Kelley Polar Interviewed

Kelley Polar turned heads with the triumphant release of his debut album 'Long Songs of the Hanging Gardens.' The album successfully married melancholic pop music of yesteryear with the disco touches he's known for (from playing strings with Metro Area).

In the midst of releasing his sophomore album 'I Need You to Hold On While the Sky is Falling', the Jazz Diaries was fortunate enough to catch up with the elusive pop star to talk about out... jazz.

So Kelley, when’s the next album due?

03/03/08

And how does the new album compare to that of your debut?

Well, I tried hard to learn how to sing between the first album and this one. By trying hard, I mean not taking lessons and just singing alot randomly, in the car and when close to strangers. Have you seen the movie Robocop? It's awesome. Anyway, I read this interview with the guy that wrote that movie, and it made a bunch of money so they said, ok, write a sequel. So this guy writes this incredibly cool new movie where in the first 30 seconds Robocop gets totally obliterated, and then they recreate his mind digitally and it is like some weird version of Tron or something. TOTALLY different. So of course they fired him and hired someone else to remake the first movie again. Anyway I say all this, because I had a completely different concept, but there was enough from the first album's world that I wanted to keep fooling around with, so this album and Love Songs are brothers, or sisters, only this sibling is a little older and jaded and has been sent to reform school for bad behavior related to his obsessive relationship with the hot twentysomething science teacher. Album three, that will be like the Robocop that didn't get made. This album, it's same kind of concept as the first, but taken farther: shorter songs, changing faster, more elaborate sound worlds, more complicated construction.

Upon listening to Crsanthymeum I couldn’t help but feel a sense of Armageddon. Especially considering the lyrical content and its homage to nuclear nightmares…Is this something you feel is a reality especially in the hustle and bustle of New York City?

It's really more of a product of both an overactive imagination and growing up in the mid-80's, when all art, especially geared to kids for some reason, seemed for a year or two to be about nuclear annihilation. Like, didn't you guys have The Day After over there? They sent a flyer home with all us 8th graders saying that having shit like this on TV was totally going to fuck us up. And it did, I guess....I think half of the irony/sarcasticness/snarkiness in art now is because everyone thought we were going to die when they were growing up. You guys are probably different over there-- in all the sci-fi I read, Australians are always the ones who survive-- TO DIE AN EVEN SLOWER, MORE HORRIBLE DEATH, CAUSED BY AMERICANS. But that said, I did move from New York City a week before September 11, and I was living only a few blocks from the Twin Towers, so maybe that stuff is in my head all the time. It's somewhat part of each generation's ego to think that they are the ones living in the End Times, but between nukes and global warming, hey, at least we can offer a reasonable scenario......

What made you pack up and leave to the countryside?

This is a question I answer a lot of different ways not because I am fibbing per se, but my last year in NYC I was running a film scoring company that did mostly commericals, and in the internet boom times we were making money and had a marble and red velvet penthouse on the top of a Times Square skyscraper, and could look down on the MTV building and the screaming girls outside of the TRL studio...so for better or worse it was a time for partying and debauchery, and for better or for worse there are MANY STORIES that one could pick out for being the time when the next day I thought about what had just happened and thought "while this may have resulted in an excellent story, really it is not a method for sustainable living, at least not if one has any kind of moral conscience". So ususally I just tell one of those stories, but they all amount to the same thing.....So I left and removed myself from temptation, and went to the country, to do some Thinking.

Have you found what you’re looking for?

No, not at all, I was just as messed up and just got really lonely. So recently I have taken steps to move back to a city. In the early twentieth-century, when the medical establishment was just becoming interested in keeping hospitals sterile, they kept all the sickly newborn babies in perfectly hygenic little bubbles, and the babies all started dying mysteriously. And they realized, the babies needed actual human contact to survive, they needed to be touched and held. Hm...now it sounds like I am saying I am a Giant Baby.

Do you read a lot? What sort of books are you into...

Yeah, I do read a lot, but not as much as I used to or should, I play video games too much and watch awesome sci-fi television series all at once in groups of 12 hours. I read all the good science fiction I can find (China Mieville The Scar and Alistair Reynold's Chasm City) and when that is gone I read bad science fiction (the new Dune books which suck and others about elf princesses that Morgan Geist makes fun of me for, that have very embarrassing covers that you should cover with another book jacket like The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene), it won't do you any dating favors but at least people will leave you alone and not heckle) and when that is gone I read books just about science in general (a lotof natural history, also cosmology for stupid people that went to music school). I also read books of 18th-century French Poetry and everything by Flann O'Brian. I like books about insect physiogomy and the lite-philosophy of Alan Watts. Aaron Copeland's books about listening to music and Arnold Schoenberg's books about writing music. If I could have everyone on the planet read one book it would be The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. I very much like that this question was asked and thank you for it.

A lot of your lyrical concepts are very strange and otherworldly despite being centred on something which is so natural to all hans... love.Can you talk a little bit about the concepts on the new album and how they were inspired?

There is a song about someone who is trying to commit suicide and then thinks better of it and tries to save themselves with advanced math, there is a song about a satellite in space waiting for a signal, in love with the thought of receiving its signal, because that is its purpose, songs about reclsuive math geniuses and some about space and some homilies/sayings if you were a robot that lived in the future, some about parties that never stop and become hellish, etc etc. The usual stuff, all inspired by real life and actual events. I was lucky enough to get to do some traveling off-planet in between albums, so a lot of it is inspired by the things I've been able to see.

I assume you make most of your music in your farm in New Hampshire… what does your studio look like?

I have a two-room shack and there is a trapdoor above one room into a loft which is where guests sleep over. In one room is a bed made out of wood, there is a small refrigerator and a hot plate. There are a lot of lamps, rugs and objets that I have collected from my travels abroad playing classical music-- I end up going to a lot of places other people don't, Syria, Burma, Azerbaijan, Amalthea. The ceiling is low and everything is wood and handbuilt in the 70's, the effect is half being in a ship belowdecks, the other half in a bedouin tent. There are some big glass windows that look out onto the forest outside. The other room is my studio, it is medium-sized and has a large wool carpet in the Palestinian style and a lot of synthesizers. The walls are covered with instruments I've collected from the travels, bodhans and Zarbs and duduks and neys. There is a large gas-fired heater in one corner. There are some shelves with all my classical sheet music on it and a music stand that I use to practice viola. There is no running water. There is a screened-in-porch outside that is not used now, it's too cold.

At first, you came out with what could be classified as 12” dance singles… is this something that you would like to explore again?

I'd love to, I wanted to do a whole Kelley Polar Quartet album, no vocals, just tracks like those EPs. But nobody buys records anymore, one of the last two big vinyl distributors in the US just went out of business, so now there is only one more, I think it's mostly hip-hop. The future has arrived, file-sharers. No more indie dance music for You. I might make it and just send it to my friends for christmas, only to people I know who wouldn't rip it and upload it. They would be like paintings.

So how were you introduced to disco?

It's in my bio and no one thinks it's true, but it is. My sister Bevin and I spent our earliest years with a red-white-and blue plastic Fisher-Price turntable and our library consisted of strange obscure Disney B-list records about talking hats and operasinging whales, and LPs from the last days of disco. I really don't know how we ended up with those records, our parents didn't listen to them, that's for sure. Perhaps it was one of the servants.

And what sort of disco do you listen to?

Rinder and Lewis, I love Rinder and Lewis, Patrick Crowley, some Salsoul but not all, some Italo,

I have a sick penchant for bad symphonic-disco transcriptions of classical music, the one of Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathusthra" is a favorite. I hear a lot of amazing stuff when I happen to play with Metro Area DJing, but I couldn't name it, I'm a rank amateur.

I’ve heard you’re not really in tune to new music but is there anything that has caught your eyes or ears of late?

It's not new, but I'm obsessed with the Piano Quartet by Ceasar Franck. It's from a time when people were trying to figure out what was going to happen to push tonality further, and he is a genius. The second movement-- you should listen to it, it's him being a spiritual being and being in love with one of his students while he was married and not being able to handle it. It's new to me. Maybe it's new to you too.....

It would seem obvious to link your love of disco with the strings section but i don’t find this apparent in your song writing...Often i find that your strings evoke strong feelings of melancholy as opposed to the soaring nature that we find in most disco records...Is this a conscious move on your behalf or something that comes naturally?

I use the strings in composing more like a lead vocalist, which is why I end up having to sing all these crazy three-ocatve things, which doesn't really do me any favors! The viola hardly ever gets to play melodies, so it's probably my way of compensating. But then I will replace those string melodies with me singing, and use the strings more like a rhythm guitar or something (I hate guitars). I just have the most facility at it, so I can use it to do something that's in my head, that maybe I can't get to do anyway else. I wish I could make them sound happy though...it's harder to make good happy music than good sad music. That's why I have such distain for nerdy white-boy composers making their angsty music. Relatedly, it's also why I have such distain for myself. Not sure if I answered the question at all..

Also a lot of your music seems to be more like electronic folk music.

I hate folk music, too.

What was your musical upbringing?

I learned violin from an early age and then switched to viola when I was about 17.

Was there a lot of pressure from your parents to follow the classical route?

No, but it was something I did from an early age. My dad would have preferred if I had become a major-league baseball pitcher or, barring that, perhaps a hockey player. But he didn't mind.

Coming from a musical background with such a strong focus on music theory what is your impression of dance music today?

I don't know much about dance music today, I don't go out much. Maybe if we have another conversation a year from now, I could tell you more. What I hear on the radio in the US, dance music or otherwise, is like some kind of musical wasteland, like what they walk into in the last third of the movie Mortal Combat. That's what the radio world of the United States looks like. Ugly-ass monsters that want to kick your ass and steal your soul. Oh, except for sports radio in the New England area. That is great, great radio and it is what I listen to exclusively.

There has been a lot of discussion of late about the ease of which anyone can produce music and as such song writing has taken a back seat in the music making process. In your own experience do you find that the electronic instruments lull you into becoming less musical in your compositions?

I don't think electronic instruments do; I think presets and premade loops and templates, etc. do. That's why I had such admiration for what Metro Area was doing when they were doing it-- don't quantize the shit out of everything, use live instruments, live drums mostly, or just sample a kick or a snare, like the old producers did. There's a lot of people who make music fast and without too much angonizing, but I like the craft element-- so does Morgan Geist, and I learned about making electronic music from him. It's good to take the time to make things sound good. And the people who really like music, they can tell the difference. I get easily bored and hate boring things so I try to make my music, both the electronic and the classical art-music I write, not-boring. But I also just got rejected from the one composition school I applied to, so what do I know. And there is simple dance music, all the detroit tracky jacky stuff that is SUPER simple and also just mindblowingly amazing.

I’ve heard you are loosely affiliated with the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music.
Can you talk a bit about this and some of the stories you’ve seen in your travels?

I actually don't talk about my classical life in my electronic interviews and vice versa, I like to keep them separate-- one world is very conservative, the other not so much, so it helps keep me Out of Trouble. But Apple Hill is a wonderful, wonderful organization and anyone who cares about increasing peace in the world and, just as importantly, high-level classical chamber music, should think about donating to the cause (www.applehill.org).

Our last interview was with NY funk/disco band Chin Chin… Torbitt Schwartz would like to know if you would like to exchange remixes with him?

Fuck, I hardly ever do remixes, I'd rather spend time making my own music. But I mean, his name is Torbitt. I might do it just because of that. That's incredible. Torbitt. If he can send me a copy of his birth certificate, it is a deal.

And i’m not sure if you’ve heard of Glass Candy from New Jersey (from the label Italians Do It Better) but if you have, would you like to pose a question for them?

Have they had the pani puri from Bombay's Dimple in Iselin, NJ? Best pani puri in this world. And off of it, actually.

Thanks so much for talking to us...Can we expect you to do a tour down here in Australia?

Sure, if someone asks me-- especially if it's right after a US-targeted accidental Nuclear First Strike.