This week sees the release of Double Night Time, the terrific new album by Morgan Geist.
It’s the New York-based producer’s first solo LP in over a decade, his attentions having been focussed on running Environ Records, home to Kelley Polar and Metro Area, the acclaimed production duo Darshan Jesrani and Geist himself. Featuring vocals by Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan, Double Night Time finds Geist exploring traditional song-form as well as the deep electronic textures with which he made his name.
FACT caught up with this modern-day disco innovator in Queens late last month. Here’s what he had to say for himself…
How was Double Night Time conceived?
“I hadn’t done an album in almost eleven years, though I’d had a lot of false starts. My first album under my own name was in ’97 and then I was kinda like “Yeah! I’ll keep doing albums!” and then…it didn’t happen. I got distracted with Metro Area, and running the label, and Kelley Polar, and Danny’s stuff, and remixes, so…I’m a very slow worker, a kind of perfectionist – though when I say “perfectionist”, please understand that I mean it as a personality flaw. I’m not intimating that my work profits from my perfectionism, I’m just really slow and don’t put anything out…
“So all of of these things – especially the perfectionism and the self-doubt that I have all the time – were really working against me. I didn’t want to do an album, I was really self-conscious about it, and…
“Alright, OK, we’re not getting into all this bullshit , I mean, like, whatever…[laughs] The whole approach musically was that I wanted to indulge the OCD programming side of what I do, as opposed to the Metro Area kind of live, organic disco side. I wanted to make a really electronic album. I was also interested in doing songs; I wanted to explore song structure, and I wanted to write lyrics. Listening to them, you can probably tell it was my first attempt…” [laughs]
Why now?
“I’ve been so burned out on music…I mean, I really don’t know…I wanted to put this out record because I was like, “I don’t want to die and have only like one record to my name…” You know, like, how can I call myself a musician and then take, like, fifteen years to make an album? I reached a point where I couldn’t tolerate myself constantly re-birthing songs, I was like “Fuck it, I have to finish this thing and put it out…”
How did you hook up with Jeremy Greenspan?
“I think I was supposed to do a remix for Last Exit [Junior Boys’ first album] and that didn’t happen, and I ended up doing a remix for the next album…I guess I became Junior Boys after hearing his music and I guess he heard and knew my stuff, so…We’re quite good friends now; at first it was very much a professional relationship – which is actually for the best, because he was all like, “Yeah, let’s do some more work on the record” whereas now I think he’d just be, like, “Yeah, fuck you, I’m hanging out with my girlfriend”…[laughs]
The 80s synth-pop influence is pretty marked…
“The album took me so long, that what I was interested in doing at the beginning I kind of lost interest in by the end. At first, I was listening to a lot of Logic System and YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra], you know, kind of nerdy electronic pop, early 80s stuff; I was really into that idea of analogue-sounding music, but of that sort when you could hear the newness of synthesizers, where you can hear that the instruments themselves are inspiring the compositions. I wanted to go back to that really programmed sound after, you know, recording violins and real drums for Metro Area.”
What was Jeremy’s input in terms of composition?
“One of the songs, ‘City of Smoke & Flame’, Jeremy wrote the lyrics for. I learned a lot working from him, cos he’ll sing a part once, twice, maybe three times and then be like “Ahh, well, it’s not going to get better than that”, whereas I would have him do it ninety times, know what I mean? But then I learned something from his approach. Often the best take, especially with live instruments, especially with voices, is the first one, or certainly among the first few. Aside from that, I was very proscriptive I guess I was speaking through him. I wish it more collaborative, but it wasn’t, the songs were kind of finished…”
“Of course, New York isn’t just a musical inspiration. It’s really the energy on the street, you know? It’s about having a fascination with the city, but also having it as home. I mean, I live here but I grew up in New Jersey and I’ve been coming to New York all my life; I grew up about 25 minutes outside of Manhattan. So it’s familiar and it feels like home and I feel a love or – pride sounds weird – more like a tenderness towards the city, a protectiveness. ‘Cos New York gets hated on a lot, I mean, as much as people say it’s great, as many or more people hate it, especially in the music community. There’s jealousy, there’s resentment, and admittedly New Yorkers have an attitude that can be really off-putting. I mean, it’s charming in a way, and in som musical contexts, like hip-hop, the attitude itself has been emulated by people around the world – that whole bragging, badass thing, that’s the foundation of hip-hop.
“But it can get tiring in other ways. I mean, even shit I love, like the Paradise Garage or whatever, in a way I’m happy that I missed that – because you meet some people who went to the Garage and they’re just like, “Yeah, it doesn’t get better.” They shut themselves off. Like, if it’s not Larry and it’s not the Garage and that soundsystem and those drugs, it’s not worth paying attention to.
“So I feel lucky in some ways. Obviously, I don’t need to spell out the ways I feel unlucky – fuck man, I would’ve loved to have gone to the Garage, or Zanzibar’s – all these clubs that were right on my doorstep, you know, 10 or 15 minutes from where I grew up in New Jersey that I missed because I was in a mostly white and Asian suburban area…I feel horrible that missed out on a lot of that stuff, but in a way it’s quite liberating cos you just have this imagined nostalgia about it, and you’re not jaded in the way that the people who were actually there are jaded…Maybe if I’d attended all that I would never have got into Detroit techno or Chicago house or whatever, maybe I would’ve just been “No, it’s never going to be as good as that”…”
How has New York clubbing changed in your lifetime?
“The truth is, I don’t go out that much anymore; I don’t think there are that many good clubs around. We went through a really hard time with nightlife. September 11th really fucked everything up. I don’t mean just in the obvious ways, in the sense that it traumatized everyone and fucked up a lot of people’s lives…But I’m talking about in terms of entertainment, everything kind of shut down for a while…
“You’d think people would ‘ve gone nuts after all this, that there’d be a renaissance of escapism, but it didn’t quite happen – because it was in conjunction with Giuliani who really fucked up nightlife. I’m sure you’ve heard about the cabaret laws – if you want to have dancing and drinking at the same place you need a special license. Something like that ruins it, because it boils the options down to super-clubs that can afford it [the license], who are totally commercial, or lounges, where you LITERALLY – and I know what literally means, I’m not just throwing the word around – could not dance. There were signs on the wall that said NO DANCING. I mean, they [club owners] could get ticketed [fined], and they did – Plant Bar closed because of that. People would start dancing and literally you’d be DJing and you’d be like, “Yo, seriously, just don’t dance, because if a cop walks in we’ll get a ticket.” It was fucking hilarious. And fucking horrible.
Have things improved since then?
“The laws are still in effect, it’s just that there are other priorities now that we’re in such bad shape financially and stuff like that. But even Bloomberg kept it going! It’s easing off, but the ripples are being felt, there’s still that element of superclub vs lounge, with nothing in between. For me, my favourite clubs have always been small to medium-sized, and those were the ones that ran into problems – because they couldn’t afford or couldn’t procure the cabaret license. So clubbing was sort of sucky for a while. And music too – I mean, I’m really motivated by the music of New York’s past, but I’m not sure I’m super blown-away by what’s happening now. It’s a weird spot to be in as far as dance music culture is concerned.”
You’re a New Jersey native?
“Yeah, I’m a New Jersey native. Not something to shout about! [laughs]. Maybe after Detroit, actually I think before Detroit, New Jersey is the most universally mocked place in America. I mean there are so many places in this country that are really boring, but I actually love New Jersey; it’s a really interesting place. I’ve lived here [in New York] long enough that I can call myself a New Yorker, for sure, but I still say I’m from New Jersey, I’m quite proud of it. I think it’s ‘cos I’m not uptight about it, I’ve always come to New York, I live in the whole Metro Area which is like a New York suburb or whatever; the people who are most anti-New Jersey are motherfuckers who basically moved to, like, Williamsburg from, like, the Mid-West or the South or California, came to New York and started wearing spiked leather belts and going to hipster bars – those are the people that are going to make fun of New Jersey the most. They’ll be like, “You’re from New Jersey, oh that’s fucking lame”. And you’re like, “When did you move here?” And it transpires they arrived from Salt Lake City a week ago…[laughs]
Can we expect a new Metro Area record any time soon?
“My own record is my priority right now, and the truth is there’s a lot about running a label and all the other things I’ve been involved with, including Metro Area, that are proving exhausting to me. Doing this album, I’ve had no one to worry about myself. I don’t have to wait on anybody, if there’s a fuck-up it’s me – that feels nice. Because running a label, probably like running a magazine, is kind of a thankless job. It’s something that I liked when I started, but now – especially now that you can’t make any money out of it – it feels like a huge energy-drain. In a way it’s frustrating for me that Metro Area is the highest-profile thing on the label; I understand why, but I’d be just as happy for anyone to notice anything that we put out!
“Darshan and I have very different working styles, and things move so slowly it’s impossible for me to give you an answer. I’ve been saying for four years now that we’ll have a new album ready in the Fall, and it’s not happened. The one thing I can say we’re doing that’s definite is, we’re doing a mix for Fabric. That was due to come out in November, but we gave them a list of stuff that’s proving difficult for them to license, so I don’t know if it’s going to be delayed, or if we’re going to tighten up the schedule a bit so we still make the release date, I’m not sure…
“Also, neither of us have had studios for a while…I got kicked out of mine at the beginning of the year; luckily I’d finished my album way before then. I had to relocate, I was in a very expensive area and paying almost nothing, and the landlord kind of wised up and jacked up the rent so much that I couldn’t stay there. Darshan’s just been building his studio for four years or something like that, he’s a bit more laidback than I am…I think we’re both probably going to wrap up at the same time; Darshan’s finishing his finally and I got settled into a new studio a couple of months ago – it’s in a really old building in Queens , so I’m having to do a bit of re-wiring etc. So we’ll hopefully have a new album next year, but when I hear myself say that I inwardly groan…[laughs]
“The truth is that everyday I think I might like to stop Metro Area…I’m trying to separate it out from just my overall exhaustion with music. Music doesn’t excite me the way it once did. All the business of running a label, the way music is consumed now, everything is burning out and I’m kind of in a negative spot. So I’m hoping that starting to make music again will maybe get me out of that, because I really haven’t made a note of music in about six months. It’s funny, I used to kind of censor myself with this stuff, but I guess I don’t need to – Darshan’s such a close friend and an amazing guy, and he’s well aware that I’ve been frustrated for a while with the label, everything, so there’s no surprise that I’m a bit frustrated with Metro Area too. I think I need to get back in the studio and stir my enthusiasm again…”
Kiran Sande
