For Murals For Immersion, the sixth ambient album released under his own name, Kenneth James Gibson teamed up with saxophonist Paul Carman for a very non-traditional collaboration. The music is driven by the saxophone, and while some parts are recognizable as such, much of Carman’s playing gets and sculpted into an otherworldly sound. Over a Zoom interview, Gibson talked about how the project came together and the process behind it.
How did this collaboration came about?
Kenneth James Gibson: So, Paul Carman… I moved up to Idyllwild in 2014. I live in LA now too, but I moved up to Idyllwild in 2014, full-time for a while. I’d always heard rumors about this dude, Paul Carman, who had played with Frank Zappa and was this amazing musician. And throughout the years, I was getting to finally know him and seeing him play. I used to book him at my ex-wife’s restaurant. We had music there. So after some time, I got to know him and we talked about working on some music. We finally nailed down a time, and I just had him come in to the studio, and we started recording bits and pieces of sax sounds. That’s kind of how it started. Basically, we did pretty much the whole album in two sessions. Paul would come over to my place, my studio, and we would just record. We’d pick certain keys and just record everything we’d think of in that key – drones, little melody lines, et cetera. And that’s how it started; knowing him in Idlewild and seeing him play around town, he’s an incredible musician.
Did you have any kind of preconceived ideas of the sound you were going for? Was there a concept?
Kenneth James Gibson: No, it was completely experimental. I had no idea. I knew I wanted to do something in the ambient and experimental realm. But I had no idea how it was going to sound or what was going to come out of it. There was no real goal for anything except just wanting to do something cool with an instrument that I have never really worked with before, which was saxophone, and with someone I had never worked with before.
Did it present any challenges working with the sax on this?
Kenneth James Gibson: No, it flowed really well, far better than I even thought it would. It took me about eight months or something after we recorded the first group of sounds. It took me a long time to get to it. Other things came up, work came up, etcetera. And it took me probably about eight months to actually get to it. And then I probably did three quarters of the album. Then I thought, ‘okay, let’s get one more session in for maybe two more tunes, two more pieces of music.’ So I’d say three quarters of the album was done from the first session, and then a quarter of it was finished from the second session.
After each of the sessions, was there much back and forth in terms of how the overall compositions developed? Did Paul give additional creative feedback, or did you take the session and then just run with that?
Kenneth James Gibson: After the initial session, it was pretty much me just running with it. Paul was totally fine with that. I actually sent him the tracks as I’d finished them, and he seemed to be pretty much cool with whatever I was doing, so I just ran with it. But once I actually started the process of arranging these sounds into full blown pieces, it came really quick. It just flowed out. I guess I just really needed it, something new to work on, and it just really flowed. I think actually from the second session there might even be a whole bunch of stuff that I didn’t even really get to, which will, I guess, be for the next album.
When you came to do the second session, was it influenced or impacted by the work you had done with the first session material?
Kenneth James Gibson: I think it kind of did, actually. I think I maybe had a little bit more of an idea of what I wanted out of it, although what I got in the first session was far more than I could ever even use. But yeah, I think there was probably a little more direction on that second session, just a little bit, maybe like, ‘Okay, give me a couple more melody lines,’ or something like that, which I might’ve not asked for in the first session as much, even though we did do some. But I think there might’ve been a little bit of, maybe give me a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that. But it really wasn’t too much different really, to be honest. But I think there was a bit of that really knowing from what I got out of the first session and maybe more of what I wanted. I think I might’ve said a couple more melody lines and maybe some more noisy bits. Just give me some breath sounds, some weirder noises to really add in there for life, I guess you could say.
When it came time to work with the recordings and add your parts, was there anything about the nature of the saxophone that may have impacted your own creative process and the way you approach things?
Kenneth James Gibson: Yeah, the sound of the sax is so amazing to work with ambient music. I mean, I did a lot of pitching, so a lot of the sounds you’re hearing are pitched way up and way down. I actually created some of the melody lines that weren’t actually played that way, that I had maybe some drones or some short bits that I recorded. I actually went in there and changed and created melody lines out of, say, a single drone on a couple things. And the sax really lends itself to sounding great, being able to almost do anything from kind of celestial high-pitch stuff to super low, creepy, almost fog-horny kind of things and everything in the middle. But yeah, the saxophone really, I feel, lends itself to be able to be molded into these sounds that don’t even sound like saxophone. Obviously there is a lot of obvious saxophone on the album, but it’s literally 99% all saxophone outside of some Moog Prodigy bass swells. So every single sound really that you’re hearing outside of some low sub bass sounds is all saxophone.
In terms of the listening experience, was it carefully thought-out in terms of the sequence of tracks? Is it meant to be listened to from start to finish? Did you think about how this should be presented to people?
Kenneth James Gibson: I know I started with the first one, ‘Finding New Language,’ which has an intro that is probably one of my favorite things in the record, actually. There are times when you make music, and I don’t even imagine where those sounds came from. And I know because I made it, but when I listened to it, even while making, I’m like, ‘Wow, how the fuck, that just sounds so ghostly and otherworldly,’ and those are the sounds that I really like to run with. WIth ‘Finding New Language’ I thought was a perfect intro to the album because of that. Yeah, so the way the album is arranged is the way that I thought it should be listened to, for sure. I feel like it tells a story, although hopefully that story is different for everybody.
Do you think there will be a live component to this project?
Kenneth James Gibson: I’ve thought about it, and I think it is possible. So nothing is booked or planned at the moment, but I have thought about how to really make it work live. I don’t know exactly how to do that yet, but I have definitely been thinking about interesting ways to present this music live. I mean, I think that would be an amazing thing to do if I could really get the essence of the recordings live. I don’t know if you could really do that with one saxophone, but it would be really fun to do. Obviously you could use a computer with tracks and then have live sax on top, and stuff like that, and kind of mix the live element with other sounds and stems and stuff like that. I think it would be a really fun thing to do, but haven’t got there yet.
You mentioned that you had recorded other material with Paul. Do you think there will be a follow-up to this, with a similar style?
Kenneth James Gibson: I would definitely like there to be a follow-up with a similar style and maybe doing something slightly different with this. So it’s not just a repeat, I was actually emailing with Paul today and told him I’d love to get together maybe by the end of the summer for another session.
Get the album at kennethjamesgibson.bandcamp.com. For more info, visit worldofkennethjamesgibson.com.
