By Keith Walsh
Stat·ic, the collaborative project of Julian Shah-Tayler, Darwin Meiners, Dustin Heald and Mark Gleason, starts with some unusual limitations, yet the product doesn’t sound like the result of calculations. On the contrary, as demonstrated with their new single “Thracian,” which features pulsing synth bass and edgy guitars, the sounds are immediate and visceral.

“This is the world we were given/not the world we would choose to live in/This is the world we were given/Not the world we would choose to live in.”
(From ‘Thracian’ by Stat·ic )

First, the limitations, as explained by Shah-Tayler. “Darwin and I have discussed these concepts of just taking three instruments, and three instruments only, and limiting ourselves to playing one note on each of the instruments. For example, so there’s never a chord on the whole thing. Or you use one drum machine that creates everything you do, and you never elaborate on what that does in one sequence, except for maybe a fill here and there. And limitations create the artistic aspects of it.”

“Magical Numbers”
In addition to the intellectual side of the band’s work that compliments the visceral. I suggested that there’s a protest feel to Thracian. “I think that’s the idea,” said Shah-Tayler. “I felt very definitely disappointed with the way people have been conditioning truth recently, and it’s been a big issue culturally in the west, obviously. And people have the opportunity to choose their reality and to choose the facts that they would like to follow. And that takes any objectivity out of it. I’m a philosophy graduate, I studied Philosophy of Logic and also Psycholinguistics as part of my degree, and I felt that without an agreed objective truth we have a very great difficulty in reaching people. The song has something to do with that.” (Shah-Tayler studied at York University).

After discussion by the members of the group (with visual artist Mark Gleason contributing graphics) Darwin and Heald present their tracks to Shah-Tayler, who steps out of his customary production role. In the case of “Thracians” and its predecessor “S Blonde,” his vocals were immediate responses recorded with an experimental approach in mind.

“What you’re hearing is a first take vocal, on initially hearing the song,” he said. “I don’t really re-record anything to get in tune, or to be consistent in any way. I want it to be ‘not quite right.’ ‘Cause you know I spent a lot of time massaging my own stuff, and when I produce Darwin I spent a lot of time massaging his stuff, so I felt like this thing is let’s make it raw, let’s make it from the subconscious, let’s make it flow, let’s put magical numbers in it. Let’s put tones that are beyond the range of human hearing in it. Let’s try all these things.”

For more about those magical numbers, refer to my second article about the “Thracian” on punkrockbeat.com

“No Connection Drawn Specifically”
Creating the sounds of Stat·ic gives the members an opportunity to create something different than their usual productions. Shah-Tayler’s electro-rock project The Singularity often releases lush, orchestrated pieces, while with Stat·ic he surrenders the producer’s role and just goes for raw energy. “Well because if you can abdicate responsibility for things that you’re really use to,” said he said, “then you can just focus on what’s important. The focal point, the focus of the song is my lyric, the focus of the song is the melody. We access a lot of the subconscious for this whole project.”

Curiously enough, the titles of the works by Stat·ic so far have little to do with the lyrical content.  As Shah-Tayler explained: “Yeah, that’s one of the useful things about Stat·ic being a complete collaboration…basically Darwin and Dustin come up with something, off the top of their heads, that’s a description of a piece of music that they start with, and once it develops, we decided that we would keep the name, I and would make no conscious reference to any of the words or names involved, so there would be a kind of subconscious connection. It must influence my subconscious, when I come up with lyrics, in some way, but there should be no connection drawn specifically.”

http://www.darwinmeiners.com/
http://www.dustinheald.com/
https://www.markgleason.org/
https://www.julianshahtayler.com/
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