Photay interview – “The cement is not as solid as you like to think it is”
Welcome to the post-lockdown album era
It might be seen as a quintessentially British activity, but Evan Shornstein, the American producer behind Juno Daily’s album of the year 2024, the majestic Windswept by Photay, is more than happy to chat weather with us.
“I was on the radio this time and we started off talking about the weather,” he recalls, “and a friend of mine said ‘I can’t believe they were talking to you about the weather, it’s way too polite!’ But years later, the weather is impacting everything we do – it’s anything but small talk.”
At the time of our chat, Shornstein’s current home city Los Angeles is undergoing what he calls “a fairly big heat wave.” Catching him to discuss what is his fifth album to date in the morning LA time, he’s been out to take the air before the heat descends big time and – like everyone in the city – he effectively becomes housebound.
“It’s pretty weird for me because I’m pretty new here. Around this time of year it’s pretty typical but this is a more intense heatwave and in the middle of the day it’s not really wise to be out. It’s a very different kind of heat – you know, I’m from the East (originally Woodstock, New York state to be precise), so I’m used to humidity. This is a different kind of sunbaked heat.”
You could do with a breeze then, we say, none too subtly steering – or possibly crowbar-ing – the subject of wind into the conversation, as the Windswept album’s central theme and inspiration.
“It’s kind of relevant, last night there was this – I never experienced it before – kind of warm, hot wind, I think it’s the start of the Santa Ana winds… I’m not an expert but I think they can be quite dangerous, they can start fires.
“I think that why it’s inspired so much music – you get such a wide spectrum from this really gentle, subtle, barely perceptible wind to one of the most destructive forces there is. There was a hurricane in New York six or seven days ago, maybe ten. Destructive weather is intense, I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone, but I’m kind of fascinated by it. Because we’re kind of numb to the atmosphere until it gets too hot or anything that’s not earthly, in a sense. I’m fascinated by weather because it’s a reminder of this vulnerability we have, living in this atmosphere.
“When you see what’s happening to our atmosphere, I think that our infrastructure is very dated really. I experienced my first earthquake recently, it was thrilling because it was quick and mild, but it sparked this realisation that as solid as the earth seems, it’s shifting. All the freeways, all the highways, they’re all on tectonic plates. The cement is not as solid as you like to think it is. It’s kind of a beautiful thing but it’s also a reminder that the weather is intensifying.
“That’s why I chose to write music about it – I kind of feel it should be right at the centre of our attention at the moment. Just sort of, in pandemic days, the one silver lining was all the travel slowing down – the stillness that sort of gave our earth a rest. Like I said before, I feel like we need to stop this feeling of invincibility. I think about it a lot because it’s like our number one thing (to be worried about), but it’s not our number one focus and on a musical tip, for me often the voice I want to transmit through music is this larger thing. A lot of jazz musicians talk about feeling this transmission, when you get hit by a feeling. Music is my favourite way to transmit that. It’s the easiest way of sharing it with people.”
The album’s theme was initially sparked, however, not by a storm or a caressing breeze, but by a single sound which just happened to have such an unpredictable, uncontrollable nature it reminded Shornstein of the wayward power of the wind.
“It was a synth patch, just a simple, computer-generated soft synth sound. I tweaked a few things and created this patch. No matter how long you held it, it was really out of control, I couldn’t work out how to control it at first.”
From this tiny conceptual acorn, grew quite the mighty oak. Windswept is the perfect fusion of trademark Photay electronics and live instrumentation, not least the woodwind instrumentation provided by Randall Fisher (flute, saxophone) and Will Epstein on other reeds and winds, that bolster the sound in fresh and unexpected ways.
Regular collaborator Carlos Niño provides the often rambunctious percussion, while guitarist Nate Mercereau is credited with playing “Translucence” on ‘Barely There’ and Portuguese folk artist Mariana Bragada plays the ocarina, a type of ceramic flute, on ‘Low Pressure System’. After the previous Photay album, On Hold, released in 2022 and made up of telephone ‘hold’ music, it’s a refreshingly social sounding album. After the slew of the pandemic era’s lockdown albums, Windswept feels like a celebration of musicians playing together, not via computer but – shock, horror – breathing the same air in the same room.
Shornstein describes LA-based Fisher as an “incredible” musician, introduced to him by Nino. A hastily arranged hour long session, he says, with Nino, Fisher and himself provided much of the material that was used to create the album.
“We’ve all played together a lot live and a lot of the excerpts are taken from an improvised session we did in the studio right before a live show. We thought ‘we’ll record for an hour – we don’t have a load of time but we’re all here. Carlos played the percussion and Randall played in a very free way, without any meter, just little moments on top of it.”
After seeking, along with every other electronic musician on the planet, that elusive perfect production sound within computer technology, he took a diiferent sonic tack on this album, opting for the less streamlined, more human sound of recording the sound in the room rather than pure digital data collection. It proves to be a masterstroke, lending Windswept a unique feel that echoes the warmth and vibes of an older age, but reinvents it for a 21st century audience.
“The sound that is more daring and braver to me now is those ‘room sounds’, you know, getting people together in a room,” he says, before adding with a laugh, “We know it happened in the past!”
Ben Willmott