Have a Nice Life released their only album, Deathconsciousness, last January. Since then it has gained a ton of steam to the point that it made it on a few year-end critic lists. Deathconsciousness is a double-disc album that is accompanied by an 80-page booklet that tracks the life and mysteries of an ambiguously fictional 13th century religious mystic named Antiochus. This mysterious and elusive premise is only complicated by the alluring mix of genres. Have a Nice Life mix shoegaze, post-rock, industrial, and black metal, among other genres, into a cohesive blend recorded with a lo-fi sound and a DIY aesthetic. It is this strange alchemy that made the album stick out against countless others in 2008 and makes Deathconsciousness an album that feels larger than life. As a way to celebrate and investigate the complexities of the album I recently spoke with one half of the Have a Nice Life duo, Dan Barrett (ex-In Pieces), with the hope of acquiring further insight into this special record.
Sputnikmusic: Have a Nice Life really swept Sputnikmusic off its feet in 2008. Deathconsciousness finished 5th on the staff consensus top 50 list and 7th on the users' top 100 list. It seems like your success came a lot from gushing, positive reviews and blog-based internet hyping. Did you expect the album to take off like it did or has its ascent been a complete surprise? Feel free to address your adoring fans!
Dan Barrett: First of all, we really appreciate the time and care and attention to detail people devote to the album, from the internet in general but from Sputnik in particular. I was a lurker on Sputnik long before the record came out, so that was special for me.
Never, ever, did I expect to sell the first 100 copies of the record. Never. I was coming from In Pieces, which was a touring band, and they were an exception, essentially selling all of their records through traditional channels of distribution like playing shows, trying to get a distro company to put the record in stores, etc, and did fairly well (for a struggling hardcore band, anyway) by doing so.
Have A Nice Life, on the other hand, played something like 4 or 5 shows when we were in college, and then dropped off the face of the planet. The label didn't exist. We didn't know anyone who liked our music or wanted to sound like the bands we wanted to sound like. The band was just something Tim and I did when we hung out, because it was what we had always done.
The fact that people are so into the record is completely amazing and wonderful and incredibly gratifying and scares the living shit out of me.
SM: Deathconsciousness is an album who's influences seem to stretch from the late 80s (post-punk, shoegaze) all the way through modern times (post-rock, black metal). Is this a product of your natural listening habits over the years? Are you mixing teenage nostalgia with the contemporary interests of your adult life or is HANL's sound just a stylistic combination that arose on its own?
DB: So, I am going to tell this whole story, of how this happened. I'd say it was a funny mix of on purpose and completely by accident. We started off, Tim and I, playing acoustic guitars in my dorm room. That's what we were: very cliche. And we had such a healthy disdain for what everyone who ever played acoustic guitar in college was doing...I mean, it's such a ridiculous, "college dude" thing to do. So, we wrote these epic, poppy songs about killing people and blowing our brains out and vikings and westward expansion and stuff, and played coffeehouse acoustic shows as if we were the Gorilla Biscuits, screaming, swinging guitars, head-banging and so on. We were very confrontational. The running joke was that we were going to record a techno record, because neither of us knew anything about electronic music or computers or recording or anything of the kind. Slowly the joke became a reality, and we incorporated this keyboard Tim had, and started recording through the pinhole mic in my computer, and I bought a keyboard, and it was all downhill from there. Songs like "Earthmover," those were originally acoustic songs, so you can picture Tim and I beating the shit out of our guitars at the end of that song and rolling around on the ground when you hear it. That's where it all comes from.
SM: Talk about your compositional process. I know you use a mix of live instrumentation and digital instrumentation (via Native Instruments). Do you guys have your "sound" in mind and then program drum beats and synths to best fit that, or is fiddling with the digital side of things part of the compositional process?
DB: We usually start with a riff. Tim will come over with an idea, or we'll use one of the random bits and pieces I am constantly recording and then forgetting about. Then we'll record one part, and say "OK, what's next," and only rarely will we have an idea of where the song goes. They develop very slowly, over time. We don't get to practice that often, since we both work and are in school, so the songs kind of evolve through endless twiddling and additions and subtractions until we think they aren't horrible, and then it's on to the next thing. Some songs are more structured in the beginning; "Earthmover" was written from start to end at the beginning, but it's really only two chords, anyway. "The Big Gloom" was a case of just constantly adding things until the speakers couldn't handle it.
SM: Deathconsciousness is definitely a lo-fi album, but is incredibly detailed, layered, and rich. For example, during the opening chord progression of "The Big Gloom" the scraping your fingers make on the guitar strings as they change chords is audible, which gives the track the feel of something done at home, but also contributes to the overall lush texture of the piece, particularly as other instrumental parts are layered on top. How did you achieve this and other seeming paradoxes?
DB: It sounds like it's done at home because it is. We don't know how to record. At all. The gear we use has evolved very slowly, but lots of the things that characterize a lot of our stuff now began as ways to circumvent shitty recording equipment. I started messing around with layers of reverb because we were recording through the built-in mic in my computer, and there was always hissing in the background. It's really the only way we know how to do things. We're just figuring it out as we go, and hopefully improving over time. I don't know if the aesthetic grew to match our abilities or vice versa, but it gets the job done.
That said, I'd love to go back in time and master Deathconsciousness. It isn't mastered at all.
SM: So what gear was actually used to record Deathconsciousness? How did you generate all the reverb? Are you still recording vocals through the pinhole mic in your laptop? How did you mix the album?
DB: Thankfully we are past the pin-hole stage. As for gear, all we really use is a MOTU Traveler for audio input, a MIDI controller, and Logic. And guitar and bass, of course. But that's really it. All the effects and so on just come about from endless tweaking on my part. We actually wanted to keep working on it, but we almost lost the entire record to a computer crash, and so the songs on the record are the backup copies I had made a few weeks earlier (and those were the first backups I ever made, so we were very, very lucky). That killed any possibility of mixing, so we just put it out as it was. I'm not sure it would've made much difference, however.
SM: Do you feel that maybe Deathconsciousness is the special album it is because you guys "don't know how to record?"
DB: I think that makes it different. We just invented our own way of doing things because there was no other way. There wasn't any conscious thought there. Most of the record is actually first-takes; we'd just write a part, record it right away, and move on to the next thing. There are less steps between us writing a part and someone hearing that part than with a traditional studio set-up, and I like what that does to the music in general. We just think of ourselves as a punk rock band, and approach things as such.
SM: The combination of booklet and double-disc feels like the larger structure of the novel Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire is a strange triptych of a book. Within is a 999-line poem coupled with a preface and annotation to that poem by a colleague of the poet (both invented by Nabokov), who creates his own deluded interpretation of the poem that is at odds with the poet's real intent. Discerning the line between real and unreal is the joy of the novel. Similarly, I read [name redacted] as Deathconsciousness' Charles Kinbote - a fictionalized annotator to the accompanying music, all of which is masterminded and ghostwritten by the real life Nabokovs, Tim and Dan. How is the listener / reader supposed to approach Deathconsciousness' entirety? Is it an obscure puzzle meant to be unraveled with both authentic and fictitious elements? Is it all of your design? How does the booklet inform the music and vice versa?
DB: Obviously, reading the book isn't required to enjoy the record. We wanted something attention-grabbing, we wanted to do something different from every other band that just puts out a demo. The book and the record dovetail in a lot of ways. I wanted people who put in the effort to see the connections between the two, and those connections go both ways. They're about the same thing. They create a different picture taken together, rather than either apart from the other.
I'm pretty sure I'm on record as thinking that no one would actually read the book, and I'm really glad people have. We are not interested in doing something everyone else does. We want to seriously, literally give people Problems. That is always the goal. I don't know if we achieve it, but we don't just want to do music. We want to engage in complete mind-fuckery. That's our mission statement. It may be pretentious, but it helps us decide what's worth doing and what we can skip.
SM: What one track off of Deathconsciousness would you say is your crowning achievement? Which best encapsulates the sound you were going for?
DB: My favorite song is probably "Earthmover." It has the things I associate most with the songs on Deathconsciousness, namely tons of reverb, huge drums, and a giant, cathartic ending. It is, in a lot of ways, the prototype for the other songs on the record, which are all essentially variations on that theme. We didn't mean for it to be like that, and I really only became aware of it recently, but I think it holds true. I both love that and want to stay there, and also want to get away from it.
SM: The Nahvalr album also came out this year and I think there is no doubt that it is the world's first "opensourced black spiritmetal" project. Briefly talk about how that project came to be and any interesting elements of the compositional process that deserve attention.
DB: I am really, really proud of that record, because I think we nailed exactly what we were going for, which was a totally overwhelming nihilistic hate-filled future-noise murder record. I really wanted to write just, unapproachable, freak out songs. The idea of having people contribute came about because we wanted to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the black metal scene, and also because we felt that the traditional, scary-noises-recorded-by-some-guy-in-his-basement thing had been done better than we'd ever be able to do it.
The black metal scene, in a lot of ways, was the inspiration for the home recording emphasis of the label, [Enemies List], and I think it influenced a lot of people in similar ways. Since Nahvalr was a conceived project, not a band that sprang up organically, we could really sit down and think, "in what way can we turn this concept on its head." Black metal is such an amazing genre right now because there is so much differentiation between bands - it seems like every other record you hear is doing something different, putting a personal spin on the core themes of the genres - and that's really intriguing and we're honored we could contribute to that in our own small way.
The downside to that is that it isn't exactly as listener-friendly as some other stuff we've done, and some people have a negative reaction to that. Aesthetically, though, it is exactly what we wanted to do, which is really rare for us.
SM: You say "overwhelming nihilistic hate-filled future-noise murder record" and "killing people and blowing our brains out" in a deadpan fashion. How seriously are listeners supposed to take Nahvalr's evil aesthetic? Is it just part of writing a black metal album? Have a Nice Life and Giles Corey also have strong suicidal or evil undertones at moments. How do these lyrical or aesthetic concerns manifest in the music? I'd say Have a Nice Life connotes despair at moments but it's not nearly as bleak as Nahvalr. Knowing that you achieved the aesthetic you wanted with Nahvalr, how well would you say you did at establishing aesthetic for Have a Nice Life? For that matter, what is Deathconsciousness' aesthetic, if it can even be boiled down to one idea?
DB: In terms of Nahvalr, I really set out to write a dark, depressed record, because I had those feelings and I wanted to express them. Aesthetic came first, genre second, not the other way around. There's nothing tongue in cheek about it. Nahvalr, in a lot of ways, was the exact opposite of Deathconsciousness, being very planned instead of organic. And a lot of those themes come up in our other stuff, because I feel those emotions in a very real way, not in a "I'm arty, so I'm sad" way, but in a "fucking up my life" kind of way. It was very easy to write Nahvalr material, because those feelings were right near the surface, whereas Deathconsciousness, for both Tim and I, had to grow over time because it required a bit more perspective. We just wrote songs and that came out.
I don't feel any need to be nuanced with Nahvalr. It is what it is: just an expression of some of the worst things I feel and think. But obviously, I don't feel that way all the time, or I wouldn't be here. It's easy for me to just spew hate and depression, and so on, because it's simplistic; it's a lot harder to develop a multi-sided aesthetic that says many things, that addresses different issues and comes to different conclusions. I was very happy with what we did with Deathconsciousness, because I think it's layered enough to not be one-dimensional. I'm trying to make Giles Corey the same way, though that's turning out pretty dark, as well, but there's not much I can do about that. I just want to make it the truest expression of a feeling possible, regardless as to what that ends up sounding like.
If Nahvalr was about self-hatred, Deathconsciousness was about the sense of helplessness that death gives you. There's a triumphant side to that, because it makes you feel more alive, if only in contrast.
SM: Both Have a Nice Life and Nahvalr are products of a label you two are running, Enemies List. What other artists are on the label? What is the unifying quality of those artists? How does a home-recording philosophy play a part in what albums you put out and artists you'll consider? What are the upcoming projects for the label?
DB: Right now ENEMIES LIST consists of Have A Nice Life, Nahvalr, America Addio, which is a kind of electro-clash, hyper-pop project from our friend M. Kestigian, Afterlives, which is actually an amazing one-man project from my brother, Will Barrett, Giles Corey, which is a solo project I am working on, as well as a few projects that are kind of dormant at the moment but should produce material as time goes on including GATE, a death rock band that will probably change it's name as there are too may other "Gate"s in the world and The American Black Chamber, which is this kind of choral/medieval music-with-guitars thing I want to do, etc.
Really, the unifying quality they share is that they are home-recorded. We really try to focus on things that are a bit outside the norm, personal expressions rather than records that fit neatly into any particular genre. ENEMIES LIST is more of a brand then a label; it puts out music by a certain inner circle of people we know and love. The band names may change, but if you see the ENEMIES LIST logo we want people to know that a certain method, aesthetic, and attention to detail was put into that release.
Upcoming projects are Deathconsciousness vinyl early this year, then a Deathconsciousness re-release by tUMULt records in California, which is one of our favorite labels. We probably would have done stuff with them for nothing, just to be label-mates with Leviathan and Weakling. Afterlives is putting a record out very soon, and it's really good, kind of jangly, heavy rock. It's hard to describe. It's total outsider-art, Will's first foray into music in any organized way, and I'm really happy with it. I plan on putting a Giles Corey record out this year. I have a lot of songs for it, it's all acoustic, it's going to be a crazy, weird, depressing record if I can get it done.
SM: Where is Have a Nice Life going in the next few years? Do you see yourself and Tim effectively launching a live show? When can fans expect another album? Is the sound going to change fundamentally or will you be working with similar ideas?
DB: I want to play live really, really badly. That's where my background is, and playing live is one of the few true catharses I have ever felt. We are trying to make it happen but our schedules aren't exactly lining up at the moment, so who knows.
Tim and I have been talking about putting out a Have A Nice Life 7-inch this year. We're writing new material, with the goal of putting out two new records on top of that. One is material we've been working on for a while, called The Unnatural World, which is a continuation of the things we were doing on Deathconsciousness, though hopefully more intense. We're kind of figuring out where we want to go with it. The second record is more of an abstract project called The Devil, which Tim originally conceived as a record that would give people serious psychological problems. Like, fuck people up. That is the goal. We're just going to completely deconstruct everything we do, or try, anyway. We have one or two things written for that.
So, we're busy. We're exploring, but my main concern, really, is that I just try not think about anyone else while writing. It is really easy to feel the pressure of trying to write Deathconsciousness 2, to try and recreate that success, but I don't think that's possible, especially not if we're trying to do it on purpose. I'm not going to put anything out into the world unless I am 100% convinced it is better than everything else I have done.
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