Matthew Perpetua: One of the things I really liked in the book is how you write about how we listen to recordings, and how that’s transformed over the years with technological advances. But one thing never really changes — we tend to listen to music alone. Listen, as in focused listening, not just being in a room while music is on in the background. Do you think Wayne et al were thinking about this when they were making Zaireeka, since the record is something that can’t be heard alone?I find it interesting that Richardson implies that "getting together with friends" may not be as important anymore. Not necessarily in the sense that you don't want to hang out with your peeps, but because a drastic overhaul in technology now makes music an instant gratification process that locks you in the dome of your iPod earbuds, alone. Zaireeka was a bulky, time-consuming experiment (I tried it once and it was work), and I think music listeners in general today would be less likely to have the motivation to purchase a CD, much less attempt to listen to four at once on four different stereos. Yet another example of technology driving social interaction, only this time, it's in a direction opposite to all the sharing and Facebooking and tweeting.
Mark Richardson: Yes, I think the social aspect of it was there from the beginning, as it grew out of the Parking Lot Experiments. That was always to be a “happening” of a kind with multiple people there. The genesis of Zaireeka was, “How could we make a recorded version of this?” Had the technology existed then to make it 8 channels that you could listen to yourself, I am not sure they would have gone that way, because the idea of getting together with friends was really important.
(Perpetua and Richardson also discuss briefly how Embryonic is fitting into the band's current creative narrative, something I looking forward to as their April 21st Riverside appearance draws near.)
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