all the music that you’ve combined the
electronic new wave punk it’s not
necessarily the lyrics that people will
listen to it’s the whole sensation of
the whole song so how do we translate
into messages well that’s interesting
because when I was a philosophy major I
mainly focused on linguistic philosophy
and a big my frame about to get really
boring but a big part of linguistic
philosophy is understanding how people
respond to information and and where
where meaning is derived from and I grew
up my mom was an English major and I
grew up in a very sort of like
intellectual literary household and I
like words quite a lot but what I’m
really fascinated by that’s one of the
reasons why i was drawn towards dance
music and disco was the ability to take
banal words and infuse them with tons of
really poignant meaning you know like
the lyrics of I love you you know it’s
been sung a million times and it means a
million different things and that’s one
reason I love working with disco divas
because you give a great disco diva
really trivial lyrics but somehow they
can sing them in such a way that it’s so
pregnant with meaning and significance
so and I like I certainly like I love
the Leonard Cohen approach to lyric
writing or someone like Bruce Coburn you
know people who really focus on lyrics
but I also really love taking almost
painfully simple lyrics and trying to
infuse them with you know subtext and
meta text and different like there’s one
song on this album last night called I’m
in love and I think the whole song has
nine words and to me that’s kind of an
interesting challenge like how do you
take a song with nine words and give it
meaning so that’s I don’t it’s almost
like an inside challenge that like me
the former sort of philosophy major who
focused on on linguistic studies it’s
like a challenge I give myself to an
extent like is it
you could write 800 words and actually
convey less meaning than you could with
just a few I mean when you work with
vocalists what what do you look for in a
vocalist for electronic music well what
I love in a vocalist either great
technical proficiency like someone who’s
just got a beautiful voice or someone
with a really distinctive voice more
often than not actually i think i prefer
the distinctive voice is there a lot of
people who have technically great voices
without a lot of character that’s
someone who has like a truly unique
voice you know that even if it’s not
technically perfect something that
really strikes a chord with any what you
see is the future of dance music well
done from my perspective dance music and
I don’t want to sound overly
reductionist or simple but dance music
is any music that makes people dance and
that could be poka poka it could be
klezmer music it could be disco and can
be the Rolling Stones it can be hip-hop
I mean I just love that idea of music
that makes people dance whether they’re
dancing at a wedding whether they’re
dancing in their living room or in a
nightclub whether they’re dancing like
really cutting-edge electronic music or
whether they’re dancing to porgy and
bess you know like I just I love that
music has that power to get people to
stand up and move around and finally
sorry to jump around like this but um
what your name mo be as inspired by your
great great uncle’s book classic Moby
Dick have you had any attachments from
the special origins of your name uh yeah
I mean well my full legal name is
Richard Melville haul and I’m supposedly
related to Herman Melville it’s
complicated because he had a really
strange life he had a lot of success
with a book class I’m what’s called
typhoo um when he was young and then as
he became better at writing he became a
lot less successful and he sort of ended
his life penniless and in obscurity you
know he was a shipping clerk and he’d
written Moby Dick and when it was
released no one liked it we’ve got
terrible reviews didn’t
sell very well and I think was only
about like 20 or 30 years after he died
that people started to discover it and
on that side of the family like the
Melville side of the family there are a
lot of very sort of dark tragic men and
it’s weird I’m always aware of that
because I definitely have a propensity
to be a little dark I take myself too
seriously so I almost have to force
myself to not be too self-involved and
take myself too seriously well it’s been
a pleasure to talk to you thank you so
much for your time seriously I’m very
happy to meet you
electronic new wave punk it’s not
necessarily the lyrics that people will
listen to it’s the whole sensation of
the whole song so how do we translate
into messages well that’s interesting
because when I was a philosophy major I
mainly focused on linguistic philosophy
and a big my frame about to get really
boring but a big part of linguistic
philosophy is understanding how people
respond to information and and where
where meaning is derived from and I grew
up my mom was an English major and I
grew up in a very sort of like
intellectual literary household and I
like words quite a lot but what I’m
really fascinated by that’s one of the
reasons why i was drawn towards dance
music and disco was the ability to take
banal words and infuse them with tons of
really poignant meaning you know like
the lyrics of I love you you know it’s
been sung a million times and it means a
million different things and that’s one
reason I love working with disco divas
because you give a great disco diva
really trivial lyrics but somehow they
can sing them in such a way that it’s so
pregnant with meaning and significance
so and I like I certainly like I love
the Leonard Cohen approach to lyric
writing or someone like Bruce Coburn you
know people who really focus on lyrics
but I also really love taking almost
painfully simple lyrics and trying to
infuse them with you know subtext and
meta text and different like there’s one
song on this album last night called I’m
in love and I think the whole song has
nine words and to me that’s kind of an
interesting challenge like how do you
take a song with nine words and give it
meaning so that’s I don’t it’s almost
like an inside challenge that like me
the former sort of philosophy major who
focused on on linguistic studies it’s
like a challenge I give myself to an
extent like is it
you could write 800 words and actually
convey less meaning than you could with
just a few I mean when you work with
vocalists what what do you look for in a
vocalist for electronic music well what
I love in a vocalist either great
technical proficiency like someone who’s
just got a beautiful voice or someone
with a really distinctive voice more
often than not actually i think i prefer
the distinctive voice is there a lot of
people who have technically great voices
without a lot of character that’s
someone who has like a truly unique
voice you know that even if it’s not
technically perfect something that
really strikes a chord with any what you
see is the future of dance music well
done from my perspective dance music and
I don’t want to sound overly
reductionist or simple but dance music
is any music that makes people dance and
that could be poka poka it could be
klezmer music it could be disco and can
be the Rolling Stones it can be hip-hop
I mean I just love that idea of music
that makes people dance whether they’re
dancing at a wedding whether they’re
dancing in their living room or in a
nightclub whether they’re dancing like
really cutting-edge electronic music or
whether they’re dancing to porgy and
bess you know like I just I love that
music has that power to get people to
stand up and move around and finally
sorry to jump around like this but um
what your name mo be as inspired by your
great great uncle’s book classic Moby
Dick have you had any attachments from
the special origins of your name uh yeah
I mean well my full legal name is
Richard Melville haul and I’m supposedly
related to Herman Melville it’s
complicated because he had a really
strange life he had a lot of success
with a book class I’m what’s called
typhoo um when he was young and then as
he became better at writing he became a
lot less successful and he sort of ended
his life penniless and in obscurity you
know he was a shipping clerk and he’d
written Moby Dick and when it was
released no one liked it we’ve got
terrible reviews didn’t
sell very well and I think was only
about like 20 or 30 years after he died
that people started to discover it and
on that side of the family like the
Melville side of the family there are a
lot of very sort of dark tragic men and
it’s weird I’m always aware of that
because I definitely have a propensity
to be a little dark I take myself too
seriously so I almost have to force
myself to not be too self-involved and
take myself too seriously well it’s been
a pleasure to talk to you thank you so
much for your time seriously I’m very
happy to meet you
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