YELLOW EYES
YELLOW EYES “The Master’s Touch”
By Octopi Mills
Some bands just don’t want to defy expectations, they want to smash them into atoms. That brings us nicely to New York’s YELLOW EYES. Led by the Skarstad brothers Will and Sam, they have used black metal as a starting point for their musical adventures, which have veered into unknown countries.
On their latest effort “The Master’s Murmur”, they’ve put on their hiking boots and traveled to a place few have gone before. It’s a bewitching web of sound that has only the barest resemblance to black metal...an experimental album that gleefully flies in the face of any conventionality. For those with the courage to make the journey, it is an exhilarating experience.
Wormwood ventured into the fields of the Master’s Murmur to converse with Sam Skarstad about this unusual work and much else in the realm of YELLOW EYES...
WWC: Welcome to Wormwood Chronicles. What can be said about the new album, “The Master's Murmur”, in terms of how it was created and the writing process for the songs?
SAM SKARSTAD: “Master’s Murmur” came out of nowhere. Initially, we had been talking about putting out a short EP that would help us pay for our tour to Germany and Greece. But then, suddenly, with only about a month to go before our release date, we struck a vein and couldn’t stop working. We became fascinated by the idea that there are no limits, and that to alienate some listeners is to bring others even closer. For some songs, like “Tremble Blue Morning” and “Winter is Looking,” the process was similar to previous albums in that we started with an idea from Will’s demo pile. For others, it was either totally from scratch in the room or a strange synth snippet from my own demos that grew like a mushroom. The feeling in the room was intoxicating, as it tends to be when you know there is something being unearthed. It’s probably how paleontologists feel when they find a piece of vertebrae from a Raptor. There’s more here, I know it. The conviction is important. The closer you can get to mania, the better the music will be.
WWC: Where are you fellows currently operating from and what be said, if anything about this region? Has it influenced your writing in any way?
SS: Right now, both Will and I are living in Beacon, NY. It’s a small river town. After all these years of working on YELLOW EYES, I can’t say for sure that any place has any impact in a creative sense. In the dreamlike state of intense work, I feel far away from any physical place. In a practical sense, it’s nice to look outside my studio window and see a mountain. Sometimes I test a passage of music by playing it back while looking at that mountain. If it feels wrong in that moment, there is more work to do. That trick also worked when I lived in New York City and my window overlooked a cemetery. It also works when I look at a painting or a photo of a strange landscape. Maybe I shouldn’t call this a trick. Let’s just call it “thinking.”
WWC: Is there an influence from what we call "dungeon synth" in some of the music or is it just synth itself at times that is the inspiration? There is a certain unique blend in the music that I found quite interesting.
SS: We often use the term “dungeon synth” as a kind of shorthand, but, like any instrument, the effect of a synthesizer depends on what you are putting in the frame. Many sounds that come out of an analog polysynth are warm, lush, and digestible—even if the sounds are in a high register or have a sharp attack. For this project, we tend to be drawn to synth tones that are cheap and digital. A fake-sounding clarinet patch from a rompler can be an extremely bleak sound, for example. It’s unnatural and singular. I won’t pretend to know why, exactly, but my guess is that it has something to do with fantasy and living with the sadness that other worlds are out of reach. When you hear a fake, lonely sound, something lights up in you, an acknowledgement that your fantasies may be cheap but they are all you have. It could just be a form of nostalgia.
WWC: When approaching some of the lyrics and themes, what is happening in terms of some of the subject matter involved in the writing?
SS: At the beginning of the month that we were working on Master’s Murmur, I found a Greek travel brochure from the ‘50s at a tag sale. I flipped through and saw a photograph of a woman picking tobacco in a field. The way her head was turned down had a mournful, saintly quality. It became the album cover, and it led to the lyrics for the song “Master’s Murmur,” which is a widow’s surreal lament about living in filth in the wake of “the master.” I think I’ll leave it there to keep things from getting too literal. Some of the other songs are similar in that a question is always hovering—am I losing my mind? The tipping point of coherence has always been at the forefront of my mind when writing lyrics and thinking about albums conceptually.
WWC: As I understand, most of you are involved with other projects as well, outside of YELLOW EYES? Would you share a bit about these?
SS: Will has always been feverishly writing riffs as long as I can remember, and many of those have ended up as USTALOST songs. Then, during the pandemic, for a while he started using a synth and made a bunch of demos that we turned into SUNRISE PATRIOT MOTION. We’ll be playing a set with SPM at Roadburn this April. I have a project called PELTED SHELL that is an outlet for my indulgent ideas. I guess I would call it industrial folk. We’ve all learned over the years that when you’re infected with the need to make music, if you don’t make it you start losing the thread. Having solo projects helps the orient the ship and helps to prevent your frustrations from leaking out in other ways.
WWC: Where does inspiration come from on these last few albums? On Master’s Murmur, things seem to have been done in a very unique way. Also, is there a certain ritual or routine when it comes to making or recording these albums?
SS: Speaking of indulging in solo projects, “Master’s Murmur” felt to me like a convergence of Will’s and my indulgences. I lean toward unsettling atmosphere and Will leans toward overflowing, angular melody. My demos are me muttering into a microphone over a jittery synth landscape. His demos are teetering passages of clean direct-in guitar. The album ended up feeling like both of those at once.
One routine I’ve tried to implement in the studio is to alternate between working alone and working together. Some ideas need to be drawn out with other people and some ideas need to be unraveled alone, with your head down. You don’t always naturally want to break off and work alone when you’re with someone in the studio, or vice versa, but you have to try it if you’ve hit a wall. You have to try everything.
WWC: How do you feel about Vinyl and cassette formats? Any special plans for those?
SS: We feel good about them. It will be done.
WWC: In working with the band/project what is your own role? How much of your own role goes into setting up external things like gigs for the band also?
SS: There are roles outside of the music that we’ve naturally fallen into. Will and Mike are both very good with the “external things,” as you put it. They’re good at keeping in touch with people and making things happen. That’s not usually my role. I take the baton for much of the finishing work. I do the mixing and mastering, cover art, press writeups, stuff like that. Alex is probably the most competent of all of us when it comes to keeping a level head and solving problems on the road.
WWC: As far as literature, film, or music, are there any works you yourself hold in great esteem or were inspired by? Even if not works that were inspiring can you share some of these personal treasures with the readers?
SS: This question is endless. It’s saying “error” on my calculator. We’ve found a lot of common ground over the years. All I can do is sketch. John Fowles comes to mind. We’ve spent hours listening to PSYCHIC TV. “Hard to Be a God” is a film that hit me at the right time. Will and I just listened to Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt on a long drive and were reminded that it is one of the world’s great treasures. I don’t know. I need another page stapled to the back. I cannot continue.
WWC: How hard is it to promote the band or do shows these days and how have you seen it change throughout the times? What advice would you offer someone in just getting their music out in this day and age or trying to somehow break near even?
SS: I’m not sure if we got lucky or if we just stuck around long enough so that the barriers wore away—probably both—but we very rarely do any outreach at all. The amount of shows we do per year is about as much as we want to do. We’ve played the best shows of our lives in the last couple of years, and we’re still getting more offers than we can say yes to. Plus, practicing for a show can interfere with our efficiency in the studio. I have very simple and possibly frustrating advice on the theme of becoming a band that people want to see. Think very hard about the quality of your compositions. Think way less hard about how you record it. Don’t think at all about how to get shows or press writeups. At some point, if it’s good, and if you’re putting it out, somebody will notice you. Making it good is a true battle, and should take up the majority of your energy. How can you break even? You can’t break even. You will always lose money. Embrace that and get a job so that the music will still be a place of freedom. When you go on tour, spend as much as you need to spend. The good experiences you have on tour will get you through some dark times back at home. As you get older, a lot of people stop making music because it becomes a burden. If it never becomes a burden, maybe you’ll never stop.
WWC: Who is the most interesting person you've met in your involvement with music, whether it be a listener, legend or anyone at all?
SS: It’s always an incredible thing when someone you admire comes to your show. I’d rather not get into specifics, but I have made some friendships that way. Plenty of people in bands we’re friends with now began as mythological beings in my mind many years ago. We’re all the same.
WWC: All that I pass through Wormwood are eventually asked this next question and a huge interest for a lot of us here is the paranormal, supernatural, metaphysical, or whatever you would like to call such an experience. Can you tell us anything you have personally experienced or even heard about that may fall into this field?
SS: I’m fascinated by first-hand accounts of the supernatural. As a cursed creature of logic, I can’t keep myself from thinking about the person telling the story and ticking off all the natural possibilities first. The imagination is an awesome force. I’m sorry to say that I have no stories of my own. That’s kept me a skeptic. But I want so badly for the stories I’ve heard to be true. I spent a lot of time as a kid walking in the dark woods or sitting in a dark room inviting any kind of interaction. Nothing ever happened.
WWC: What does the future hold for YELLOW EYES at this time, and is there anything you would like to say in parting now?
SS: There is a lot to come. We will probably be recording our new full-length album this summer. Thank you!
