Best Loop Duo: Tunde Adebimpe and Morgan Sorne

Three hours later, singer Tunde Adebimpe would lead his band TV on the Radio through a triumphant headlining slot at the NPR showcase at Stubb's. But at this moment, he was sitting on the stage (no chair or stool, on the actual stage) at the tiny 405 Club with his friend Morgan Sorne, experimenting with looping equipment. "Thank you for showing up," he told the crowd of about 80 people. "We're pretty much going to fuck around. You can do stuff."

The audience followed his lead and sat cross-legged on the club's wooden floor. They were then treated to Adebimpe and Sorne constructing songs in real time, hypnotically layering one sound on top of another into slow grooves, with Sorne's high-pitched keening contrasting with Adebimpe's rumbling voice. They patched together improvised percussion and snatches from their own songs, and when Adebimpe chanted a line like "there is life in it still," all ears were attuned to the nuances of repetition. By the end of the set, Adebimpe was reclining on one side: relaxed in posture, but at a high pitch of creativity.

GRAMMYs On The Road With Jimmy Herring, Sorne And Wheeler Brothers

Sorne frontman Morgan Sorne discussed the project's beginnings, performing live and his favorite GRAMMY moment, among other topics.

"In taking what's on record and presenting it to an audience, the biggest thing that I feel is important is to be as sincere as possible," said Sorne. "[I] allow myself to be as vulnerable as I can be as a performer."

Featuring Deano, Kevin Naquin and Sorne, Sorne are an Austin, Texas-based collective blending visual art with poetic lyrics, pulsating drums and visceral chanting. The group's debut album, House Of Stone, was released in 2011 and features 13 tracks written by Sorne, including "Golden Death Chant." Sorne is currently on tour in the United States, with dates scheduled through November.

Meet Surface Fan Morgan Sorne

By Mona Cao

Morgan Sorne is a multi-disciplinary, award-winning prolific visual artist, musician, actor and filmmaker, boasting an unparalleled vocal range with perfect pitch. He brings listeners to tears with his intense, emotive, hypnotic angelic falsetto and has churned crowds into a writhing frenzy with his bone-rattling dynamism and range. In his own words, “it’s as if Jean-Michel Basquiat, Daniel-Day Lewis, David Bowie, Jeff Buckley and Bjork got together and had a baby.”

The Surface Pro 4 is Morgan’s proud go-to to produce music and visual art with software such as Ableton Live and Adobe Photoshop. I enjoyed meeting and getting to know Morgan this past year after inviting him to participate in a music and technology panel at Microsoft Store Westfield Century Center in LA, where he spoke to a group of public attendees about his passion and love of all thing music and art. It was in person that I got to see firsthand his skilled drawings and sketches that are as unique, expressive and thought-provoking as his sound, performance and work in other media.

Let’s hear more from Morgan on his passion and artistry:

Your work is such a unique blend of visual installation, musical composition and performance. What was your inspiration for SORNE and pursuing so many different forms of media and expression?

As a kid I was inspired by the immersive worlds created in films like Star Wars. I also grew up on stage, performing in musicals, plays, musical acts and choirs. I found that I was drawn to creating environments, having also discovered an ability to visually render characters and ideas, it felt very natural to move between mediums. Each process fed the other. Rather than fight that process, I have embraced it as my means of creating a signature point of expression.

What’s a project you’ve done that you’re proudest of?

I am nearing the end of a fifteen-year cycle of work, a multi-media opera spanning six volumes of music called, House of Stone. I brought this world to live through installations in museums and galleries, a live show featuring a dance troupe formed around the project and a series of short films which speak to the overarching themes of House of Stone. The vision for years has been to create a graphic novel of House of Stone as a companion and ultimately, a film or TV series, accompanied by a touring theatre production.

What do you like about creating on Surface? Do you use pen, touch, or a combination?

I love the portability of the Surface and use the pen to illustrate. The precision is fantastic. I also use the pen in creating animations of my drawings.

What experiences have stood out to you?

I recently created a series of animated drawings using the Surface for a TED Talk at Oxford for the Lauren’s Kids Foundation. The TED talk dealt with Lauren Book’s five years of child abuse when she was an adolescent by her nanny. As an adult she founded the Lauren’s Kids Foundation to help children identify sexual predators and unsafe situations at home and in public. Lauren’s team sent me the script for her talk and I picked certain images that came to mind along with pulling from Lauren’s ideas and images. I’ve developed a series of animated characters for interactive packets given to students grades pre-k-8th grade throughout public schools in Florida and won a few ADDY awards for the kits our team made for Lauren. The beautiful thing is that the materials are working and kids are coming forward and identifying unsafe situations that they find themselves in. Also I recently toured Europe with CocoRosie and used the Surface Pro 4 to run my live sets and loops in some of the most beautiful venues. To be able to hop on a plane with a full live show on a device that is the size of a tablet has been a dream come true.

What do you love most about using Surface in work or life?

I love the portability of the Surface and use the pen to illustrate. The tablet feel is so important to me and I love the ability to draw right in Photoshop and Illustrator. The precision is fantastic. I also use the pen in creating animations of my drawings. A big desire of mine for a long time has been to have a device that is the size of a tablet but with the capabilities of a laptop. Portability is essential as I travel around the world and need tools that can handle the programs necessary for executing my work. As a traveling musician and artist I need tools that are as seamless in the visual presentation on stage as they are powerful in running the programs needed to pull off amazing live experiences. To be able to use programs like Ableton Live and the entire Adobe Creative Suite has totally enhanced the game and made it possible for me to reach larger audiences worldwide.

What’s something recent you’re working on with Surface now that you’re really excited about?

Right now I am working on a graphic novel project with Saul Williams in which I am drawing and coloring the entire book using the Surface. I can’t talk too much about it yet, but it is going to be an incredible project and the Surface will be a central component in the production of the book and visuals for Williams’ live show.

SORNE just released the fourth volume for his epic avant garde one-man opera, House of Stone‘ You can find the latest volume, ‘House of Stone: Death IV’ here.

Check out more of Morgan’s music and visual art at morgansorne.com. You can also follow him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Youtube.

MartyrLoserKing Graphic Novel Press Release

Art Basel Miami: Chandran Gallery & Juxtapoz @ Beach House, Shore CLub South Beach

Last night, Juxtapoz and Chandran Gallery opened a special exhibition, installation, and performance art piece at the Beach House in the Shore CLub South Beach, featuring works amazing installation and performace from Monica Canilao and Sorne, paintings by Jason Jagel, special beach robes and towels by Geoff McFetridge, poolside decor by Richard Colman, lobby installation by Andrew Schoultz, and pool floating canoe by all the artists.

New Original Works from LA’s Dancers, Musicians, and Performance Artists

The first weekend’s program highlights new musical works, including vocalist Jasmine Orpilla‘s collaboration with Peter Deguzman featuring traditional Filipino kulintang gongs and Pangalay dancers; and Eat Your Young, a collaboration between animator and performer Miwa Matreyek and sound artist Morgan Sorne, blending his five-octave vocal range with her inventive shadow play.

Meet Morgan Sorne

Today we’d like to introduce you to Morgan Sorne.

Hi Morgan, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I have been singing since the age of two. My mother, who was pursuing a Master’s in voice from Florida State University School of music, would tell me that her vocal coach heard me regularly singing my mother’s voice lessons as a toddler and encouraged her to place me in a music program for the gifted.

“Your son has perfect pitch.”

Mom tried putting me in Yahama, and I hated it. I remember the deep loathing I felt for the ridiculous songs we had to sing. Needless to say, my time at Yamaha didn’t last long, and I am grateful that my mother didn’t push music.

The grace and space she bestowed allowed me to find musical expression in myself from a place of inspiration and authenticity.

As an interdisciplinary artist, voice has played an integral role in my work. Over the years of exploration, I have interwoven multiple mediums together in the quest to evoke mystery, beauty, shock, and awe. The common thread of this braiding is my voice and the internal landscapes that inform how I use this instrument. Digging into the etymology of human consciousness, building sonic worlds of celestial grandeur, and processing psychosomatic conditions of mind by way of vocalization have been some of the driving forces compelling me to push the boundaries of what the voice is capable of achieving.

This vocal work is ongoing, ever-evolving, and infinitely rewarding.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?

I suppose my knee-jerk response is that if it were smooth, it wouldn’t be worth the ride. For as many successes, there have been far more failures. I am proud of my failures for they have provided such invaluable growth and experience as I hone my craft.

Making a living as an artist in a way that is sustainable and healthy is an art form in and of itself.

Over the years, being able to adapt, diversify and create multiple revenue streams has allowed me to continue seeking my “why.”

Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” In my teens, I would hold that question in my mind as I meditated on what I NEEDED to serve by way of my artistic expression. This is my North Star. I remind myself of my “why” daily as I wear the hats of “how.” Those hats are numerous and varied but they all serve to enable my life as a fully-embodied artist.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?

I am an interdisciplinary artist who intertwines visual works, performance, voice, and literary works as immersive, transmutational experiences. I am known for my other-worldly five-octave vocal range, compelling installations, and performances and currently finishing up the illustration of a 320-page graphic novel for Saul Williams due out next year via First: Second Books.

I have toured the world with my artistic heroes, independently produced and presented House of Stone, my American folk opera over the course of ten years with a host of artists in some of the most prestigious venues, and have inspired hundreds of mentees and voice students to authentically find their voices and hone their respective crafts whatever they may be.

What do you think about happiness?

Seeing the spark of inspiration grow in others by way of my efforts as a creative brings me deep and profound joy. A core drive in my life as an artist is to help in elevating the consciousness of everyone around me. This calling feels true and honest.

KUTX SXSW 2013 “One to Watch”

Originally hailing from Tallahassee, Florida, Morgan Sorne is more than just a musician: his palette includes dance, art...and more than a little philosophy. It all comes together on stage in one unforgettable, conceptual experience. With a sound that melds the best experimental pop (think TV on the Radio, with whom he's toured) and jagged polyrhythms (think Nine Inch Nails, perhaps) Sorne is an artist who goes his own way--but whose audience seems to be rapidly snowballing. Challenging, emotionally taut, and intellectually satisfying, Sorne may not be for everyone--but he is unquestionably 'One to Watch' at this year's SXSW.

Review of Eat Your Young, A Multimedia collaboration with Miwa Matrayek

By Jeff Slayton

This week The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) opened the 15th annual New Original Works Festival 2018 (aka the NOW Festival). Nine artists have access to REDCAT’s space for approximately six weeks to experiment, take risks and create. It is a wonderful opportunity. The NOW Festival runs Thursday through Saturday for three weeks, featuring new works by three different choreographers each week. Week one featured works by Miwa Matreyek, music by Morgan Sorne; Jasmine Orpilla and Peter de Guzman; and Jmy James Kidd, music by Tara Jane O’Neil. Two of these three works reached the level of new and original, but one was a rehash of ideas from New York’s 1970s postmodern era. What was very a huge plus, however, was that each of the three works included live music.

Eat Your Young, choreographed by Miwa Matreyek, opens with angelic vocals sung by composer Morgan Sorne. The tone shifts, however, as Sorne begins to add layers to his wide octave range voice with electronic music that he controlled. Sorne did so seamlessly, never losing pitch as he turned dials and struck his electronic drums.

Matreyek appeared and then moved behind a screen that projected a film of an ocean with high waves and littered with plastic debris carelessly discarded by humans. Periodically, shadows of her hands appeared, seeming to reach out of the water. She sank, tried again without success to stay afloat. We saw her treading water and being conquered by rolling waves. Suddenly the film morphed into a slice of the earth, with Mother Earth in the center. She cradles a newborn baby as if giving life to the earth. Slowly, however, we see the effects of man-made structures cover the surface, the ravaging of the earth’s oil and minerals and the continuous destruction of everything green.

Mother Earth struggled inside the globe as humankind slowly tried to kill her, but instead almost annihilates itself through nuclear war. Matreyek left it open as to whether humankind survived or learned its lesson.

Morgan Sorne, Miwa Matreyek – Eat Your Young – Photo: Venessa Crocini

Eat Your Young was a beautiful fusion of live vocals, electronic music, film and shadow. These elements were not new, but how Matreyek and Sorne combined them to inform and awaken was unique. The graphics in the second part of the film were filled with visual nuances and vibrant colors, and Sorne’s music became as compelling and apocalyptic as the Earth’s demise. The title said it all. We are killing our future.

A Constant State of Awe:

An Interview with Morgan Sorne

by Cameron Turner

SORNE is one of the most exciting voices to emerge lately from the talent incubator of Austin, Texas’ independent music scene. Straddling neo-folk, electronica, tribal freak-out, and choral sublimity, SORNE is the brainchild of Morgan Sorne, who moved to Texas in 2007 to paint, compose, and collaborate with other artists.

Newfound editors first caught SORNE at an afternoon benefit concert at Austin’s Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American cultural center in June, 2011. The mercury was pushing 104 degrees in a thermometer tacked to a booth near the shade when SORNE took the stage, eerily garbed in black costumes. Over the next forty-five minutes, Morgan Sorne and his bandmates dazzled the audience with the incendiary, hallucinatory storytelling from SORNE’s debut album, “House of Stone,” which offers a grim, archetypal story of a number of children dealing with guilt and responsibility in the wake of a fratricide. Although rivers of sweat poured off his forehead, Morgan Sorne cradled the microphone, summoned up whirlwinds of dust on stage, and swayed ecstatically back and forth, channeling something otherworldly.

In the midst of a busy touring and production schedule, Morgan Sorne swapped emails with Newfound over the course of the last few months.

I would say that I live in both realms. One foot in this world, and one foot in the other. –Morgan Sorne

CAMERON TURNER: So much of your music seems to invite the ecstasy of escape—whether in a story, like the central narrative that entrances your audience in “House of Stone,” or the physical experience of the music itself. When and how have you most lost yourself? And when and where do you return to reality—touch ground—as an artist?

MORGAN SORNE: Escapism is a central issue addressed in this work. I suppose I regard escapism as a form of self-help, or as a sort of coping mechanism. Perhaps it is a way of relating to one’s own reality.

I would say that I live in both realms. One foot in this world, and one foot in the other. I love the idea of attaining a level of enlightenment where you live in a constant state of awe, and this form of spiritual enlightenment can be found in so many cultural traditions. In many ways, I feel that I live in this state of awe, and regard the constant flow of creative expression to be the result of my disposition.

TURNER: How has living in Austin, especially the city’s character and geography, changed the direction or focus of your art?

SORNE: Place has a very profound effect on the work. I am inspired by landscape more than anything else right now. When I came to Texas in 2007, it was the southwest region that truly influenced the work. The energy of the earth is very pure there. Melodies come to me in places of such quiet as Big Bend is. This place is one of a handful in North America considered to be a “black sky” region unaffected by light pollution. The sky is breath-taking there, and was the inspiration for the figurative pieces seen on the record packaging. Children on the hunt, searching the land, lit by moonlight.

I start with very little in terms of planning a new song or painting. It’s about recognizing the present moment. The present place.

TURNER: So much of your art wrestles with ethical questions, especially how people reconcile mistakes they’ve made with the urgent need to continue living—and to forgive those who have erred and restore their innocence. I teach high schoolers for a living, and I can’t help but think of the Romantics (especially British Romantics), who thought of childhood as a state of privileged innocence, and thought of adulthood in a postlapsarian sense—as a kind of fall from grace. What role does innocence versus experience plays in your art? Do you try to reclaim innocence and get back to childhood, like some of your children do in “House of Stone,” or do you welcome experience and growing older?

SORNE: The idea of having a child self within resonates very deeply with me. The painted figures represent the souls of these archetypal characters in House of Stone. This work serves to ask questions of its listener or viewer on the points of innocence, good, evil, etc.

I have been very interested in human development, from cradle to grave and how the cycles of behavior and the layers of time shape the course of evolution.

I have always been deeply connected with my childhood, to the point that it has been painful at times, to recognize its passing. I believe in recognizing all suffering, the accumulation of knowledge, and the “loss” of “innocence,” to be a vital part of development. I love my pain, for it is the catalyst which fires the clay.

This work serves to challenge the viewer/listener on these points, and hopefully, charges the senses and strikes chords within those who listen.

TURNER: What do you envision as the ideal interaction between you and your

audience when you perform? How do you think about your songs’ effect

differently in performance, versus in the studio?

SORNE: Ideally, I want the audience to be immersed in an environment, or a mood. I like the idea of making a performance feel more like a participatory exploration into new, yet familiar territory of the universe. Of the shows I have presented, my favorites have been those which engage multiple art forms simultaneously and successfully dissolve the barrier between spectator and performer.

I like the idea of making a performance feel more like a participatory exploration into new, yet familiar territory of the universe. –Morgan Sorne

TURNER: How do you keep yourself present in your art, and in your moment? Is

being present antithetical to the way that you use memory and consciousness of the past in your lyrics?

SORNE: I try to regard myself as the steward to the work that I have been making. I like the idea that we are simply conduits by which the universe conveys itself to all living processes. By figuratively stepping aside and focusing on the simple task of acting; of making, it has allowed for the work to develop and for the performances to manifest themselves. I feel so humbled by the connections I have experienced with people and places as a result of working in this fashion. I have no idea what will come next, except that I know that I will be drawing today.

TURNER: When you think about your influences, which artists, especially

writers and other painters, have catalyzed your own work?

SORNE: Kandinsky’s writings on art really have served as a major point of affirmation for me. Artists like Marcel Duchamp, Anselm Kiefer, Kiki Smith, Cara Walker, and Jim Roche have inspired me. I relate more closely with the Outsider Art community than any others, including people like Calvin Black, Minnie Evans, and Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder.

The Beat writers like Kerouac and Ginsberg have had an influence on my approach to making, as have Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound.

The Mythic Universe of Sorne

By Doug Freeman

Like all myths, it’s difficult to discern just how the story began.

In some sense, it’s a story that that has always already been told. In another, it’s a story that will never be fully told, continually evolving and mutating and living beyond itself. And in many ways, Morgan Sorne is less the creator of “House of Stone”—his ever-evolving multimedia saga—and more its oracle, a mystical creative shaman piecing together disparate cultural shards into a vessel that can not possibly contain its own immensity.

Sitting calmly in his home in north Austin, Texas, surrounded by his artwork and instruments, Sorne attempts to outline the expanse of his vision with a deliberate but inevitably digressing intensity. The conversation leaps from Joseph Campbell to Björk, Star Wars to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, Hayao Miyazaki’s anime to Robert Farris Thompson’s Flash of the Spirit. And yet they’re all pieces of the same saga, all swirling and collaging into the multimedia centrifuge of Sorne’s “House of Stone.”

“To compartmentalize is really difficult for me as a personality, I’m just not that kind of person,” admits the 31-year-old musician, visual artist, filmmaker, and writer. “My mind just kinds of runs like a river, and all of the stuff just chaotically collides in on itself.”

When Sorne released his debut House of Stone album in 2011, few fans could have realized the sheer scope of what he was building. The 13 songs seemed simply an extension of his mesmerizing live show, tribal and trance-like, with an aggressive energy wound and released through his perfect-pitched, four-octave range.

It’s a story that will never be fully told, continually evolving and mutating and living beyond itself.

House of Stone was a mere overture, however, a prelude to the epic narrative to follow. Last year, Sorne unfurled Death I and Death II, the first two chapters of the planned five-LP series that he aims to have completed this year. With those albums, the narrative began to unfold more clearly, revealing the encompassing audacity of his developing universe.

“For me, what excited me truly was the idea that instead of just doing an album, what if it was an album that told a story where you could dig deeper and there might be other pieces of discovery—that might be art or performance—to create something that isn’t just a passive listen or a passive experience,” he says. “And if you dig deeper, it’s like excavating a Mayan city. You’re uncovering. To me that element of discovery is really exciting.”

Sorne first began outlining the concept for “House of Stone” while still a teenager. Growing up in Tallahassee, Fla., both his parents had operatic voices and worked in theater, bestowing upon him an ingrained penchant for the epically dramatic. The archetypes for the narrative began to emerge in his artwork and writing—the First Born, the Black Sister, the Second Sun, and their murder of their father and king in reclamation of the kingdom.

After earning his degree in fine arts from the University of Florida, Sorne moved to Austin in 2007 and found inspiration in the vast expanses of Texas, the setting of the Dead Desert evolving the myth and evoking a world both pre-civilization and post-apocalyptic.

In 2009, his artwork was selected for show in the prestigious Texas Biennial, and he created the short film Children of the Black Mountain. His live shows garnered attention for their increasingly intense and enveloping experience, winning him best avant garde artist at last year’s Austin Music Awards during SXSW. Sorne’s universe began to unfold through every available medium, and with the release of Death I andDeath II, he relaunched his website to present the story to an even wider audience.

“What was exciting to me, and what’s still exciting to me, is the idea that one could find the perfect fusion of multiple mediums to create that world,” attests Sorne. “Especially on the point of technology, I think about what makes cultures beautiful. Being a humanist, I think a lot about what makes a culture, and how is that culture protected and lost and regained. As new things become available, we’re interested in exploring how that medium can complement the philosophies behind the rest of the work. Ultimately it goes back to that idea of connecting with people and relating to the culture.”

“My mind just kinds of runs like a river, and all of the stuff just chaotically collides in on itself.”

As he lays out the myth, Sorne is careful not impose too strict a reading on his work. It’s intentionally ambiguous, more an archetypal framework for the ever-expanding world he’s fostering than a fully formed narrative. He wants to allow the myth to evolve naturally and beyond himself, and his fans have begun to contribute their own pieces to the story, giving his universe a life of its own.

“On purpose, I have withheld that story for many years now,” he continues. “I’ve got my beginning, my middle, and my end, but everything in between, that’s all subject to change. And the beautiful part of it is, what’s happened with ‘House of Stone’ over the years as I’ve met fans and people and we’ve talked about it, things have mutated and changed. I think that kind of kinetic energy is so important for storytelling.

“I’ll go to Minnesota and a 20-year-old will come up to me with an entire narrative that she’s written based on my story without knowing any of the content,” he continues. “People make me clothes with my designs embroidered on them, handmade. I get videos of choreography groups sending me their movement to my songs. It’s like sitting around campfire, and when you say the thing it comes back to you and it’s something completely different. There’s a beauty in that for me.”

This spring, Sorne will move to Los Angeles, considering the media and entertainment mecca to be the next logical step in developing his work. His full ambition for “House of Stone” is characteristically grand. He plans to create a book when the album series is finished but also wants to produce a full operatic show that he can tour, incorporating his artwork and music and film into a comprehensive stage experience that extends to the audience.

“The true goal is to authentically connect with the audience member no matter where they are in their life, create something that is undeniably touching,” offers Sorne. “I feel like some of the greatest shows I’ve been to, I’ve been a little bit scared, been pushed outside of my comfort zone. That’s the exciting part of that experience. I’ve always loved the idea that good art comes from a need, but also allows for the viewer to come into the room and get comfortable. You can imbue it with your potential, your history. To me, that’s good dialogue in an art piece.

“And if you dig deeper, it’s like excavating a Mayan city. You’re uncovering.”

“My whole mission statement as a creative is to create an experience that goes deeper than just going to a show. I really want to have that be there but also offer things like workshops or elements in the experience that allow for the fan to feel like they have a bit ownership in the piece.”

Just as the “House of Stone” myth represents a framework for Sorne to explore the possibilities in his art, he considers his artwork to be as much about providing a catalyst of experience for others. Ultimately, the universe that Sorne is creating is not the mythic world of “House of Stone,” but the threads between communities of creativity across the world—nodes connected both virtually and in real life.

“I feel the desire as part of my life’s purpose to help light people up, and see them creating at their highest potential, and like to see that as part of the tour model, where there is that community globally, so you know wherever you go you can charge people up,” envisions Sorne. “It doesn’t even have to be the arts. It’s about finding your voice, whatever it is. People want to have purpose—they want to connect. We’re looking to find our purpose; we all want that. And if I can provide a spark to find that purpose, then I feel like I’m doing my job.”

Austin Music Awards: Best Avant-Garde/Experimental Artist: SORNE

SORNE Interview

by Mason McGough

SORNE are a multimedia art collective from Austin, Texas. Considering his work a “tapestry of humanism,” Morgan Sorne’s elaborate tale of five siblings is concerned with the villainous extremities of human nature. Osprey Radio spoke with Sorne about the creative process behind his debut album House of Stone, the role singing can play in self-expression, and the nature of inspiration.

OR: Tell me about how the idea of SORNE the band began.

MS: About six years ago I began developing a series of short stories. I started in high school years and years ago, but while I was still living in Florida I began fleshing out the idea of a story about five siblings singing songs about their relationship to their father. Though he is a character in the story, he was never a living character, so you learn about the father through their perspective of him after his death. As things progress, you learn about what will happen to the siblings, foreshadowing things to come all through song. The characters were based on family members and people very close to me. Over the years they’ve taken on their own identities, serving as archetypes, really.

At the time these stories were coming, they were really a means of coping with some things that were going on in my life. Like any great fiction, the writer reacts to his circumstances. Storytelling is such a healing thing; there’s something very fun and cathartic about being able to speak through story. For me, the objective has been to create something that takes visual art, music, and performance and provokes new ideas.

While touring around the state, I met Kevin Naquin and Dean Cote who helped me figure out how the live show would turn out. Actually, when I started playing in college, I had a different ensemble here in Florida.

OR: So it was a different set of performers when you played in Florida. Was there a noticeable difference when you switched to the new performers?

MS: Yes, definitely. When starting out, it definitely had more of a progressive rock sound. It took a bit of time to really flesh out some of these ideas. That’s where the distinctive sound really came from: taking time to soak in all the different influences I had been listening to and letting it germinate over time. The songwriting process has been one that’s simply a means of taking what you have in the immediate vicinity and creating new music from it. The visual art as well was formed from this approach.

“Rhythm and voice is such an integral part of this music because it speaks to the human rhythm, this pulse that all of us feel on some level.”

OR: I once noted that the setting of House of Stone reminds me of Thomas Hobbes’ image of the state of nature, a “brutish” world where the characters are subject to chaos. Do you agree that your world is like that, and if so, is this world one that’s inherently negative?

MS: I’ll say this. The basic concept behind House of Stone was that this group of people represents the villain. We’re looking through the eyes of the villain. This family is a tyrannical family. They’re feared, evil, but the point is to look at their lives, their suffering and understand why they do what they do. There are groups today whom the rest of the world fears and yet we have no idea what life is like on their side. The idea there was to speak to this need to find understanding. In terms of [House of Stone’s] world, there’s reference to this New World Order concept where the rest of the environment is uniting under one concept and this group of people is the last holdout. They’ve resisted for years and The Second Sun (one of the five siblings) is literally saying “I’m taking it back, I’m going to reclaim land that has been taken from us and you all can try to stop me.”

The whole record has this building sense of doom. This outside order is building this huge attack to just wipe them out once and for all for transgressing. The Second Sun character is angry; he’s hell-bent on realizing this Manifest Destiny idea that he has built with these fragments of the past. He’s assembled this idea of what his country should be using examples like the Egyptian culture or the American culture. Speaking on that, the events of this story could be in the future; they could be 45,000 years ago. It also can be reminiscent or reflective of what’s going on in today’s world. It could be happening simultaneously, on parallel planes.

OR: What was it like recording the album? The aesthetic was partially born out of necessity, and yet it fits so well with the narrative, to the point where you don’t even notice that the record was recorded entirely using things in your house.

MS: I remember a quote from Nietzsche that says “He who has a why can bear almost any how.” I love that because it speaks to things that I believe are important to my process. Know why you make what you are making. All of the elements here in the album were thought about. The guitar was my dad’s first guitar. The piano in some of the songs I haven’t released yet was my granddad’s piano. And each sibling has their own instrument. The First Born has a lap harp and there’s something about the sound of a lap harp that speaks to the nature of his story. It harkens back to the sound of early Americana to say something, to let some of this blood out. I had some basic studio elements and realized the music as well as I could, given my resources.

I had some experience building and outfitting a studio. We built the studio from the ground up, literally built the building and outfitted it with a whole bunch of equipment. From that, I learned a lot about what you need and what you don’t need. If you think of the old folk and blues songs that were recorded through nothing but a tin can, they’re beautiful. The rawness of the recording translates. That could be representative of a number of songs I will be releasing this year. I feel like a lot of the vocalists I have been inspired by aren’t necessarily the most pleasant to listen to, yet there’s something about the modem of their voice that completely floors me.

OR: Who did you have in mind?

MS: People like Joanna Newsom, Antony Hegarty, Jonsi from Sigur Ros, Devendra Banhart, and also this collective out of Japan called Geinoh Yamashirogumi. All of the voices in that group are at times very abrasive and yet speak to this level of humanism that’s very satisfying. It fills a void that’s missing; perhaps it’s the intensity of their voices. Or even Bjork. There are sometimes when she sings that she even sounds like a cat! But it’s so great! There’s a freedom there, a liberation happening when a vocalist can just open their mouth and it’s something that I’ve seen happen in our audiences. As we perform as a group, people have come up to me and said they’ve always felt self-conscious about singing because of something that has been told to them. Even Dean has said it to me as a few times that he’s felt subconscious about his voice. There’s this desire in us to want to sing.

“For me, the objective has been to create something that takes visual art, music, and performance and provokes new ideas.”

We need to throw out preconceived notions of what it means to be a “good” singer and just sing. We need to forget about what we’ve been told because singing is so cathartic. We’ve done these shows now where it will break down to me teaching harmony to the audience and they will just soak it up and embody that. Rhythm and voice is such an integral part of this music because it speaks to the human rhythm, this pulse that all of us feel on some level.

When I was asking myself the question “What right do you have to make art? What do you have to say?” I went back to some tapes my mom had recorded when I was singing and making beats at the age of two. I listened to the beats and there’s almost this polyrhythmic thing I was doing with my hands and I said to myself “Okay, that’s what I do. I make beats with my hands and sing. And I like to draw little guys and cut them out!” From there it’s just stepping aside and letting that creative energy to flow.

There was a great Ted Talk with the lady who wrote the book Eat Pray Love in which she speaks of this idea of genius. Around the Renaissance, the idea of genius shifted from something out of the universe that speaks through the artist to something that’s placed on the artist. The artist is now called the “genius.” To me, that’s so debilitating and it stifles the creative process. Over the past four years, it’s been a constant conscious process of mine to step aside and allow the work to flow through me. I focus on the quantity of the work and allow the universe to focus on the quality of the work. If we can regard ourselves as stewards to that creative energy we feel compelled to convey to people, it makes the job that much easier and enjoyable. You don’t have to take responsibility for the work. You’re merely a servant to it.

SORNE will be performing at CMJ Music Festival this Thursday and Friday in New York, NY.