Active Child

Sun 29th Jan, 2012 in Features

Active Child aka LA musician Pat Grossi is a former member of the Philadelphia Boys’ Choir. Having such a ritualised and structured introduction to high art left an indelible mark on that part of him in charge of articulation and definition. Listening to his voice float like cold vapour over his harp it’s easy to forget how something so explicitly beautiful is the product of enormous discipline and diligence. It’s almost uncomfortable to listen to such unfiltered, uncommon aestheticism and yet it’s also very natural to be drawn by it, to become ensnared in its tendrils.

To counteract its intensity, the other major component is an entire decade’s worth of pop music production and sleight of hand, namely the 80s. A healthy diet of Nu Wave and Romantic Pop has given Grossi the perfect delivery vehicle for his expression, allowing him to construct familiar neon arrangements that his voice and his harp can then fill to bursting with life and power. It’s like staring at the sun through blue and red cardboard 3D glasses.

Active Child is visiting our shores for the first time in January for the Laneway Festival with the recent tour mates M83, Toro Y Moi and Feist. He was kind enough to chat with us about his recent adventures.

You just finished up a tour with M83, how did it go?
Yeah it was good. I was pretty excited beforehand and the entire tour went really well. It was pretty exhausting – we played 25 shows in 28 days but I’ve been a fan of M83 for a long time so I was honoured to go on tour with them, get to hang with them a little bit and watch them play so it was a big success for sure.

You mentioned you’re a big fan and you both have that bruised sunset, synth opera thing going on. Did you find a connection to them as far as your sound was concerned? Did you feed off each other over so many shows?
Yeah, definitely. They kind of have a different approach to live shows than maybe I imagined. They definitely translated their new album and some of their older works into a much more sort of arena style rock show with the bright lights etc. while I felt like I was a little more attached to brooding and slow atmospherics because that’s the kind of music a strive to do and the kind of music I enjoy myself. Nevertheless the show was amazing and powerful and people went crazy for it which wasn’t what I was expecting.

Your sound, whilst you’ve got the same sort of tone, is a lot more intimate, whereas they’ve got more instrumentation and a broader reach, though I would certainly connect their music to your music. It was a good match.
Yeah it was a good match. They developed a lot of new fans through Midnight City and the album and they’ve grown a much broader audience than they have in years past. It was interesting – it was one of the first tours that I felt that we were equally accepted and rejected some nights, where some people just didn’t get it or some people were all about it; it was kind of a mixed bag.

Now that you have been touring with the likes of M83 and you’ve got a well-received album out there and you’re headlining your own tours are doors opening for you?
Yeah, I mean, I’m talking to you right now! I’m coming to Australia, I’m going to Tokyo and I’ve headline a European tour coming up. Doors are opening and it’s pretty exciting to see things happening, and so quickly. I haven’t been around for very long and this is my first album to come out, I feel pretty blessed getting so much success so quickly.

I know there’s a lot of people excited that you’re coming out in summer, and I think a lot of that is due to the fact you’ve got a very unique sound – the harp is a big thing, and you’ve got this beautiful falsetto and an austerity to your music. Was it natural to incorporate these elements or did you look for something new?
No it was very natural, all the things that came together. I don’t know how it all looks from the outside, I can see it feeling like maybe some sort of novelty to combine these elements or I had some concept where I wanted to create some new sound or whatever but it wasn’t. It was me just evolving in a lot of ways as a song writer and a singer.

I mean I put the Curtis Lane EP out and a lot of that was me experimenting and recording and kind of figuring out what kind of music I enjoyed making, what I could make and what I was capable of and this is kind of what it’s led me to. The album is where it all came together – what I find interesting and things that have been a part of my life for a long time.

Is your sound difficult to get right? Is your harp difficult to record properly?
No its not, it’s not too bad! For the harp I’ve installed a pickup into it. I actually drilled a hole into the base of it and put different contact pickups along the length of the soundboard and I can either plug them into an amplifier or I can set up microphones in the room. I mean usually I park up on stage in a live setting and the sound guy’s like “Oh shit… What do I do with this thing? Where would you like this?” and I’m like “Don’t worry, just plug straight into the back and we’re good to go!”

On the new album you flirt with R&B; not just with the music, but lyrically and tonally. Is this going to become more of a focus?
You know, I have a lot of fun with it. It’s fun to perform and fun to record. When I was writing Playing House and doing Hanging On I’m most excited about those tracks because I’ve felt my voice is doing something new and felt fresh so I definitely would like to explore it a little bit more. I think initially a lot of people who heard the EP and then heard those songs first and were kind of turned off by it like “This isn’t Active Child. This isn’t what I expected to hear.”, but it’s found a lot of new fans and a different audience for me which is cool. I’m seeing a lot of different people coming to shows that I would have never expected to show up, so I’d definitely like to explore that little bit more.

It’s interesting how popular R&B is becoming with artists like How To Dress Well and The Weeknd. It’s interesting to see this area being mined for something new…
It is interesting. It’s a touchy area for me; it’s almost like a white rapper or something. It’s like you’re crossing into this other world, like “this is for this group of people, this is their music and it’s strange for you to intercept that” or “you can’t be a part of that – you’re an impersonator” or something. I find it interesting the way music kind of gets sectioned off in different ways and how people look at it. It’s completely cool to be able to hear it for what it is without trying to put it into a place, you know?

The 80s was a great decade for melodrama in pop music and for clean, slick recording aesthetics and you can certainly hear some of that on your record with the big reverbed drums beats and such. What draws you to that aesthetic?
I don’t know, I think I’ve always been very captivated and inspired by that era of music, that kind of big… big everything. Big sounds, big reverbed toms, gated snares, claps; whatever it happened to be. I think a lot of it carries over into a lot of hip hop sounds; they dig 808s or 909s or claps or whatever.

I grew up listening to a lot of that music as well, like my dad would play Peter Gabriel’s album Car on repeat. It’s the album I grew up with, memorising it. At the end of the day I love listening to it just because I connect to it. The melodrama that you’re talking about is what I enjoy most about music; it’s about being in your own head space, with a nice pair of headphones and just letting the music make you feel bad or make you feel alone or make you feel happy; whatever it happens to be.

When it comes time to write a song that’s where I find myself looking to go every time, like for better or worse I get wrapped up in it and I love that feeling of heartache and the emotional heaviness that music can bring you.

You have some older influences with your music, do they inform what you listen to now, and does that influence stop once you start recording?
I think I gravitate to music that is somewhat reminiscent of what I make. Not always, I mean I obviously I don’t want to get boring, but I think I’m definitely drawn to music of similar sounds and artists who are toying with the same styles that I’m using as well. Fever Ray’s album was a huge influence on me with its big drums and haunting melodies and pitched vocals and stuff like that. There’s a lot of modern music these days that are doing the same things, I mean maybe not using as obvious influences like 80s sounding synthesisers and stuff like that but very similar styles.

There’s a YouTube clip of this guy chatting to you during SXSW a couple of years ago and you mentioned the difficulty of transporting the harp due to tuning difficulties. Will we see the harp in Australia next year?
Wow, that seems like forever ago… those were literally the first shows ever playing this music, so I was a little bit overwhelmed and this guy’s following me around, like, interviewing me…

I’m in the midst of buying a new harp for future tours, but the harp I have now I’ve travelled to Europe back and forth a few times and it’s never a problem.