Deru

(May 2010)

Interview by Adam McKibbin

Diversify. It's sound advice not just for your financial portfolio, but for your artistic portfolio as well - particularly in these trying times. There's no shortage of variety in the output of LA electro-wiz Benjamin Wynn, one-half of the music and sound production company The Track Team (best known for their work on the TV series Avatar, the Last Airbender).

When he steps out solo, Wynn records under the name Deru; recent projects have included Genus, a score for a ballet based on Darwin's theory of evolution (a collaboration with Joby Talbot), and Say Goodbye to Useless, a ruminative and inventive electronic voyage.

Prior to his May/June "Drink the Sea" tour, Deru discussed Darwin, day jobs and the shifting tides of electronic music and technology.

Until I was doing research for this interview, I had no idea that you logged a couple years at UW-Madison, my alma mater.  As much as I love Madison, it really didn’t have a top-tier music scene in the time I was there.  Was that part of what led you to pack your bags – or was it just that you were partying too much?

Well, what got me to move to Cali had more to do with the school itself then the social or music scene. I decided that I wanted to study music and go somewhere that offered electronic music classes. I was studying photography at Madison and it’s so huge that you never get the classes you want. I was there 2 years and never took 1 photo class. I could only get these horrible huge classes that all the other people that couldn’t get what they wanted had to take. It felt like a waste of time.

But musically I actually liked Madison. This was back in my turntable/MPC days and there were a lot of good DJs around. I linked up with two in particular and ended up doing two underground hip-hop mixtapes with a DJ named Chemta (who is now ½ of The Fun Years). I also hooked up with Atmosphere and Eyedea & Abilities when they were doing these tiny shows in the Union or whatever. Slug rapped on one of my beats for our second tape, Departures (named for this very topic). Those tapes can still be found here.

You’ve got the Drink the Sea tour coming up in May and June.  How do you think the three acts complement each other? 

I think it’s going to be a really solid 3 hours of music. We all came from similar inspirations - Hip Hop of some form. What’s interesting is how we’ve all latched onto slightly different aspects within that. It’s gonna be really, really damn fun. I don’t think people will leave disappointed.

What kind of setup do you have for these live shows?

I’ll have a laptop with large controller and drum pads. I’ll be “remixing” my songs live. I split up all my songs into loops and re-configure them live.

There aren’t too many people who can say they’ve written music for operas based on Darwin’s theory of evolution, and I feel like I’ve now interviewed the bulk of them, having also talked with Karin from The Knife.  Have you heard their newly released Darwin opera?  If so, thoughts?

I’m sort of embarrassed to say that I haven’t given it a proper listen. I really appreciate the fact that they made and released that record, though. It can be a hard thing to get the “marketplace” to understand records like theirs and Genus, but they seem to have had good luck in that regard. Records like this can be hard to fit into a musical ADD culture; they take an investment. They tend to really pay off, however.

If someone were to chart the evolution of electronic music, where do you think 2010 would fall on the graph?  Is it a monkey, is it a man?  There are some who argue, for instance, that certain other genres (rock, hip-hop, etc.) are pretty fully realized. 

Tough question. Especially as there are a lot of different sub-genres within electronic music. And you could either talk about the technology that goes into making the music or the music itself. The technology still has a lot more to evolve, and it will continue to do so no doubt. I think that as physical interfaces evolve so too will electronic instrumentalists. You can see this now with things like the monome, lemur, and even the MPC. People can get really good at playing things if you give them something to play. Where electronic music is right now is a harder and much more elaborate question. There are theses on the topic, I’m sure, so I’m not sure we can really even begin to tackle the subject - but let me know if you want to!

Obviously when you a release a single track out into the public, like “Peanut Butter & Patience,” it has to work as a stand-alone piece.  Are you cognizant of all the tracks working that way, or do you write tracks sometimes that you feel need to be experienced as a piece of a larger body of work?

Occasionally I write songs that aren’t meant to fully function on their own, or at least they’re better heard within a larger whole. Like interludes or ambient tracks within an album. I really like writing “albums” and forming larger moods and thoughts. I also like the idea of doing something different each time – like each album being an isolated moment, summing up my thoughts and moods at that point of my life - like a musical time-box.

What’s your process for coming up with song titles?  With instrumental music in particular, titles can definitely influence a listener’s interpretation.  Is it ever hard to put words on pieces that are wordless?
I like titles that suggest the mood of the music without being too obvious. That being said, sometimes it can be more random. If a word or phrase catches my ear during the day I jot it down in a notebook and then I’ll match these up with the moods of songs. I’ve got long lists of potential track names. At one point I was into tropical cyclone names form the Philippines, like Loki, Tapah, Noru... I liked that these sounded like words that had meaning, even though it’s not clear what it was in English.

So many creative people in LA are torn between pursuing their passions and making a living.  You have a lot of different balls in the air, including commercial work.  How have you been able to strike that balance, and how much (if at all) does the professional side interfere with the personal side?

True. Though I would argue that people are engaged in that struggle throughout the world, not just in LA. And in lots of ways LA offers the artist more options for making money doing what they do. It is a tough balance though, and it’s a “grass is greener” kinda thing. I start getting really irritable if I can’t work on my own music for too long. The flip side is that it can be freaky to see the bank account go in only one direction. I’m pretty sure balance is the key in all aspects of life though, so this is an ever-evolving process. Ultimately I’d love to make my living from Deru, but I also do like working collaboratively on bigger projects, so there’s some balance to be had there. One day I do hope they will converge, though.

And to wrap up on a lighthearted note:  It must be just a little bit annoying that you now have to clarify the statement “I worked on the music for Avatar,” no?

Hahaha. So true. Not only that but once M. Night Shamalan’s The Last Airbender comes out next year I’ll have to contend with people not knowing it was a TV show. The other day I was at dinner with a music supervisor and she was like “What? The Last Airbender used to be a TV show? Ugh, I don’t do TV.” I was speechless.