Dan Goldman of Luxury Pond | Live on Sound Authors

March 1, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors! That was a little track called Le Metro, a beautiful track. Tell me about that track as an introduction here Dan.

Dan Goldman: Hey Kent! Well that song is a bit of a reflection of the sound of the Montreal subway system. A lot of the pieces on that record called the Revolution are sort of from my childhood and yeah, that ones kind of an audio collage, its sound bytes of various sounds I found while I was recording the whole record.

Dr. Kent: I chatted with you briefly a few months ago and since then you sent me a disc of Luxury Pond, which is your new release and man there’s some great tunes on that one. We’re going to play one at the end called Caving In from that. What are you working on now?

Dan Goldman: I’m working on a whole bunch of new songs actually. I’m actually sitting in the house looking out at frozen Lake Erie and it’s pretty inspiring. The lake is frozen in this windswept formation in what you might imagine the arctic might look like. It’s pretty inspiring so I’m working on a collection of new songs. It’s hard to say which direction they’re going they are still in the fermenting stage.

Dr. Kent: The name of your group, Luxury Pond, almost has an echo of that frozen lake.

Dan Goldman: Yeah I know, I keep coming back to water. I’m a Pisces so water keeps popping up whether I like it or not.

Dr. Kent: Your music fascinates me as a classical composer because you combine electronics with harsh vocals at times, soft vocals at times. What’s your process of writing songs, recording them; do you have a four track? What’s your thing?

Dan Goldman: Well the last one we did was recorded on my laptop, I’m trying to think yeah all the tracks were pretty much recorded just in my bedroom and then I sort of set up the sample and really the last record Luxury Pond I wanted to do the opposite, I wanted to record the whole record in a day, live. But I wanted to take the glitziness of the last record and as opposed to a live seating. So we spent quite a bit of time arranging and planning the session, myself and Owen Powers, who did the string arrangements and then rehearsing the sessions. Then I asked a friend Ryan Driver whose very talented analog well he’s a musician of multi instruments but particularly he plays an analog which is capable of creating a lot of glitchy weird broken sounds so I decided I wanted to have a live session, which comprised of heavy arranging components but also a rhetoric component, superimposed those very composed few to very chance things.

Dr. Kent: Some of the words your using like glitchy, I like that term, but then when you talk about allotropic music; I know what that is but when did you start getting into that kind of experimental stuff?

Dan Goldman: It’s always been something that’s been attractive to me. Like even just from starting to put music out there was an element of improvisation. I was always attracted to the weirder Beetles songs for instance, like I’m the Walrus, one the first examples of interesting collage in the pop world. So its not a new thing, Strawberry Fields, Revolution No. 9, that kind of thing, that influenced me some so there’s a degree of that and I spent a bit of time studying improvisation as well.

Dr. Kent: What kind of improvisation.

Dan Goldman: Predominantly jazz improv.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about the construct of the album itself and your of course playing with great musicians. On Luxury Pond you had a string quartet with you, but what do you normally play and how do you go about constructing it?

Dan Goldman: Bits and pieces everywhere, I’m predominantly a guitar player and oftentimes when I come up with little ideas on the guitar I take some notes for over the course of several months of sort of lyrical notes. At a certain point spend some intensive time kind of trying to put the puzzle pieces together. So things kind of influence each other. I wouldn’t say I’m really the type to write a set of lyrics and then set music to it. I like the whole sort of fit together to kind of create a cohesive piece. Sometimes like on the newest record Luxury Pond there’s some lyrics that are not necessarily linear, not storytelling like, and some are influenced by dream imagery. But the fact that they’re not linear doesn’t really bother me so much as the fact that what I’m looking for is that the whole thing makes sense as a unit. Whatever it takes to make the whole thing feel right together.

Dr. Kent: That’s an interesting discussion too because I’m also a songwriter and I always start with the lyrics first. It’s a fascinating thing to talk to someone about their process and that because we’re all so very different in that. You can really hear in your records that it’s an organic whole; they’re not verse-chorus-bridge kind of tunes.

Dan Goldman: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: What are your influences in terms of songwriting? When did you start?

Dan Goldman: Like who do I listen to?

Dr. Kent: Yeah and when did you start listening?

Dan Goldman: Not until pretty late in my musical formation. I started in my mid 20s, I’m in my 30s now and I’ve been influenced by a friend who is a poet and she sort of exposed me to modern poetry but these days my favorite artists are Smog, Wilko; Wilko is a good example of a band that uses lyrics that aren’t necessarily linear. For some reason I studied classical guitar so I guess that’s where the form ideas come in the sense their not verse-chorus traditional song forms. It’s more kind of a through composed concept a lot of times.

Dr. Kent: I’d love to chat with you some more, we’ll have to have you on when the new record is out. Is Luxury Pond available now?

Dan Goldman: It will be available. Since last I spoke with you there’s been some progress. A company called Sonic Onion will be handling it in Canada but they won’t have it for at least another month or two. For now the easiest way to get it is to go to myspace.com\luxurypond and you can just order one and I’ll be happy to send a copy.

Dr. Kent: Awesome and it’s a great record I listen to it over and over in my car, I love it. It’s hard to say, its syrupy or something like that, it’s got a great vibe to it.

Dan Goldman: I hope its maple syrupy!

Dr. Kent: Exactly, definitely northern syrupy, not your diet syrup. Let’s listen to a track, tell me about the track Caving In.

Dan Goldman: It doesn’t have any of the alimentary components we talked about; its just strings and voices and it’s probably the most linear in terms of the narrative. It was the first song that Owen and I arranged and that way it kind of set the tone for the rest of the record. Owen’s concept with the arranging was to; he was influenced by the 24 Preludes of Chopin in that Chopin took like one motif and developed it through the whole piece in a way where it doesn’t return. So that’s what Owen was going for in the arrangement and he succeeded quite well and I’m happy with it. Its one of the older songs of mine and something I keep coming back to, yeah, I hope you like it.

Dr. Kent: Cool and enjoy your frozen landscape and we’ll talk to you soon.

Dan Goldman: Thanks Kent.

Dr. Kent: Dan Goldman is the artist and we can check out his MySpace account at myspace.com\luxurypond. Here’s the track Caving In from his album, Luxury Pond. Take it easy we’ll talk to you soon.

Dan Goldman: Thanks Kent.

[Music]

Dr. Kent: That’s a gorgeous tune from Dan Goldman called Caving In. The album is Luxury Pond and his myspace is myspace.com\luxury pond. Have a wonderful Friday and a safe weekend and we’ll see you back here next week.

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