VIRB

Q: So let's get one thing straight from the start - what is Wolf Tickets?

A: Wolf Tickets is the name I have been recording under since 2001.

Q: But "Milk Moon", your 2008 CD, is described as your first release. That's a rather long incubation period.

A: The vast majority of WT recordings were not released. I have been writing and recording songs long before the Wolf Tickets name. There was also a period in the last few years when I didn't really write or record anything. In the past year I've been getting into music again, and enjoying writing and playing it again. I had created a MySpace page, but I never really paid much attention to it, mainly because you could only upload 4 songs. Then in August 2007 I found virb, where you could upload what seemed like an unlimited number (I ran into the 30-song limit pretty soon, though). It also seemed more user-friendly, so I started updating it regularly. There were a few people who were listening and who asked for a CD.

Q: So why "Milk Moon"? What does it mean, anyway?

A: I spent a lot of time thinking about what to release. At first I wanted to release my 2001 CD, "Car Alarms Are Entertaining". I changed my mind several times about this, and went through several variants, one of which was a double-CD release of old and new songs. Finally I decided against it, because it was not really representative of where I am now, musically speaking. Instead, I decided to focus on some songs I had written in a 6-month period in 2005 when I and my girlfriend lived in an apartment at the edge of town. Looking back, I discovered some of these songs were good, but unfinished. Some didn't have enough words. "Milk Moon" just means that period and that place for me. It was a strange time; home but not home, sad and exhilarating, dark and light.

Q: The songs on the album are arranged in three "sections". Isn't that just a little bit pretentious?

A: Of course it is. The whole thing is uber-pretentious - starting the claim that some songs I happened to doodle in 2005 are in some way relevant and need to be heard now. The sections, though, are meant to make life easier. It was really difficult to sequence the album, to balance it and keep it even. It was already long and sometimes heavy-handed, so you needed something snappy like "September" after "Blue", for example. It just became easier to do if I split it in these chapters, with bookmarks in between ("seven hands" and "summer leaves").

Q: Your song notes mention the dates of recording for each song. Why is this important?

A: It's not important per se. It was a habit that I got early on to write down the dates of everything, because it helps to keep track and can be really useful in court, too. Also, it was difficult to decide which songs to choose for the release, so by imposing this time limit, I brought some order and hopefully some thematic cohesion. It's true there are some songs which were written and recorded after that time but it all came together once I came up with the loose 'concept', if you will. Although it's not a concept album, except in a personal way. I hope the songs stand even without any knowledge that they were written in a certain time or place. Also, I think it's funny that I am playing with a younger version of myself, for example when the music and some vocals were recorded in 2005 and then more instruments and vocals were added in 2007 and 2008 (as on 'Window').

Q: Why did it take so long to finish?

A: At the beginning of 2006 I moved to Brussels, and for most of the year I neither wrote nor recorded anything. The 2005 songs were just left lying in a corner of my hard drive. In 2007 I gradually started recording again, but it was like exercising a broken limb that's been in a plaster for months. So for the album release, I turned to the 2005 songs, which were still quite exciting. There were lots of tiny things o finish, though. This took time, because I also happen to have a day job which requires my attention. All in all I wouldn't say it took that long. Most of the tracks were recorded in a few days each. What lasts longer is deciding what to do next, whether to add or substract from it. With 'My Disappearing Act' the original recording was much busier, and I just pared it down to the bare bones.

Q: How long does it take you to write songs?

A: It depends. Some just arrive fully formed and ready to be recorded; with others I toil and toil for months trying to find the right words or melody. There's no way of telling. Usually if I bother to come back to something a week or so after I've written it, it means there's hope. My notebook is full of aborted beginnings. After I've done it on paper and in my head, it can take very little time to record. "Glamourous Days" was recorded in just one day, but I had been working on it for two days before that. Still, it was almost instantaneous compared to other songs on the album.

Q: How do you feel about the 'Milk Moon' songs now? Is it appropriate as a 'debut' album?

A: I'm just glad it's out and I can move on to new things! No, I quite like the way it came together, with the artwork and everything. I'm always plagued by uncertainty - that I'll release something and the next day I'll realise I could have somehow made it better. So it's definitely good to have a full stop, a point of no return when you can say, This is it, that is the finished product, no more tampering. As for it being appropriate as a debut album, whatever that means, I think it's as good a record as I could make right now. It's very hard for me to judge, because I've been inside my head for years dealing with these songs. My opinion is that it's cohesive, and perhaps not as experimental as some of my earlier recordings. On the other hand, there are some songs with no choruses, or which start and then just go off on an instrumental tangent. The last song, 'Rock in My Shoe' was a lot of fun - it was also the last thing I recorded for the album. It's essentially a late-at-night improvisation (actually two of them, spliced together), with mistakes and missed notes - I'm not a very good guitar player. At the beginning of the song you can faintly hear some 'shoop-shoop' backing vocals. They were the hardest thing to do.

Q: About the song 'Seven Hands', you write that it was 'generated'. What does that mean?

A: It's simply that I used some looping software to write it from scratch, and then generate it. There is no actual instrument present. That's where it got the name: you would need to have seven hands to play it on the piano.

Q: One last question. What's in store for the future?

A: Well, I have a plan to do a collaboration EP with people from Virb. I already have around 15 new songs as well, so there could be a new album at some time. That is not very definite, though - I'll have to see how the songs turn out. I think I want to go into a different direction now - more electric guitars, more loops, more rhythm. And I've just been looking again at "Car Alarms" - this is probably going to be the next project. My initial problem with re-releasing it was that some songs weren't really that good, and there were some outtakes from that time which I now liked more than what was on the actual CD. So it just became a very bloated thing, and I don't want to release another 80-minute album. Now I think I'll just cut out the so-so tracks and release it in a slimmer, snappier form. The packaging will be simpler so it will be cheaper as well. Those chipboard cases turned out to be very expensive. "Milk Moons" take time and effort to make, so I think I'm going to give myself a break from handpressing for a while. I just finished making a new batch of "Milk Moon" - it takes days!