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An Interview with Thomas Anselmi of Mirror
Posted: Monday, May 25, 2009
By: Ilker Yücel
Editor

The live concert has been a tried and true method for artists and musicians to perform for an audience for centuries. Of course, in the modern era in which digital technology has ingrained itself into virtually every aspect of our daily lives and every form of media pervades the senses, those very same artists are in a bind to try to discover new ways to present their performances in ways that will excite and awe. It's not uncommon to see a fair share of theatricality incorporated into the live show, providing audiences with not simply a live rendition of the music they've already listened to through their speakers but also with an actual display of showmanship and physical performance. From the immense circular projection screen and laser lights that Pink Floyd employed for the bulk of their time to the formless flights of sonic frenzy that defined a Throbbing Gristle show, from Alice Cooper's horror show theatrics to Celldweller's dizzying display of live percussion and seemingly endless spinning, the live show is not only intended to present the music, but has now become an avenue for the necessity of spectacle. Thomas Anselmi recognizes this dilemma, which has served as inspiration for his Mirror project, a multimedia presentation that blurs the lines between erotic art, cinema and cabaret. With producer Vincent Jones and a handful of renowned collaborators, Anselmi's soundtrack album to Mirror took the conventions of pop melodies and lyrical ambiguity into a darker realm explored only by a handful of artists before him. As such, Mirror is not simply a live show, nor is it a mere theatrical event, but rather an outlet for Anselmi to discover new means to portray his skewed vision as broadly as possible: visually, lyrically, musically, theatrically. Anselmi lets us in on just what drives his creative vision, touching on the inspiration behind several facets of the Mirror show, as well as his collaboration with artists like Mike Garson, Dave Gahan, and Phil Western.

The Mirror album you just released is actually a soundtrack to a multimedia presentation you are doing?

Anselmi: Yeah, well, the word 'multimedia' is kind of an awkward word; it doesn't mean that much; a rock video by Nickelback is multimedia. But yeah, it's a show. We use a lot of screens and girls and performers in different ways, not so much a staging where an audience looks at something, but a showing around the audience.

Where are these shows done? In a live venue?

Anselmi: Warehouses mostly. We do them in live venues, like the El Rey with the Legendary Pink Dots in Los Angeles, and we have to pare it down because of fire regulations, different things like that, but the ultimate is to do it in a large space.

What is the nature of the show? Is it plot-related?

Anselmi: Oh god, no.

Because listening to the record, it's reminiscent of the soundtracks to Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks: melancholy ambient pop music that lends itself to a narrative. As far as the show is concerned, is it related?

Anselmi: We use fragments that seem to be plot-related, but they are not. We take different aspects and references from pop culture and reassemble them. The record is rooted in these familiar melodic structures and uses those ideals in live shows. Cinematic...we try to play with the familiar to make the uncanny. An example would be when my wife was wearing a blond wig at my parents' house and she took it off and my mother put it on and I screamed when I saw her in it, because it was a familiar thing to me that had been turned on its head, and I was struck by that idea. It's not the shocking that that creates the uncanny, it's the familiar with something wrong.

You did the show in collaboration with Vincent Jones, is that correct?

Anselmi: No, not the show. He produced the album, and he played on it too. He did a fantastic job.

As far as working with him on the record, how did you find working with him and his production style? Merging your styles, did they clash at all?

Anselmi: There was no disparity as far as influences went. It was really complementary, with a lot of agreements of what we wanted on the record. You know, Vincent is a very accomplished piano player, but we both wanted Mike Garson to play piano on the record.

You worked with Garson, you worked with Dave Gahan (of Depeche Mode), and you worked with Phil Western (of Download and Skinny Puppy); how did of they come to work on the record?

Anselmi: A lot of the people I have just known for a long time. I've known Phil for a long time; he's an old friend. I've known the Skinny puppy crew for a long time. Dave Ogilvie produced one of my band's first records. Phil was one of the first to use the computer as an instrument, and I had never met anyone like that before. When I first saw him, he used it like a guitar virtuoso would his guitar, and it really opened my mind up to want to work with him. Because computers can be clumsy, and digital technology is used in a mundane, corrective way, and that is really ruining music and running musicianship itself. I mean, how we are ever going to get a Mike Garson out of today's musical landscape? It's unlikely. I think it's changing, or I hope it's changing. It's ruined rock music, because rock music is naturally a visceral, expressive form, and the computer works against that grid. Time, tuning, timing, editing...that is the opposite of visceral, and the computer wants to perfect that, and often they get corrected into nonexistence on an artistic level, and I think it's exciting is to hear people use computers in a way that is free and unhinged and not making them more perfect and make them raw and things you could never have made any other way, like the Beatles did with multi-track recording, and then they could make collages out of the vocals and sound and totally abandon an event that occurs in time. Like Brian Eno's 'Here Come the Warm Jets,' where the drums are not in relation; that kind of thing excites me about digital technology, totally letting go that there was ever a band. It's like how painting was in the early part of the 19th century, where a painting was judged based on how it mimics a subject, but later on, after the impressionists, it was abandoned, and the painting didn't have to be related to the subject at all, and I am hoping that with the record, that can happen too.

You self-released the record. Were there any plans to have it released by a label?

Anselmi: There really aren't. There was some interest, but I've been signed to three different labels before, and I don't want to go through that process again. The collaboration with marketing and promotional departments...the record comes from wanting to dabble in those different aspects of what and how pop music is presented, and I don't really want to have a big discussion about who is going to do what. I want to be involved in all of that, rather than to have it negated through a censor board.

Is there going to be a video accompaniment to the record?

Anselmi: Yeah, it's a work in progress whether or not to make a DVD of the show, and what that is going to be, but we are making music videos. We have one for 'Nostalgia' and we just finished one for 'Nowhere.'

Are they going to be put on the Internet?

Anselmi: Yes; we're not sending them to television. They seem to be over it, so we feel why bother? Is that wrong? I am just excited about making something and having the ability for it to reach people without having to deal with the corporate world.

Was that part of the impetus of doing the show in the first place? Was that thinking part of the inspiration?

Anselmi: A few years ago, I started to be convinced that the album had reached its zenith and was in decline as an art form, and I always wanted to be involved in videos and other aspects, but once a label is involved, they control everything, unless you sell millions and millions of records. I'm not sure. I get excited at thinking about what would replace the pop music show, and using music in a less sincere way. The visual, the show, and everything in between formed a whole, and music was not the expressive whole taking up all the meaning in that, but trying to finding meaning in between all of it, if that makes sense. I get a lot more excited about the show than about releasing a record, a show where an audience can leave feeling something different then when they got there.

The record does have some pop elements to it, but one could not really classify it as such, as there are many elements to the record. How would you define pop music in the way that you are using the word?

Anselmi: I have been in acts that liked to fuck with structure and form, change its parameters, and in Mirror I wanted to play with conventions. Any melodies that didn't sound familiar, I abandoned them, so I wanted these melodies so that you feel like you knew them. That was my intention, that you had heard these songs a million times, but couldn't recall where.

Francis Lawson who sings on 'Nowhere.' Is she involved in the show?

Anselmi: Yes, she is, and we just finished a video for 'Nowhere' that was shot in the Salton Sea, which should be out in a couple of weeks. She's 17, and her father is involved with the show; he's a visual artist. And we are working on stuff for her to release.

Who wrote the lyrics for the album, and how do they tie together? Is there an overarching theme to the album?

Anselmi: I wrote the lyrics for the album, and to me, there is a theme. To me, the record is a lot about escapism and about nostalgia, the fact that the future...I don't know. I don't know if I want to say what the record is about. I don't want to make you feel that it's egocentric, but I wanted the record to lyrically seem like it was a lost love affair, but really, that's not what it's about. It's a breakup album for the 20th century.

Are there plans for a second Mirror album? Is this going to continue? Is the show going to keep going?

Anselmi: The show is not like a Broadway musical; we are a group of artists, I am the creative director, and we do shows. We did one show called 'Nostalgia,' where the song came out of. It is a designed environment, different screens, cameras, singers, and sets. I think we like to do big events in the style of London in the pre-rave scene: immersive and interactive.

Like early Throbbing Gristle.

Anselmi: We are hugely inspired by them, that whole scene.

What other kinds of musical plans do you have outside of Mirror?

Anselmi: On this record, we took pop music and degraded it, and on the next thing, I'm thinking of doing the opposite: using factory sounds and making other traditional elements be less of the focus: less melodic, more machines.