Phil Elverum Quotes

Phil Elverum

Profession : Musician

Birth : May 23, 1978

There's a lot of music out there that's like, 'I'm so mad! I'm sad! I'm into skulls and crossbones and the color black,' and that's just meaningless and shallow. So much of metal is about that and it's hard to find metal that is substantial and meaningful in terms of its content.

Phil Elverum

Nirvana really touched me as a teenager and started making me pay attention to music as a participatory thing that I could do.

Phil Elverum

There are parts on 'Wind's Poem' that are literal recordings of wind. I had this old sound effects record that I got some wind from and then I figured out that distorted cymbals sound just like wind so I used that a lot.

Phil Elverum

My exposure to independent music was via Nirvana and grunge so I'd never gotten into punk. I don't really like that music of Crass, but I love the band, and I love their way, and their presentation.

Phil Elverum

I listen to all kinds of music and sometimes I try to do something that's referential to an era or a genre, but it still sounds like me.

Phil Elverum

I don't really see myself in a lineage which is fine with me. Sometimes I do try to explicitly copy an exact song, an arrangement, a sound - and I fail. And so you can't even tell I was trying to do that thing. It makes sense in my own head but I'm incapable of copying.

Phil Elverum

For awhile the only thing people were talking to me about my music, that's all they ever said: 'You must be a nature lover. Are you camping all the time?'

Phil Elverum

These people that worked with my dad doing landscaping were in a grunge band so the music on the cover of Rolling Stone was in a very real way connected to people practicing in the woods near my house while I was home doing my homework.

Phil Elverum

I have a hard time working with other people with my own songs because I have a pretty complete idea of how it should be. It's usually just me multi-tracking which is better than coercing someone into doing my idea.

Phil Elverum

It's challenging to live in Anacortes. I lived in Olympia for five years, went on tour for a year, ended up in Norway for a winter, and ended up back in Anacortes. But I have a long life ahead of me. I'll probably live in many different places, and then die in Anacortes.

Phil Elverum

It is something I've noticed - that my audiences are young. My only thought has been because I play all-ages shows. Even so, they're pretty young, and sometimes I'm nervous the content of my songs - these weird, ambiguous, philosophical ideas I'm trying to articulate. Are the kids getting it? Is it going over their heads?

Phil Elverum

I think I'm obsessed with accessibility which is why, when I'm touring, I want to play all ages shows.

Phil Elverum

I'm really nervous about coming off as exclusive or elitist. At the same time, I recognize that when I put out vinyl or an expensive coffee table book not everyone can afford it or listen to it.

Phil Elverum

I just play under the name Mt. Eerie. I started doing that in 2003 and I've pretty much been doing that since then.

Phil Elverum

I am drawn to cold, desolate places rather than Hawaii. I actually love Hawaii too, but I tend to go to Iceland or Norway or Northern Japan - northern places for whatever reason. Which aren't necessarily the best places to tour.

Phil Elverum

Grief - the actual, natural process of it - doesn't have a schedule that I can work my life around.

Phil Elverum

Usually I work at the merch table until one minute before I have to go on stage.

Phil Elverum

We had a simple 8-track studio set up in the record store where I worked. And just staying after work and experimenting, realizing what was possible with recording - that's why my project was called The Microphones at first. Because it wasn't even songs really. It was just sound.

Phil Elverum

I remember discovering that I loved recording - that breakthrough when I was in high school getting to record for the first time.

Phil Elverum