It’s easy to get absorbed by CJ Weaver‘s world: once it bites, it’s highly addictive. If you want to know more, a new free download – ‘Raindrops’ – from the set has just been made available: check the end.
We discussed his Flood ep and more besides.
And talk about being bitten…
Hi I hear that you’ve had a close encounter.
I was actually quite recently hospitalized for a pretty ugly bite from a two toed sloth!
(see image of actual sloth, and work note)
So recovering from that. I’ve been working with them, and plenty of other things at the National aquarium for some years now.
Tell us how you and Translation came together?
I was born and raised in the DC area, and discovered strange electronic music pretty early on. Sometime in high school I found D&B in the local music scene. I quickly noticed the interesting sounds of ASC and Resound coming from these guys, and within a few years we met up and I started sending music over.
Can you tell me about that lovely sleeve art?
Josh Mott! He is a very talented friend of mine from childhood, whose art I have long thought would fit the music well. This seemed a natural fit and kept everything local!
Take us behind ‘Forest Music’? I love this. Any good forest stories btw? Can be amazing but not if lost in one.
Ha ha yes, the forest was on my mind all the while working on this one. I had been working on this soon after I started working with rainforest animals, and it certainly bled through into the music.
This was also around the time I started getting booked for some very cool renegade outdoor shows waaay out in the woods. Those really stuck with me and this song is part of that.
‘Scrolls’? I love where this takes me, the place…
This one was actually untitled for some time, but I used a lot of very unusual grainy samples from a few old VHS movies I had sitting around.
I really had the feel of the track layed out just as I wanted, then had to figure out exactly how to describe it.
It feels like a lot of the source material I was going through was too degraded to use, like I was rummaging through old parchment or something.
Are your tunes about emotional push, pulls, inertia? I feel that, with the titles. About forces and how we perceive them. ‘Undertow is totally wicked.
I feel like that should come across in anyone’s music to some extent, but I do really try to add a depth that let’s you fall into the sound.
Adding textures and backgrounds that speak to me are my way of creating that feel.
With your background, any great facts or things that stunned you recently?
Well, as I mentioned I work in an aquarium, and am also a geek.
So one of my favorite ones is a salamander – the spotted salamander, from the Eastern US also – was recently described as the first photosynthetic animal with a backbone.
So when they are young, they actually have cells that take light and produce energy like a plant. Weird.
What tune is in your head right now.
I would have to say ‘Take Me To The River’ by Talking Heads. It usually finds its way into my head at some point in a day.
Sometimes a Martsman tune may squeeze in there too and not leave.