Chris Frain - I needed a different identity

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NÚMERO 38

UNA R E VISTA IMA GINARIA

PATTERN LANGUAGE I NEEDED A DIFFERENT IDENTITY.

[ Interview with Chris Frain from Pattern Language by Benjamin York. ]

I NEEDED A DIFFERENT IDENTITY

Electronic music continues to give new albums to listen to and to enjoy, it has happened that we have found an album called "Total Squaresville", published on June 16 and, on closing of this edition, we have contacted Chris Frain and we have asked you some questions, with the idea of opening a dialogue path for a new interview in the near future, then we leave your thoughts Hi Chris, thank you for allowing us to ask you some questions about your career.

You have been in several projects that are very different from what you are doing today (The Giranimals, Tanuki). What has attracted you to such varied projects?

I think there are several reasons. First, it’s exciting to learn a new instrument or a new musical vocabulary. And sometimes there’s little choice you have in the matter - bands break up and you have to start working on something new. For me it’s fun to build a project from scratch - whether solo or with other people. Each time you do that you (hopefully) find another element of your “voice” as a musician somewhere in there.

I read that the documentary "Synth Britannia" triggered a change in the direction of your musical career. Is this so?

Definitely. I was mostly familiar with the music of that first generation of British synth pop/new wave, but I never realized how DIY the approach to that music was, at least in the early years. It was a weird confluence of the punk attitude towards creating music and the availability of relatively cheap music making technology. That was very inspiring, and I think it parallels the development of music making technologies today. There are so many good synthesizers out there for around $500 or so! Making electronic music doesn’t need to be this super-esoteric thing and it doesn’t have to just be dance music, either. We’re at the point where you can sort of invent your own genre, just like they were doing in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

"The Life and Times of Lenn Cicada: 2014-2015" in May 2016 was your first work under the name Chris Frain, Then "Imagining the Dalton Era" in

2016 and "Habitat '67" in that same year. Why did you now decide to release music under the name "Pattern Language"?

Up until a few months ago this actually was going to be a “Chris Frain” album, but the label (Happy Robots Records, UK) and I decided, after hearing the initial mixes, that this album’s music was categorically different from my previous work, and therefore needed a different identity. Previously, my music tended to be more prog-rock inspired, more ambient, more abstract. But “Total Squaresville” came out very differently with shorter and more focused tracks, so it made sense to start this with a clean slate. I will keep performing and recording the more spacey stuff under the “Chris Frain” name in the future, though, in parallel with “Pattern Language.”

Tell us about your new ‘Total Squaresville’ release.

“Total Squaresville” was just released on June 16 and you can find it on Bandcamp as well as iTunes. In terms of the overall style, I like to think of it as Synthwave but without the “neon grid” tropes.

Maybe “Thinking Man’s Synthwave”? There are elements and influences baked into it from the music I’ve been listening to for the last few years, such as: Kraftwerk, Cluster/Harmonia/Neu!, Stereolab, A.I.R., and John Carpenter’s soundtrack music.

I got in touch with Happy Robots Records last year when they released the Hologram Teen EP. I was intrigued by their catalog and I felt my music would fit in with the label. Much to my shock and surprise they got back to me the next day and the rest is history. I immediately remixed some Rodney Cromwell tracks last summer and then began work on “Total Squaresville.” Other than some suggestions about keeping the tracks focused and a little shorter on running time (I tend to go long on my tracks), the creative decisions have stayed with me and I’m thoroughly happy about that. Shameless Promotion PR had done several campaigns for artists on Happy Robots Records and I remembered seeing something new every day about the Hologram Teen release when that was happening. Since there was already a great working relationship between the label and the publicity firm I figured that would also work for me.

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What are you planning for the rest of 2017?

I would love to tour in the later half of the year, either here in the US or in the UK - I just need to figure out the logistics of that. Besides working on new music I am also contributing to a retroculture blog

called echosynthetic.com.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak with you.

Thank you, Benjamin!

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