Over the last decade, American singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Phideaux Xavier has become a rising star in the progressive rock world. With the help of his stellar musicians and working under the guise of a simplified title, Phideaux, he has proven to be a masterful songwriter and composer. In fact, Phideaux’s releases, including Number Seven and Snowtorch, are arguably some of the best albums the genre has ever seen. Recently, I was lucky enough to speak in-depth with Phideaux about his music, influences, and life. Be sure to check out the first part of the interview here.
I spent one year finishing up all the songs that became The Great Leap while I had the basic tracks mostly recorded for Doomsday Afternoon. I hadn’t finished up the lyrics yet, though. You could say that during the year we did The Great Leap, I refined a lot of my vision so that when it came time to do Doomsday Afternoon, I had more ambition to make it epic and “progressive.” I see the orchestrations on The Great Leap as being really internal—you’re not going to hear really interesting flights of fancy like you might on Snowtorch with Part A going into B, C, D, E, F, G, etc. You’ll basically hear three parts, and what I find interesting with The Great Leap is what’s going on below those chords. There will be an interesting theremin line followed by a cello line followed by some strange guitar thing. They’re all working together. To me, the layering is what’s interesting about The Great Leap. A lot of people either aren’t interested in that or they aren’t listening enough to notice it. I think they just kind of think it’s my attempt at being a cross-over rock artist. People definitely don’t rate it well in the progressive rock community.
I can’t understand why.
Well I think there are different ideas as to what we should be doing. When Doomsday Afternoon came out, it was really a breakthrough album for us. It was essentially me looking back on the other albums and saying, “I want to do a whole concept album that explores the same themes over and over again.” Again, like Jethro Tull or other bands that do long pieces. My gimmick for that album was an orchestra. I feel that every album should have a special quality to it. The Great Leap featured more theremin and horns and me singing a lot. 313 was about doing an album in a day without writing any songs ahead of time. The gimmick of Chupacabras was, you know, using strings more. For Doomsday Afternoon, I knew a guy who had access to the L.A. Philharmonic and he could help me score it. I chose to do a lot of orchestration with him (as opposed to using my normal rock instrumentalists). That album sort of became the most progressive rock thing we’d done so far, and when the follow-up came, Number Seven, it just so happened that the song I was working on, “Waiting for the Axe to Fall,” was another epic piece. It kind of had low energy on one level, though. I was listening to a lot of Italian prog at the time, and what I loved about those albums was the keyboard sounds. They had a lot of pretty, organic sounds, and I wanted to use that for “Waiting for the Axe to Fall.” That’s my extremely long-winded answer to your question [laughs].
No, no, please talk as much as you want. That’s what it’s all about. Again, I agree with many fans that your last three albums are your best, but I definitely appreciate the early ones as well. Artists should grow, and Phideaux certainly has.
Every album is a progression in the sense that as an artist, you’re always learning from your last one and applying it to the new one. Stylistically, I think people go through different changes.
Speaking of Infernal, which is the follow-up to Doomsday Afternoon and the conclusion to the trilogy, how will it sound? Will it reprise anything from Great Leap or Doomsday Afternoon?
I think that on some level, part of the reason I’m hesitant about doing Infernal is that I worry about people comparing it to those other two. They’ll wonder, “Will it be as good?” No one ever wants to return to the crime, as it were. I do find that there are aspects to the melodic ideas of Doomsday that I would like to return to. We’ve been playing live a lot lately and we’ve used a lot of different approaches to the Doomsday and Great Leap material. There’s some stuff that’s come up that I plan to incorporate into Infernal. Infernal was essentially written before Doomsday was out; I wrote two twenty-five minute pieces, “Infernal” and “Eternal.” It was supposed to be the ying and yang of that dystrophic world and further the questions of “can there be redemption?” and “is there hope for us?” Things like that. Having done Number Seven and Snowtorch, I’ve continued to explore similar themes and longer pieces, so I’m now I’m a little concerned about how I originally wrote the music. I worry that it’ll have a sameness quality to it. Once 7½ is done, I’m hoping to rehearse the Infernal music with the band before we even record it. Usually I bring people in to record and it’s just rehearse-record-rehearse-record the whole way. This would be like trying to create a live entity before we even record it.
Cool.
I am curious to see if, in that process, we get something different enough from Snowtorch/Number Seven/Doomsday Afternoon. I really love those albums and I don’t want to make the lesser son of them.
That’s definitely a legitimate concern. I’m sure that a lot of people, when they make their benchmarks, are afraid to release anything else.
Exactly. I love long-ended pieces and I also love shorter, interesting pieces. I like the way Doomsday contained shorter songs that ultimately added up to something more. For me, Number Seven is two main songs with 30+ transitions between them. I like transitions, but I also like things that are clearly songs. Previously, I thought Infernal was just an album of those two songs, but now I’m thinking it might actually be something different than that.
I’ve always heardNumber Sevenas a seventeen track suite where the songs are very individualized (as opposed to how Snowtorch always references itself).
I agree. It takes you from A-B-C-D, but it doesn’t necessarily recall what came before it like Snowtorch. Snowtorch is much more of a composed piece in the sense that clearly, all the musical ideas are recurring in different ways.
That’s what makes progressive rock so interesting, and you guys do it quite well. It’s exhilarating to listen to an album for the 10thtime and suddenly discover more places where sections reprise.
That’s one of the things I really loved about the new album. There are tons of little things like that in there and I really hope people continue to find them and enjoy the hunt.
Touching on the Great Leap/Doomsday Afternoon/Infernal trilogy again, do they share similar themes and ideas (even though they don’t share a specific narrative)?
Well, my sister has always lead my through the pathways of music and literature, and she felt that there is a very clear narrative that links the first two albums. I don’t find it too much. If you listen to the characters in “You and Me Against a World of Pain,” they’re essentially saying, “We’re going to be separated and we’re gonna have to fight to stay together because this culture and government is going to rip us apart.” They are still the same characters that are waiting for each other on the fire escape on Doomsday. I mean, the first song on The Great Leap is “Wake Up,” which says, “Come out of your torpor, away from the hypnosis of television, and see what’s happening in the world.” Those characters from “You and Me…” feel “okay, we have to navigate our way across this world, whatever it is.” Then there are also allegorical parts to The Great Leap; the “crisis” that happens in “The Waiting,” which is some sort of ecological crisis/the Rapture if you want to take it into Biblical terms, ends up being more of the same thing. “Who’s there when you’ve been abducted and the world is unsafe? When the night is broken.”
Wow.
It’s not really like Jenny and Paul battling their way through the forces of doom as much as it is survivors. Who is the “Rain Boy”? Who are the people in “You and Me…”? Who is trapped is their Siberian prison camp in “Long and Lonely Way”? Who is the character who’s going to be snatched away in the cold night by Nazi-like people in “They Hunt You Down”? Who is the character collecting body parts in “Tannis Root,” you know? There are a whole bunch of characters and situations in The Great Leap that, to me, all take place in the same world. On Doomsday, it’s like “we’re waking up on Doomsday morning and what are we gonna do?” It’s those characters that you follow through that one. It’s kind of thematically related and not a long narrative, but I think it’s kind of like a lot of interlocking narratives that take place around the same time.
That’s intense. So, Arjen Lucassen is an artist that a lot of new progressive rock musicians want to work with. You appeared on his latest Ayreon release, 01011001, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. You appear on the track “Web of Lies.” How did that collaboration start?
Great album, isn’t it? (laughs)
That and The Human Equation are his best. I’m not sure which I prefer.
Oh, really? You like those more than Into the Electric Castle?
Yeah, I do. I like all of them, though, of course. I’m guessing that one is your favorite?
Into the Electric Castle was the first one I heard, and I loved it. Anyway, I have a friend who sometimes helps me with the website and with sending stuff out. I gave him a few couples of Fiendish to send to radio stations, and he sent a copy to Arjen. I had turned him onto Arjen’s music and told him, “oh, there’s this great band called Ayreon and you should listen to them.” So he sent the album to Arjen unbeknownst to me. Arjen wrote me this really long and detailed email about how much he liked Fiendish. At first I thought it was a cruel joke (laughs), but it turned out to really be him. We became friends on the internet—I would send him my new material and he was always very supportive. Around the time of Doomsday, I really wanted to have some guests artist on it. I’d asked a few people, like Martin Orford from IQ and Matthew Parmenter from Discipline, and I’d asked Arjen. He said he’d do some stuff, but then he got into a situation where he had to move and I think he was going through some personal issues so he had to drop out. All he was able to do was contributing the line “is that all you have to say?” to one of the songs. So I have him speaking a bit. As a result of that, I think he felt he should have me appear on his next Ayreon album. I’m not quite the technical singer that he usually has so I think he had to find something special for me to do (laughs).
I think there’s a definite similarity in how both acts use male and female vocals for drama.
Yeah, I probably took a bit of that from him. When I started making music I didn’t have quite as many female singers. Back when we didn’t really perform live and Molly and Linda weren’t in the band full time. I just admire his use of melody. He has such distinct melodies in his pieces and he has some which make you think “oh, is this some classical thing that he’s ripped off?” But it’s always something that he’s written that sound so familiar and right. It sounds like the most perfect combination of notes, you know?
That’s what you both excel at, really. Pieces like “Snowtorch,” “Microdeath Softstar,” and “Age of Shadows” contain several sections that just flow together perfectly. They’re addicting.
I’m glad to provide something addictive that’s not terribly detrimental (laughs).
Who do you listen to today and who would you like to collaborate with, either as a separate project or on one of your albums?
Well, I don’t really want to collaborate with anyone because I worry about it being too much of a publicity stunt. There are a lot of people I admire, though. It’s funny because I don’t often get a chance to listen to music because I’m often very involved in my own stuff. When I’m in the middle of doing my own stuff, it’s harder for me to listen to other artists because I worry that I might get too influenced by them. Plus, sometimes I want to listen to something I know really well, like folk music from the 60s. I just discovered a band I really like called Pearls Before Swine. And I love the band Mars Hollow; they’re very fun and a different sound from what I usually listen to.
I’ve heard a lot about them. In fact, we just featured a review of World In Front Of Me at Sea of Tranquility.
Many people say they’re reminiscent of Rush because the singer has a similar voice, although they’re more direct than Rush. It’s kind of like the The Yes Album period of progressive rock, when it was more concise. What they play in the studio is what they play live. There are a lot of people who I like that I don’t get to listen to as much as I’d like.
Yeah, me too. And you’re right about avoiding the influences of others.
On the one hand, I’ll listen to something and say, “oh, damn. I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing because this is the sound I should be going for.” I get a little bit pulled into the direction of what I’m listening to, and I find something that’s completely different, it’s helpful. Now I want to do folk albums and go for the vibe of early 80s stripped down rock (laughs).
You could always go for a folk prog sound like, say, Fairport Convention or Renaissance.
I do love all that stuff, that’s for sure. I just got in the mail the new collector’s edition of Felona e Sorona by Le Orne, an Italian band. It’s a great concept album from 1973 that contains beautiful keyboards. It’s a perfect album. I also got the new Kate Bush album and some rereleased things. Believe it or not, I’m looking forward to the new Yes album. It could be quite fun.
It could be. I kind of have a weird perspective on it because Jon Anderson told me of his less than encouraging opinion. But I’m optimistic.
Oh, yeah. I’m sure. I love the Yes album that was without Jon [Drama] so I can see Yes existing without him. Essentially, it’s the team behind Drama and I would love to have more of that. I know Arjen is working on a solo album. He’s someone I’d like to work with again.
His last release was the second Star One, Victims of the Modern Age. It was really good, but again, I think his Ayreon project is his best.
Me too. I love the first Star One album [Space Metal] and I haven’t really heard much of the second. I’m curious to see what his solo album is like because I think it’ll be more along the lines of what I like.
In speaking of influences and the first generation of progressive rock, it seems that so many new artists wear their influences on their sleeves. As much as I love all this stuff, it can be a bit derivative. Do you think that’s inevitable?
I don’t know. On the one hand, you know, I’ve been making music since I was ten years old. I have a whole history of my own stuff to quote from, so do I want to quote from Close To The Edge or Trespass or Thick As A Brick? I love when I think “oh, that organ sound reminds me of Tull or Genesis,” but I would never actually try to emulate, say, “The Cinema Show” or The Snow Goose on purpose. I love Camel, but I don’t want to spend $35,000 just to make my own rip-off. If I didn’t think there was something genuine about the music for myself, I wouldn’t want to use it. So, is it inevitable? I think it is to a certain extent. I mean, the reason I make music is because I love all that other music. There are a lot of people who say, “Oh, this isn’t progressive because it hasn’t progressed from point A to point B.” I think to myself “well there can be different definitions of progression.” When I was in 11th grade, I made a sound design project in which I recorded through this old microphone and headset from the 50s. It was distorted and I got this metal machine noise music. I brought it in and played it to the class for a few minutes with the point being that by the 1990s, music had disintegrated so much that you wouldn’t even know it as music. It would just be pure noise. It was kind of a joke, but that’s what progressive music ultimately progresses to, isn’t it? What’s the difference between a style and the desire to progress? I like to perform melodic music in a certain style that’s reminiscent of the music that I liked as a kid.
Of course.
I say the words “progressive rock” because I know that’s what people know it by. I don’t think I set out to “progress.” I’m not someone who wants to be a jazz musician or an improvisational person questing for some 13thnote, you know? It’s funny because whether you’re listening to avant-garde music or Philip Glass, you’re still going to be reminiscent. If it’s a pop song, it’ll go back to 40s pop songs. There are definitely some artists in progressive rock that just like to rip the pages out of the books of their predecessors. I’ve heard stuff that I don’t think is “good” progressive rock, and I can understand and identify with why people hear my music and say, “oh, this is just trying to be Genesis.” Not really. I don’t really want to be Genesis because I have my own idea of what I want to say.
Even in the 70s, there were imitators. Yes had Flash, and today Mystery sounds a lot like Rush. And 100 bands sound like Dream Theater. It’s always happened. I really think Phideaux is among the most original and unique acts out there today, though.
Thank you. Although we love deriving and homage, I’m definitely more interested in my own history than I am in the history of, say, Gentle Giant or Yes. I love those bands, but I have albums of my own.
Does that mean Phideaux is never going to have interlocked harmonies like Gentle Giant?
Well, it’s funny. The song “Party” on Chupacabras, which sounds like 90s Pet Shop Boys, has interlocking vocals. Even when we do that stuff, it never sounds like Gentle Giant. I mean, I love “On Reflection” and I like Spock’s Beard. There’s a slide guitar theme on Doomsday that I absolutely love, and it works really well with the chords. But someone could totally say, “Oh, there’s ‘And You And I’ right in the Phideaux album.” Our piece definitely echoes their piece, but it wasn’t constructed specifically to rip their song off. I’m sure it’s the same when Spock’s Beard has its Gentle Giant moments.
That’s a great point. My final question is about your day job. I’ve heard that you direct soap operas, like “General Hospital.” How did you come to do that and how do you balance that with your music?
I went to college and as I mentioned before, I’m not really a musician in the sense that I’m not really trained and I didn’t go to school for music. I don’t consider myself a superb performer; I’m far more interested in creating and arranging music, and if I need to hire other musicians, that’s great. If I need to ask someone else to play my part because I can’t, I’m happy to do that. So when I went to college, I thought, “Well, what would be a fun job to have?” I thought it’d be nice to work in television production. I lived in NYC at the time and soap operas were really the type of dramatic production that was in New York. I liked the way soap operas told ongoing stories and a lot of unusual things happened on them, like aliens coming to town, people trying to freeze the world with a weather machine, and surreal spiritual things. They weren’t really only about romance novel stuff. I started working on a show called “Guiding Light” and I stayed there for many years. Eventually, I went to California and wound up working on a show called “Passions,” which was a sci-fi soap opera about demons and witches and such. It was heaven. When that went off the air, I came over to “General Hospital” where some people I’d worked with on “Guiding Light” were in charge. I’d always admired them and it was great to have the opportunity to work on such an iconic program.
Awesome.
American soap operas are on of the things I’m always interested in—they’re a fun and historical type of dramatic television. I’ve been with “General Hospital” for the last four years. It’s a great cast and crew and it’s a lot of fun. What anyone does for his or her day job is exactly that—a day job. I work there probably once a week and when I take time off for music, it’s usually on the weekends or nights. “General Hospital” is my first position and my second is my own work. I try to do it between the crevasses and cracks. Also, my producer works on other things too so I always have to fit my projects around his schedule. Sometimes we take weeks off at the show, like now, and that’s always helpful for my music. That’s really why I only get one album per year, and it’s slowed down from that recently. I’d like to get some more out this year. 7½ should come out around September, and then towards October/November I hope to have the first Mogon album out. It’s called These Are Our True Faces. 2012 will be devoted to Infernal and we hope to have it out by December 2012. After that, I think I’ll try to work on a second Mogon album.
It’s great that you have so many projects to keep you busy.
Yeah, and hopefully “General Hospital” will keep me employed so I can continue with my agenda of making music (laughs). I believe Mogon is contributing a song called “Snuff” to another Musea compilation. I had to turn that in at the end of June, and it’s like a ten minute minimalist rock song. The guy I’m working with over there does a lot of concepts involving classical pieces. He works with Colossus Magazine. I feel lucky to be involved in that. We’re also starting to put some things out in vinyl, like Snowtorch. It’s exciting because it sounds a little different and warmer. We had to put the unnamed fourth track at the end of side one, between “Snowtorch Part 1” and “Helix,” because of the timing and sound quality. We thought that the coda at the end of the album would work just as well at the end of side one.
I can’t wait to hear it all. Well Phideaux, it’s been a real pleasure speaking with you about, well, everything related to your music. You’re truly one of the best songwriters and composers working today.
Oh, well thank you, Jordan (laughs). I’m so happy you enjoy it. Take care.
You too.
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