IHLYATT

(pronounced ee-lie-at) is the ambient, electronic audio/visual project of Athens, Georgia based artist J. Anderssen. While contributing his talents to a number of other bands of various styles and influences (Nu11, Sacred Bull, Gumlog), Anderssen uses Ihlyatt as the solo outlet of his personal creative process and vision for an all-encompassing sensory experience. Coming off his most refined and inspired release in 2021’s “Flowering Copse,” and a collaboration with atmospheric violinist Annie Leeth expected to be available this spring, J. Anderssen talks about the beginnings and maturation of Ihlyatt, what inspires his ever-evolving creative process, and how the aforementioned collaboration with Annie Leeth came about.

Signal to Noise (SN)
How did the original idea for Ihlyatt come about, and what was that initial version like?

J. Anderssen (JA)
The initial idea? I'm trying to remember. I was trying to start a shoegaze band, and actually jammed with a few different people. I had the idea for the name and I liked the name, and when the band didn't end up happening I just started recording stuff on SoundCloud and used that name for it. It was originally pretty much just like ambient shoegaze and I hadn't figured out anything with, like, stereo or recording DI or any of that stuff, so I would record everything through an amp into an SM57 and just do multiple takes. It was pretty rough. Actually, the stuff on SoundCloud is probably still there and it's probably better than my first actual EP, which was dog shit. I recorded that and I think it was online for like maybe a year at most. Then I recorded another EP and that is the first thing that is still online because it's not perfect, obviously, but it's the first thing that sounded decent.

SN
Which album is that?

JA
That's called “Fetch.” “Fetch” ended up also having all these really rough, black and white photos with it. Ihlyatt, long story short, an ill-fated shoegaze band that went through several iterations until I was just saying, “Fuck it, I'll do this myself.”

SN
So, the music that you wanted to make with a full band, was it similar to what Ihlyatt has become?

JA
I wanted it to be sort of like [post-punk duo] Have a Nice Life or something, but with more of a full band. Then I realized Have a Nice Life was mainly just one or two guys’ recording project, and the only time they do a band is when they go on tour. The important thing to know about Ihlyatt is it always just starts with me, like, ripping off someone else, and then through some idiosyncrasy of my own process or recording, it ends up sounding distinct by accident.

SN
I think that's called finding inspiration.

JA
I'm a lot harder on myself.

SN
How do you feel your sound has changed or progressed since “Fetch,” or since that initial jumping off point?

JA
It's gotten a lot glitchier. It used to be very drony, like, blown out. It basically started off like lo-fi wall of sound stuff and turned into really glitchy bleep-bloops over top of the textural stuff. So, the really crackly, lo-fi wall of sound stuff is still there, but it's a bed for the lead part to go over, which used to be all guitars and now I use mostly synth. Mostly a Korg Volca FM run through all the pedals and bullshit. It used to be just one or two takes of something that were mixed into being over the top, and now it's probably ten different recordings that all are doing one thing, but they come together to form this bigger thing and they're much more intentional.

SN
From listening to "Flowering Copse" and "Whose Roots are Stars in the Human Mind," the wall of sound is still very present, but it sounds a lot more homogeneous. Like you said, intentional. It's more of a puzzle where everything is fitting together instead of stacking layers and layers on top of each other.

JA
And that's really the one important thing to making experimental music, because you still have to think of it like a song where you're composing a song, but instead of like, okay, the drums are doing this and the bass is doing this with the drums and the guitar, this and that. It's like, okay, I want to have this texture and that sort of forms the bed. And then the lead part ends up being just some really weird noise you figured out how to make with a synth and a few pedals, and then that'll be part of the song.

So, yeah, the process is mainly learning how to be intentional with that style of music, because it's a completely different process than normal recording but you still have to think of it as composition.

SN
When did visuals become just as important as the music? Were they always part of the vision for this? You kind of touched on "Fetch" having a series of photographs, but was that always part of what you wanted to do?

JA
Yeah, pretty much. I've sort of come full circle with the visuals. I use, like a fake VHS Glitcher thing, where I will bit crush this stuff with an app, and it sort of had this digital VHS look. Then I went to black and white 35mm photography and then "Whose Roots Are Stars" was mainly drawing from 16mm film.

SN
Was that the release show where you "played" the visuals? [The “Whose Roots Are Stars In The Human Mind” release show where Anderssen worked a 16mm film projector to produce a hypnotic visual atmosphere accompanying the record playing through the house speakers.

JA
Yeah. The last two tracks were excluded because I just didn't have enough film and it's too fucking expensive. Basically three quarters of the album were matched to a 16mm projection, which you saw. I did that at Flicker and I would still do that if it was cheaper and less of a pain in the ass. That one show was so unbelievably difficult I'm amazed that it went as smoothly as it did.

With the VHS, I can start in one place and run it through all this other stuff. Then I have all this stuff piling on top of itself, and basically have spent maybe $30 on 8 hours worth of tapes, VHS is like $30 for 8 hours versus $60 for three minutes (with 16mm film). Pretty obvious choice right there. From 30 minutes of (VHS) footage, if you have literally one glitcher and a video mixer, you can make infinite combinations of stuff. You can sit there and do that, put some music on and do that literally for hours and hours and hours and hours, digitize all of it and then you have this giant thing to work from. It's pretty much always been a part of Ihlyatt, but just like everything else it has gotten more intentional and the process has been refined in terms of figuring out what works. Even if I did have the money to go back to 16mm, I would probably still do VHS because it's so much more fun and immediate. You know, you have a short clip of, like, me walking through the woods overlayed with a sunset or something, but you run that through video feedback and a glitcher device, and you can't even tell what the hell it is. You're fundamentally changing the input.

Artwork for the Ihlyatt record “Flowering Copse”, by J. Anderssen

SN
What was the point where you felt everything coming together and you were creating the vision that you had in your head for what you wanted to do?

JA
It's a lot of small breakthroughs, definitely within the last three albums. So, I did a noise album for a tape label in South Dakota.

SN
“Demigod”?

JA
Yes. Yeah. I met them at Bombs Away and they were just like, "That was awesome. Do you want to do release?". Luckily that was right at the end of my wall of sound phase, because otherwise it would have just been like 40 minutes of unremarkable wall of noise, but instead I was getting into power noise, which is like the super dynamic, push/pull, blown-out 808 and harsh noise type stuff. So, I made a really good power noise album, and then I don't remember if "Whose Roots are Stars..." was before or after that, but it was within that period and it was sort of like, “Oh, okay, this is like its own thing now.” The last album, “Flowering Copse,” I am the most happy with of anything I've ever done because that just clicked. I understood how my process works and how I can get a good result with my own process every time. And I know how to put it on the computer and mix it, and I know how the improv and pre-structured stuff comes together. It sounds fuller. So it started in the last three albums, but definitely gelled with “Flowering Copse.”

SN
So you feel like you're just now getting to the point where you're able to create your vision?

JA
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, I think "Flowering Copse" was a refinement of the process that started with "Whose Roots are Stars In the Human Mind." The cover for "Whose Roots Are Stars..." was actually a painting that my mom had done that I really liked. I knew even before that was a project, I was like, “I want to use that painting as album art at some point but I'm not going to use it until I'm sure that whatever I'm doing is good enough, because I really like that painting and I want to use it for something that's worth it.” 

Artwork for the Ihlyatt record “Whose Roots Are Stars In The Human Mind”, by J. Anderssen and K. Sherrill

SN
You mentioned being more comfortable with the process - what is the creative process like for you with Ihlyatt?

JA

It's pretty much hours and hours and hours of just improv with my pedalboard. Probably pedals, Kaoss Pad, and a few different things going into a mixer. Now it's pretty much always the Volca FM, and I just got a pedal called a Stretch Weaver that is wild. It has this really organic glitchy feel to it.  But, yeah, it's pretty much whatever input I have going in through, at this point, the Stretch Weaver and the Kaoss Pad. Then that goes through the pedals and then stereo output into tape machines. which it's not recorded to tape. It's recorded through the tape preamps. The sound and visuals pretty much have the exact same process and the visuals play off the sound.

With the EP that I did with Annie Leeth, I still use the synth, but I resampled her violin through the Kaoss Pad, and then that was the main initial sound source. It was pretty much the exact same process, except instead of being based around the (Korg) Volca, it was based around her violin samples. It all pretty much starts with improv that is rearranged into a coherent piece, and then I just figure out what else I need from there.

SN
How did the Annie Leeth collaboration get started and what went into that process?

JA
I had actually met Annie Leeth when I was in Fat Neptune. We had a section where we had a string quartet, and she went to music school with the keyboard player, Jason. We didn't really interact that much, it was kind of like, "Nice to meet you", yada yada. She continued to release a bunch of really good stuff, and so she sort of stayed on my radar. 

Artwork for the Ihlyatt/Annie Leeth collaboration, “Sun In Your Head”, by J. Anderssen

Then I did the ambient nights at Flicker and had her play one. While she was there, I talked to her about wanting to do a project where I started with a different sound source. I love the way a violin sounds, and I thought that would fit well because I made a song, that I don't think I actually ever released it, but I bowed my guitar and it sounded like a violin. That was sort of the basis of the song. I was like, “Well, what if I actually used a violin from someone who actually knows how to fuck to play violin?” So, I just asked her about it and she was very helpful for how busy she was. She works at Chase Park [Transduction] and then she's also in Faye Webster's touring band, but she still managed to send me these samples for my, you know, bullshit experimental project. She didn't have to do that, but it became this cool thing that I initiated and am lucky that it sort of happened as well as it did, because she was on and off tour basically the whole time she was sending me stuff. I actually still have her violin loaded in the Kaoss Pad because I know I'm not going to get a better sample to use. So it just stays in there.

SN
I'm really stoked for that collab to come out and finally hear it. You mentioned the ambient shows you were putting together, how do you approach performing live for Ihlyatt?

JA
It's gone through several iterations. The 16mm thing that we were talking about was pretty much just the album played through a tape machine into the PA and I was 100% controlling the visuals.

What I've done more recently is had a backing track playing through a looper and I load the basis of whatever songs I'm playing into that and then add the lead lines and the main part of the song, I'll be doing that live. But the bed or basis of the song is coming from the looper. So, it ends up sounding really full and I have a guide to go by, and it's all me playing it because it's just a previously recorded base or something coming from a looper with me adding to it. Because I know how the songs sound, I can sort of say, “Okay this one's almost over I need to tone it down and then cue the next one up.” So it all ends up being seamless still.

SN
I know this is a solo, introspective project, but is there a person that Ihlyatt would not be possible without, outside of yourself?

JA
I guess the people who have helped me figure out how to do stuff and that goes both for people who, I know this isn't really what the question was, but it's basically like the inspirations that I'm drawing from. For instance, Ihlyatt would not sound like it does now if not for Tim Hecker, but there are a bunch of other moments where it's like, “Oh, that's how this person does this.” It'll be like some musician who I'm trying to figure out how the hell they did that and then I'll stumble upon it accidentally. So, basically just small little inspiration stepping stones or helpful people along the way.

SN
What is one record that you think everyone should listen to?

JA
"How it Feels to be Something On" by Sunny Day Real Estate. That is an unbelievable album. Sounds nothing like any music I make, but then every time I come back to that album it's just unbelievably good. And then, I don't know, just for the experience of having listened to it, "Going Places" by Yellow Swans. Once that album clicks, it is like life changing shit. It’s layers and layers of perfect texture. It's beautiful. And that's an album that I would try and copy the sound of. Literally every song I made was trying to capture the sound of that album and I never, ever got it. I don't know what they did to record that. It's like the two guys, one of them controlling guitar and effects, and then another guy just controlling effects. The greatest noise album ever made.

SN
What band or artist do you think more people should know about?

JA
Sprain. Basically, anyone on The Flenser, but Sprain. Sprain is one of the best contemporary noise rock bands in existence. Another good one is Chat Pile, who's also on The Flenser. Also amazing noise rock. Yeah, just listen to The Flenser's entire output. Only listen to that for a month and tell me if your life hasn't been changed after that. You might be more depressed, but you'll also be more musically inspired at the very least.

Interview by Griffin Hans

Edited by Rachel Bailey and Griffin Hans