Name: Ryan Dann
Nationality: American
Occupation: musician/composer
Current Release: Songs To Fall Asleep At The Wheel To
Recommendations: Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini / Heart of a Dog by Laurie Anderson

If you enjoyed this interview with Ryan Dann of Holland Patent Public Library, visit his website www.hollandpatentpubliclibrary.com where you can browse by time, space, duration, mood, meal and other unexpected categories.

 
When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

When I was 12, I got an electric guitar, and I really wanted to learn the guitar solo to “Magic” by Pilot. And then I did and it felt fucking great.

Some people experience intense emotion when listening to music, others see colours or shapes. What is your own listening experience like and how does it influence your approach to music?


Music for me is like walking into a room where there’s a little play going on. Sometimes it’s not a play, it’s where someone really lives, and that requires a bit more reverence. I prefer to lay down with headphones on and give music my undivided attention, and that’s the audience I write for as well.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?


I’d rather not have a personal voice, all of my favorite moments making music have come from trying to interpret someone else and completely fucking up in a way that somehow sounds good. If I’m not writing, then it’s just a sign that I’m not learning.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I’d rather not have an identity, too much identity becomes a barrier to empathy and exploration.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Do something different, but listenable. Find something you want to save, and build it a glass box.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I discovered classical music through Bugs Bunny. Does that make it timeless or innovative? Is Rick Astley timeless? Or is he a precise time in perpetuity? I can’t really prefer the past or the future. I try to just keep a clear concept of what I want to communicate and employ a sense of future or a sense of tradition if and when it helps to communicate my idea more effectively.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?


I find instruments I don’t know how to play and then try to figure them out. At some point, an instrument existed before there were players who knew how to play it, and then someone picked it up and figured it out. If you teach yourself that instrument, then you are reanimating the corpse of that instrument’s history, and sometimes the corpse tells you a secret.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

My perfect days are backwards. I wake up at 10am, slowly, until I feel like having coffee and fruit. I do all my errands - laundry, dishes, exercise - then I have lunch. Then I have a nap. When I wake up, I have merienda, then sit down to work at around 5pm. I slowly gather some steam, take a short break for dinner, then hit my stride around 8pm and hopefully remain in the zone for 5-6 hours, or sometimes 8 if I’m really cooking.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

The pinnacle of the creative process is to reach a point where you’ve stared at a wall long enough for it to start moving. Then you just draw what you see. This is what World of Echo by Arthur Russell sounds like to me.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results? 


My wife tells me I’m a very slow, but very powerful computer, and therefore I have enough respect for the time and sanity of others to work alone. I love playing with others, but then the goal becomes communal, and that’s typically a much different goal than what I strive for alone. Logistically, alone is also easier.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

For now, I like relaxing people. Seems timely. In the future, maybe I’ll want to try stressing them out.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

In all big questions, I haven’t understood anything from music except that someone else at some point stood in the spot I am standing.

There seems to be increasing interest in a functional, “rational” and scientific approach to music. How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other? 


Science is kind of about nailing everything to the ground, and that feels very unmusic to me, but maybe I just don’t understand what this is referring to. I like Aphex Twin, is that science?

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. 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?



Making coffee and ripping a guitar solo are two totally different things. Mundane tasks are for letting your mind wander. Playing music is for focusing as intensely as possible on what you’re doing right this very second, which means you should care about it or else your mind will wander and you’ll fuck up. Fucking up coffee is fine, just make more.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages? 


There are probably some patterns involved. A spiral in the drain can look like a galaxy, so I’m sure my experience of trees has some corollary auditory input that’s roughly the same shape.