{"id":20734,"date":"2021-03-29T05:30:52","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T09:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20734"},"modified":"2021-03-24T11:19:31","modified_gmt":"2021-03-24T15:19:31","slug":"the-solitary-sounds-of-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/29\/the-solitary-sounds-of-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"The Solitary Sounds of Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"

An edited version of this feature appeared previously in<\/em> SF Weekly.<\/span><\/p>\n

For Snake \u2013 also known as Oakland musician Nic Barbeln \u2013 spontaneity is a key ingredient in the process of making music. Released in late January, the latest Snake album, Wind<\/i>, captures that character in its twelve dense, moody tracks. \u201cThings just come out of the ether,\u201d Barbeln explains. \u201cWhen it’s time for something to happen, I have to grab a mic real fast and make<\/i> it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means that many of the sounds captured on the finished recording actually happened outside the confines of a recording studio. And that approach is especially well suited to an artist who nearly always works alone. \u201cIt\u2019s all on my time,\u201d Barbeln says. \u201cI don\u2019t even know when<\/i> it\u2019s going to happen; it just kind of \u2026 happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wind<\/i> has a signature character, but it\u2019s one that reveals itself in waves, only after presenting the listener with an outlier, the musical equivalent of a red herring. Listeners who spend time with Wind<\/i> may be surprised to discover that \u201cOutburn,\u201d the album\u2019s opening track, is wholly unlike anything else they\u2019ll hear on the record. Its jangly, shoegaze texture draws the listener in, but once they\u2019re hooked, Barbeln takes them on a journey to other musical destinations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I wasn’t even going to put \u2018Outburn\u2019 on the record,\u201d he admits. Wind<\/i> was conceived as an experimental collection, and the tune\u2019s comparatively accessible qualities weren\u2019t necessarily consistent with that. \u201cBut I shared it with friends and family, and everyone was super into it,\u201d he says. And eventually Barbeln came around as well, deciding that the tune might be one of the best he had ever written.<\/p>\n

So he added \u201cOutburn\u201d to Wind<\/i>\u2019s track sequence. And in doing so, it completely upended his original idea of what the album would be. He describes the opening track as \u201csomething that almost anyone \u2013 not just a niche group of people \u2013 could get into.\u201d<\/p>\n

But listeners who have followed Barbeln\u2019s work since ReRisen<\/i> \u2013 his first album under the Snake banner, released in 2012 \u2013 need not worry. Wind<\/i> is most definitely not a pop album. In fact, the lo-fi, breathy and malevolent \u201cFeel the World\u201d is more in keeping with the album\u2019s experimental nature. The antithesis of what used to be called easy listening, \u201cFeel the World\u201d demands much of the listener.<\/p>\n

In its own way, \u201cFeel the World\u201d stands apart from the rest of Wind<\/i> as well. Reflecting what Barbeln calls \u201cthe \u2018just coming up with things\u2019 aspect\u201d of his art, he thinks of the track as a way to balance out the more meticulously crafted tracks on the album.<\/p>\n

The track is an exemplar of one of Barbeln\u2019s favored working methods: combining material from disparate sources to make an original whole. \u201cFeel the World\u201d began as \u201ca spontaneous voice memo recording that I made while walking on the street in Oakland one night,\u201d he explains. \u201cThen I put it over another recording from somewhere else.\u201d The juxtaposition is unnerving, and the finished track feels less like a song and more like a recited poem that happens to have music.<\/p>\n

That quality is in keeping with Barbeln\u2019s emphasis on lyrics. Though you might not know it; throughout Wind<\/i>, Barbeln\u2019s vocals are buried beneath sheets of sound, to the point at which they seem more like textural elements than a means of expressing ideas in word form.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very<\/i> into my lyrics,\u201d Barbeln says with a laugh. \u201cI put a lot of thought into them.\u201d He goes so far as to print the lyrics to Wind<\/i>\u2019s vocal tracks (ten of 12) on the record\u2019s inner sleeve. But there\u2019s an ambivalence at the core of his work that expresses itself in his production and mixing choices. \u201cI’m also a fan of not being able to hear my lyrics,\u201d he says. \u201cSo it’s kind of a paradox.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s a unifying thread that connects the dozen or so Snake releases, Barbeln suggests that it\u2019s the music\u2019s \u201cspiritual, ghostly\u201d character. Before recording Wind<\/i>, he says that he used music as a kind of therapy during difficult times. But he feels that the new record documents a new and more expressive phase. \u201cThis album is representative of a more universal set of emotions: emotions in general, the whole palette,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Wind<\/i> is a more refined effort than earlier Snake releases, but as tracks like the simultaneously hypnotic and pummeling \u201cAntichrist\u201d demonstrate, rough surfaces and sharp edges remain very much a part of the music. Barbeln suggests that the biggest change from his early days may be an increased emphasis on self-editing. \u201cI’m in this new phase where I don’t want to put anything out that I don’t think is totally great,\u201d he says. \u201cBack then, I recorded or archived every single thing I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

But mostly for Barbeln, that process of making music at home happens at home; even before the pandemic, live performances of Snake material were a rarity. The music\u2019s personal nature \u2013 and Barbeln\u2019s method of creating it on his own \u2013 aren\u2019t really consistent with the idea of concerts. \u201cAs Snake, I’ve probably only performed five to 10 times over the past 10 years,\u201d he says. But the COVID-era\u2019s growing use of live streaming may push Barbeln in that direction. \u201cWho knows what\u2019s going to happen now?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Barbeln believes that as he approaches middle age, he still maintains \u201cthat punk ethos of \u2018not really knowing,\u2019 just feeling around on the fretboard and playing some textures that sound good.\u201d And despite the contemplative, occasionally insular character of Wind<\/i>, Barbeln says that he isn\u2019t composing solely for himself. \u201cIt’s always about the song and its effect on the listener,\u201d he says. \u201cI write songs when I’m having a lot of emotions. If a song is a success, it’s just the translation of whatever state I was in.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s pleased whenever a listener can connect with the expression of those emotions. \u201cIf people catch up on that by listening, then that’s amazing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn’t always happen. But when it does, it’s pretty awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An edited version of this feature appeared previously in SF Weekly. For Snake \u2013 also known as Oakland musician Nic Barbeln \u2013 spontaneity is a key ingredient in the process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,54,62],"tags":[4488,4487],"class_list":["post-20734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-post-rock","category-rawk","tag-nic-barbeln","tag-snake","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-54-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20736,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20734\/revisions\/20736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}