Leave it to multi-instrumentalist/composer Michael Bernier to conjure up something fierce!
VEIL (2013) is his follow-up to the equally brilliant LEVIATHAN (2011). Once again, Bernier shines brightly on drums, Chapman Stick, Rhodes, piano, cello, violin, tabla, vocals and bowed stick. On a several tracks, he is joined by Kandy Harris (vocals), Dave Bodie (drums), Martin Keith (bass), and Colin Almquist (bass). I recently had a chance to discuss this new masterpiece with the maestro himself…
MM: How did your strategy differ this time around? What did you want to express differently on VEIL that you did not on LEVIATHAN?
MB: LEVIATHAN was my first attempt to compose entire pieces in my own voice on multiple instruments. I listen to it now and hear lots of things I would do differently. The voice is there. The intention is there…but I was still developing my inner conversational skills. I try to make my music interestingly technical and melodically evocative…but mostly the latter. VEIL is less “hey look what I can do!!” and more “Hey look what I can make you feel”. My goal was to improve the formula with tracks that were interesting, memorable and accessible …not just “proggy” or “mathletic”…something that didn’t alienate everyone but musicians.
MM: What artists/musicians/music inspired you on this album? I hear hints of things here and there, but I am curious if these glimpses are from your youth or people you are currently listening to now?
MB: I seldom listen to anything new that falls within the genre of music I play lately. Usually new influences, I notice, are inadvertent. I could listen to the soundtrack to the Shining and the next day have an idea that is inspired by the feeling it evoked that sounds nothing like that. On the other hand there’s the inescapable tendency to emulate players who made impressions on me when I was younger. So that being said I find that I can’t avoid certain sounds and phrasings I enjoy playing from Alan Holdsworth to Johnny Marr to Stanley Clarke to Tony Williams to Stravinsky to Samuel Barber to Jean Luc Ponty to My Bloody Valentine to Zappa…yada yada. I listen to everything so it’s an amalgam really.
MM: Your music shifts moods quickly, song to song, and sometimes even several times within a song. Is this natural to you/part of your spontaneous mindset, or was this a concerted effort?
MB: Well I shift moods quickly all day…I think we all do. There are many moments where I would love to sustain a mood…capture it in time but life doesn’t seem to offer that luxury with any continuity. I feel music should be appropriately like this, fluxing, organic and seemingly unpredictable yet each moment should be the result or product of the last…and ideally resolution…so I suppose it is my mindset. lol
MM: Were you raised on jazz and encouraged to improvise?
MB: I was raised with two parents who listened to everything. My father is responsible for making me actually “listen” to music. I grew up in a house where downstairs my dad was blasting Mahavishnu Orchestra and I was upstairs in my room listening to Bauhaus or The Smiths. Eventually I started to try playing violin, which drew me towards Jean Luc Ponty and Stefan Grapelli. Through the years I taught myself to play many instruments by ear. I like Jazz…but have never felt like a jazz musician. As far as improvisation, I was musically illiterate till a few years back when I decided to start decoding my own music for other musicians I was playing with. So…I suppose I for the most part “improvise”…I play the notes I feel I should, when they should be played….and quite unexplainably I just always know where they are on the instruments I play.
MM: Willows intrigues me as an opening piece. What was it inspired by? It sounds like a ship setting out on an epic voyage.
MB: Interesting. (insert Titanic joke). Willows originally was a piece I started writing for my wife Kandy Harris. She is obsessed with Sondheim. I decided to compose a piece in that vein…with a little me added…and some hints of some Sondheim-esque parts of Mahavishnu ‘s Apocalypse…end result is track 1. I thought it would be a nice set up for the following title track.
MM: FreTnetic is outrageous and ebullient. Was it inspired by the drum & bass loop? How did this composition originally materialize? Are your pieces composed, spur of the moment, or do you conceptualize them over a long period of time?
MB: FreTnetic was a happy accident really. I often practice Chapman Stick to drum loops for chops and to test potential progressions that ultimately a drummer will play. One day I was playing to the loop that wound up on part of this piece on the bass side of the stick….fast…really fast. I loved the velocity of it all…so I just started piecing it all together. Once I have a bass line like that to work off of my work is half done….eventually I added the “hip-hoppish” section at the end to cool things off and create a relative value for the listener…sort of like sending a boxer to the corner between rounds to regroup. I had the help of two talented bassist friends in Martin Keith and Colin Almquist who added their unique sounds for the latter parts of the piece.
MM: This album is especially surreal, dreamlike, and almost unconscious. Is that on purpose? Your last album was done when you were touring traveling a lot. Now that you are home more often and stationary, has that had an effect on your music?
MB: If anything being stationary lately has help my focus. I decided to take a break from touring so I could spend time with my two young girls at home who were seeing very little of me on tour. They were 10 and 11 years old. These are important years and I figure I can resume touring when they are old enough to be a product of my parenting not in spite of it’s absence. I recently made it known that I had suffered a series of grand mal seizures. Flat-lined a few times. Very scary stuff. Had an MRI that revealed an anomalous growth on my brain. It’s not a tumor (insert Kindergarden Cop joke) it’s just extra grey matter with neural networking. Neurologists cannot explain it. It’s in the worst place to attempt a biopsy so it’s just there. Perhaps it was the cause of the seizures? Perhaps it’s why I am who I am? Or, maybe it’s just there. In any case this whole medical gauntlet caused a deep reflective period for me and made me examine myself and mortality. This is what VEIL is. The film score to what I’ve been through since it all started…good and bad. “Veil” is actually an antiquated term once used for a seizures. I thought it would be an appropriate title for the album I recorded through it all.
MM: This album reminds me of King Crimson’s RED a lot. The energy and intensity are familiar. Was that album inspiring to you at any point in your life?
MB: I heard a lot of Crimson growing up but never wrote like or played like them till I was asked to join Stick Men. I was born in 74 so the first Crim I was exposed to at a musically receptive age was the 80’s line up. Fell in love with Ade’s voice and then worked my way back to RED from there simply because that line up was revisiting it. Having played Red and other King Crimson tunes in Stick Men..again, it’s an inescapable influence but not intentional.
MM: Your drumming skills are spectacular on this album. As a drummer myself, I’m impressed. How do you usually record? Do you do the drums first? You have truly mastered the art of making the one man band sound authentic, as if you are all playing together in one room 🙂
MB: Well thank you kind sir. I generally track all my instruments to a click or fake basic drum beat. Then go up to my attic and record live drums over that…remove the fake drums (sometimes keep a cool 808 kick sound or wacky noise)…come back downstairs…listen to the kit…if I did something unusually interesting on the live kit…I go back and converse with that with the music again…rinse and repeat till I’m content.
MM: Captain Kirk reminds me of Alan Holdsworth. Did his music ever influence you? If so, what albums? Also, how did you get that bizarre drum sound on this song???
MB: Yes. Alan has been a great influence on my melodic sensibility with soloing (although I am doing on a Chapman Stick) He was nice enough to help me get my sound on a few pedals. He’s a very sweet and patient friend. I called this track Captain Kirk as a tip of the hat to Alan’s “Mr Spock” from Tony William’s Lifetime. As far as the “bizarre drum sound”…I tried something that I had tried many years ago before I had decent recording software and microphones and the like. I was living in Olivebridge, NY, and had no rehearsal space in the house I was renting. I did have a very small attic storage space that had 4 foot high ceilings. I crammed by kit into the space, dropped a pair of headphones into the kick as a passive mic, hung another pair of headphones above the kit and plugged into a Fostex cassette 4 track and recorded. Humble. Tinny,…but effective as a means. So I tried that again with this track…but with very expensive headphones in a larger space…trying to get an antiquated studio sound. Sometimes I like less desirable textures and production value. Let the playing and composition do the leg work…if the track remains seaworthy I use it.
MM: Nothing New is a beautiful way to end the album! You and Kandy sound spectacular together, as usual. It’s as if when you sing together, you become a 3rd personality. How did you first meet and when was the first time you sang together?
MB: Quite appropriately we met at a karaoke bar in upstate NY…fell in love…it didn’t take long before I sat down with her and a guitar and started taking turns singing our favorite songs. Soon after it was the logical step to integrate her into my compositions. She has an amazing voice and harmonic intuition that I find myself writing songs around. Inspirational.
MM: My gut feeling is that this album is part 2 of a trilogy. This is your Empire Strikes Back. Thoughts?
MB: Possibly…or the director’s cut of LEVIATHAN. The next album will be differently better…that’s my only goal.
*You can PURCHASE and listen to VEIL at the link below…
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