Have you had the chance to perform it live yet?
IBARRA: No, not yet.
I’m guessing it’ll sound very different live, like if your heart rate is speeding up on stage.
PARRY: Right. Part of it is committing yourself to this rhythm that’s outside of your decision-making process. Committing to playing to your own heartbeat while Susie plays to hers, knowing things will go in and out of sync because that’s how bodies work. That opens up musical spaces and mental spaces for a performer.
IBARRA: Definitely.
PARRY: You’re following this interior metronome. This other presence, if you will. It really decentralizes your own musical control system in your mind.
IBARRA: The intention is so different that you play differently.
PARRY: And the audience listens differently. You open up this listening space for people. They know they’re listening to the musicians listening to their heartbeats or their breathing. A really unique quality can emerge from that.
IBARRA: In a lot of Southeast Asian percussion music, the time is always expanding and contracting, especially in gong music. It puts your body in a different state — I can’t drive while I listen to it. I have a similar reaction to this album.
PARRY: Listening to it is kind of hypnotic, it puts you in a kind of alpha state.
IBARRA: We’re always in these polyrhythmic states, we’re always shifting, but we’re not always aware of that. In this case, we’re actively and intentionally aware. And we’re inviting the listener to experience it with that intention.
PARRY: It’s divorced from the top-down brain logic that usually drives musical performance. When you listen, you can feel there’s a different logic system at play. It’s not brain logic; it’s body logic. You’re released from the hierarchy of meter.
IBARRA: Our decision-making is totally different. When I’m practicing polymeters, I have to place everything in my body. It’s a practice where the heart and the breath are asking us to listen and play from our bodies.
PARRY: You have to relinquish the normal controls you hold as a musician.
Can you tell me about the sample packs you’re releasing for the project? Did thinking about the sample packs change your compositional process?
PARRY: The sample packs are basically elements of the record taken apart.
IBARRA: It became a very inclusive process because we knew we were making both an album and sample packs.
PARRY: I ended up thinking of it as an entire composition, which is how I approach all my music, and figured the sample elements would present themselves. I didn’t really think about the samples much while writing the music. I knew the most beautiful and interesting samples would become apparent.
Is there anything you’ve learned during this experiment that you’ll take with you in your future music-making?
PARRY: It’s a nice self-contained world in some ways. But any avenue you explore can become an avenue you revisit.
IBARRA: The process became very layered, especially in thinking about how we’ll transpose this as live elements. And I really love where we arrived. It’ll definitely influence how I might listen to and think about things in the future.
Updated 6.22.22, 5 p.m., to correct information about Parry and Ibarra’s comission.