How did this body of music come together?
Max D: About half of the album was from one studio session where we had a great crew together and improvised a few times. A few remained largely as they were played. Some of those takes, separated, became little loops, or random architecture for Matt and I to make other songs with. There are also a couple that Matt and I basically made over email on our own, and “Open Door” is from maybe even before COVID, a different live session in studio (with an added ending a few years later).
Matt: Yeah, there was a session in Baltimore at Tempo House in 2022, with Dustin Wong, Jeremy Hyman, Benny Boeldt (Mezey), Andrew, and me. Some of the songs are pretty direct results of those sessions, like “Pasters”—that’s more or less a live take that Andrew tweaked through pedals and effects and stitched together. “Specials” and “Warmer Cooler” came about in the back and forth between Andrew and I, sending Ableton files and adding or subtracting. “The Latecomer” is one of those ones that just fell together, Benny and I made the synth part for a Mezey & Nosho track and then abandoned it. When we pulled it into the mix for Lifted, Andrew dropped the percussion recording in and it didn’t need much more. Jacob Long’s saxophone was a later addition, and it really took it towards a three-dimensional sound that we love.
Is there an ideal setting for listening to this record?
Max D: This one is pretty patio to me. Even winter patio, courtesy-puff outside, seeing footprints-type music.
Matt: It’s definitely a daylight record for me, I like it with the ambient sounds of the daytime—daylight and an open window.
Has your relationship with improvisation changed in the decade or so this project has been active?
Max D: Definitely yes, for me. That was an element of starting these ideas in the first place, doing more improv. I wanted to loosen things up. DJing and making tracks is kind of a gridded world. I love it but it was cool to gain a new thing over the years.
Matt: Yeah, when I think about how our process has evolved I think we’re both more open to committing to improvisation than ever before. The first two records really came out of editing the shit out of live recordings that we would make with small groups of players. On 1 and 2, we rarely let a jam wind up at all like it was initially recorded. With Trellis there’s so much more allowed through from the live studio recordings. Open Door is a good example of a very direct mix of a recording that Joe Williams, Andrew and I made at Tonal Park in DC years ago. We sat on it and when we came back to it, it felt a breath of fresh air, with a certain honest quality. It reminds me of the Instrument soundtrack. We’re also finally playing Lifted shows after all these years, and those live sets really rely on improvisation as a rule.
How about your relationship with collaboration?
Max D: Certainly. I’ve done a decent amount of collaboration other than Lifted along the way, too, and it’s never quite as truly wide-open-ended and musically free as it is with Matt. Anything is an idea.
Matt: I’ve always leaned toward working with other people, but often in more focused ways. Like Andrew is saying, there is a commitment to letting the ideas sprawl out with Lifted. I think working on 3 let us get a little more conceptual, we’d talk about ideas that aren’t just musical.
What’s your favorite ECM release?
Max D: Damn, incredibly tough question. I think I will go with current rotation evidence, and say Paul Motian Trio I Have The Room Above Her. I played more drums on Trellis and no small part of that is due to the influence of my perpetual PM deep dive. This trio gets to so many places, it's incredible.
Matt: Yeah, there are so many great ones. The ECM album I’ve listened to the most the last few years is Live at the Deer Head Inn. It’s Keith Jarrett, Paul Motion, and Gary Peacock. It’s not a typical ECM sounding record, it’s warm and lively and relaxed. There’s also a record by Food called Quiet Inlet that I love. It features Fennesz on some tracks.
There’s a lot of players, influences, and textures bouncing around this record. How do you navigate that and retain a sense of sonic space?
Max D: I think one thing Lifted keeps true to life is that these elements sort of are our sonic space. We love to combine like, a pure digital castoff file with us as a multitracked trio in high-def over it. That’s sort of always been where the foundations of our tunes are, down in the mixture of a few approaches combined. With players involved, that sort of just grows with the ensemble but stays about the same in how we stew up.
Matt: Yeah we definitely like that quality of collage and let the textures of recordings do a lot of the work for us in terms of creating a space or environment. We’ve talked a lot about the sonic quality of Robert Altman movies, really enjoying the depth of chatter that happens throughout movies like Nashville or Short Cuts. We both bring a lot of field recordings to the table, and sometimes we’ll build around or on top of those to kind of reinvent the context of the recording.
I’m curious to know more about your production process. Is there a point when you know these songs are finished?
Max D: I mean, we do a lot of long periods of time flicking songs and their files back and forth. A lot of the ideas for players to go on top will start up sort of off-the-cuff, like I’ll be messaging someone online and just kind of realize I should see if they wanna be on a Lifted song. Or dream big and ask friends of friends to help me connect with someone. So we send files back and forth, meet in real life, meet with extra players for takes, email extra players, send all that back and forth, etc. And recently we got into a practice of playing the stem files of some tunes across four CDJs and two mixers, which really just melts stuff down and allows us to go way further into the songs.
Matt: We definitely cook some of the tunes for a long time, years even. And, we tend to have a lot more material bouncing around then will fit on a record. Andrew is really good at sequencing tracks, and we’ll know sometimes that a track is definitely on the record from the get go. The first track, All Right, is something we’ve had fully baked for a while, and have just been holding it. Tim Kinsella recorded the guitar part for that about two years ago, and later Jordan GCZ added the Rhodes chords. We thought of Tim because we both were listening back through the Joan of Arc catalog. The other tracks kind of puzzle piece around the ones that we commit to early.
Andrew: Joan of Arc The Gap is my shit.
What is the most underrated DMV-area band or artist of the past two decades?
Max D: In the grand scheme of things I gotta go with Sir E.U. Every time I see him do his thing live it’s some really other shit, like a stunning situation. His records and style has been bitten to shreds by lesser musicians imo too, which just adds to the underrated-ness. The best.
Matt: A couple of people come to mind, but Djoser is a top notch producer making exactly the kind of dance music I like, he’s had some well received releases but I think people sleep on it!
(Photo: Kat Sherr)
