O+S

Music is all around us if you know where to listen. And if you know what to do with it.

O+S, the combined powers of Orenda Fink (Azure Ray, Art in Manila) and Scalpelist (aka Cedric LeMoyne of Remy Zero), have created an unusual pop record based on sounds both every day and out-of-the-ordinary. Transforming field recordings — such as Native American rituals, thundering airplanes and Haitian dialogue — into loops and jumping off points, O+S creates music from the pieces of life few get to see and the other, seemingly routine parts that go unnoticed.

An experiment birthed from an art project for Omaha’s Bemis Center of Contemporary Arts, the resulting album is haunting and memorable enough to have songs hand picked for crucial scenes on both Grey’s Anatomy and Joss Whedon’s latest endeavor, Dollhouse. Although seemingly strange in its genesis, O+S intrigues equally as much as it invites.

SSv’s Natalie B. David called up Orenda in Los Angeles to discuss the strange journeys behind the duo’s eponymous, Saddle Creek debut.

SSv: I know O+S had a different start than most albums since it began as a residency for the Bemis Center of Contemporary Arts. So how did all that get started and how did you become involved with the Bemis Center?

Orenda: Well, they have a pretty strong presence in the Omaha art community so I had known people who had done residencies there and had gone to a lot of events there and when I kind of found out more about the residency program I thought it would be something interesting and inspiring to take part in so I applied for it. When I got it, I decided if I was going to do a residency, I didn’t want to just write a record the way I would normally write it, I wanted to kind of take that opportunity to do something more challenging and different.

So I had the idea of collecting field recordings from all over and then sifting through them and making loops out of little segments of the field recordings and writing on top of that, and that would kind of dictate the rhythm and melody and how the song would take off just from the field recording loops, so that was the idea. And I needed a partner to help me with the technical side and I also thought, since it was a residency and it was kind of all about artists working off of each other that some collaboration would be appropriate. So I asked Cedric, my friend Cedric LeMoyne from Remy Zero, to come and collaborate with me on it and he did and he came and spent two weeks at the Bemis Center with me and that’s kind of how it got started.

SSv: Cool. So when you were setting out to make these field recordings, did you have specific sounds in mind that you were going after?

Orenda: I had specific places that I wanted to go and record, no specific sounds, necessarily. I just would walk around with the recorder and when something would catch my ear, I would record it. So it was just as I heard things I would record them.

SSv: What were some of the places that you went to?

Orenda: I went to Haiti for a week with my husband and did a lot of field recordings there. I went to Alabama and did a lot there. I went to a pow wow in Kansas City and recorded it. And just a lot of everyday places in Omaha, and around the Bemis center even. I recorded things like a person using a stapler [Laughs] and putting up an installation and different places like that.

SSv: So of all of the recordings that you made, what percentage of them made it on to the O+S record?

Orenda: A very small percentage. I took a lot of field recordings and there’s only 10 songs on the record, and some of them have layered sounds of them, but maybe 15 or 20 of them made it on the record. But there’s just hours and hours and hours of field recordings. [Laughs]

SSv: Do you have any plans to, maybe not replicate what you did with this album, but do you have any plans for these recordings beyond just hanging on to them to remember the experience by?

Orenda: Yeah, I don’t have any plans for the field recordings other than just to keep them for reference, but I think we’re trying to decide, I think we want to stick with this formula because I really enjoy doing it this way. So we might go out and try to accumulate another batch of field recordings for the next record, go some different places and a different style, but work off of them in the same way.

SSv: Cool.  That would be neat.

Orenda: Yeah.

SSv: Now when you were out doing the field recordings is there a specific experience that sticks out most in your mind?

Orenda: Yeah, in Haiti, we went and recorded a pig being slaughtered at a Voodoo ceremony and that was pretty intense.

SSv: I’ll bet!

Orenda: [Laughs] I definitely remember that because I’d never really seen anything quite like that. We recorded the whole thing, from the moment that they let the pig in until his last dying breath. It was pretty intense.

SSv: Why did you decide that would be something that you’d want to record?

Orenda: Well, we recorded this Voodoo priestess singing a few nights before. This friend of ours there, she was an anthropology major and she had been studying with this family for a long time, she asked us if we wanted to record this Voodoo priestess singing some of these traditional Voodoo songs. Of course that would be amazing, so we recorded her just singing a-cappella and I guess she liked us enough to invite us back. She invited us to the pig slaughter if we wanted to come and record it, and we agreed, and, you know, embarked on a little adventure.

SSv: Did that recording make it onto the record anywhere?

Orenda: That one didn’t make it on this recording, but when we were in Haiti, we were also using those field recordings made specifically in Haiti for a sound installation for an Art show that was taking place there that week, but samples of that made it into the art installation, but not into the pop record. [Laughs]

SSv: Yeah, that’d be a little strange. [Laughs]

Orenda: Yeah [Laughs]

SSv: Now, I know you’d been friends with Cedric for something like 16 years. Did you ever think you two would collaborate on a music project, let alone something like this?

Orenda: You know we had talked about collaborating for years and kind of toyed around with it a little bit, but I didn’t think it would gel like it has. I think it’s a real project. I think we’re a real band now and I think we’ll keep making music together for a long time. I didn’t really expect that, but it’s definitely a great, pleasant surprise.

SSv: I read where most of the album was completed with the two of you separated from one another. What advantages or disadvantages did that bring to the project?

Orenda: Um, you know, I mean the disadvantages I would totally say would be sonic fidelity maybe, just because we didn’t do it in a studio. We had to send files and hard drives and had to use these makeshift studios all over the country. But the advantages for me were awesome because I did my part, which was mostly kind of basic song structure and loops and singing on top of it, and I would send that to Cedric and then it would come back as this beautifully fleshed out song with amazing arrangements. So I thought “This is a great arrangement! I like this!”

SSv: That would be great to send something off just sort of the basics and get it back all fleshed out and be like “Awesome! I kind of did that!”

Orenda: Yeah, and the great thing, too, is that I think we have similar tastes and sensibilities too. I liked everything he sent back. You know, which is great. There was never really a point where I was like “Ehhh…this really isn’t working for me.” That never happened one single time.

SSv: So were any of the songs, as far as lyrics and melodies, were those things you had been working on beforehand, or were they all written after you had the recordings?

Orenda: I think there’s just one or two songs I had started before I was working with this style, and we added field recordings to them instead of building them off of the loops, but there were a few that were like that.

SSv: For a last question, what was the biggest thing that you’ve taken away from this whole experience?

Orenda: For me, I think it was giving in to the loss of control and just letting something else kind of guide me, whether it be the field recordings or the art residency and the experimental nature of it or just a collaboration with Cedric and his friends, the people who played on the record. This really worked for me and I’m glad to give up a little bit of control because then some really amazing symbiotic things can happen that can’t happen when you as an artist are playing every part and writing every part and trying to hold on to everything.

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