Rob Moose is a Grammy winning Multi- instrumentalist, producer, arranger and composer who has worked with the likes of Bon Iver, Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers and countless more. Rob Moose’s EP Inflorescence comes out on August 11th.
Mairyn: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Rob Moose. He’s here with SCAD Radio more than music. Two-time, Grammy winner. That’s our first of all interviews. The closest or last closest interview to two Grammys was Janelle Monet on a sidewalk festival,
Rob Moose: Woah.
Mairyn: So, you get to officially say that in one way you beat Janelle Monet
Rob Moose: I’ll take it
Mairyn: To being the Grammy winner of SCAD Radio. So how are you doing today?
Rob Moose: I’m great. Yeah. Glad to be here chatting with you.
Mairyn: Looks a lot sunnier than where we are normally. Savannah’s beautiful, but it’s currently absolutely abysmal. I’m using a white screen on my laptop to light the room cuz it is that dark outside.
Rob Moose: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I’m on Orcas Island, Washington. And spring has arrived here and, and, uh, I’m finding it hard to focus on work because just it’s so enchanting.
Mairyn: Beautiful! I wasn’t planning on starting this interview with the weather, but oh my God, it looks so good there. That’s beautiful. I wish I could be on that porch right now. That looks fantastic.
Rob Moose: It’s plenty of room.
Mairyn: So, I guess we should just start with the most recent thing that you’ve been working on. We’ve got Wasted with Phoebe Bridgers, written by Fantastic Twitter follow Marshall Vore as I know him. We had that following up on the Britney Howard song, Bend Not Break, What’s coming next? Who’s our next feature?
Rob Moose: Bon Iver.
Mairyn: Yeah. A big one. So that is incredibly exciting. You have been, if I can say like a hidden gem of this pandemic music scene. So many of these things feel like touchstones of the pandemic for a lot of music fans. I mean, we’ve got Punisher, of course. We’ve got Punisher. We will get to talking about Punisher and Copycat Killer and then we also have folklore, which is definitive to this whole era of music. And as we’re coming out of the pandemic, suddenly I feel like we’re getting this big surge of music from you with the Y Music release and this upcoming ep. Are these things that you were working on over the pandemic or are they this post-pandemic kind of creation?
Rob Moose: The ep, goes back to 2018 for me. Oh, it’s taken l longer than I would’ve ever imagined, but I’m so happy we’re finally at the point of the songs coming out.
But yeah, I started thinking about doing something like that around that time. I, I really wanted to experiment with the idea of supporting a song, with entirely strings, but not sort of taking the music out of the lane that it could be in otherwise. I just wanted to try to change the instrumentation and see if it was gonna be possible for it to still be, you know, fun and, and, reflective of, the artists that I was working with, what, what their interests are and what their kind of sound is.
Because over the years I’ve gotten to add strings to people’s songs a lot, and I’ve noticed That there’ll be moments when they’re mixing or just investigating what I’ve done where they’ll just solo all the strings and then maybe they’ll add the voice in and it like, and everybody’s always like, oh wow, this, we should put out a version of the song like this.
So, I just thought like, what if, what if we did? But what if the strings were designed to support the song in that way rather than just sort of like, this sounds pretty with that, So, so I started reaching out to different artists I’d worked with over the years that I felt close with and felt like were really important to my artistic development and to see if they’d be open to the idea of me experimenting with a song theirs, to try to voice it out in this way.
The first person I reached out to was Sara Bareilles, cuz I had, um, recently met her and worked on some orchestral arrangements for her. And she gave me this beautiful song, which is coming out in July. I reached out to her and Phoebe and Justin and Britney.
Britney was, I think the second person I reached out to. I made the first one in 2018. I was on tour with Paul Simon and we had a day off and I just went deep in the hotel room.
I had my mobile recording set up and just spent like eight hours in a row or something just trying to figure out how to make something like this. That was basically the genesis of it was to just see what would happen and try to see if I could like, find a new, a new role for what I add to people’s songs and change the order of how things get recorded.
Mairyn: Yeah, that’s so fascinating to me because I can really see that just from what I’ve seen so far of the music like, you have such an interesting way of focusing on the strings. And I noticed that a lot with Copycat Killer. And weirdly, the fact that you brought up Paul Simon. That was my first introduction to your orchestration.
Because, I got, um, In the Blue Light on vinyl from my grandfather, because I was like, I love Paul Simon. And he was like, here, the most recent one. And at first I was like, okay, cool, this isn’t Simon and Garfunkel. And then I was like, this is really fantastic. And I’m one of those people who goes through all the liner notes and it’s like, who are these people? And then I Googled you and I was like, This dude is on everything. And I’ve been talking to people being like, okay, you don’t know this guy’s name. Or maybe you do, but you have something that you love. I think I was looking at your website, it’s 400 albums? Is that the recent number, 400 albums?
Rob Moose: No,
I think it’s like a thousand-something now.
I need to update that. Yeah, or maybe it’s 800 or 900 or something. I don’t, I don’t know. It’s a lot. Yeah.
Mairyn: There’s some crazy tidbits on there. There’s Bowie, you have some music on Bowie. That must feel kind of crazy. That has to feel kind of great.
Rob Moose: Yeah, that was like a posthumous-like reworking of an album that, I didn’t do the arrangement, but I was part of a string quartet that played, I think we did three songs in, in 2018 as well. That was really fun. Really amazing. Yeah. Like insane. Yeah, insane.
Mairyn: So, I wanted to ask, I think a big part of.
What drew me to kind of finding all these bits of your string work is the way that you were talking about supporting the music and supporting, the feeling and the emotions behind it. Specifically, I was listening to the song Punisher recently kind of prepping for this, the strings in that song feels so at the heart, and the emotional core of that song is so built up. There’s this moment when it’s copycat killer with a chemical cut and it all comes together and has this big emotional thing. Your music to me is so, visual and so sensory. This is a funny thing
Do you believe that synesthesia is a real thing? Because people have mixed feelings, but I feel like you have such insanely visual music to me.
Rob Moose: Huh. That’s cool. Yeah. I don’t have it myself, but I know people who do, and I’ve heard people talk about it in interviews and it’s like the girl in red there’s this podcast about songwriters called, ‘And The Writer Is’ And I think she talked a lot about synesthesia in that interview. And I was, I was fascinated to hear about it. And, I think, yeah, I am obviously really interested in responding to the lyrics that are there but trying to do it in ways that, isn’t going to feel like it’s too literal.
You know, I remember actually, in Phoebe’s music, I remember a cool example, ICU I think. Yeah. Where like, I can’t even get you to play the drums.
Mairyn: And the Drums just BOOM!
Rob Moose: Mm-hmm. And there’s like a little drum just moment where Yeah. Stops for a second.
Or maybe even in Scott Street, like right before the, the drums are mentioned, like the drums come in. I feel like there’s ways to like, interact with the lyric that where you might have, you might have started doing something right before, or you’ll change something that’s subliminally enough that that person feels that there’s a response in a relationship, but it’s not like, oh, that was corny.
But I think my process , with trying to contribute string parts is, when I first started doing it, I was really interested in textures I gravitated toward like the sound of artificial harmonics to kind of create like, eerie sounding synth, their guitar like sounds, I didn’t start off trying to do like conventional string arrangements where it would, where it would sound anything like what it, what an orchestra may sound like.
Cuz I really wanted, I was just doing it myself and I wanted it to be easy for people to add strings to songs. So, I gravitated toward, you know, unconventional uses of the strings. And I’ve like retained my interest in that even as I’ve gotten more, more used to, doing bigger string arrangements or working in a more pop context where different things are, are, are being prioritized.
But sort of like, yeah, a surge of emotion, like a splash of color here. But, A commitment to adding something and taking it away and not being, not, not becoming familiar in a song is really important to me. Because I arrangements that sort of like lose me are the ones that are just there from start to finish and it’s just like not creating impact.
You know, there are things that you need in a song like you, you need the chords to be expressed and you need rhythm say and, and stuff like, but they’re, some of the most powerful moments in music might be when you just take something away and then you give it back. And I’ve, I’ve always felt that a valuable contribution I can make is to the structure of the song, the structural clarity.
Like if I, if I can add something or take something away that will make a section feel richer or, or more chiseled and focused, that, that, that could be as valuable as adding a really memorable melody or adding like a sense of bigness, you know? So yeah, I think those are some things that I think about whenever I’m approaching a song.
Mairyn: Yeah. That’s so fascinating, especially like that idea of taking things out because that’s a lot of what happened, like with the Copycat Killer ep. Yeah. And um, the Performances on late night, (It was Moon Song On Jimmy Kimmel)
I remember it like was a conversation online with a lot of people just because, if you can’t tell as a like young white woman at an art school, of course, I love Phoebe Bridgers. It was a conversation of like, wow, this feels so stark. And the meaning and like the lyrics just feel so raw. In those arrangements on that, listening to it, something about it makes you rethink the music itself.
Like I’ve heard those songs over and over and over again. And then hearing them in this context where it was just stripped away made you really think about what she was saying. And like on Kyoto, which is normally like a really upbeat song, Then you’re really hearing the lyrics of that song in a different way.
Did she rerecord the vocals for that or was that just a, you stripped that down and went
Rob Moose: She did. She did so the process was like, it was kind of a crazy experience because I heard from them in, at the end of the summer or early fall of 2020. And so we were like, you know, deep in lockdown, and yeah, my wife and I had a newborn.
He was like five or six weeks old. Mm-hmm. And Phoebe said, I had done, the wasted track already.
Mairyn: Wow.
Rob Moose: In 2019, 2020, we had made that and she said, you know, like, my Punisher got voted such and such by Rough trade and we have to make this, companion piece to it.
And most people usually just like hand in demos of stuff, voice memos, whatever. But I really wanna do something special. You know that thing you did on the song Wasted? Like, can we do stuff like that for some of the Punisher songs? And, and when I heard from them, they like, they needed it in like 10 days.
Mairyn: Oh my gosh.
Rob Moose: It was like something insane. And I had made a few of these tracks that are now coming out on my EP already, but like for instance, the song Wasted. I spent hundreds of hours working on, so I, immediately said, yes, let’s do it. You know, because I love working with her and she always, really gives me, a long creative like leash and this very interested in strong, unexpected ideas.
And I feel like working, you know, some, her and Justin and people like that are the people that push me to do my best creative work. So it’s like any time there’s an opportunity, and if it’s anything short of physically impossible, I’m going to do it. But I didn’t know how I would do it. And I got the stems from the album from the mixer mm-hmm.
And basically, just grabbed the vocals for each song. And she was also like, you decide what songs you wanna do. And like, in a perfect world, can you do five? And I was like, okay. And so, I had it on my calendar of like, when it had to be done, and my life was in total disarray because I Had-
Mairyn: a baby. Covid.
Rob Moose: The only thing I could think of was, I should just stay up all night, each time I need to make one of these songs and just start and finish it in the amount of time that I can, like stay awake and I will just have to do it, you know, because wow. My previous example had taken hundreds of hours and there was no way, to spend that kind of time.
I did four of them. I did two in a row and then I took a day off because I was so tired. And then I did two more, two more overnights. And basically, at like 8:00 PM or something, I would just go into my studio room, down the hall and like, and be like, how am I gonna do this one?
And just kind of come up with the idea on piano really quickly. And then immediately start building, recording it. And I would kind of get, I’d get through the first verse in chorus or something, and then I’d be like, what am I gonna do now? And so, you can sort of hear like some of them have, In savior complex, there’s like kind of a scene change at verse two where there’s like negative space in the strings.
Because my initial idea was like this sort of arpeggiated kind of Philip Glass-esque. I was sort of like, what if, what if there’s this like static arpeggiated string texture that’s just giving you the bare minimum of the harmonic information you need to understand where you are in the song, but letting the voice do a lot of the work.
And then that was sort of building up over time and then like it reached the end of the section and I just kind of like dissolved it and it was like, now what? And so, I was interested in like, I never wanna have the same texture for the whole song. Like somebody else, like if Philip brought glass himself had arranged it, he would’ve probably just like kept that machine going and done things to it.
But I more like the idea of it running off the cliff. Cuz, I think when you oftentimes in a song when you get through the end of the chorus and you go to the second verse, that’s where like the story is gonna evolve or shift or surprise you. And what if the music can do the same thing? So with that one and with and with Punisher.
I just had the idea of letting her voice be in the clear and kind of treating it like an art song and having like a, an evolving drone around it that moved like out of time but had a very specific arc to it and addition of notes that would kind of create this tension. And, and with, with Kyoto, I told her it’s like, I want this to play at your funeral.
I knew that the song started off as like a sad ballad and that they, that they did this juxtaposition with the upbeat, you know, which is brilliant for the album. Mm-hmm. But I thought like, let’s like, return it to kind of where it came from, but take it like farther.
Mairyn: Make it sadder.
Rob Moose: Yeah. Make it sadder because like it is, and she says, she says those things in such offhand ways about like, you know, gotta call on your birthday, like getting the, getting the kids’ birthday wrong and stuff. But, you know, You still tried basically, stuff like that. She just tosses that off and it’s very powerful.
But like if you really take, take time to think about that, it’s kind of devastating. So, it’s like, I don’t know, I just felt like with some of them I wanted to kind of pair them back. And with that one, I wanted to, I wanted to go full in and like make it just be really cathartic to listen to.
Mairyn: Yeah, I mean there are some great videos of the people at ERA’S tour when she dedicates it to the dads and all the dads are like, yeah, and they’re like, this one’s for the dads.
I’m like, that’s not what this, it’s making me laugh. But yeah, it’s just one of those songs where it’s like when you hear it in that context, that’s one. It’s the one that I think you took on the biggest shift. But I mean, it works so well just cuz it all the content is already there. You just kind of worked around it.
I would never have guessed that this was a 10-day project. I would’ve guessed like the-
Rob Moose: No it was four
Mairyn: four?
Rob Moose: Yeah, it was four days. I, they told me 10 days before.
Mairyn: Wow.
Rob Moose: And so, I did, I did like one night I would do one, and the next night I did another one. And then I took a day off.
And then I did it two more times. And the next morning I would just text her like a bounce of it with her old vocal. And I didn’t do them at the same tempos as the original song. So, I would like, I would like kind of edit her vocal to sort of fit. It sounded terrible.
And I would send it to her, and I’d be like, what do you think? And she’d be like, that’s great. Do another one. You know, it was incredible. She probably understood how insane it was for me, but also just was like, yeah, cool. Like, let’s keep going, you know? And, we didn’t change anything.
And then a few days later, she went in and re-sang all the vocals and then I had my friend Gabe play cello on each of them. Once I knew that it was kind of done and approved, just to add more richness to it. And then I. The mixer mixed it. And the whole thing happened like that.
That was, the first time for me to really have my name on something in that way as well. And producing it and being a big part of, the sound. I’m so happy that I, that I said yes. I don’t think anybody else in my situation would’ve even considered the possibility of doing it.
They would’ve been like, I’d love to do this, but I’m sorry. Do you know? And, and I wished that I had said that before I started. Cause how am I gonna do this? But that’s the great thing about an artistic career, I guess, you don’t know where your biggest pushes and inspirations will come from and, and things that seem impossible might be the most important things you do.
Mairyn: That’s so cool, especially with knowing that you did Wasted beforehand and knowing that you were working on the EP beforehand. That makes total sense. Listening to the music back-to-Back, I guess this is probably a good time to talk about Wasted which came out this past weekend. Great response from what I’ve been seeing online.
My very first thought when I listen to it is it reminds me thematically of last time I saw Richard by Joni Mitchell,
Rob Moose: oh,
Mairyn: But like in a more introspective way, if you can call something more introspective than the end of Blue. But this sense of melancholy is so overwhelming and I I’ve been loving it.
I’d love to hear what that process was like.
Rob Moose: Yeah, well it was, it was kind of similar, although it, it took place over a long period of time. Yeah, Phoebe, when I asked her, she had this song that, that I guess they had recorded it a couple of different times and, and it turns out that Marshall, wrote the song, and that I just found this out from her Instagram post, But like the first song that he ever showed her. I did like an Instagram live with him recently, and he, and he talked about showing her the song too. I think it was a kind of a character study maybe based on some people that he knew in his twenties around the scene in la of people trying to, you know, break into playing music and stuff.
I was really drawn to the story. I mean, it’s sort of bleak, but kind of something at the end. There’s a knowingness to it where I think that the character like even for all, the struggle that they’re going through kind of is able to see from the outside back at themselves and the people around them and what, what it looks like.
And there’s a sort of, maybe the sense that like, whatever’s been wasted or how time maybe hasn’t been. Maximize, that there, could be something beyond that for them. Mm-hmm. Like, I don’t, I don’t feel like it leaves you on a mm-hmm. It doesn’t, it doesn’t answer, and it doesn’t tell you where it’s going.
But there’s a sense that maybe there’s something beyond that. There’s a recognition of what they’ve been through. Yeah, it was like a three, a three or four-chord song, acoustic guitar. Like, and, I guess you can hear the recording online. I had no idea that anybody had ever heard the song before.
Cause nobody told me that. I just, and I just started kind of poking around with it. Um, like what, like how could I respond to the chorus? Could I create some kind of little thematic, little hook,
like these, little percolating things that you might hear in pop music, like, but done on strings in a sort of advanced technique kind of, kind of way? And then, and then put that in the intro, but thought, oh, let me put like all the wrong notes around it. So, you start off from a disorienting place where you have almost a sense of dread.
Mm-hmm. Like if you could hear musically what is maybe going on in that character’s head at different points, like their, sense of dislocation and, lack of contentment or whatever. That’s how, kind of how I wanted, to frame it. And then that there would be this, this, this drone coming in that would, and then again, like doing the bare minimum to give the vocal center stage and let it kind of walk us through where it wants to go.
Harmonically and melodically. And there’s these like little kind of false starts in the cello where like a note will swell or a little figure will happen, but then it just goes away. Like I think just trying to get into the headspace of somebody trying to make their way in the, in the creative world, but not, not being on sure footing and, going for stuff, but like, I.
Not landing really. I just, yeah, I didn’t, I don’t think I thought about this stuff consciously, but as I go back and listen to it now, that’s, I think that’s what I was trying to play with so that there is, there is a relationship between the words and the music, but it’s a little bit more abstract and.
And the hard thing about making that song was that I was recording to her voice, to her demo, and I basically, I just, it was like eqd it so that the guitar would mostly disappear, but it wasn’t recorded to click or anything. So it was kind of like a very emotional performance. It was all over the place.
I recorded myself saying like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, like to just give myself something to play to. But it was so hard. And so, I, the whole first section of the song is in that free time. And then when it arrives at verse two, I was like, this needs to change. So, I just like put it on a grid and, that’s where that dun dun dun, like the triplet string thing enters.
I love that though. I would never like want to do that again. Cause it was so hard to create around this like uncertain timing. But I think it gives this feeling of, of like something that’s very loose, like kind of clicking in and a sense of purpose to the song and the arrangement that I think is.
You know, it’s worthwhile. There’d be other ways to achieve that, but I like that. I, I went through that, I was working on it on a, on a retreat here at this house, on Orcas. And I got as far as that through that, those first sections. And, and I was kind of exhausted and I was like, I don’t know if any of this is good.
And then whenever I opened it again in New York, I was like, oh, this is cool. I should keep going. And so, I did it. I worked on it like periodically. I didn’t do it so differently than Copycat Killer, where it was like, here are your eight hours to make something. kept tinkering with it.
And then, that idea at the end, on the last verse of the Silver Lake Lounge, those percussive sounds are I asked my friend to kind of tap out a pattern on the cello, on the wood. And then I tuned the different notes and tried to make kind of like a talking drum and edited the rhythm
Something about having the percussion felt like a drum circle kind of vibe, and it just felt it was a nod to the idea of an open mic or something. I’d never been to the Silver Lake Lounge, but I just imagine it’s like local bands or people trying to get there and there’s probably some misguided ideas and I wanted to like, do something that felt rootsy like that,
but at the same time was like extremely like, manicured, you know?
Mairyn: Mm-hmm. Polished rootsy-ness
Rob Moose: Totally. So, I worked on it for an incredibly long time and then, and then thought the song was done, and then like a year later she ended up redoing the vocal again. And then Marshall got in there he’s singing the harmonies on it.
That song had a super long germination period, but it came out at the right time. I feel like, you know, I originally had hoped that it would come out before Copycat Killer, cuz I didn’t want it to seem like I took the idea from that project.
I think Copycat helped establish the sound of this type of thing a little bit more so that, I noticed it with Copycat Killer that some people were upset by the versions of the songs cuz they’re really attached to what was on Punisher. And some people said some really horrible mean things, and it’s okay.
I wanna make music that is bold, and that people have a strong reaction to. And I haven’t like, poked around on the internet as much, but what I’ve seen from people here is like, they’re just really excited to have a release of this song because it never really properly kind of came out. and it seems like people have been responding positively to it too, so I’m glad.
Mairyn: It makes so much sense that the beginning was not on a grid because it’s, got this great rumbly journey, and experience, and then you get there and suddenly the song really does click into place.
So, it makes sense that that’s how you put it together. With, all of these songs, were you given an already existing melody? Were you given that, or were some of them just lyrics, how did that come together?
Rob Moose: Yeah, most of them, they were songs that were kind of fairly, fully realized but, recorded in either in like in a demo or where the, the artist just ultimately didn’t feel like the version was right and they weren’t gonna put it out.
So with Britney’s, Sara’s, and Phoebe’s, I basically got those versions, either was able to isolate their vocal or asked them to, make a scratch vocal singing along to it so I could have something work with, and then just kind of tried to not listen to the original recording of it really at all because I didn’t wanna be chasing that idea and just tried to kind of.
Then work to the lyrics and the melody and, and think about a whole new structure. Obviously, the instrument choice was gonna be different, but I also really wanted to like to get outside of the kind of three-chord approach to the songs and, that at specific moments. But rather than that, be the basis of it, have that be the kind of contrast.
So in Wasted, there’s like multiple chord progressions for the chorus, even though the chorus is the same in the singing. I thought it would be interesting to reference what the chorus originally was, but then also do something incredibly different for the second chorus and like, stuff that you don’t typically hear in songs because the chorus is supposed to be kind of the same, getting bigger and bigger, but the same idea so that it’s really memorable. I really wanted to like challenge that notion with that song.
A couple of the tracks that I did that are coming out later, like the next one, the Bon Iver one, and the final one with Emily King happened a little bit differently. The Emily King one is, an instrumental piece of music I composed on guitar and piano sent to her.
She wrote a song over it, and then I removed all my stuff and changed it. And the Bon Iver one having a little bit more of a back and forth like he had, he had most of it, but I kind of helped create this other section that happens a couple of times and threw some lyric ideas at him and stuff.
It’s kind of evolved and I think, as a next step, if I get the opportunity, I would love to try to make entire pieces of instrumental music first on the strings even and have them be bold and weird and adventurous and see if people can write to it. It might be too hard, but I think, again, changing the order would like to yield a different interesting result.
Mairyn: The people who you’re working with, I feel like they might be up to that type of challenge. And I’d love to see how that would play out. That sounds fascinating.
Rob Moose:
Yeah. it’s like what I, what I was attracted to in this process, was being able to, to push and pull against a defined melody and set of words in a story so that if I change the chord progression in a chorus, it’s like a double meaning. It’s gonna enhance, the words in a certain way.
And it’s easy to do that when the, when the melody is already there, you can be like, well, actually this chord could work under, or this chord, and what I think would be harder from a writing perspective would be if you have unconventional chords, like rich, kind of surprising chord progression to write on top of that.
But to, to maybe try to find something simple where it would, you would still feel that tension because like, I don’t want it to sound like Prague or something, you know, I don’t want it to be like, oh, he went to that coordinate. And then, if the vocal is following those, adventurous moves, more literally it might be a little annoying.
So, I do think, yeah, I think like casting wise, it would be interesting to pair the piece of music with the person and that would be able to succeed, you know, in doing that or, so we’ll see. I really love that tension. That’s what, that’s what’s attractive to me about it, is being able to like, really surprise somebody with this chord and make that lyrical moment land in a different way.
Mairyn: So, when you’re going into working with, let’s just say you’re working with Taylor Swift. Are you thinking about the single piece of like, what you’re hearing or do you kind of consider the whole grand scheme of someone’s catalog? Or are you just trying to do what you think is best for the song?
Rob Moose: No I] don’t consider, no. I get really zoomed in and if I’m not that familiar with the person’s work, I don’t go get more familiar with it because I think what, what I’m really trying to do is like capture a first impression and so I’m really superstitious if I don’t, if somebody doesn’t make me, like, have a conversation with them about what I’m going to do or what they want to do, if they’re real, just like open to just seeing what the process will be.
I like won’t listen to the song until I’m in, in the studio in front of the microphones so that I can be like listening for the first time and singing along, like whatever idea comes out and then capturing it all right away. Because I think the more you sit and think about something the more, it can be harder to just get an idea, you know,
Mairyn: yeah.
Rob Moose: You can like, know the song really well. You can become a fan of the song. You can love it. You can, you can just be admiring the production of what’s already there and you might, you might kind of write yourself out of the picture. Which is cool, like, you know, maybe you’re not supposed to be there.
But I really find that, that if I can get in there and, get running with it right away, I’ll get so much farther. And if I can’t do that, if I need to have a series of conversations about it or for some reason, if it’s something I’ve heard at different stages, it’s just going to take me longer to get the first idea.
So, I’m a, I’m a real believer in trying to keep it fresh and not thinking about what somebody has done before. Like what were the strings like on their last record, I wanna do something different. I’m just trying to respond to that particular song and how it’s hitting me at that moment.
I’m doing it all for the song. Like, I’m not trying to showcase myself or anything. Something that comes up sometimes that’s difficult for me is when people are like, I love the strings you did on some Phoebe Bridger song or some Bon Iver song and like, love something like that and this and, I just can’t do that for somebody else because the, you know, the relationship with the artists and their music is what is dictating what I’m creating, you know, I mean, there are, there are things in common that you’ll hear from, from my work, like across the board probably. But I can’t fake a Bon Iver string arrangement for somebody else. That’s why I have a hard time predicting what I will do. I just like to go in there and try and try to make something that I’m gonna be incredibly excited about and share it and take the risk that somebody could hear it and be like, no, try again.
You know, which is heartbreaking, but then you try it again.
Mairyn: That’s fascinating. Have you ever had one where you just heard it, and it felt too precious or it felt like you couldn’t replicate something on it? Have you ever had to turn something down because it felt so, like, so specific?
Rob Moose: Yeah, sometimes I think the biggest challenge for me is just feeling like the track is too filled up already. People aren’t comfortable generally listening to stuff in a partially completed state. I mean, we have the tools at our disposal to like to produce stuff out in our bedrooms on our phones and it’s so rare that somebody says to me like, I’ve got this song, I want you on it.
And like, we’ve kept a lot of room for you because we know you’re gonna bring all this stuff to it. It’s usually like, I’ve got things in that feels like what the strings could feel like, and, and, and I’m like, are you gonna take those things out? Like, or am I meant to coexist with that? Do you know?
Usually, I can find places up high where stuff hasn’t been put in yet. And that’s, I think why I gravitated toward artificial harmonics and stuff. And in the first place was cuz I felt like there’s a space above the vocal and above the guitars that, that is, is less occupied in that.
If you can play in a spooky and kind of more intimate way, it won’t be annoying and melodramatic. But that’s sometimes the biggest challenge for me in choosing whether to work on a song is like, is there room for me? And the other thing I think would be, does the artist or producer have so specific of an idea or reference in mind that there’s not gonna be like, room for me creatively?
Not really sonically, but like, people will be like, I love, this Beck track, or this Bjork track or this, uh, the verve what’s the bittersweet symphony? Like, you got these references that you hear time and again,
Mairyn: it’s like that’s every string.
Rob Moose: Yeah. And like those, these things are great, but like, cool. Is that like the basis for a new idea or is it like you really want something that’s like quite close to that? Or have they already even temped in some strings and I’m, I’m just meant to play that and like I can do all those things, but I think is it the best use of, me and, and what I could be contributing?
Like, or should you just be finding somebody else to do that? That’s the stuff that I think mostly I’m wondering about in terms of whether, whether or not, to do it. Besides, do I love it? Or you know,
Mairyn: are you interested?
Rob Moose: Am I interested? Yeah.
Mairyn: Are you at a point right now where you feel like you kind of have the people you’re working with? Do you feel like you kind of know who you wanna be working with or are you still finding new people every day that you are interested in working with?
Rob Moose: Oh man. Yeah. I hope, finding new communities never. Never ceases, you know, it’s like, gets so much energy, and new ideas, from working with, new generations, of people. I, I feel like I’ve been, I’ve been taught so much, by different, groups, and artists I’ve worked with, and I get the chance to remain relevant or participate in what is zeitgeisty and interesting about music.
Like, the first group I worked with for years and years and Anohni and the Johnsons I think of that as like my music school education, beyond the schooling that I did. and then like Bon Iver that was when I really started doing strings on records for the first time.
And then Phoebe it’s interesting cuz all these artists are on the secretly Canadian group. I don’t know who the next people will be that I would be like very closely identified with, but there are people I’ve been working with lately who I feel like, oh like, you’re part of the next wave of, you know, like Lizzie Mc Alpine or Victoria Canal or, you know, like all these kids on major labels or not labels, who are like very, are really good, very adventurous.
They might be like huge fans of some of these other people that I’ve worked with. But they’re getting like big in their own right and I just feel like, continuing to be a part of that. Rather than sort of closing yourself off and saying like, this is what I do. I’ve always been interested in, what will the overlap between like my aesthetic and this person’s aesthetic sound like, and whether can I do something that I’m proud of that works for them.
And like, wouldn’t that be neat if it worked out? And so, you know, working in with pop artists too, like there can be more restrictions and, you know, you might have to take a more understated approach, but people tend to respond to bold ideas. And I think, I’m always on the hunt for like new exciting people to work with and just getting a track that, that like blows my mind is, such a privilege.
There’ll be a few tracks each year where I’m just like, this is my favorite thing. I can’t wait for them to come out. I’m gonna listen to it over and over again. I like a lot, most of what I, work on, but some of them are just so right there in my heart, like this record came out recently, Ryan Beatty, I think it’s called Calico.
I played on every song. I just loved that music, and I would listen to the rough mixes of it. In the time between working on it when it came out, and he was somebody, I, I had never heard of that, that Ethan Rosco, you know, was producing a record and brought me in to, to work on.
And so, I feel like there are these great discoveries around the corner all the time, and I, I would, I would never put walls up around myself. And I also really wanna be able to, like, in certain circumstances, give the gift of what I do to like, it’s such a special thing for people I think, to have strings for the first time.
And so, I don’t wanna be cynical about it and I realize like the sort of value and, power of it. Not like my thing, but just strings themselves. I wanna stay on the ground and keep doing it. I love what I do.
Mairyn: That’s so cool cuz I think a lot of people could be like, all right, I did this much Bon Iver, I can keep doing this for the rest of forever.
Because you’ve worked on so many things that feel like such important touchstones, it’s great to have this continuing relationship with the music.
Bigger scale. I think something that’s really fantastic is you, do you work so much within like large-scale pop music?
I don’t mean like pop music, like pop music, but, you know, large scale popular contemporary music. As somebody who is clearly so knowledgeable about music theory and all of these things. What drew you in the beginning to start working so much in this area?
Rob Moose: Yeah. I, I feel like I always grew up, with that music, whatever that was at the time.
Like as a, just a kid, like listening to the radio or, buying. The CDs and stuff of, of the bands that, that I loved. I started playing piano at age five and violin at age six, and all my grandparents were musicians, so music was like a big part of my life. And I was trained classically, but I was never like, exclusively listening to classical music.
Like, I loved it. I thought it was so cool and, so powerful. But I also just loved like guitar and drums, but it seemed a world away to me. Like, I could listen to it, I could consume it and like participate in it in some way, but I didn’t understand how could I play that type of music?
Because most of the time, there weren’t instruments that I played in that music, you know, like, I think there are some exceptions, but I, I don’t know if I was really aware at the time of like the role of strings and more popular music, I was like the kid in orchestra who would, be like plucking out Nirvana songs on a break and trying to figure out like, how those things worked.
I remember the first time I ever played a guitar was at a music camp and I was 15 and somebody had like a Les Paul there and I was really into Guns N Roses, which is kind of whatever amazing,
Mairyn: I mean, you were 15. That’s awesome.
Rob Moose: Yeah. I remember sitting there and figuring out like guitars tuned in fourth and the violins tuned in fifth.
So, it like, feels like a whole different beast. I remember sitting there and just being like, if this is a fourth, that means in order to play this note, it’ll be here. Figuring out one of their songs and just thinking like it was the coolest thing in the world. And a couple of years later getting a guitar.
So for me, it was always like kind of separate and I thought, you need to play this instrument to play this type of music. And so, I got really into guitar and played in bands and stuff. And the early touring I did was kind of equally guitar and violin, and I’m really glad that I developed that skillset.
But it took me a long time to realize that I could apply my classical training and use my, use the instrument that I really knew how to play in this world. And, I feel lucky that in, , in New York City, after I graduated from school, there were a number of groups and artists who were kind of interested in bringing classical music, chamber music, whatever, into like the indie rock scene.
So, I was, I was working with Anohni and the Johnsons, which is a group that was big, in terms of that, overlap. And I played on the Sufjan Stevens, Illinois album, through a friend when I was just out of college and then that led to me meeting The National, and The National led to Bon Iver, but all these groups were doing projects where whether it would just be for special shows.
They would, they would have strings or woodwinds or brass or whatever. And, I just felt like, oh, I’m finally kind of in the place where I always. Was interested in being, but I didn’t know how it would be possible. It’s like I’m playing this instrument that I love that I studied, but I’m getting to do it in the context of like, songs.
And, it wasn’t to me about like what genre it was or not, but it was really like working with songs and performing in less conventional spaces. You know, performing, amplified, performing for people who were like screaming and excited and drinking and like, you know, lining up outside hours before to be there.
I got to sort of perform in the context in which I had always been a fan. So, I think. Playing on more pop records, just like just a natural extension of that. I sort of found my way into that general world in, New York in the mid two thousand. And then very naturally, the kinds of records I’ve gotten to play on have evolved a little bit.
And like in some cases it’s just as simple as like Aaron Dessner from the National who I met in like 2007 is now producing people like Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran and he’s like, Hey, can you do this thing? And I’m like, yes. And in other cases, it’s like, you know, maybe it’s through pop artists, and producers, love Bon Iver, love Phoebe Bridgers.
That’s like a super referenced and appreciated sound, all these few years later. So, playing on the Miley Cyrus song Flowers, that kind of came about because like those producers like loved Bon Iver and I met them through a friend, a lot of people tried to produce that song and
they got the sense from the label that like strings would be really helpful. And so, they brought it to me and we figured out the strings and then they got the project and like, you know, it’s like, I guess it’s through relationships, but it also is reflective of my upbringing and the way that I always listen to music and makes sense to me.
That I am, that I am where I am. Yeah. But I couldn’t have imagined it.
Mairyn: that’s amazing cuz that whole connectivity of like, well this sounds like this, he likes this, he likes this. It makes so much sense to me, like in the timeline of two thousands to now music that it started with Sufjan Stevens, Come and Feel The Illinoise.
Just because that’s such a definitive strings album for me. Such a definitive album for me,
right. I mean, yeah.
Rob Moose: Yeah. He’s a, he’s incredible.
Mairyn: you don’t even need to talk about it. I don’t even need to say how great it is cuz I would just be repeating the thing that everyone’s been talking about for like, 10 years.
, that’s so fascinating, that collaboration and that reflection that you’ve gotten to be a part of through like every inch of this process are so cool. You also are doing, you just have the y music, come out. That’s a lot more, I don’t know how I would define it.
It’s instrumental mostly with some background vocals. It’s a lot farther away from what you’re doing. I think it’s fascinating that you have flowers and then you also have this y music collective coming out at the same time. I think that that’s fantastic. Um, yeah. How long have you been playing with those guys?
What’s that like?, bringing that
all together?
Rob Moose: Yeah, that’s a totally related thing to the story I was just telling. The group formed in 2008 and a number of us were kinda young adults in New York City having just graduated from Music Conservatory, trying to figure out what we were all gonna do, and trying to pay our rent and stuff. We all did a combination of freelance classical gigs and, would find ourselves on stage with bands and singers here and there. For a few years we were doing these types of shows with Sufjan and The National and, sometimes it would be like an orchestra.
Sometimes it would just be like four or six people. There were those of us who were really into that. And then there were some people who would inevitably be on stage who were just like, this is a gig. Like whatever. It’s just a band. It doesn’t matter. Nobody can hear us. There was a range of attitudes and sort of integrity around it.
And for those of us who really cared about it, we just felt like that was frustrating and unnecessary. And we thought what if we could form a group that would specialize in this? Because we really believe in what these people are doing and think they deserve, like the best players and people who just care about it the most.
So originally the group was formed to be like a supportive auxiliary unit for bands and songwriters, and we didn’t intend to play music on our own and we chose the instrumentation is based on specific people. Like, we were thinking about who we know in the scene that would be into this and would do a great job.
And we happened upon an instrumentation that works. But nobody had ever used, used it before. And it’s, you know, it’s three string players, violin, viola cello, two woodwinds, flute and clarinet, and trumpet. And you know, normally if you’re gonna have a trumpet, you’re probably gonna have like 50 people on stage or just all brass or something.
So, it’s unconventional to have that kind of mixed instrumentation. And there was no music that existed for it, but we started telling people what we were doing and people wanted to write music for the group. And so, kind of before we really. Got to do much collaborative stuff. We ended up getting some concert music and playing some concerts, recording it.
And we made a few albums that, that way where just each piece would be written by a different person and there’d be some people from the classical world and some people from the songwriter world. Then we started doing more collaborative stuff. We just had our 15th anniversary. we’ve worked with like all kinds of different people along the way in the more indie world.
And then we were on Paul Simon’s farewell tour, I can’t even remember all the things we’ve done, but,
Mairyn: a lot of things.
Rob Moose: But one thing we hadn’t done until recently was write music together, cuz we were always commissioning music from people, and we didn’t think of ourselves as writers.
And, and the bands that we would work with would be like, why don’t you guys write your own music? Cuz that’s what they all do. And eventually we just decided to try it. And it was right before the pandemic. We just got together for some days and just tried writing in a room, not in a typical way that that chamber music would be written, but we didn’t use notation.
We didn’t come in with preexisting ideas. We didn’t sort of start something and then have somebody go and finish it. It was just all done collectively. We would voice memo the ideas. We would just sort of snoop around like, what does it sound like when this person’s warming up?
What’s that sound? That’s cool. Let’s build something off of that. Making this record was a really, really challenging and rewarding process for us of like exploring a whole new way, to create. And then we ended up recording it remotely since we were all separated and, and we just kind of like passed things around and some of the tracks.
Were initiated remotely. A lot of them were started in person and then we would finish, and we would like have weekly zooms and listen to the stuff. It’s a, a thrill to get to play that music alongside, these great pieces that we’ve commissioned over the years. We did a Carnegie Hall show in January where the whole first half was, was our music in the second half was two premieres from like amazing composers.
So just to be kind of in the conversation after being a champion for other people’s work is, is exciting and, yeah, hopefully just gives us a whole other set of things to explore in years to come.
Mairyn: I was listening to it while studying for finals, which was very interesting because the wolves were coming on and I was like, suddenly everything is very intense. I’ve gotta write this paper.
Rob Moose: It’s high stakes.
Mairyn: So cool. I love the music, but I was like, wow, I can’t study to this. Which is a great compliment because it was, Far too cool for me to be studying too. I was like, this is way too exciting.
But I think that it’s so interesting to hear what you guys all are doing together. It feels so clearly collective and the team spirit of it all is so evident in the music that you’re making. And I think you can tell that you guys have been not working directly on it for 15 years but working together for 15 years.
I think that feels so clear. Did you mean to kind of have them all come out at the same time?
Rob Moose: No, no. It’s, yeah, it’s so odd. There were so many different moments where I thought this would be a convenient time, for my EP to start coming out because this thing happened or this thing.
I remember Phoebe got nominated for like four Grammys and then didn’t win any of them.
Mairyn: Boo
Rob Moose: And I just thought like, what if she wins? could our track come out after that? Nothing kind of worked out the way I expected but then in terms of the ep, it starting to come out on the back of like Flowers.
Like playing on Eds album and playing some shows with him and doing some of the higher profile work. And then it overlapping, with Y music as well, like my, these two like in intensely personal things. Like the fact that Ed’s album and why Music’s album came out on the same day.
Mairyn: Yeah. The same day!
Rob Moose: And like, I didn’t have a track come out that day, but Phoebe came out the next week and like, it’s honestly, it’s reflective of what the experience of making the music is like because I think one of the best things about what I get to do is that I have different songs coming to me all the time.
One day I might be working on something for a pop artist and the next day it might be like a really sad, long experimental, you know, it doesn’t follow any kind of predictable order. So, the fact that all of these things are coming out around the same time, is accurate, in a
way.
Mairyn: You really are on fire right now. It’s like back to back to back. I was over at a friend’s house and the Ed shearing documentary came on Disney Plus (Apple TV) and I was like, wait. that’s the guy I have the interview with. And everyone was like, what are you talking about?
I’m like, no, I I’m talking to this guy. I’m like, A week. I know. I was like, I recognize this face. So, it’s just crazy
Rob Moose: Was, I in the documentary?
Mairyn: I forget what streaming service it is, but you’re on a documentary. You were behind Ed Sheeran and playing because they turned on some video, him playing background.
Rob Moose: Oh, he’s, he’s amazing. It was so great getting to meet him and work with him. Such a generous and kind and like he’s just an incredible performer and like super consistent, and very easygoing. Like anything you could hope for, especially somebody at that degree of fame and success just, just Awesome.
Mairyn: Was that a record that you were able to work more in room or is that another.
Rob Moose:
No. Not at all. Yeah, completely virtual. Not even with the producer, they were doing a high volume of tracks and I would just, I would get like four at a time. It is the same sense of urgency that I felt with Copycat Killer, where I was like, dude, this is like a big thing, and this is like a new uncharted territory.
And like they’re sending me songs, I got to get ’em back to them, by like tomorrow. So we were actually rehearsing and. Touring with Y Music, I was away from my family for like, the first time for like 10 days. we were doing these like six, seven-hour rehearsals, and in the morning before and the night after the rehearsals, I was like recording Ed Sheeran songs at, at home. At my studio and sending ’em back I would do four and then I’d get two more and I was, I was just like, trying to get the momentum going. It was so fun and, didn’t really have a sense of like where it was going or when it would come out or, what it would ultimately, how it would be packaged.
That it would become subtract, you know? I thought it was kind of like more of a diversion for him., it was beautiful to get the chance to actually get together and play with some of the people who were on the record, and other, close colleagues of ours and get to do it these intimate shows for him, like he was, the, the songs are so personal for him and to see him presenting them to the public for the first time and as he described it kind of.
Handing over the stories to everybody else to kind of make their own. They’re about real events in his life that are really sad and really challenging. He, he broke down sometimes in the middle of the songs, like just, it was just so, so raw. Like, so it was credible to be a part of that.
Mairyn: Yeah, I mean, it’s a, it’s incredibly personal album and I’m really excited to continue to see how that plays out. With everything coming out, all I’ve heard has been really great. So, with, you’re doing a lot of things while you’re touring, it seems like you’ve had that combo. Do you think that we’re moving towards a place again where it’s gonna be just a bunch of musicians in a room, or do you think we’ve kind of moved past that as an industry?
Rob Moose: Yeah, I think it’s definitely a combination now. Like people, people work in, in a variety of ways. I’ve found over the years that even way, way before the pandemic and stuff, but just once I started recording myself, people. I thought I was just gonna do it at home to like to make a demo or give a representation of what I would do.
But people really just valued like, oh, the strings got made, and like we were able to keep working on this other thing that day. And so I think some things are, it’s great for like efficiency to be able to, to do them or say somebody as a singer is like really, really prefers to do their vocals by themselves.
They can take the stuff home and finish it. Or you can have the opportunity to, conceptualize and document and flesh out an idea without somebody hearing the process and judging it. Which I think can be valuable for taking a big swing. For me it really is. Cuz if somebody was like watching me do what I’m doing and saying, I don’t know about that note, and I’m thinking you don’t, you don’t understand like how I’m going to situate that note because I haven’t played all the voices yet cuz I’m doing it by myself.
I think there’s a benefit to allowing that kind of like remote work to flourish. But I think there are some parts of the, of the, of the record making process that just like, have to happen together or are just better together. I think we’ll probably like land on something that is a combination that’s different for different people, but that, maximizes like all the, all the benefits of the different approaches.
I think there are things that we all learned from isolation that, \ we shouldn’t just throw out because we don’t need to do them. For the y Music album that we, we made completely remotely, we would’ve preferred to get the chance to go into the room and play and play it down together.
Maybe next time we do something like that. We’ll start some of the writing together, finish it separately, and then maybe get together, and record it. Like just use all of the parts of the process, for the greater good, I guess.
Mairyn: As you’re touring with the music that you’ve made, in the small scale, like with this y music stuff, do you ever have these moments of like, oh, here’s something I wish I could have, add, or go back with as you’re playing it in front of audiences?
Rob Moose: Yeah. Yeah. We still change the stuff.
We’ve always been like that. We’ve even been like that with other people’s pieces. Like we’re very involved and editorial one of the tracks, we figured something out about it after the album was mastered, and then now that’s the way we play it. And it will be funny, like the next time I listen to a recording, I’ll be like, where’s that part?
Do you know? I think it’s always like that for people. But at the same time, it’s great to freeze the music at some point because otherwise, you would just tinker with it endlessly. I’ve seen people do that with their records where, they were so close to it and they always just felt like there was something more, and, and sometimes it just gets worse.
And like, if there’s nobody else at the helm who can really give you that perspective and tell you can really get in your own way. So, I think it’s great for it to be separate and to continue to have a life, beyond just what the recording is. Like. If, if you are just replicating your recording in a live performance, you’re probably not gonna enjoy playing it for very long.
Mairyn: I mean that’s definitely true. Coming from the art world. Like the moment it’s on a wall, you realize everything you could have done. It’s like, well, but it’s done. You have to just step back at some point, it’s the way it is with all art. I another question about like touring as you’re playing music, do you find that that’s like helpful?
Like, is it generative for you with the other work that you’re doing? Help you come up with ideas? Was it hard not playing music for people while trying to think of everything? Or was it kind of nice to have that break?
Rob Moose: I think I found the repetition of live performance to be, what’s the right way to say it?
Like, because sometimes promoting something, the repetition involved in it, is not in and of itself inspiring. I think it almost creates a demand, a desire, and a need to make something else at the same time. So, like what I was saying with, the Bareilles track making that during the Paul Simon tour, we were like playing the same show every night.
And I just felt like I’m not getting to use this other part of myself. I think it’s great to like get the feedback of the people and, and, have a sense of how music can land and connects. But, I don’t know that the two things are directly related for me, or at least that I’m aware of it, I think.
But I do think like going into one mode makes you miss the other mode more and, and that is good.
Mairyn: Yeah. That’s, that makes sense.
Rob Moose: Uh, longing for creativity, you know? For, for creation rather, I should say. .
Mairyn: I definitely can understand that. Do you think you’re gonna have a chance to get to, is the EP itself wasted?
I keep wanting to call it wasted.
Rob Moose: It’s called Fluorescence.
Mairyn: Inflorescence. Thank you. With, Inflorescence being all these big artists in different places, what are you thinking as far as like live performances? Do you wanna be able to take it some places? What, what’s the goal there as far as performance?
Rob Moose: I don’t know if it’ll ever happen. I think maybe there would be circumstances in which, like, one of the artists might be doing a show with an orchestra or something, and maybe there’d be an opportunity, to arrange it for that moment. But I don’t know that I, I’m gonna be able to like, pull off the incredible scheduling and favor feat of like getting all those people and being able to do it.
But I do think it’s given me a sense that for the next project I do, it would be great to, to work collaboratively in that way, but maybe with like one or two people and do like a larger, more thematically connected, piece of music that, that could have even just a small performance life. Even if it’s just with.
Some at some festival in Europe or something. Yeah. Where there are like more resources to do that. it would be fascinating to see how it would translate because I come up with the ideas myself and record them all. And then, the minute you put it to different people to play it, it’s already gonna have kind of a different inflection.
And so designing something that could not just work that way but also would benefit from that, would be interesting. And then also figuring out what role I could play in the performance. Whether it would just be one of the people playing or somehow doing something different, leading it, I don’t really know, but I think this one is probably just gonna exist in its, recorded form as far as I can tell.
Mairyn: Is that your next focus as you have like a next big goal? Is it an album? Is it a. Live performance? Like, what’s your next peak, if I can ask that?
Rob Moose: Yeah. No, I don’t, I don’t like totally knowing the answer, when I started making these things and discovered this process, I felt like I had kind of hit upon my life’s work.
I felt like this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and the most rewarding, and I would love to do hundreds of these. There were other people that I asked that gave me songs that, I could still keep making more of them and some of them would be really intriguing ones to make.
I’ve thought about like, maybe approaching somebody’s catalog, Burt Bacharach or Donny Hathaway. Those are a couple people I thought of where it’s like, I just love the music so much.
Mairyn: Oh, that’d be fascinating.
Rob Moose: Yeah. It’d be cool to do a project that really like dove into someone’s work, but then took it in, in all these.
Places. There’s this organization, red Hot, that does these compilation albums that, they’re often based around somebody’s working that way. I’ve done some stuff with them. Yeah, like kind of maybe be taking it in more of like a music director kind of position rather than like, I am the artist or something.
I don’t really know. I know that I want to keep going and I also want to. As I said, like maybe flip the order where I make a piece of music and bring it in and try to start with that. I also want to having now like, sort of prove this point to myself that you can do it with just strings and voice.
I’m curious to see what it would be like if you start there, but then if you let some of the other elements, like back in, try to kind of find a hybrid that’s like, you know, like some of the stuff that Bjork did a million years ago on, like on a jet. I think that’s so cool. I think, even bring my stuff in and be like using it in writing sessions with people to generate new work.
Like instead of it has to be just the end result, maybe seeing what happens if it goes at the beginning. I don’t know. I think it’ll be a process of discovery. I think for this, this moment I’m trying to just like, enjoy the release of it as I, as I am currently working on other types of things, but I, I hope there’s a lot more of it in my future, because like I said, it was just so engaging.
And I think it’s a, you know, it’s yielded some kind of unique result for, for better or worse. It’s like, I haven’t heard something exactly like it before, so there’s gotta be more to explore there.
Mairyn: Yeah, I mean, I can’t wait to hear it. I hope, there’s more and I can’t wait to hear the rest of the ep. So excited to hear it all coming out. So, when’s the next one? When’s the next release?
Rob Moose: I think June 9th is the Bon Iver one, and July 14 is Sara Bareilles. And August 11th is the whole EP with the Emily King song and I’m working on music videos for all of them. So hopefully that will continue for the rollout. And so there’s gonna be music video for each? Yes, I think so. We’re, yeah. It’s, things are in process, so Fingers crossed it all works.
Mairyn: I’m so excited to hear everything. It’s gonna be great. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. This has been fantastic.
Rob Moose: Yeah, thank you. Great questions. And it’s nice to talk to somebody who is aware of, uh, what I’m doing and what I’ve done. Sometimes I do these and that it’s like somebody just made somebody talk to me and they’re like, they don’t know really that much, and which is fine.
I don’t, I don’t expect people to make it more rewarding to you know, feel like we we’re on the same page.
