Remember Alec Berlin? The guitar connoisseur became a bit of a constant feature on our blog, thanks to his recent endeavours as a solo project. Making a point of using his guitars as a purely melodic element, leaving shreddings and technicism behind him, Berlin recently released a mesmerising record, ‘Patchen Avenue’, a collection of seven instrumental pieces encompassing various genres and sonic direction.
The result is a personalized look into Alec’s artistry, an open door to his musical prowess. If the title track is too mellow for you, with its elegant and relaxing country settings, you could always turn your ears to ‘Flatbush Jaywalk’, a more complex, odd episode.
What truly matters though, is the wisdom Berlin showcases in approaching the guitar. He seeks to communicate with the listener through the instrument, not making the guitar the sole topic of conversation. He’s opening a communication channel, a way for him and the listener to bond. And it works.
Intrigued by the project, we caught up with the American talent to find out more about his artistry and future goals… Interview below!
Hey Alec, how is it going? some of our readers might not be familiar with your project, how would you describe yourself, in a few words?
I make guitar-driven instrumental rock music that skews more towards song than shred.
Your current work is the result of a long journey; What first drew you to making music?
Hmmm… well, I’m a Beatles nut. My first musical memory involves our family dog, a dachshund named Otto. To rile him up, we used to run around singing “She Loves You, yeah yeah yeah” – he would go berserk and run around with us. Not long after that, I heard Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first time, and I became fascinated with the guitar.
As a professional guitarist, you have a long history of musicals and gigs all around North America. How did that inform your current artistry?
I’ve tried my hand at a few different musical endeavours over the years, including a long stint studying Jazz. I also work in musical theater a lot. And I’ve always felt most excited by well-crafted, concise songwriting. I hope that my current music is in some fashion the product of all of those influences. It’s definitely all about songwriting. There’s improvisation, although it exists only in service of the song – it’s not open-ended like you might find in Jazz. And there’s a LOT of attention to detail, which I have encountered quite a bit in theater.
‘Patchen Avenue’ is your last single, taken from the EP of the same name. Are we correct in thinking it is one of the ‘tamest’ tracks on the record?
I understand what you mean, although I wouldn’t use the word “tame” – I think it’s quiet, compared to the other tracks I’ve recorded. But it’s every bit as involved and adventurous in its own way, despite being a little calmer in going about it.
We appreciate the fact that you like to make your guitar ‘sing’, instead of ‘shredding’. Can that be pointed out as your musical philosophy?
I just wanted the guitar playing to serve the song. I also love to listen to amazing instrumentalists who are able to play long extemporaneous, improvised music, whether that’s Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, Wayne Krantz, Derek Trucks, or so many others. But that’s just not what this music is. There’s a time and a place for everything, and this record is the time and the place for more focused guitar playing.
How’s the music scene in New York these days?
There’s always things going on in NYC, great music happening by locals as well as by bands passing through. The last few years have not been so kind in that we’ve lost a bunch of really great venues – such as the famous 55 Bar – but there are still places to play, and people eager to both play and listen.
Tell us about ‘Life in the Bog’, a particularly complex gem. How did it come about, and what were your references?
“Life in the Bog” was one of the first songs that I wrote for this project. I’m glad you brought it up, because it’s a good illustration of how things went down. I wrote it just on a guitar – I’d record rhythm guitar parts on my phone and play along with them to work out melodies, structures, etc.
Then I played it with a band over the course of a year or so – 2 guitars, bass, and drums. It’s really fun to play it live, it’s a very raucous song, really gives everyone a chance to shine.
But then when I recorded it, I sort of started from scratch. I had SOME ideas – I knew the basic structure, I knew where the loud parts were and where the quiet parts were. But I didn’t really know how I was going to create any of the sounds. And there were quite a few surprises, things that I came up with that I hadn’t anticipated. For example
- In the introduction, I layered 8 tracks of ebow. It creates a really cool, vibe-y atmosphere. And then, to contrast that, I recorded the melody pretty clearly, with an almost jazzy guitar tone (using the neck pickup on my Epiphone Casino). I like contrasts, and this one seemed to work well. -At the end of that section, there’s a big major chord that lurches you out of the minor section. For that moment I wanted to emulate a sound I heard on a demo of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” – I’m not really sure what the sound is, but it’s sort of an explosion of sunshine. So I layered 2 guitars an octave apart and dialed in a sound that is bright and jangly.
- For the bridge sections where the bass plays the melody, I wanted everything to be very unstable. So I did 2 things to accomplish that – first, I dialed in a vibrato tone on a Strymon Mobius pedal (so it drifted in and out of tune). I played the chords with the back end of my pick, and I tried to purposely play them a little out of time. I was thinking about the rhythm guitar part at the end of “Dollars and Sense” by Radiohead for this section.
- And then I asked mix engineer James Frazee to flip the drums around, so that things would be very unstable. This is sort of inspired by verse 3 of “Strawberry Fields Forever”, which has a backwards hi-hat throughout.
Anyway, that song is especially dense with sound design. There are a bunch of other elements to it also – there’s a direct guitar part that sounds like a Clav and reminds me of Talking Heads. And there’s a guitar melody that I wanted to be massive and very Strat-y, like Stevie Ray Vaughn, so I layered three parts, in three different octaves. I bet you’re sorry you asked now, huh? But that’s how it went down for all of the songs – there were all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, sonically. It was really exciting to record this music!
What are the next steps for your project? Anything exciting on the horizon?
Well, I recorded 12 songs in all. I’m releasing one per month, and Patchen Ave is number 7. So there are 5 more to come, including Minir Maad, which will be released on Dec 15. I also went back into the studio in August to record basic tracks for 3 more songs. I haven’t finished them yet, but that’s next on the to-do list.
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