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feels-like-floating · 1 year

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Born in Hawaii and raised in Japan, Dustin Wong is an American guitarist and former member of art-rock band Ponytail. Represented through Thrill Jockey and (soon) Leaving Records, Dustin has also collaborated with musicians Takako Minekawa and Dan Deacon.

We recently had a chance to speak with Dustin about his practice and upcoming spring residency with us. Get cozy for this conversation that meanders through the architecture of sonic collaboration, landscapes of music-making, and being inspired by AI impressionism.

Interview conducted and edited by Light Liu, Director of Community Platforms at Floating.

Light: Let’s start by talking about your music, your practice, and what you're looking to do with music in general.

Dustin: There's been a lot of changes in process since I started playing publicly. At first I was just trying to figure out how to put together sounds using software by trial and error and incrementally try to understand the theories and how things worked.

It was all visual and shapes, like squares and triangles and rectangles, putting together shapes to create sounds. And as I started doing bands [in Ponytail], music was all based on ideas rather than theory, through trial and error working things out, [then later realizing] what kind of musical ideas we were actually [using].

[Then] it shifted more into solo performance and group-based music and that became more about studying the geography of the guitar and understanding the mechanics of how each note corresponds to each other, research and study of harmony, counterpoint, patterns & percussive elements.

I started collaborating with Takako, and that became the realm of sampling, the idea of taking a sound and understanding what those sounds can feel like in different octaves. While we were in Japan, at the end of the show, the promoter would [sometimes] suggest doing improvisations with the people and the bill, and I found that to be really novel. I started getting the bug for improvising, and we shifted into a more free form structure. We went on a few tours where we improvised [the whole time.]

Here in LA, I became way more interested in the idea of building something new every time when performing. There are more opportunities here to play more improvised music with other players here. I was so impressed with how people can catch a sound, play with it and return something back that’s resonant or challenging or [taken] to a whole new realm. It's been such a great practice for me what I'm trying to do with the Floating residencies.

L: Listening to your music & the way that you talk about your music, there's this very cross sensory feeling about your approach. It’s very visual and almost tactile, there’s a real sense of a concept or framework to your music. Would you like to talk about that at all?

D: It's changed a lot, my idea of the way I approach my gear, my interface, my pedals. When I was doing solo loop guitar, I associated everything as a kind of factory, each pedal corresponding to each other as this module of resources [where] sound is being transformed into another sound, into another sound, into another sound.

That has changed quite a bit. I don't see my gear as a factory anymore. The scenery has gotten wider. It's like I can see the things outside of the factory so to speak, where there's sounds that slip into the space, like cars, trucks, people yelling, sirens. It was a bit of a challenge in the beginning, because I always thought of those sounds as being intrusive, but the fault was mine, [because] in a sense, I had to include those sounds for the music to work. And now I welcome those sounds when I practice. It's inspiring. It's like, “Oh, I want that texture, and so I'll include that.” It's like, “Thank you for the tip,” you know?

L: How are you taking this kind of mindset into your residency at Floating this spring?

D: I'm hoping that the people I'll be playing with will create, you know, fun accidents. That can be a potential for something new.

L: Is there some kind of intent that you have for the residency or how you’re curating people?

D: The first performance will be with Cate Kennan and Celia Hollander. They're both excellent with the keyboard, the synthesizer and [have] a sensibility of the surreal and uncanny aspects of what music can do, and I'm just really excited to explore these new spaces. I want to grow more as a musician, I want to know what I can do beyond what I'm doing right now. And by playing with other people, you're able to reflect on each other and see yourself more through other people.

The second performance will be with Butoh dancer, Kyoko Takenaka. That'll be this whole idea of how movement, physical & bodily movement, can affect how I will change my sounds or how the sounds can change physical movement within the context of the environment. I'm excited about that. And then the third performance will be with Brin and Dylan Fujioka, and they're both drummers, so it'll be more of an exploration of rhythm and percussion & how I can navigate through that. It’s like trying to put together a fun obstacle course, by inviting your friends to play and maneuver and find yourself through that. [laughs]

L: That's a really nice way of putting it. Have you played with them before?

D: I have not played with Kate in a session before, and not really with Celia either.

L: So what drew you to their work?

D: I've played a show with Cate where we were on the same bill, and she plays these sounds that, it's so hard to put into words, it's not cerebral because it feels physical, but it does take you to a place that's otherworldly, a realm that's surreal, fantastic, dream-like, not in the sense of the landscape, but more of a feeling, that you're feeling it in your mind and in your soul.

Similarly [with] Celia, she's able to juxtapose different sounds that when you hear it it makes you realize, “Of course these sounds work together,” but you would never think to put those sounds together. It's poignant, simple, [but also] very intentional.

L: What kind of relationship do you feel like you have to the outdoors or playing music outside?

D: It's the best.

Floating was actually the first show I've played since the pandemic. That was with Jeremiah Chiu at the Japanese tea garden at Storrier Stearns. It was the most cathartic experience I've had in a long time, because I hadn’t played a show in maybe a year or so. And maybe more so now, but you feel comfortable being outside. You feel safe.

The way the sounds bounce, you know, it's different in every outdoor setting. If there's trees, there's a certain acoustic reverberation that the trees have, they soak in the sound, but they also bounce back the sound, and you have the wind. The sounds can be very welcoming, the rustling of the leaves, or even a person in a distance having a conversation, the sounds all integrate without being intrusive. Dogs barking, children crying. It all works for some reason, rather than if it was indoors, it would feel different I believe.

L: How so?

D: It'll be too much. It'll bounce off the walls too much. The pace of the sounds are different, you know, it's a lot more opaque. Outdoors, the sounds are more translucent.

L: That's a really lovely way to describe that, it's very poetic and also insightful in a way that's different from stating an objective fact about it. It's nice. [laugh] I really liked what you said earlier about the geography of the guitar. Is there any resonance between that and the geography of a landscape?

D: It's kind of like treading paths, right? You're walking through this environment that you're not accustomed to. When I was learning guitar, I was like, “How do I approach this?” And at first I was like, well, I'll just figure out, I'll make recognizable shapes that I can memorize. And the path to this environment, it just starts growing into the landscape more. It's like, “This is a shortcut.” Or, “This is the long way around, but a better view.” I just feel a lot more comfortable now with the guitar. It feels like a home where I feel comfortable walking around.

L: Cute, and very cool. Let’s see, is there anything else that you want to add?

D: The other thing I've been thinking about a lot is the recent AI stuff that's been happening with stable diffusion and AI-based music and where artificial intelligence is able to emulate imagery. It's reminding me of this idea of likeness. I don't know if you remember being a child and having a classmate that's really good at drawing and being like, “Wow, that looks like the thing you're looking at.” I've been really thinking about the idea of likeness, in the sense of music as well. It kind of sounds like music, and maybe that's just right, you know?

I think that's what the fascination of impressionism is. It's not a complete painting, but that's what makes it complete. I'm exploring that idea with my sounds right now, like two steps removed from “what it's like.” AI's making “what it looks like,” but I'm trying to redefine the idea of “likeness.” It's measuring like, where's “almost there?”

L: Do you have anything coming up that you wanna promote?

D: Two records coming out this year. The collaboration with Brin will be coming out with Leaving Records this year. And a solo record is coming up on Hausu Mountain Records. I'll be preparing for those releases soon.

Float with us this spring for Dustin Wong’s seasonal residency & check out his upcoming albums :)