The airy, spacious compositions of Benoît Pioulard is the work of Portland’s Thomas Meluch. He’s one of the city’s more reclusive, low profile acts, but makes consistently beautiful music using looped layers of found-sound, breathy guitar, and his own hushed vocals. After catching his hypnotizing set at PDX Pop Now!, I set out to unravel the mystery surrounding this local gem. He quickly and amicably agreed to an interview. The following is the result of a conversation via email about the nature of live versus recorded music, uses of multimedia in live performance, and a brief glimpse into the mind and process of a highly original Portland songwriter.

XPLDR!: You’ve been making music as Benoît Pioulard for some time now, but I rarely see your name on the bill at local venues. Is there a specific reason you don’t often gig around town, or is it simply circumstance?

Benoît Pioulard: You’re right that it’s been a fairly long-term endeavor, even before I had a name for it.. I’ve been recording in some regard since about the age of 9 or 10 & have for the most part considered my works to be very homespun and cloistered.  My live sets, for a long time, didn’t really reflect anything else that I was doing or recording, & only recently have I made the effort to sing or play recognizable songs.. I went on a really tremendous tour this spring with Windy & Carl and am feeling optimistic about the European jaunt that I have coming up this fall, so it’s ultimately a good thing for me that things are moving in a more comfortable direction in terms of the live element.  As for playing around Portland, I don’t generally seek out shows but am fairly receptive to requests, it’s just a matter of those coming in.

XPLDR!: You’re one of many Portland artists who’ve begun using a video component in their live set. At PDX Pop Now!, in addition to yours, I saw at least three other acts [Nurses, Deelay Ceelay, and Dash!] integrate video elements into their sets. What originally inspired you to use video during your live performance? Do you edit and create the video yourself?

BP: I’d say the primary reason is that I’d rather draw the attention away from myself because I’m not a natural performer, nor do I consider myself to have any kind of captivating ’stage presence’ the way things stand. My hope is that people will close their eyes, really, but if they don’t it’s nice to know they have something pretty or weird or weirdly pretty to look at.  And yes, I generally create the visuals myself from found footage and that sort of thing; my brain naturally attaches images to sound anyway, so it seems appropriate and I tend to appreciate shows that are a synthesis of the senses.

BP: For the most part I delve the collections at Archive.org as they have a ton of amazing/beautiful/bizarre things that are in the public domain and pretty easy to work with.  For a few performances I’ve used a re-edit of an inexplicably captivating old documentary called ‘Talking Feet’ that was loaned to me by a friend.. But in general I trust my gut when looking at footage & consider the musical correlation later on during editing, if at all; I feel that my attraction to certain sounds and images comes from a similar part of my brain, so my hope is that the combination of elements will make sense at least on some level, and ideally line up in a different way in the mind of each spectator. Perhaps that’s ambitious or unrealistic, I don’t know.  It’s hard, after all, to imagine the effect on others when all of this is such an ultimately selfish project.

XPLDR!: Do you ever work in reverse, that is to say, have you ever see a video that captivates you in such a way that you say to yourself, “I’d like to compose music for this”?

It’s been a long-term dream of mine to compose things for film since I’m so enthralled by both media; I definitely wish I’d had some hand in backing pretty much any frame of any Terrence Malick film, though naturally it’d be tough to compete with Ennio Morricone and the other brilliant minds that he’s worked with.. I’m in the midst of a working relationship with an extremely talented filmmaker and choreographer from New York called Jason Akira Somma – so far we’ve only done two short pieces with hopefully more to come – and was also commissioned by Bill Morrison to perform an original live score for a Maya Deren film a couple of years ago, which I feel turned out rather well.  All these endeavors have only been a boon to my enthusiasm for scoring, to be sure.  Oh and apologies for all the name-dropping.

XPLDR!: You mention that your live sets often don’t (or didn’t) reflect your recordings. While certainly each of the two environments have their strengths and weaknesses, as a musician, do you prefer working live or in the studio, and could you explain why?

BP: As I said I’m feeling considerably more comfortable about live environs, but I feel I’ll always prefer working at home in terms of what musically turns me on the most.. I won’t lie, I’m totally controlling when it comes to things creative, so being able to sit alone and tweak one little note or percussive hit and take as much time as I need, that’s something I wouldn’t want to give up.  Also in terms of singing I’m totally untrained, so when recording I tend to layer at least three vocal tracks – and can also work with/re-record those until I consider them finished – and obviously don’t have that luxury when performing on the spot.  It also bears mentioning that I have several new pieces that I’ve been working exclusively for live sets, at least so far; some part of me believes that if I were to record them in their ’simplified’ state in the near future – that is, before heading out on tour again – I won’t be able to hear them the way I used to and that might kind of fuck me up.

XPLDR!: Can you breifly go into some detail about your writing process, in terms of recording and the various loops and sounds you use? I hear lots of ambient and found sound in your records, and wonder, how much of your process involves traditional instrumental composition? What are some songwriting goals you have, if any?

BP: I almost always write things on the guitar (sometimes cello or harmonium or dulcimer) whether lyrics or melody or music comes first.. Once those basic elements are laid down in recording, that forms the skeleton around which I add in the noises that appear in my brain while listening back, be they taped or instrumental or otherwise.  The nice thing is that I almost never have a ‘goal’ for a song and am more into exploring where it wants to go once I’ve begun recording – that being the case, I think probably 70% or more of any given song results after I first roll the tape.

XPLDR!: I enjoy your despcription of “noises that appear in my brain while listening back,” when referring to things you’ve recorded or sketched. The way I imagine it, the compositions themselves may naturally bring certain sounds or ambience to mind as they take shape. I’m wondering, do you have a “favorite” everyday sound or sounds? I admit this question is stolen from an interview I once read with Tom Waits. His answer, by the way, was “frying bacon.”

BP: Sourced or not, I like that question.. In high school and for much of college I had a habit of walking around with headphones on & eventually realized I was missing out on a lot of tremendously interesting, spontaneous music.  I’d say the first sounds that come to mind from my current existence are: the resonation of my bike tires while riding across the Broadway Bridge (here in Portland), the myriad clunks and crashes of the recycling trucks that roll through my neighborhood every week, and the swelling hiss/rumble of my electric tea kettle as it heats up.

XPLDR!: Can recorded music accomplish “a synthesis of the senses”  the way you strive to do with your live set? If you don’t think so, what kind of experience do you strive to give a listener with your recorded work instead?

BP: Music itself can definitely be transportive and have effects beyond the ears.. There are plenty of records that give me goosebumps or a quickened heart rate every time I hear them – in a good way, of course – and similarly there are those during which I can close my eyes and let images drift through my consciousness.  There are also certain records whose overall sound gives me an intense sense of the space in which they were recorded, like Captain Beefheart’s ‘Trout Mask Replica’ or US Maple’s ‘Acre Thrills’.  Not sure I’ve ever tasted or smelled a song, though..

XPLDR!: Can you name a couple of other artists or albums who’ve greatly influenced your work? Are there any local contemporaries you’re particularly excited about?

BP: As far as local acts, I’ve been fond of Grouper since long before I lived here or knew that she does – I also have to say that Daniel Menche totally blew my mind at the PDX Pop fest & have been into him again lately as well.  Otherwise I have an embarrassingly strong attachment to Boards of Canada and William Basinski, definitely mainstays of my listening repertoire..  It deserves to be mentioned as well, my most recent favorite record around the house has been Bob Dylan’s ‘Nashville Skyline’, amazing stuff there & I’m sad I didn’t know about that one sooner.  Though I suppose important records always show up when they’re meant to, no?

8/25/2009