#54: "New Horizons" - Thread

Less rambling from me this time on a song I discovered through my friend Bill Ackerman. It also ties into a favorite album from 30 years ago. I decided to ask Bill to share thoughts about this artist.

I’ve written about Aphex Twin’s ambient work already here and its impact on me as a musician. Clearly, I wasn’t alone when it came to feeling inspiration upon discovering that particular artist in the mid-90s. Ambient, industrial, electronica and wildly experimental music in general had emerged thanks to a number of artists around this period.

Unlike other musicians I’ve written about thus far, I knew little to nothing about Thread. But I became very familiar with the opening theme music to one of my favorite podcasts, Supporting Characters, hosted by Bill Ackerman. I looked forward to hearing that theme song each time a new episode was out.

I inquired about the song, commenting on how much I loved it and likened it to Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Aphex Twin. Thanks to Bill, I discovered how it came to be. It was composed by his friend James Izzo who recorded music under the name Thread. Bill also co-wrote it with him. I then went back and listened to the album this song came from, Abnormal Love.

Upon seeing the title, my first thought was, my love for music and film always felt a little abnormal to me. Sometimes I just felt consumed by a desire to keep recording anything and everything to the point of addiction (especially when the website CLLCT existed, another story for another time). Creating it, watching it, talking about it now feels like an extension of my personality that has almost defined my life to some degree. Aside from my current career and relationships, a connection was made through the arts; they speak to me in ways that go beyond words. I’ve normalized this “obsession” into something that I hope has meaning (a podcast, this newsletter, making my own music).

I have a feeling that James also channeled his energy into creating music that had an indefinable meaning. This act becomes an extension of our soul, our spirit, our essence. James passed away quite young, but I keep thinking that maybe the reason we create anything is to pass on our passion and love into something that lives on, even as the body expires for whatever reason at any point in time. Not all of us opt to have children to carry on our legacy, so we in turn decide it’s best to let what we pass on to be some form of artistic expression that will hopefully live on until this exhausted planet dies out.

Born without hands, creator James Izzo/THREAD has portrayed himself as a true cybernetic musician. With the use of metal hooks, his electronic pieces are subtle moments rich with anger, beauty and chaos. Building on his collaborative efforts with JARBOE (former Swans chanteuse) as well as his remix efforts for the enigmatic COIL, Abnormal Love blends noisy soundscapes with moments of melodic bliss and minimal experimental electronica.

The version of "ISS" that appears on this album seduces our subconscious with an unusual melding of rhythmic noise and melodic repetition. In this same way Abnormal Love builds the familiar into tense textured collections, seamlessly creating, distorting, and changing Izzo's dark personal experience into a chaotic yet inspired collage of intensity and eventual release. - Middle Pillar

“New Horizons” is a song that I find incredibly meditative, soothing, calming. It makes sense that Bill used it as a tribute to his friend for a podcast that I often found enlightening too. There’s a true gentleness and warmth to those synth pads that repeat throughout. Not to mention the fluttering keys that spiral in and out from time to time. It’s a song I can see being used therapeutically to pull someone out of anxiety or a deep, dark funk. It feels controlled and confident that you wouldn’t know it was entirely improvised. In the end, the music itself seems to say, “you’re not alone, it’ll be okay.”

That’s the general feeling I experience hearing this song. The majority of the album does veer more into Coil and experimental soundscapes with pulsating rhythm. It’s the final few songs on Abnormal Love are definitely what I would consider to be Eno-esque, the kind that you could definitely immerse into and quietly feel at peace. “New Horizons” is truly remarkable to me because it definitely could be pastiche or a passive attempt at recreating ambient music, but James and Bill made this entirely their own. It sounds like connection being made right before our ears.

It’s clear he was talented and taken too soon but instead of having the final word on the lives he touched and the songs he put out into the world, it only makes sense for Bill, a close friend of his, to be included for a brief interview after the song. Listen to this beautiful song; you’ll see why it means so much to me, Bill and many others that discover it then, now, in the future. For more about James, you can also read this beautifully written tribute by James Babbo.

1. How would you describe songwriter James Izzo as a person?

Very bright, an atypically deep thinker. Curious about science and philosophy, and an obsessive fan of music and film. Ambitious and enterprising. Very much into technology. Competitive, but generally less so with me.

2. Do you know how James created this song and the album Abnormal Love (the production, the technical side, how he recorded it, the types of instruments/programs, etc.)?

I honestly don't remember now. Other than Marc Lowe's live drums on two tracks, all of the instrumentation was synths and samples. He used Cakewalk at one stage, and Korg was one of the brands of synthesizer he used. He used to sample a lot of movies, not just the dialogue the way many people did. He would take random sounds from films and manipulate them to craft percussion/rhythms.

The tracks I co-wrote with him at the end (including "New Horizons") were first-take improvisations, though James added the spoken word and rhythm elements to "Skyscrapers and Sand" later. I remember a number of those songs going through multiple versions, it was the first album for someone else's label (Middle Pillar) after several self-released CDs and a 7" single on Brainwashed.

3. What were some of James' influences when it came to making music? 

Aphex Twin, Coil, Autechre, Skinny Puppy/Download/Doubting Thomas, David Bowie, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, The Legendary Pink Dots, Swans, Angelo Badalamenti, Nick Cave, Squarepusher, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Tricky, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, Front 242, Bjork, Ornette Coleman, Howard Shore, John Coltrane, Jimi Tenor. I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of people.

4. What is a fond memory you have of James Izzo since I know you were close?

It's hard to narrow it down to one, he was my best friend for a decade or so. I try not to dwell on the past, but in general, he was with me when we were discovering so many of the films and records that changed our lives in my late teens through mid-to-late 20s. I can remember our first time hearing Aphex Twin's "Richard D. James Album" in a listening station at a record store and seeing a look of amazement wash across his face at how drum n' bass-inspired rhythms were used on the opening song. The first time I ever hung out with him, we watched PIN. Many of the most impactful films on me were films we saw together during those years.

5. Imagine you're a music supervisor and you've been tasked to select this song for use in a film. What do you picture in terms of using it effectively? Feel free to be specific - ideal director, story, genre, scene. Maybe something that James would've loved to have seen on the big screen when his song begins to play. 

It's hard for me to pair it with imagery, it's always been End Credits-sounding music to me, and maybe to James as well, since he put it at the end of the record. James had ideas for films, I remember Stephen Sayadian's work in particular being a great inspiration to him, CAFE FLESH and DR. CALIGARI. Jodorowsky's THE HOLY MOUNTAIN, BLADE RUNNER, the Red Room scenes from "Twin Peaks", those were some of worlds James might have enjoyed seeing his music combined with.