At first glance, it would appear an unlikely match: Milwaukee’s Zod records and Boston musician Soplerfo aka Sam Brelsfoard. After all, up to this point, Zod has been best known for the often fearsome catalog of abrasive, ultra-fast breakcore records by artists such as Eiterhard, Doormouse and Venetian Snares, all of which have little in common with the subtly contemplative, slightly off-kilter sonic miniatures of Soplerfo, who favors the sounds of everyday objects, toys and field recordings over blistering breaks. “It was pretty shocking for me, too," Brelsfoard says of Zod’s decision to release his latest record of playful, laptop concrète, EP for Dogs. “I didn’t know that much about them other than that they’d released some of Venetian Snares’ stuff. So, I wasn’t expecting to hear anything from them, since I’m not exactly the breakcore king of Boston, which is what people would assume they’d be looking for." As it turned out, though, EP for Dogs was just the ticket for the iconoclastic Zod, who, Brelsfoard explains, was looking to distance itself from Midwest breakcore. “I guess that’s what appealed to them about me – I’m very much NOT that."
Not that Brelsfoard hasn’t enjoyed a healthy dose of breakbeat mayhem in his time – as a founding member of the famed Lollygagger Studios in Dorchester, he played host to all manner of sonic mayhem at the group’s legendary monthly sessions back in 2000-01 – but his own recent work as Soplerfo is more quietly subversive and engagingly idiosyncratic. “It all starts with a mini-disc recording," Brelsfoard says, describing his working methods. “I’ll go on a sound-collecting adventure. I’m not necessarily trying to grab similar sounds, but when you’re recording in a specific time and place [the sounds] tend to have similar characteristics. So I’ll have a batch of sounds from one day or one week that are all kind of interrelated. Then I’ll chop them up for use in samplers and sequencing. There’s not too much DSP trickery going on with me," he concedes, regarding his general aversion to signal-level manipulation of his samples. “I’m just happy trying to keep the sounds as raw as I can."
“I like the sloppiness of the sounds," he says, explaining further. “You can hear that a lot on EP for Dogs – things aren’t just cut quite right, loops don’t loop perfectly, they kind of sound like they fall out of sync, but they’re all done on a grid, so they are essentially quite exact, but I like that kind of sway." The field recordings often form the foundation of a finished track, as Brelsfoard mines them for intriguing rhythms and melodic elements, and then constructs a melody around it using synthesizers, guitars and a variety of toy instruments. Indeed, even the most melodic and structured of the tracks on the EP, such as the lovely “Tame Nodes," has a slight, off-balance feel in the chain-rattle percussion. “The sequencing and the playing with the sounds is the part I really, really like," he admits. “If I find something that goes with it tonally, so much the better."
As in the studio, Soplerfo’s live performances are based around samples, which Brelsfoard typically generates using a guitar, toy dulcimer, thumb piano or other object, which he then captures and processes through his computer on the fly, creating a truly live laptop performance. “I start with a completely blank slate," he says, “and then slowly build on it." So if you’re looking to hear a faithful reproduction of “Garo Knows" from the SAMpler 7" on Crabouiller in a Soplerfo live set, you’re plumb out of luck. But, he stresses, it’s the risk inherent in the way that he works with the computer, allowing it to “go off on various tangents," which is also what’s most interesting about playing out. “I can never know exactly what’s going to come out," he says, “and that’s what makes live performance fun for me and, I hope, fun for the audience, because they can see when something surprises me and how I react to it." |
