An Interview with HiatusPhotography by Simon Weller Brooklyn was asleep when I finally sat down to reflect on my conversation with Cyrus Shahrad, the musical mind behind Hiatus. It was 1 AM, the creative magic-hour, but even in the quiet, spacious night I couldn’t get into a rhythm with the material. Going back to my inbox, I teased out a track Cyrus had mentioned during our chat he said he liked to listen to on loop all night while he works. It’s an ambient track, haunting and nostalgic, and may have well been recorded underwater. The loops were undetectable, so the overall effect lured me into a sort of trance. Time indeed began to dissolve and the night started to give way to the creative flow I was looking for, words just happening. Shahrad had just returned to the UK from a trip to Iran when we spoke and was deep in the throes of mixing his third studio album. I had first heard Hiatus while practicing yoga. The track was “Parklands” and something about it brought me home– a place for me of simultaneous security and openness. “To connect with that sort of more spiritual realm,” Shahrad proposed, “music has to almost be non-emotional. It needs to be more cosmic sounding, really. It needs to have less of the human guilt and pain and all that stuff in there.” In many ways, the previous Hiatus albums have that ethereal, dream-like quality to them– a steady, down-beat mystery. Still, Shahrad also attests that his work is deeply personally involved. There’s a potency– a core, he suggests, that we’re all as artists trying to get at. Specifically with writing he explains, “I always want to imbue everything with this personal history, this kind of gravity. I scatter pictures of my relatives around the room or whatever it is that inspires me to write about stuff that is very personal to me.” From there, facts and physical reality blur together with stream-of-conscious thought and layers of obscurity. After years as a journalist, two studio albums, and several EP’s, Shahrad has found a certain clarity with the creative process, cultivating an almost zen-like relationship with the work. Mornings are for writing– quiet, unplugged, and gently caffeinated. “When you’ve just gotten up there’s still this connection with the dream world where you haven’t quite entered into the routine of day to day life. I try and have a coffee and channel that into whatever I’m doing.” His afternoons are left for mixing, recording, and making some sense of it all. Mixing, Shahrad admits, is not as free-flow. “I can’t really think of anything that hasn’t made me more miserable than trying to mix an album,” which was taking the better part of a year. “It doesn’t get any easier… But what does become easier is that you just get used to the way your brain works. Having made two records before and having gone through it, there’s a knowledge there.” Creatively, there’s a push and pull going on with the old and new, known and unknown. “Growing up is difficult.” Cyrus says with a sense of lightness. “It’s difficult in real life and it’s difficult in a creative life.” Unlike Ghost Notes and Parklands there is no sampling this time around. “I set out very much to write a musical record…almost everything started with a piano. And then I wrote parts for strings and bass.” But with such a love for, and background in electronic music, he saw his musical DNA come through regardless. “When I set out I was looking to make something that was almost entirely instrumental, but there is still a lot of electronic stuff in there.” “Making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction.” During our time talking, Cyrus a few times mentioned a long-distance friend who’s mailed him a curious mix of gifts over the years. His first mixing kit, a photograph printed on canvas, and the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. The book, sent a few years back, seemed relevant about now. Bayles and Orland offer that “making art now means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction.” Cyrus adds, “I think that there’s always a feeling that if you don’t get this down– if you don’t make this work of art ‘right’ then it’s all for nothing, you failed. Accepting that that isn’t the case is one of the hardest things.” Finalizing an album he tells, “Savagely opens you up in a way that makes you feel very vulnerable. I’m about to put out another record and I’m really hoping that people are going to like it.” We talked more about Art and Fear, The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron), and our own individual experiences inside creative evolution. “We have a lot in common as artists,” he goes on. “Whether we’re musicians, whether we’re writers, whether we’re photographers. We all kind of come up against the same problems. And they’re all internal. They’re all of our own making. That whole thing about like you know, letting go. Understanding that it may not be happening today, but it will happen again. Beating yourself up about these sorts of things is not unique to me or you or anyone.” “Trust,” Cyrus adds, for one, “has a big part to play in creativity.” And after all the coffee, books, headaches, and experience along the way, it’s trust and a love for the work that propels him forward. “It’s so easy to forget how magical life and art can be. And it’s much better with music. You know it’s like a soundtrack. Life deserves a soundtrack. I hope that I can continue to provide one for people.” The new Hiatus album, All the Troubled Hearts, released June 2 and is available here: http://apple.co/2qI23Ls
