Placement of Sound in an Imaginary Physical Space: Isolating Interview

Stephen Hindman reveals what’s behind the curtain of Isolating, their dystopian machine music project with releases on 4GN3S and Optimo Music

We open with an excursion, suggested by the music.

“These are the last things, she wrote. One by one they disappear and never come back.” So begins Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things, a dystopian novel from 1987. It’s an underrated entry in the author’s body of work, though his spare and enigmatic prose is perfected suited to the genre. The narrator (at a remove, since the book is a long letter she has written to an old friend) goes on to describe the disappearance of houses and streets in this unnamed place, the constant flux of its weather. “When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you.”

Isolating is Stephen Hindman, half of The Golden Filter, who is no stranger to shadowy machine music. Isolating’s take on industrial is however particularly dystopian. Rooted in specific works by Aldous Huxley and Andrei Tarkovsky, their debut LP Perennial nevertheless pulls me back into the world of Auster’s novel. The sense that nothing lasts emanates from the shifting soundscapes across its eleven tracks, which collectively feel almost preternaturally apt for these times.

We lit a light in the dark and made contact with Stephen to discuss the art of Isolating.

Hope you’re keeping well, Stephen. Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions, particularly with everything that’s going on.

No worries! Happy to answer these and thanks for having me!

These are dark and strange times we’re living through. How are you feeling about things? Is it shaping the music you’re making?

Yes… Very strange and very dark. Especially now that we are heading into Winter on the northern hemisphere. I have been feeling that the world has been going more dark for a long time now… with all of the music I have been involved with, the world ‘Dystopian’ gets used a lot, which is pretty accurate. There has to be a breaking point though where things start turning the other way with nature and with politics, both.

What sounds are resonating with you at the moment?

I have been listening to a lot of beatless music at the moment, or NTS without paying a lot of attention to what’s playing. Without riding on trains, I don’t really seem to listen to music all that much, though part of that is because I am still producing and mixing for other artists which requires resting my ears in between.

Isolating was introduced as a new artist on The Golden Filter Autonomy Variations remix set from last year. At that point the fact that it was you was kept hidden. Was the idea to begin the project with a sense of mystery? Did you ever consider keeping your involvement secret permanently?

I always meant to have Isolating not be a secret at all, I just didn’t want the Isolating remix to seem like The Golden Filter was remixing themselves. I had the LP and the EP done already at that point. The LP was set to come out on Dark Entries first, then the EP on Optimo, but Dark Entries canceled a lot of their releases due to the vinyl plant fire in California. Mine was one of them. Then Covid-19 happened and it seemed wrong to search for another home for the LP, with record labels struggling so much. Thankfully I have an outlet with 4GN3S through Kompakt, and I released the LP on my own.

By the time your System EP for Optimo Music arrived in May this year the secret was out and folks knew that Isolating was Stephen Hindman of The Golden Filter. The name ‘Isolating’ had taken on additional meaning by this point of course and the music itself felt in tune with what was happening. Yet your digital liner notes point to the comparatively simpler times of the EP’s creation: watching Tarkovsky, reading Aldous Huxley and hearing about Brexit. Could you talk about the environment in which the music was made and whether what you had intended was then reinterpreted upon its release?

I make a lot of music as I haven’t had a ‘day job’ for about 7 or 8 years now. A lot of ideas happen that just don’t really feel a part of other projects… After having a group of music that had the primitive, bleak, and introspective vibe of a lost soundtrack to a film like Stalker, I thought I should continue with it and make it a project. I kind of tried to make it all emotionless but somehow existential. When I was little I read Brave New World and it’s meant a lot to me ever since. When I was looking for a name of the project, I went back into Huxley’s work and came across The Perennial Philosophy, bought it, and read it. I ended up pulling the name ‘Isolating’ from my old label ‘Perfectly Isolated’ which is just a Golden Filter lyric. It felt comforting, and wasn’t used yet, like everything else I was thinking of. Somehow it all fits within the pandemic era, kind of like a premonition or a bizarre dream. Like the whole world became Thatcher’s England and then we tossed in rampant illness for good measure.

What Tarkovsky films fed into the music? In what ways was he an influence on your work?

Definitely Stalker. Solaris, Mirror and The Sacrifice as well. But Stalker was the only one that had a direct influence on the writing. An early version of one of the tracks had a long speaking sample from the film. The others had more of an impact on which pieces of music I left OFF of the Album and EP, and how things were mixed, and minimised. I didn’t want any real crossover into other projects that I am involved with.

Your album Perennial is said to mirror the concepts behind Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley. Could you give a brief outline of that text and how it played into the creation of the album? How do you interpret the thematic material into musical explorations?

I have long had the thought that if you could erase religion from humanity, that we would be much better off. Throughout history, most government sponsored bloodshed was caused by minor religious differences, and the silly thing is that, as The Perennial Philosophy points out, all of the world’s major organised religions are all based on the same thing. They are splinters of the same ideas. If people would realise that, instead of listening to politicians who try to drum up their differences, then people from vastly different backgrounds would find it much easier get along. So, while reading about that, and putting together this more existential than religious LP, I think it mirrors where my hopes would lie… that the world would look within to find values, ethics, and creativity, rather than focusing on an outside entity that kind of absolves people of their responsibility to just be a good person.

There’s an ebb and flow of styles with varying shades of moods across Perennial, although the whole might be considered haunted industrial. It’s certainly of a piece, although the individual parts also exist as their own entities when considered outside of the whole. How important was it to balance the needs of the album against the needs of the individual tracks?

There was an overriding unidentifiable aura that each song had to have, regardless of whether it was a beat oriented piece, or ambient, or somewhere in-between. The modular synth that I own isn’t very great, but it has its own vibe and it certainly has noise to it that formed the basis of every track. If you add reverb to modular clicky white noise, you immediately get transported into an empty spacious human-made setting, which is a great starting point. Building music and sound design on top of that goes wherever it goes, so as not to be too limiting, but the placement of sound in an imaginary physical space is the basis of the album – and the project in general.

Were there styles you felt you had to approach and was it difficult to travel from one to the other? You have the industrial night-time howl of “Mortification”, which wouldn’t be out of place in Eraserhead, then later on a brutalist take on Boards of Canada with “Sacrament” – someone else might have mined entire albums out of these single concepts.

This is kind of a thing I’ve had to deal with my whole life I guess… being influenced by too many kinds of music. I have a project that is sample-based that hasn’t released anything yet because it doesn’t fit with The Golden Filter, nor Isolating. But I’ve definitely tried to get a singular mood on this LP without making every track sound the same. In the future I intend to separate the multiple threads further. I definitely wanted this project to come from the lineage of The Golden Filter – into wherever it takes me, so it didn’t seem too random for people who already know what I have done musically. But, I have been leaning toward the beatless side of things lately, so I think more of that direction might be in the cards, leaving the more upbeat music to The Golden Filter.

Did you have any clear ideas about how you hoped the album would be experienced? What do you want listeners take away from hearing it?

I think I just hoped it would give off a strong visual for people who listen to it. I still love listening to the LP from beginning to end, and I can’t say that about too many other things I have released.

The Golden Filter release music on both Optimo Music and your own label 4GN3S. Which appears to be the path you’re taking with Isolating too. Does a lot of thought go into what collection of music should go out on what label, or does it come down to more practical concerns?

Isolating was originally meant to debut on Dark Entries, owned by a longtime friend Josh Cheon. I just want to keep my music within my immediate family at this point, which Keith at Optimo is – as is Josh, as is Kompakt. If things build to a different level, I’m certainly open to moving to other labels. It’s stressful releasing other people’s music, especially if things don’t really kick off, so I hardly expect a total stranger to risk having a letdown of a release. At this level, it just feels better to release music with no expectations with people you know. Especially now with the world becoming more Conservative and money flowing upward to the billionaires.

How does your work as Isolating relate to your day job as half of The Golden Filter? Do the two feed into one another?

There’s an aspect that some of these pieces of music could have started out as Golden Filter outtakes and others totally standalone, but it’s very amorphous. I am not really sure we have much of a day job with The Golden Filter anymore with no live shows, and Spotify not paying back much money. All of the entertainment world seems to be drying up. It feels like the powers that be are conspiring toward making city life like the film Brazil, where all there will be is mind-numbing offices and endless little apartments, and nothing creative. Penelope and I actually have moved to Brighton to save ourselves from the depression that is happening in London, with everything closing by 10pm. We go to the beach a lot, find inspiration in new and natural things, and have decided to just be 100% creative with everything, shunning the hustle. We will see what the future holds, but it’s very very unsure. However, The Golden Filter was on a planned release hiatus in 2020, so aside from a few tours being canceled, we never intended to write nor release anything this year focusing on our solo projects. That will extend all into 2021, as Penelope gears up for all her upcoming solo releases on Houndstooth and live shows, which leaves me to make and plan more Isolating releases.

What’s next for Isolating? Do you hope to get out into the world when that is possible again and play some shows?

I’d love to play live, but I don’t think it’s happening anytime soon. I have a new studio space, so I will work out playing something live along with filming it or streaming it and go from there. And I’ll definitely work on new music to release in 2021. I also may abandon vinyl and just release music on 4GN3S with book accompaniment from here on out. It’s something I nearly did for Perennial, but decided on vinyl instead, as there are no real distribution channels for music books in place.