URANIA

Unfortunately, the core of the group (George Hagegeorge and Ric Nigel) had a falling out not long ago, leaving George to carry on under the new name Urania. I will let him explain just what happened...

Let’s begin with the changes that have taken place in the band since the Regeneration remix CD was released last year.
GEORGE HAGEGEORGE: After the release of Regeneration, Ric and I had been talking about doing some new material for UTN, but then he shortly came back to me and said he was dissatisfied with the status of Under The Noise, as far as popularity. He said we weren’t getting famous enough fast enough, quote unquote. And I was kind of bewildered by that and he said that he just didn’t want to get involved in another project with me and he’d rather just take some money and buy equipment for himself and we just never talked again.

I started working on “Aquarius,” the cover song that we’re doing. in December, and the rest of the new material in January. And the name has been changed to Urania for my part, for what I’m doing. I don’t know if he’s doing anything or not with music, but I don’t think you’ll ever hear anything from Under The Noise again.

Was it kind of out of the blue, Ric deciding to leave?
GH: No, I guess it was kind of building, in various ways, previous to that. But at one point, I guess it had degenerated on a personal level for him. My intentions were to make another record with him.

How did you come up with the name Urania for the band?
GH: Uh, well, good question... (laughs) It is one of the nine muses in the Greek pantheon of gods. There is an asteroid called Urania, which is exactly conjunct my sun astrologically, and so it was a prime choice for me because it is part of my identity, creatively.

So it’s a little more suited for the project being solely you?
GH: Yeah, this project is a much more personal project for me, because there is no personal dynamic between me and Ric. We used to talk about stuff and he would write lyrics and I would come up with music. Now there’s no talking, I just make the music and lyrics.

The UTN sound was always very dense and complex. How does the Urania material compare to that?
GH: This first batch of material is kind of stripped down. There’s not as much textural composition, you know what I mean? I am not making the songs out of textures now, I’m making them out of more traditional constructions. Less elements. A lot of the sequenced tracks are only made up of like ten or twelve parts, instead of 36. So it’s just more direct, straight-forward, recognizable parts. There’s not as much interweaving of elements, yet it’s very melodic and listenable. This is kind of the direction I wanted to go in anyway. We had talked about stripping down the sound and even getting into some rootsy influences, like reggae, and so I think that kind of influenced the sound a bit.

So you are handling all of the music and lyrics yourself now?
GH: Yeah, and I’m doing all the vocals with Melissa (Sharlat).

I was curious if she was going to contribute anything.
GH: Oh yeah, she’s still involved, but she’s not involved with the writing. With UTN, I was writing the music and occasionally I would write the vocal parts, like I wrote the chorus for “Sun.” But I’ve never been involved with any singing or lyric-writing myself in all the years I’ve been making music, so it’s a new experience for me. It’s been working out really well. I usually get the music started and then, while I’m listening to the music, I write the words and formulate the way that I want to sing it after the words are written. Then put the vocals down.

And I’m not using tape anymore, I’m doing all this to hard-drive. So it’s really easy for me to put the parts in and then put them into the part of the song that they fit the best. I don’t have to think in a linear or orderly manner too much. When I pen the words, they’re usually in some sort of lyrical flow, but then when I find the chorus, it’s often later once I’ve put it in the right spot.

Could you give me some insight into some of the lyrics from UTN, specifically “Lie” and “Sun?”
GH: Well, “Sun” started out as a musical idea and I told Ric what the chorus would be and played him the song at the same time. I watched him just grab a pen and scratch out the verses and we cut it. It took no time, like maybe an hour.

“Lie” was the last song we did for Of Generation and Corruption and that was laid out in the model of an astrological wheel, using themes from the different houses for the songs, starting at Capricorn (or the tenth house) and taking themes all the way around. When we got to “Lie,” I said this one will be about relationships and he said, ‘Okay,’ and when he came back the next time, he had written the song. There was a lot of that kind of stuff where I would just suggest key words or themes and he would come back with lyrics.

What kind of lyrical ground are you covering with the new material?
GH: I’m working on an album called Initiation, which is self-explanatory. We all go through initiations at various times in life and the main theme of the record is about that. It’s the first record for me, personally, in a lot of ways, so it’s quite suitable from an inward direction outward, as far as the expression. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and personal discovery and just not being involved with a lot of society and things going on. So, the record is a very personal slice. It’s a cross-section of something bigger and a lot of the words reflect into things that aren’t stated in the obvious sense. There’s a lot written between the lines, no question about that, it’s been evident since the time I started writing the stuff. It’s all spiritual and personal for the most part. It may not look that way, but it is. “Aquarius” is obviously about the collective, but a lot of the other material is -- it’s universal stuff. We all experience these things individually, but in a common realm, and that’s where a lot of this is focused. A lot of it is focused on magical constructs, like the Tree of Life and stuff like that. Contemplations resulting in words.

Is your deal with COP still good for the upcoming Urania release?
GH: Yeah. I called Christian and said I’m changing the name and he was like, ‘Well...’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I thought about it for a couple of days and I don’t really identify with the Under The Noise concept anymore and I want to move on.’ And he was like, ‘That’s cool.’ Change is essential. Static living is certainly not progress and I’m not worried about leaving the name behind.

The cover art on the UTN releases in the past has been very diverse. Who was responsible for it and how involved were you with it?
GH: Usually I have some visual ideas that I suggest to Brian Roper (from Pygmy Children) or Cheryl Fair. We either start taking photographs or collecting images somehow and then Brian will layer them together and present a, usually very complete, mock-up. He lives nearby, so we just go over and look at the stuff. We don’t do it over the internet or anything. Now for this newest record, for Urania, it is being done by Cheryl Fair with ideas that I shared with her. They’re really basic, like logo images, and we sent those to COP and they’re going to send back ideas and we’ll work it out with them across the ‘net, until it’s finalized. BTW, the new album is six tracks, about 28 minutes long.

Do you have a release date for that yet?
GH: It’ll be in the Spring, not sure the actual date.

I notice you did a video for “13th Tribe” and I was wondering how important the visual element is to your work?
GH: I feel that, musically, there is a lot offered to create visual images for the listener without any film or video representation. “13th Tribe” was sort of like a practical adaptation of what we could do with the song. That’s kind of a dancey song or something to jump around to, so we went with that. I think some of the other music is a little more cerebral or vision-oriented and I think the listener could really benefit by just closing his eyes and seeing what happens.

Now, with OGAC, it’s like that because you have like an hour to let the record go where it will. The new record is shorter and more direct, it’s not a lot of exploration. It was something that I wanted to do with OGAC that we didn’t plan and I’ve done that, so I don’t really want to go in that direction for a while. I do want to get into doing some longer pieces, maybe even like CDs that are just one piece. Instead of having a bunch of different compositions on one recording, just do a long recording and let it go where it will. But I’m not quite to that point yet...I’d have to clear my whole hard-drive...(laughs) I’m just not ready to make that presentation right now, I have to formulate it a little more first.

You’ve done a lot of remix work and I was wondering if you could take me through the process of doing one.
GH: They send a DAT that usually has a mix of the song, in its original state, and the vocals and all the rest of the instruments separated in mono or stereo parts, consecutively. Then I just sample the parts that I want to take. Sometimes, I’ll sample just about everything, just to have it on the sampler or on the hard-drive so I can call it up if I need it. Other times, I’ll just decide, ‘This will be in and this part will not.’ Then I’ll just start playing with the parts, putting them together with beats, old beats or new beats or parts of the mix that they sent sometimes. I’ll just work on a couple of different grooves and eventually one will be more apparent as an introduction or a chorus and I’ll just splice the canvas into shape and continue to re-work the ideas. A lot of times, I like to shift the tracks just by odd amounts, dotted triplets or whatever so that they appear in weird places and then I’ll throw another dotted delay on top of that so that it lands back in the beat. That’s where the remix inspiration comes from, trying to make things appear in a new phase from where they were originally put in.

And I like to work with the original elements as much as possible before I start writing a new track or putting in my own sounds, because I find it’s fun to just stretch things out of shape and see where it can go. Then I’ll just add as much as need be to complete the mix. I think that the original band likes that, because, like, I’ve had some remixes of my stuff come back and there isn’t a trace element of anything except maybe the vocals. Even though the mixes are really good and nice to have and listen to, you just feel a certain loss of identity of the original to such a degree that I think it leaves a void.

Along similar lines, what was the process of producing the Clay People’s latest album like?
GH: That was the first recording I did with the hard-drive system. We had nine songs on the computer, multi-track all at the same time, and we were all pretty pleased with that. There were no ADATs or anything in the room. It was very new to all of us. We all enjoyed the editing power and the ability to clean up the tracks without the tape rolling by. It affected the production quite a bit. It changed the way were able to approach constructions and things like that. We had always worked with sequencers with the Clay People before, but when you have the audio in the sequencer as well, it starts changing things a little bit. I could record Dan (Neet) without a compressor and then change the level of his vocals to where I want them without using a compressor, and therefore retain the dynamics of certain passages, and I was opting for that a lot with him.

Any touring plans for Urania?
GH: Not at the moment. I’m in the middle of producing the Pygmy Children album and after this EP is released with a couple of remixes that I did, I have to finish up on tracks to get the album out in the Fall and then I can start thinking about what I want to do. I’m just kind of caught up in getting Initiation formulated and finished and then I’m going to start thinking about how I want to go on with Urania -- I might bring some other people in, I might try start doing songs that are written with a band so they can be done live with great ease. I don’t know how that would affect the recordings. Ultimately, I might just go back to the recordings and do them the way I always have. I like to write and record at the same time. There’s no rehearsed stuff. UTN never rehearsed until after OGAC and it was a miserable attempt, so we didn’t keep doing it.