PRESSURE RELEASE
AM Static get to the ‘guts of the song’ with sophomore album
Chris Austman and Nils Mikkelsen may see eye-to-eye on most aspects of their creative partnership, AM Static, but the impending release of their sophomore album seems to be stirring some very different reactions in the two musicians.
Work was being done on Rise & Shine way back in 2014, before their Juno-nominated full-length debut A Life Well Lived had even been released. So how does it feel to finally have the album see the light of day after toiling away on it for more than three years?
“Nerve-racking,” says keyboardist-producer Mikkelsen. “Relief,” says vocalist Austman. It’s part of what Mikkelsen calls the duo’s “complementing differences,” which may be just as valuable as the common ground the two share. Austman is also an actor and a family man with a young son. Mikkelsen works as a producer and sound engineer. The two formed AM Static in 2011 in part because they shared appreciation for a number of far-flung influences, from Joni Mitchell, to Stevie Wonder, to U.K. ambient techno artist Squarepusher and Scottish electronica duo Boards of Canada.
But with one EP and two fulllength albums under their belts, the principals of AM Static have settled into a working arrangement that relies on individual strengths and pulling each other out of comfort zones.
“The way that we make sure we aren’t working inside of our own blind spots, is that we take our ideas and throw them to the other,” Austman says. “The agreement, which is easy when we write so much, is that we only work on the ideas where both of us feel really excited about the direction that it is taking. Sometimes the ideas will be simple, sometimes they will be more highly developed. But really the testing ground is throwing it at the ears of your partner to find out whether or not they can feel the same kind of excitement that you had for the idea.”
Both agree that there was a bit of pressure thanks to the success of their debut album, which was nominated for Best Electronic Album Of the Year when the Junos were held in AM Static’s hometown in 2016.
“There does live in the back of your mind a bit of pressure when it comes to the fact you are releasing the followup to something that did get an unexpected level of attention,” Austman says. “Part of the writing process we went through with this one included a very technical approach to paring everything down. Even though we certainly felt the pressure, we decided, as much as possible, to make an attempt to thrive under the pressure and release something that was going to be as clean and purified as possible.”
Some of the sonics on Rise & Shine may have been pared back, but it also has the assured tone of something that has been meticulously crafted in the studio.
From the yearning, synthheavy Already Gone, to the mournful ballad Anything, to the chill and melodic Baptism, the songs play off of the two main pillars of AM Static’s sound: Mikkelsen’s studio wizardry and Austman’s soulful vocals.
While a Juno nomination seemed to firmly plant the duo in a very specific genre, Mikkelsen says the electronic label is broad enough that it never feels stifling.
“I grew up playing a lot of metal, and there was always talk of ‘What’s real metal and what’s not real metal?’ ” Mikkelsen says. “That was really a way for people to exclude or put down things based on how they felt. I played a lot of jazz in college and would hear the same thing: What’s real jazz and what’s not real jazz. I never really hear that with electronic music because it’s constantly changing and there’s just too much going on to figure it out.”
Rise & Shine will officially be launched on Friday at Festival Hall. AM Static will be challenging another misconception about electronic music by performing with a five-piece band.
“With our first record we ran into problems adapting things for live (performance) just because you start doing very productionheavy things like playing sounds in reverse that are really hard to do live,” Mikkelsen says. “So it was thought out when we were working on this one. How can we do some of this stuff live? A lot of this stuff was written on a piano or on a guitar. All of these songs just work with piano and vocals. It was starting there and then taking it into the crazy production world. Then it comes full circle. You go down to the guts of the song, just the chords and the melody. You bring in a band and see what happens. We didn’t want to have a glorified karaoke set of just playing backing tracks and having Chris sing overtop. We really wanted to give these songs to a live band and see what they do with them.”