Interview: Emmalee Crane

Emmalee Crane is a classically trained musician who blends woodwind and other traditional instruments with synthesisers, guitars and found sounds into ambient orchestral drone. Based in San Francisco, her debut album, Crux, was released in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim and her much anticipated second album Formantine is due out November 23rd 2010.

Hi Emmalee, I understand you were classically trained, at what age did you become interested in music and are you from a musical family?

The family is half musical, on my Mom's side. She's a piano and clarinet teacher - has been since before I was born - and her Mom was a pianist too. I probably started playing piano before I can even remember - there would always be kids in our house who she was giving lessons to, and I would sometimes watch and then go play with her afterwards. It was really early that I was more drawn to the woodwinds though - I just thought they were beautiful, and they were something I could pick up and take to my room unlike a piano. My Mom says I sometimes took a clarinet to bed instead of a toy. I chose the oboe as my primary instrument early on, both for the way it looked and the really distinctive sound.

Please tell us your influences and inspirations, musical or otherwise.

Gosh, so many. Musically, I always want to say it's the obvious ones like Stars Of The Lid and Brian Eno, but actually I'm not so sure it is. My music doesn't really come out sounding like theirs most of the time. I'm definitely influenced by classical music - Debussy, Mahler, Strauss. Herschel is a great hero of mine - he's not known for his music even though he wrote some oboe concertos that I absolutely love, but my other passion is astronomy, and he was someone who married those two worlds. I listen to a lot of eighties music too though, and a lot of the later work that Mark Hollis did with Talk Talk really had an impact on me.

You have a second album coming out soon on The Streetlight Farm, how did the recording go and were there any difficulties?

In a lot of ways recording this album was harder than my first album, Crux. Crux didn't turn out the way I expected - I had lots of half finished ideas and feelings about what sort of sounds I was aiming for, but really it just all came together in the studio and I ended up writing melodies and structures along the way. With Formantine, I basically heard the entire album in my head before I did anything at all - I wrote it all down and then started recording knowing exactly what it was supposed to sound like. That was difficult as it didn't evolve organically and it was a different way of working for me - I was constantly trying to get what I was hearing in my head onto tape.

Is it just you on Formantine or were there other artists involved?

It's mostly me, but there are others on several tracks. Patrick plays brass in a few places - he also played trumpet parts on Crux and We Stop Without Thinking. Then Miles, Jen and Sarah play various instruments for some songs - mainly because it's just so much more fun to play with other people than just layer tracks on your own. But even so, probably 80% of it is still just me layering tracks.

I read on your bio that you are interested in circuit bending, what kind of instruments have you modified?

Mostly toys, guitar pedals and a few keyboards. Sometimes it's successful and sometimes I just totally wreck stuff. I'm not really trying to make them into viable instruments, I'm just trying to make things make unrecognizable sounds. I probably enjoy hacking guitar pedals the most - I love showing up to sessions and pulling out messed up overdrive pedals and saying "I'm going to play my oboe through this today".

Would you say you do the majority of your recording in the studio or at home?

I do lots more recording at home, but just for myself. Everything that I've released has been recorded in the studio, with the exception of a few loops or flourishes that I've done at home and we've used on the finished track. At home I'll often just leave the tape running and record myself playing random stuff.

You are known to blend a mixture of more typically classical instruments such as the oboe with contemporary synths and ambient textures, do you feel just as comfortable with using both to write your music?

I do. Mostly I'll write for the oboe since that's my main instrument - I might just hear something in my head and score it out, but sometimes I'll just sit at a piano or synth and improvise something. Most of my synth sounds come from experimentation - usually I'm not really setting out to create a specific sound from a synth. If there's a certain sound I'm trying to get it's usually one I know can be made from woodwinds and distortion.

How does a songwriting session typically go for you? Please talk us through the process of writing a new track.

It really does cover the spectrum - sometimes I'll play through the entire thing in my head then grab some staff paper and write it down. Other times I'm just improvising and I'll stumble on something that I think I can build on. Usually I at least have some idea that I want to build on before I pick up an instrument though. My songs are always based around drones, so there'll be a sustained note that I'll either leave on a synth, or play on the oboe or cello and loop, then start layering on top. Sometimes the drone stays in and sometimes I'll take it out as the song gets built up.

Do you like to leave tracks alone once they're written or do you make changes and update them?

I really like to just leave them alone - once something's recorded I don't really want to go back and redo it or edit it - as soon as it's on tape, that performance exists and it is what it is. I might decide tracks aren't really adding anything and just drop them, but I don't like to do lots of takes. Miles, who does all of my mixing, is pretty much the exact opposite - he's such a perfectionist and always wants retakes and adjustments and to tinker with things. We meet in the middle and it's probably for the best.

Have you any plans to support the release of Formantine with live shows?

I'd love to, but I still haven't figured out how to translate my music to the stage. There are so many layers and overdubs that it would be really hard - and need a lot of musicians - to recreate my music live, and I don't like the idea of playing along to backing tracks or sequences. So I often think that I should just play live solo with my oboe and distortion and looping pedals. But I don't know if people would actually want that.

Finally, besides Formantine have you any other projects coming up which you can talk to us about, such as collaborations or compilations?

I'm open to collaborations for sure but nothing planned, and I have lots more ideas that I need to get down on tape. I guess long as people want to keep listening, I'm just going to keep recording.

Website: http://www.emmaleecrane.com/