Dirty Projectors
screening sans cleaning
by Michael Barthel

Sporadically Brooklyn-based composer and musician Dave Longstreth has a band that is mostly him, and it is called Dirty Projectors. In 2005 he released an album entitled The Getty Address that was a rock opera about Don Henley and other things and was built from stuttering, closely-harmonized choirs, percussive noises, woodwind ensembles, and recitative vocals, and hit the sweet spot between baffling and incredible better than anything else released that year. He now has an EP out entitled New Attitude as well as a DVD of the animations made for Getty and so here is an interview with him you could read, if you want.

Your last full-length was actually a cut-up and re-imagined version of an earlier, aborted attempt at the album. Was this a productive technique, and have you ever considered doing it deliberately?

You mean like arrive at fragmentation not through process but as first, immediate inspiration? I think so — making The Getty Address taught me to think that way. Every time I've written some chamber music since making the Getty, when it actually comes time with the players there in front of me playing the score, it always sounds too moist, too full. I always want the ends of their notes to be severed magically, no decaying room or anything — just gone! Like the opposite of a ghost limb.

Was there a particular impetus behind the inclusion of James Sumner's visuals in the live show?

James was doing these amazing short flash animations when I was finishing up Getty in 2004. I was moving into the room in New Haven that he was moving out of, so we got to know each other a little bit. He liked Getty and started making animations for the songs. His project has gradually grown more and more epic in a very classical way. For a while it seemed to make sense to project the animations onto us during the set, which we did on tour in 2005, and some other random shows in New York back then. Then on the tour this spring we played The Getty Address movie — which is what it's become, recorded sound and visual together, distinct from anything that would happen live — prior to the actual band. It's really its own thing at this point.

How has the live incarnation of the Dirty Projectors influenced your songwriting on the new EP?

I would say it's loosened it up, but actually, it's the opposite--in trying to make the live show sound like the record, or trying to make the record a faithful document of what happens live, you are making one subservient to the other. It's boring. They are totally different forms. I am into making live shows that are epic and wet, spontaneous, free. I am into recordings that are like texts — complete, formal, unchangeable.

Is there something particular that draws you to cellos & woodwinds?

I like classical instruments because they remind people of Hollywood movie soundtracks and help get people feeling the big, primary-colored emotions. I am also drawn to them for their associations with elegance, class, red wine, and candlelight. My favorite instruments are the piccolo and double bass.