Great party last night - thanks all for coming! Polypores Q&A Part One today
- quiet details
- Mar 15
- 5 min read
Hi friends - hope all good :)
What an awesome way to cap the first couple of days of this wonderful release - absolutely packed session of lovely people and pure positivity - thank you all for being there with us!
CDs are still going fast, don’t sleep if you want! Stephen did a brilliant mix of the tracks for the long-form version, if you bought a CD and want the private Bandcamp download, drop me a message.
Now for Part One of our Q&A - big thanks to Stephen for the insights!
Please tell us a bit about your background and history in music?
I started playing drums aged 12 and, like most teenagers in the mid 90s, was in a band who wanted to be both Nirvana AND Green Day. In my early 20s I started learning guitar but also taught myself how to make music on my own using software (I was obsessed with Nine Inch Nails at that point). I formed a band and did that for a few years, but also did loads of solo stuff too, where I played all the instruments and sang. That continued until about Xmas 2014 when I started doing Polypores. I had about 30 albums up on Bandcamp and I just got rid of them all and started from scratch, without any vocals or lyrics. And then before I knew it, ten years had passed.
Please can you describe a bit about your general philosophy and process as an artist?
It's developed somewhat over the years as I've "found my voice" so to speak, become less derivative. I think recently it's mostly about expressing myself authentically. Taking whatever it is I'm excited about and doing that. It's about speaking the unspeakable. Putting feelings and vibes that I can't properly describe with words into music. When I was writing lyrics, I was always hampered by the fact that I didn't have a very good voice and I wasn't very good at writing lyrics. Once I started making instrumental music I was able to bypass that and express myself adequately. And when I moved towards modular synths a few years ago, I was able to get even closer to that because it's an instrument I essentially designed myself, to accomodate me. It allows me the purest form of expression. I keep tweaking it very slightly to get even closer to it, but I'm nearly there.
What does quiet details mean to you and how did you use that to approach this album?
I'm neurodivergent, and the way in which that presents itself for me is that I'm very sensitive to certain things, and have a tendency towards heightened focus on details, structures, and patterns. This can be a good thing sometimes but can also be exhausting and distressing. I made this album around November/December 2023, when I was in a period of "Autistic burnout", a time when all of these details and patterns got a bit too much for me and my brain was unable to cope with it all. Making this album helped me with that as it gave me a focus on a different kind of detail - I was able to really zoom in on the patterns, textures, and, well, the "quiet details" within the music. It was an album made to both distract and soothe myself. In the process of making it I was able to lose myself inside these details, these textures, and find some relief from everything I struggled with in the world outside of my studio and the safety of the music.
Another important aspect relating to the "quiet details" was that this was my first use of the Make Noise Strega, a synth which includes a very noisy delay. It's essentially highlighting what traditionally should be an undesirable sound, but shaping it into something which is potentially beautiful, or at the very least, interesting. It's the highlighting of a "quiet detail" into a main feature, which I thought was particularly appropriate here.
Photo credit: Iain Armstrong
Shout-out today to dear friend of quiet details, Neil Mason and his essential newsletter, Moonbuilding.
Ultra-kind words this week about qd and the Polypores album - huge thanks to him and highly, highly recommend subscribing/supporting for a weekly round-up of some of the best music out there.
Here’s the intro:
The one we’ve all been waiting for, right? Apart from maybe Eno, which I’m sure quiet details are probably working on or, at the least, have thought about. That would be something wouldn’t it? The incredible thing about this label is that it seems no matter how many releases they tuck under their belt, they’re always able to pull something incredible out of the bag. Sorry about the mixing of metaphors there, but you know what I mean. Not that anything qd do is fluff or filler, it’s all killer gear, but the very nature of a project like this, where there’s a new release every single month, means a lot of labels would front-load a project like this, get the big-gun releases out early doors and then have a so-so long tail. You’d see it a lot in the 90s with the tidal wave of mixtape type albums – you know the sort of thing I’m talking about don’t you?
None of that is the case with qd, it’s the Goldilocks of record labels, everything they do is just right. I love how, in the third year of the project, they’ll just casually release a showstopper like this. They do it all the time. They had a run of consecutive releases last year that went Loula Yorke, Plant43, James Bernard, Veryan and James Murray. Nice work, really nice work.
So to Polypores. Stephen James Buckley is an artist I’ve written about a lot, and with good reason. He’s worth writing a lot about. He’s on the cover of the current issue of Moonbuilding, I might have mentioned it, and the interview we did is one of the favourite pieces I’ve written in a long time. More about that in a minute. First let’s tackle this latest release. So this is qd31, 31 releases, and they’re able to go, look, it’s Polypores. What a label.
Read the rest here
Quick bit of fields we found news - lots coming in the near future, starting next week the release of the first in a new series of EPs, rhythm structures.
A complimentary contrast to my deep-listening resolve / relate series, inspired by my time on dance-floors and beyond over the years - if being ill last year taught me anything, it’s do what you love, and do it now. Very special person on remix duties too.
Very much looking forward to sharing it with you x
Will be available to everyone and also included in my Bandcamp subscription at no extra charge.
Much respect to Jeran Portis for the early support on his always awesome Point Blank London radio show - check it here, rhythm structures 01 coming in around 28mins.
resolve / relate 03 coming after that, check out last month’s here:
Much love and have a good weekend!
Alex
quiet details studios - mastering and audio services
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