BYRH
An interview by Bennett Kelly.
Formerly a trio, the self-produced EP from Sam Hersey explores guitar and synth-based soundscapes freed from the constraints of live performance.
Hersey’s songs propel listeners into a creative world where lyrics contemplate the ills of dementia, in the opening track “River of Doubt,” and the perils of modern identity in “Fiddle Crisps” and “Laurel-Leigh.” Meanwhile, nearly instrumental tracks “Succulent Chinese Meal (Elliot)” and “Bright Red Yellow House” showcase Hersey’s intent to evoke just the joy of pure listening.
Look At My Records music reporter Bennett Kelly caught up with Hersey over the phone to learn more about Byrh’s production process:
Sam: When Byrh was a band, I was constrained by the medium and the instrumentation. It had to be something we could sing live, and work as guitar-bass-drums. In that way it prevented me from doing what I wanted in terms of sound design, synthesizers and harmony, vocal harmony, multiple guitar parts, and in how I could write the songs.
Then in terms of the right restraints or constraints, I started the EP as a challenge posted by a website to write, record, and release an album in one month. It gives you that time constraint, which unintuitively frees you from holding off on decisions, makes you work faster and more creatively. You can't agonize over decisions and let that bog you down and prevent you from making progress on the song. You just have to... Something has to get done. So it does inevitably. That was how the EP was made.
I think I'm a lot happier with it than I've been with a lot of other stuff I've written and recorded over the past few years. But it is fraught in terms of live performance because I really would be hard-pressed to recreate a lot of this stuff live, and make it sound anything like how it does on the record. But that's just something that can stop you from creating. If you're afraid that something you do is going to screw up your live show, you have to figure something else out instead. It's a lot more conducive towards the creative part of it.
Ben: You had a good phrase in there, “sound design.” Each of these songs really has layers and layers of sounds. When do you know it's done for you? How did the tinkering play out?
Sam: I ended up tinkering with the songs for six, seven months after that [challenge]. One of the things I enjoy most about producing is just trying to create these interesting sound textures and try to make them melodic, or match the harmony, or complement something else in the song. In the beginning, it's just a matter of generating, and grabbing a synthesizer tool, a plugin or something, and recording something in a way that just makes a new sound out of it. Use it in a way that's probably not intended, or use it in a combination of tools together, effects like lasers or reverb or delay, to create a sound that no one anticipated when they were making those tools.
There's also things like recording the reverb from a reverb, and then chopping it up and rearranging it so it's rhythmic. That's what I did in the intro of “River of Doubt.” Or having an arpeggiated synthesizer thing that I then put a pitch-shifting distortion on that makes it sound like not a synthesizer anymore. It makes it sound melodic instead of arpeggiated synth notes.
Ben: What are some of your favorite or proudest techniques across the songs?
Sam: One thing I do a lot is, I use a reverse-delay pitch-shifting pedal plug-in where the delay signal that it produces is reversed, like how reverse-sounds sound. Then it also progressively pitches them up the longer that they go on for. It sounds really cool to put anything through that, and then a lot of chopping it up, rearranging it, shifting it, putting it through effects, trying to morph it.
I use that technique a lot. I used that in “Pinkish Clouds” [from Byrh’s 2023 album]. I use that in “Laurel-Leigh.” I use it in a song that I'm working on right now. I think I overuse it a little bit, so I'm going to try and not do that anymore unless I try it for something and it works really well and it doesn't sound the same as everything else. But that's a big one for me.
Ben: Then how about some song concepts. I know what some of them are about. “Fiddle Crisps” was a vampire story. “Laurel-Leigh” is a thirsty YouTuber, I think.
Sam: “Fiddle Crisps” was the strongest concept I had for a song. When I was thinking about it, it was, this is a song about a vampire who was a brand mascot for a snack food called Fiddle Crisps. Just like Count Chocula, the food is named after him, he's named after the food. Then he loses his brand endorsement. He's having an existential crisis. He's like, Who am I without Fiddle Crisps? Am I really here? Now he's alone in solitude, moping around, feeding his fish, and reflecting on his existence.
“River of Doubt,” I had vaguely, an elderly couple where one of them was starting to get Alzheimer's. That one's a lot more vague, but just imagery of, the man in the relationship, wandering off, getting lost, getting sunburn, talking to strangers, and the wife trying to deal with it. For him, he doesn't know where he is every day or something like that for her. I don't know how to deal with that.
Ben: Is that personal for you?
Sam: My grandma has dementia, but it's more just from watching a lot of TV, like documentaries about people. I feel with dementia and Alzheimer's, I feel like that used to be a really popular documentary topic. People would write a lot of articles about it. It was very scary to me. I really don't want to get Alzheimer's when I get older.
“Laurel-Leigh,” I was imagining a demonic streamer, social media influencer, just likening the grind of getting your followers to become dependent on you, and needing them for their money, and them needing you for their social interaction, their community. This toxic symbiotic relationship where there's a parasocial relationship happening. It's a lot of imagery of, I'm in your spell, siren song, singing, drawing you in, and putting you under the spell and manipulating you. It's a mystical take on that culture. Sinister, mystical, magical thing. A witch or a siren. But again, the lyrics are all pretty vague. It doesn't tell a concrete story about anything, any events that are happening, really. Just capture that vaguely and politically, that idea.
Ben: And then you've got the other two, “Succulent Chinese Meal” and the title track.
Sam: Those ones, there's no concept behind those. They're just pure listening, pure music, no poetry or deeper meaning imbued into them. I feel like you don't always have to have poetic concepts to music. You can just listen to music just for the way it sounds, and that's enough to evoke emotions in you without that level of meaning. So that's what I was just making with those two. Like electronic music. There's no... Electronic music is not about stuff. It just is.
Ben: You mentioned that a couple of them are listening songs. I was driving in my car listening to these. Do you think of how these should be listened to? Are they designed to listen with your earmuff earphones on, or is it meant for driving around?
Sam: I think about that. I want it to sound good in any context, basically. Because some people only listen to music just from playing from their phone. Some people only listen to music in their car, their shady car speakers. My 2008 Honda Civic, the speakers are not great. When I'm mixing it, I try to listen to it from my phone. I listen to it in my car. I listen to it in my nice studio earphones, my nice studio monitors, my earpods. I listen to them a lot to figure out what works in each context and compromise how to make it sound the best in any one.
But I don't think that they're specifically intended for a certain setting. I want them to be appreciated in any setting, basically. But there could be a cool concept for an album, another type of positive restraint. If you wanted to make an album where you're like, Okay, this has to sound good in a driving context. I don't know. It's hard to get that balance. It could backfire. Then you just can't finish anything.
Big Yellow Red House is out now! You can stream it on your platform of choice. Keep up with Byrh by following them on Instagram.
