From La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela to Valee and Gangsta Boo, Michael Vincent Waller talks to us about collaboration, mixing, and connecting the dots between modern Classical/new concert music and hip-hop.
Exiting 2024: This is the first in a series of conversations as we conclude 2024 – some that have been in development for a while, but that take on special relevance to us now. David Abravanel wrote this far-reaching interview with the incomparable Michael Vincent Waller. -Ed.
Ask what kind of music Michael Vincent Waller makes, and you won’t get one answer. Under his full name, Waller’s background includes studying under La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela and working with the likes of modern classical luminaries, young and old, from Blue Gene Tyranny to Sophia Subbayya Vastek. Shifting to the MVW alias finds Waller in a different mode, making trap-inflected beats and working with heavy hip-hop hitters like Lex Luger, Valee (with whom Waller released a collaborative LP last year), and the late great Gangsta Boo.
Valee. Photo: Haley Scott.
This year presented a unique opportunity for Waller’s eclectic musical interests to collide, as a long-gestating project of remixes for his 2019 album Moments presented a murderer’s row of contributions. Moor Mother, Xiu Xiu, Jlin, Levon Vincent, DJ Marcelle, Prefuse 73 – and did we even mention Loraine James, Fennesz, Lex Luger, and more?
Assembling this kind of roster is a credit both to Waller’s breadth of creative interest and his collaborative passion. We sat down with him to talk about blurring lines, making connections, and the evolution of the remix.
(David’s note: for full disclosure, Michael is an old friend, some of which is referenced in this article. I still fondly recall us seeing La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela’s group perform at a room inspired by their Dream House at the Whitney Museum in 2010)
Michael Vincent Waller – Moments (Remixes)
How did Moments (Remixes) first come about?
It originally sparked from a conversation with Jlin that we did for Talkhouse to kind of just talk about each other’s aesthetics and the release of Moments, to kind of time it with that. And during that discussion, we talked about the ideas of remixing and potentially working together, because we were friends and mutual admirers of each others’ music over the years. So it started through that conversation, the first idea of a remix was actually sparked.
But in terms of the timeline, the first was with Xiu Xiu, they did it in January of 2020, so right before the pandemic started. The project started pre-pandemic, and then kind of quickly evolved, and became a pandemic project.
It was really an honor to work with these artists and see how they would collaborate with my work. The essence of both voices of the artists in the works – that’s what I was very excited about, and I hope has pervaded the work.
Michael Vincent Waller – “For Papa (Xiu Xiu Remix)”
How did you decide on the breadth of the remixers that you worked with? There are so many artists here from different backgrounds and styles.
I was really rooted in my own appreciation of everyone’s work for their own merit and their stylings and their influence on me as an artist and the way I listen to music. Anyone who kind of changed the way that I hear music, or their music kind of informed my picture of what music’s potential is. If I could glean a real interest, a genuine interest in their music and how it works, then it would be organic.
I didn’t want to stylize it or group it or say I wanted to do, like, an ambient remix or an electronic-only remix. But I will say that, through my classical, contemporary releases, I never involved electronics. I started with electronics in my early days of coming out of NYU, and I performed with a laptop through 2012, so, for about four years, I would perform with electronics and live electronics.
Michael Vincent Waller – photo above and feature image at top by Tim Saccenti.
I remember you were the first person I knew in 2009 who had a Lemur.
Yeah! Early Lemur user.
I was trying to do drone and kind of mixed media composition then. I was very focused on that style. The laptop was a conducive way to do that, and Max/MSP and generative tones were really great. But then, when I started doing contemporary work as a composer, I focused more on scoring music for others to perform. In that transition, I really kind of put the laptop behind and just did everything with the score.
I did a lot of my scores by hand for a couple of years before I moved into notation software. And, you know, I became much more involved in that completely acoustic instrumentation, and all my recordings were recorded with maybe a very light reverb and very little low digital effects and kind of a more “natural” sound. Obviously, it was recorded in Pro Tools, and there’s some digital-to-analog conversion involved, but it was just about capturing the acoustics, and the aesthetics of recording and large halls and beautiful mics, and very spatial recording patterns to capture a lot of natural reverb decay and all the imperfections of the sonics of acoustic instruments and the natural phenomenon of acoustic instruments. I was very interested in capturing that in high fidelity in the composition and working with – let’s just call it decay of the note or the envelope and the overtone series, how those elements can be part of the composition and into the tonality and woven in and out of the form.
The Moments album, it was all acoustic. It was recorded in two halls, one in Kansas City, the White Hall with [pianist] R. Andrew Lee, and then in San Francisco, in the bay with [vibraphonist] William Winant at Mills College. Big halls for both of them, very acoustically recorded, grandiose instruments in a beautiful space. Having that transported into an electronic world and with electronic composition methods and beats, the plethora of electronic tools that are used in ambient, or say, post rock and experimental rock, outsider avant garde… In general, I would say I wanted to see how [the remixers] could reabsorb those kind of minimal textures and melodies and these more singular melodies.
Michael Vincent Waller – “Bounding (Levon Vincent Remix)”
I remember a few times artists asked for the stems, but these were solo compositions of piano and vibraphone. There were multiple voices at times, but they were all together. There was only one recording; the only stems I had were the individual mics in the space. That actually brings up one really interesting point: the remix by Levon Vincent. He asked for the MIDI from the composition itself, from the software, and he played that back into synths. So that was one of examples of where the remix extended beyond the recording itself.
I was going to mention Levon Vincent and Tom VR looking at the diversity of what’s there, and thinking about the evolution of the remix. It used to be that a remix was often a version of a track that was more suitable to be played in club sets. And those Vincent and VR remixes, I could easily imaging hearing at a club. Then there’s takes from Fennesz and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma which are more abstract and drone-oriented. Or you’ve got beat-oriented work from Jlin, or pieces from Xiu Xiu, Moor Mother and Lafawndah which add lyrics and vocals. It shows a real malleability, coming from these original minimalist piano pieces.
I think that’s kind of what organically emerged. The intention behind some of the remixes was to see how [the pieces] can be recontextualized and an inspiration point for different works, and not locking things into any specific genre, but exploring constellations that are similar and very different. Just seeing how they would become permeable, how they would pervade through. There’s some quietude and kind of a subdued nature to some pieces, and a kind of glacial nature in all of them, even with the dance tracks and more percussive tracks. Levon Vincent’s is a very glacial piece. Even the Tom VR remix, which is super upbeat and very accessible, also has a glacial evolution.
Going back for a moment to your influences and development, you studied with La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela – around the time you were talking about earlier when you moved from electronic drones towards a minimalist modern classical sound.
Rest in peace. Marian Zazeela. Very, very sad that she passed recently. I’ve been thinking about her a lot and how much she influenced me and her spirit, how valuable and inspirational she was. Just the way that she operated and how she greeted people, and how she interacted with people, how it was a reflection of her art and in the light and the installations and the just the subtlety and third dimension or even fourth dimensionality to her work. Even with her calligraphy, it had almost a 4D feel to it on the page in a 2D manifestation. I’ve been reflecting on that a lot.
Pandit Pran Nath, Terry Riley, Marian Zazeela, and La Monte Young – Ragas of the Night
She and La Monte definitely, you know, perennially influenced me and sculpted the way I think and hear and think about overtones and the way I construct music. Thinking about how math works in music and relationships work in music, and how that intertwines with spirituality and numerology. I think that extends to everything.
You hit on some things about the intention of a remix, and I think that’s, that’s, that’s actually where you get a lot of the, I don’t know… The kind of dismissal, I guess? People don’t necessarily know how to receive them as new work. You have to really make someone excited about a remix, and for those various reasons, like you said: it can be to introduce the music to a new audience, or, traditionally, a club remix, something that’s meant for the dance floor, or something that’s putting a bigger artist on it to get a co-sign so it can get more exposure.
Valee x MVW – “Liquid”
I think in this case, you know, coming from a contemporary classical album and these raw piano and vibraphone compositions, I think it was multi-faceted in its intentions. One was to explore the core of sampling, and that kind of became a basis for how I explored hip-hop under the moniker MVW. The idea of sampling, it’s a little different than remixing, but sampling is essentially a remix in one way of thinking about it, or taking from a loop, or extracting a loop, or a fragment of a composition and creating a loop out of that. It became a big part of how I was thinking about what would be interesting from the project, what to learn about, and how that could be possible.
It’s interesting that Loraine James is one of the remixers here, since she released her own album inspired by Julius Eastman, another modern classical/avant garde composer. And of course, Jlin’s album this year worked with Steve Reich and the Kronos Quartet. Do you see something larger happening, with people kind of cross-pollinating with the modern classic world and beat oriented music, or dance music?
Yeah, I think it’s something that’s happening in the zeitgeist, and those are great examples of deeper explorations in music. I’m interested in exploring that, in my music, and also through different contemporary lenses. I want to sample my own work so that I’m putting my compositions forward, and, you know, using that as a way to, you know, explore right through the composition process and how that plays out into this cross-pollination you’re talking about.
Michael Vincent Waller’s original Moments album
I like highlighting composition and instruments and acoustic phenomena and all the things that I like in my music. How do I put that into new context? How do I make that more palpable for different audiences and different genres. I would just say that it just gives an opportunity to hear my music in these worlds, and that’s exciting for me. I think that blurring those lines of where composition and genre and beats and percussion and textures all can be – this cross-genre thing, it’s just happening. I think it’s evolved from a long tradition of breaking down boundaries and always being radical and always pushing the envelope that multiple generations are compounding into.
We’re hearing more music now. We’re able to infuse more music. It’s an exciting time! Everybody’s listening to everything now, and everyone has access to everything, right? Like you don’t have to be in downtown New York to hear certain people anymore.
How do you balance continuing to work as a composer, while working on hip-hop as MVW? Are you working on both simultaneously? Do you have different head spaces for each?
That’s a good question – it’s a tough one.
Taking a step back: I used to paint a lot, and when I was studying composition, I started painting more and trying to do more physical art. And in one year until like 2008-9, I took almost a year off of composition and just did paintings and [visual] art. And I just was obsessed with that. And it was really great to help me figure out how I wanted to compose, and how do I how I wanted to become an artist, as a composer, as a musician. Sometimes I think you need to switch the headspace a little bit into a different sub-discipline, or a different style of creation, and then you can start to then do both.
I feel like that’s similar to how I got involved in hip-hop for maybe a good couple years. I definitely focused more on hip hop production and production in general. I was doing a couple [non hip-hop] compositions per year. I didn’t completely shut it off. I just slowed down my output. Usually it was closer to five to 10 pieces a year. I went down to like one or two, but now I’m trying to get back to more regular composition and regular production, trying to do both at the same kind of involvement level. But that’s taken me about three or four years to get to that kind of feeling where they both can be regular, even though there’s different audiences and processes to do things, or different networks or communities to work with.
I’m trying to blur those as well!
Michael Vincent Waller’s website
Michael Vincent Waller on Bandcamp