plastiq phantom, a biography.
 Kurt B. Reighley


The daily commute - we all love to bitch about it. But how many of us put that drive time to good use? American composer Charles Ives did. He fashioned the clickety-clack of the rails that carried him between Danbury, CT and New York City daily into complex polyrhythms for orchestra, and by 1947 he had a Pulitzer Prize in music to show for his ingenuity. Likewise, qp (real name: Darrin Wiener) - the sole member of plastiq phantom - gets maximum mileage out of his routine trips to downtown Seattle. 

"I have a portable sequencer, with a two-octave keyboard and a bunch of synth sounds, for working on ideas. I take it with me everywhere, even on the bus," explains the affable 21-year old. "select imputor?" (qp doesn't like capital letters much - too bossy), one of the most arresting tracks on his forthcoming Sweet Mother Recordings debut enjoy the art of lying down, was composed almost exclusively using this machine. "That one took me a month to write," admits our hero. "But I only wrote in the morning, on the way to work... and not much outside that."

"I'll walk around working with it, too. I wrote most of 'transmodular binary influx' while walking, and you can hear that in the rhythm. And if I get bumped, and stuff gets fucked up, that sounds kind of cool!"
	
Like Ives, qp is dedicated to creating a highly personalized form of expression. But while the man from Danbury achieved renown by thumbing his nose at accepted Western music conventions, the plastiq phantom sound actually embraces classical approaches to form and timeworn techniques like counterpoint, then enlivens them with ear-catching timbres and quizzical samples. The album's thirteen tracks ring with echoes of a variety of pioneers: the '80s synthpop of Depeche Mode and Art of Noise; the film scores of Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Last Emperor) and John Carpenter (Halloween); contemporary electronic innovators like Aphex Twin, -Ziq, and Squarepusher; seminal minimalists Steve Reich and Michael Nyman. 

Sound a little highfalutin? Not once you hear what all the hoopla's about. While evocative cuts like "birds" and "492 cups to china" reveal new facets with each repeated listen, first and foremost every track is marked by qp's unerring ear for melody. And that's commendable - when was the last time you got an Autechre ditty stuck in your head? There's also a distinct sense of humor in the mix, from titles like "kicking mister bubbles" to the curious sample that unfolds into the central rhythm of "experimentations on foreign light." Yet this playfulness never errs on the wrong side of whimsy; qp takes his fun very seriously.

Though the intricate nature of some tracks might suggest years of classical study, qp's background in composition is fairly limited, aside from a brief tutorial with his cousin, a cocktail lounge keyboard player. "He sat down with me once, and taught me chord theory in about ten minutes. That was my only lesson. I played saxophone in band between the ages of eleven and thirteen, so I could read music... but by the time I started writing it, I'd forgotten how and had to learn again." 

qp began his musical career rather conventionally, purchasing his first guitar in high school. "Suddenly I realized 'Hey, I can make songs, too!' But I didn't know any chords, so my friends taught me a few, and I made up some of my own. My music wasn't anything phenomenal, it probably wasn't any good at all, but it was different."

Concurrently, he started experimenting with more unconventional approaches to writing than aping Jane's Addiction riffs. "I have an archive of four-track cassette tapes," he admits sheepishly. "That was my first medium. I didn't have any decent equipment, so I'd use cheesy drum machines. I'd make weird noises, sample messages on our answering machine, and compile it all using cut-and-paste tape edits." To this day, qp prefers to use older machines for many tasks, and eschews preprogrammed patches.

"Most of the time I make all of my own sounds," he explains. "I have a portable DAT recorder and I'll sample stuff for hours, only to use half-a-second off of a two-hour tape - and that was probably something I wasn't trying to sample!" He has a vast array of oddball second-hand records to draw on, too. Conversely, sometimes he turns off the computers and writes at his piano, a 1909 upright he purchased at a garage sale.

Eclectic as his own music sounds, qp's personal tastes span an even greater range: Marvin Gaye, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Björk, Aphex Twin, and particularly, Prince. "I listen to everything. I used to listen to a lot of rock - Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana - but I don't much anymore. I just got into electronic music in the past five or six years. Moby's Everything Is Wrong album really got me into it, because it had rock songs, but also electronic ones... and I was groovin' to 'em all."

qp grew up in Vista, California, near San Diego. He went to college in Santa Cruz for a spell to study film, which remains his other great passion. He ranks Delicatessen and Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Three Colors" trilogy (Blue, White, and Red) among his favorites, and one day plans to write, direct and score his own motion picture. qp's other musical projects include an Internet collaboration with a San Diego buddy, dubbed Calculator Man and Hanger ("compared to plastiq phantom, it's very experimental"). In addition to his own music, qp also does production and remixes for a variety of local and national artists. 

But art doesn't always pay the rent. So until he wins a Pulitzer of his own, you shouldn't be shocked if you discover qp sitting next to you on a city bus with his sequencer, whiling away the minutes till he strolls into his gig as a developer for an Internet filtering company. Don't be ashamed if your curiosity gets the better of you, either. "A lot of people ask me, 'What is that? Is that a Gameboy? A Mini-disc player?' I have my headphones on, so they don't really bug me," he chuckles. "But I get a lot of looks."