Name: Emmett Kelly
Nationality: American
Occupation: guitarist/musician
Current Release: Debut album by The Hard Quartet is out October 4th on Matador / Buy here
Recommendations: Bicycle Seat by The Friends Roadshow & Pierre Louÿs’ Pybrac

If you enjoyed this interview with Emmett Kelly, you can follow him on Instagram for news and updates.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

In my body I experience the breadth of emotional possibilities the music allows itself to express; comfort, tension etc.. sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes they are open. I listen to music sometimes in a very focused way, and sometimes I’m cleaning a toilet. One thing I love about music is that it’s everywhere.

As much as every kind of music has its appeal, entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted the strongest pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music? 

I’m not sure why I’m drawn to music. I like the sound of things. On a sensual level, I like to hear stuff. But that’s not bound to music. I love to hear people speak, glass breaking, out of tune guitars, ragtime piano. Music has become the analog by which I can understand a way to process the world. Music will transcend whoever makes it, the way they function in their world and by that I mean to say that it expresses a social position, a political conviction/action/belief whether conscious or unconscious. Their sense of self and selfness etc.

I like to be entertained but I’m also a pervert. I like to hear stories of people who I could never relate to. I like people who are antagonistic. I like people who are anarchistic agents of chaos. All of that is really entertaining. To be fair, I like something in almost any type of person, it’s just individuals who I can despise. Music is just another way to experience all that. I get bored by a certain type of narcissistic culture, but I’m a huge Slade fan.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience? 

I grew up singing in school and with my family who were all musicians. This all happened from my earliest memories, so it just was always a presence. I think that maybe is the reason why I can sing in harmony easily.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then? 

13 to 16 was the time in my life that I changed schools and became an outcast among the new catholic school kids, then bound together eventually with the other outcasts. Guitars got noisier and I became a pothead. Music was a defining characteristic for people. I was a noise head.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment? 

I have a somewhat abusive relationship with the guitar. But one that is filled with a constant admiration for it on all facets. I love the way guitars look, sound, feel. Not all of them of course. I used to be a gear freak, and now I am happy with what I have and want to sell everything else. Though I feel like if I ever buy another guitar it will be strictly cuz it looks cool.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play? 

I have no idea. If I’m being totally honest, I think I suck at going for stuff. If I go for something, hopefully I end up actually making something at all and that that is cool, but I guarantee you it will be nothing like what I set out to do. I also don’t know where inspiration comes from. I try not to be conscious most of the time in that respect, but I also fail at that too. My objective for the past few years is to figure out why I would do something at all, because I feel like the idea of producing things is just sorta ingrained in creative people’s weird personal ethos and that that can sorta lead to a real emptiness in the what ends up coming out. I think I consciously became anti-productivity for a while.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music? 

Not sure about the answer to this. I’m never trying to talk about myself or anything relating to me, though stuff leaks through but I think that’s probably something that can’t fully be avoided. If anything, I would love to be a part of a collective consciousness.

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings? 

Music is communicative of everything you believe, whether you say it or not. I don’t think music can be misunderstood. Music, like people, struggles to articulate and will be perceived how it will be, regardless of your obsession with controlling people’s minds. I personally hate that idea, so I lean into that lack of control being the thing I get most excited about. Nothing is sketchier to me than overtly political or personal/emotional/relationshippy type songs. The music will always speak for itself.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?  

I try to not to murder the music. Lots of situational ways of murdering music. I guess I try to sense oblivion and know when to stop.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I had a wild experience once in Times Square. Also in a Japanese pachinko parlor. Those are both human made though. But yeah I think all the time if I notice anything, I’m into it. And I mean literally if I notice anything at all. Something sort of annoying about classifying things musical or non-musical.  

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not? 

I’m not sure. I suck at math. Of course everything is connected. That goes without saying. But I also think I don’t really want to have anything to do with a type of music that is fashionable through AI. Data and algorithm is boring as fuck too.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

In every way and obviously.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold? 

We can’t choose to not be surrounded by sound. Even silence is impossible to achieve because we are so loud internally. In terms of music, I love listening to it, but I also love not listening to it.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

There is probably an argument from a suspendered and mustached fellow at a row of beakers filled with various shades of brown liquid where the cuppa in question is filled with the same esoteric gobbledegook that any piece of (f)art contains. They are probably right.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear? 

I’d look forward to listening to post AI music and am hoping it is better at copying stuff and shredding than we are.