{"id":508,"date":"2011-05-06T05:03:49","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T10:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=508"},"modified":"2011-05-06T05:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-05-06T10:03:49","slug":"ivan-julian-makes-some-noise-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/05\/06\/ivan-julian-makes-some-noise-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivan Julian Makes Some Noise, Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Ivan Julian<\/strong> muses, \u201cWhen a lot of guitarists from bands finally make their solo album, there\u2019s not a lot of guitar on the record! They\u2019re trying to do this radio thing, and all of a sudden, they don\u2019t play.\u201d His approach on The Naked Flame<\/em> was different: \u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to make that mistake; I\u2019m going down to the studio and bash it out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the songs on the album are written solely or in part by Julian. But he includes two covers: Lucinda Williams<\/strong>‘ “Broken Butterflies”\u00a0 <\/span>and Alejandro Escovedo<\/strong>‘s “The Beat.” Julian says that the original of Escovedo\u2019s song is \u201ca seven-inch I\u2019ve had for years. And I\u2019ve said to myself for years, \u2018One of these days I\u2019m going to re-record it. Because the world needs to hear it.\u2019 Well,\u201d he chuckles, \u201cnot that lots more people will hear it, but more people will hear it than the first time. Because there were only maybe five hundred of those things pressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as the Lucinda Williams song,\u201d Julian says, \u201cthat album Essence<\/em> is one of the best albums ever. And I thought I could get away with it, to be honest,\u201d he laughs heartily. \u201cOf all the songs on there, it\u2019s the least like her doing it that I can possibly imagine.<\/p>\n

The track \u201cThe Funky Beat in Siamese” has a deeply confusing beat. \u201cSometimes it starts with a lyric,\u201d Julian explains. \u201cAnd then I have to find a backdrop to make that lyric fit. That song is a summertime song, and so I wanted a groove for it. I\u2019m very groove-oriented. I was listening to a lot of James Brown<\/strong> when I wrote that.\u201d Julian raves about Brown\u2019s brand of genius, noting that he \u201ccreated his own genre. It was James Brown music, and it became funk. He took no prisoners; I wanted to write songs like that.\u201d The song\u2019s title might need some explaining, and Julian obliges. \u201cThe fire department hookups on New York City streets are called Siamese sprinklers. The song was inspired by seeing one of those turned on during a hot summer day. In New York, when it\u2019s hot, everybody\u2019s sweaty and has this rat-in-a-cage look to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the studio, Julian approaches his own recordings the same way he does with other clients (Candy Golde<\/strong>, The Fleshtones<\/strong>). \u201cI consider myself an editor,\u201d he explains. \u201cSo I try to edit myself. But I will admit that I allow myself to do some things I\u2019d never do with other projects. Like,\u201d he laughs guiltily, \u201cpreparing eighteen mixes of \u2018A Young Man\u2019s Money.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the more remarkable tracks on The Naked Flame<\/em> is “You is Dead.” The cut has a country blues \/ work song vibe, and it sounds like something of which Alan Lomax<\/strong> might have made a field recording. \u201cThat was the idea,\u201d Julian admits. \u201cI was sitting in my living room with my Epiphone Bluesmaster; it\u2019s a kind of Robert Johnson<\/strong>-looking acoustic guitar, and it sounds like a cardboard box. And I had a tube mic that\u2019s kind of scratchy as well. And I just decided to record it there; it\u2019s the one song on the record that wasn\u2019t recorded in a studio at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was listening to a lot of Howlin\u2019 Wolf<\/strong> around the time I wrote the song,\u201d Julian admits. \u201cI wanted the courage to write something like that, to have the complete bravery to say something like Howlin\u2019 Wolf would\u2019ve said it.\u201d Julian succeeds in this song, a clear message to his late friend and collaborator, guitarist Bob Quine<\/strong>. Julian sums up the song\u2019s theme: \u201cYou is dead<\/em>, fuckin\u2019 asshole. Why\u2019d you do this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though it’s certainly not retro, Julian\u2019s track “Sticky” is full of subtle nods to the sixties: the Mamas & the Papas<\/strong>, the Kinks<\/strong>, and Dylan<\/strong> by way of Hendrix<\/strong>. Julian says that the sixties feel was \u201cnot really what I was going for, but that\u2019s how it happened. I love those groups, and The Turtles<\/strong>. But those West coast bands,\u201d he marvels, \u201cyou can\u2019t live on the East coast and write music like that.\u201d Julian chuckles that his goal here was to write a \u201csocio-political quasi-ballad.\u201d<\/p>\n

There’s a jagged, buzzing, live in the studio feel to all of these tracks, especially “Constricted.” Surprisingly, the record wasn\u2019t recorded that way at all; the tracks were pieced together. Spain-based band Capsula<\/strong> recorded the basic tracks on tape at their own studio, then converted the music to digital files to send across the Atlantic to Julian in New York City. \u201cThen I put it back to tape,\u201d Julian explains, \u201cand added everything else myself. Part of the live sound comes from the fact that I try to use tape whenever I can.\u201d The Naked Flame<\/em> is pleasingly as far as possible from a sterile studio concoction. \u201cOne thing I can do,\u201d Julian laughs, “is make noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Continued from Part One… Ivan Julian muses, \u201cWhen a lot of guitarists from bands finally make their solo album, there\u2019s not a lot of guitar on the record! They\u2019re trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}