we caught up with blume hinges for an intimate interview
- question: We are loving your new single “Taxi Cabs.” Can you tell us a little about the backstory of that song? When was it written and recorded?
- answer: First off, thank you so much! I’m so happy that you are enjoying my new tune! Taxi Cabs was written in the summer of 2017, on an acoustic guitar, sitting on my couch. It was a super spontaneous composition initially. I was basically just messing around with a new tuning and stumbled upon that dreamy, sort of lazy chord progression that opens the song. I decided to record that and save it for later, so I pressed record on my iPhone voice memos and improvised the lyrics. I actually just checked out that very first version and it is surprisingly similar to final recorded version, lyrically and structurally. Most of my lyrics are written in this way, basically a stream of consciousness improvisation. I’ve never considered myself much of a lyricist, so I usually take this approach and then tweak them later on. But this one appears to have remained basically unchanged! I then recorded a demo version, which is when the other guitar parts and weird vocal loopy thing originated. The final version was recorded with my good friend Scott Simon Haus at his studio just outside of Chicago. Those sessions were recorded over 2018/2019. I can’t over state how much he really brought this song, and my vision of it to life. He’s truly a studio wizard, as well as a stellar musician. He wrote and played the bass parts on that song and just they are so much better than my original idea!
- question: What were you like as a kid? Were you musical or did that come later?
- answer: I was a pretty introverted, kind of nerdy kid. I was always interested in music, my older cousin played guitar, and that’s really what inspired me to pick up the instrument when I was 7 or 8 years old. So I’ve been playing for around 20 years now. Before that my mom told me I used to play air guitar on brooms! Haha! I don’t come from a musical family though, other than my cousins.
- question: Do you write music thinking it would work well in a film? What are some of your favorite films?
- answer: I have never wrote any of my music with the intention of it working well in a film, however, I do in retrospect feel like some of my more instrumental songs, for example, “Olympia,” could work in certain films or in television etc. As far as my favourite films, I’m not a huge movie buff. I really enjoy Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrei Tarkovsky, etc. Cliche… I know ! Some of my all time favourite films are Godard’s “Breathless”/“Vivre Sa Vie” and Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice”/“The Mirror”. I really really love Tarkovsky. “Perks of Being a Wallflower” gets an honourable mention as well.
- question: What has writing your album ‘Build Your Castle Inside of a Mountain’ taught you? What was the most rewarding song to write on the album?
- answer: Writing, and recording this record has taught me so much it’s hard to put it into words. I wrote the songs over a long period of time, among many others. I never wrote the songs with the intention of writing an album. I just wrote a bunch of songs after my first album came out in 2017. I did, however, spend a lot of time recording demos and seeing which songs worked together, thematically and musically. So, the songs were compiled together to covey a certain vibe and theme. The only exception to this is the song “shove,” which was added later on and wasn’t intended to be on the album initially. But, I feel like it fits really well with the other tunes on the record. I think the most rewarding song I wrote for the album is the instrumental tune “Olympia,” simply because I never imagined I would be able to write an instrumental tune that could hold its own on an album like this. It’s a song that I’m really proud of. I love the melody, and the incorporation of the violin and strings. It was also a late addition to the record, which happened really organically and naturally. Yeah, I think that would be the song that was the most rewarding to write, and be able to include on an album like this.
- question: What does your current recording setup consist of? Do you have an ultimate goal for Blume Hinges?
- answer: I don’t have much of a recording setup personally. I have an audio interface, a midi keyboard, and a laptop… haha. That is what I use to do rough demos of my songs. I also have too many guitars and pedals as well… I properly record all of my music with my producer/engineer and good friend Scott Simon Haus at his studio “Process Haus” just outside of Chicago. My ultimate goal for Blume Hinges is really just to have my music heard by as many people as possible, and, hopefully some people respond to it and it moves them in some way…. that’s really my only goal. It would be nice to be able to make a living off of music someday, but I’m realistic enough to realize that’s a really, really difficult thing to do nowadays. Essentially, I just want to keep writing tunes, recording, and releasing them with my friends, and hopefully some people dig them! That’s truly enough for me!
premier source music 