“Woaaaaaaaah.. sanso returns from outer space” reads the subject line of just one of the dozens of my electronic exchanges with Melissa Agate, otherwise known as multi-instrumentalist and electronic musician sanso-xtro. It’s an email that’s particularly important in shaping our correspondence as she confirms the whispers of a follow-up to Sentimentalist, her album which appeared on the Type label five years ago.
Agate, who affectionately signs off every piece of correspondence with “sansoâ€Â, is at one with her artistic moniker. The latest sanso album, Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain, is a particularly intimate collection of songs that carries on the delicate synth-laced whispers of its predecessor and builds upon them with additional layers of complexity. It’s a working document of a musician left to her own devices, or the aural result of being tucked away in a structure that has lived the best part of a century and a half on the north edge of the Barossa Valley, which Agate calls her home.
This album couldn’t have been recorded in a house more quintessentially Australian. Once the centre of attention as the town’s General Store and Post Office, a rain water tank sits around the back, a constant reminder that its past is still well and truly an integral part of its contemporary existence.
Within the house exist two separate recording areas; the first a studio room with a wooden floor and white stone walls, the second a cellar directly underneath which is home to a cement floor, and more stonework. These areas are “two nice, interesting acoustic spaces,” with cables and microphones running up and down the stairs.
This spatial reference has a lot to do with Agate’s music practice in piecing together Fountain Fountain. Her relocation to South Australia after working as a Telecine Assistant in London sparked a definite shift from the compositions heard on Sentimentalist. Apart from the clear definition between phrases and musical motifs found on Fountain Fountain, which could easily be inspired by the recording space, there’s also a theme of the natural world that runs through the sanso landscape (think song titles such as ‘Wood Owl Wings A Rush Rush’, or ‘The Origin of Birds’).
Moving home was her chance to “kick back”, to swim in the Southern Ocean and be away from the mental and physical pollution of living in a big city. “I must admit I’ve been in hibernation, and am not really very involved with what’s going on in [Adelaide’s] electronic music scene. I’ve played a few shows both as sanso and as a drummer in an improv group and the guys who organised those shows are pretty enthusiastic about putting interesting shows on around the city. But that’s about all I can say. It seems a little bit like there is not much going on but as I said… hibernation sanso.”
Fountain Fountain is the first time that Agate’s vocals feature with any prominence in her music. It’s something that happened when the time was right. “With Sentimentalist I didn’t even try… it actually didn’t occur to me to sing on any of those songs, except for the slight vocalising at the end of ‘Like White Fire’. All of the songs on Sentimentalist are about something or someplace. But I wanted the music to tell the stories there.”
On Fountain Fountain, there are narratives of sort, but more often than not Agate’s voice acts as a decadent glossolalia-like foil to the instrumentation. Melodies bubble to the surface with a subtle playfulness that permeates the entire album. Take for example the stop-motion video for ‘Hello Night Crow’, by friend and artist Fergal Brennan, which acts as a visual tip-toe through this delicate landscape. Composed from a variety of forest images and animated sequences, the clip’s subdued palette cleverly lulls the viewer into the album’s alternate reality.
Colour is particularly important to Agate, a trait carried over from her work in post-production. She sees colour correction in everything she watches. “Certain colours are so deluxe in a delicious kind of way that they make my mouth water,” which she thinks could be weird, but shrugs off in a playful manner.
Despite this, the sanso live show, which was most recently performed at Decibel Festival in Seattle, doesn’t rely on visuals. “I’m not into the idea of my performances being audio/visual. I think that unless the music is specifically arranged with this stuff in mind then it’s kind of a bit more of a distraction from the music being played. I guess, when it’s someone performing solely with a laptop that makes more sense because that live scenario is a little lacking in the visual stimulation department for the audience.”
Her live set-up is exhaustive in its scope and rattling off its list of contents takes more than a single breath. It seems to consist of more equipment than one person can possibly manage in a single performance. Yet somehow, she makes it happen. There’s an old Roland Juno-6, a Watkins Copicat tape echo/delay from the 60s, an Alesis micron synthesizer plus delays, loopers, an accordion, melodion, acoustic guitar, custom-made percussion contraptions, a glockenspiel and kalimba. Then, there’s vocals on top. “I like to be completely surrounded by instruments… I put my multi-task instrumentalising down to being a drummer. I’m really coordinated and I’m pretty much ambidextrous, although I am right dominant. I find trying to imitate my recordings by playing multiple parts all at once a very pleasant challenge. It can be quite euphoric and my mind feels like its going to explode sometimes, but its all for a good cause! It’s a lot of concentration, focus, and splitting ones mind into separate partitions.”
The sanso sound seems like a world away from Agate’s previous incarnation as drummer for the avant-rock band Sin Dog Jellyroll. Signed to Sony Music in 1996, the band split up in 1999, resulting in Agate’s relocation to London. “I had felt really let down by the other band members. Obviously as the drummer of the band I wasn’t in the position to keep it alive. So I decided I would go solo.”
After first picking up her father’s acoustic at age ten, percussion soon became Agate’s persistent love. “When I was twelve I was in a classroom next to the music room at school and I started to arrive at school early everyday so I could play the drum kit in there. This was a surprise to everyone as I hated school and put up a pretty big fight to not go most days.”
After a period of guitar-hiatus and the split of Sin Dog Jellyroll, the instrument wound its way back into the hands of Agate, now crafting the sounds of Sentimentalist and re-imagining herself as sanso. At first listen, Sentimentalist doesn’t really sound like it was conceived by a musician whose primary love was percussion. The album excels in its brevity; songs are sharp and honed to within an inch of their key idea, with just a hint of movement from cymbals and drumsticks. Parcelled into bite-sized pieces that rarely exceed the two-minute mark, the Sentimentalist sound featured little to no vocals, just drifting synth-atmospherics.
Fountain Fountain is by contrast much more lush in both its recording process and final presentation. Mastered by Lawrence English, it’s Agate’s first record for the Digitalis label. “I love the mastering process. Lawrence is excellent and has done a fantastic job! I find mastering really exciting, because it means the recordings are finished, also because it always sounds sooooo much better after mastering. Punchier, more deluxe.” Added emphasis, sanso’s own.
“When I work out the artwork for my releases I don’t usually have any kind of preconceived idea… it’s important to me that it makes sense, that it’s a connection to where my mind was at when I was writing and recording the songs. With Sentimentalist I had to be a little less fussy. Type had some strict guidelines, for example I wasn’t allowed to use any font except for the Type font, the one they use for everything. This bugged me because it was all a bit too tidy, and my music is far from tidy! But I do like the way it all looked aside from that.”
Digitalis gave Agate creative freedom on this album, from concept to final packaging. The artwork is hand-drawn by Brennan, based in Ireland, and in a limited run will appear as yellow coloured vinyl as well as in CD form. “I hypnotised Brad from Digitalis to let me do coloured vinyl… it was all part of my plan for this one.”
Agate hopes her next release will follow soon after Fountain Fountain, with the majority of the record complete. Surrounded by the pleasantries of her recording environment, its aesthetic is sure to be closely tied in to the delicate euphoria of Fountain Fountain. “It’s about finding something, someplace or someone extraordinary… climbing to the top and embracing it 100 per cent.”
Fountain Fountain Joyous Mountain is released through Digitalis Industries/Boomkat.
