_137 record probably some time in the fall.