Sam Prekop lends his affection for synthesizers to the gallery crowd
In his work in the Sea And Cake—and a long time ago in Shrimp Boat—Sam Prekop has crafted sophisticated and knowing songs. Although the Sea And Cake grew out of the post-rock movement in Chicago, where Prekop still lives, it has leaned more toward subtle songs of lively restraint, guided by Prekop’s guitar and vocals. But his fourth solo album, The Republic, is a different tangle of wires: It’s an instrumental synth record full of drones, tones and reveries.
The first half of the LP is music Prekop composed to accompany a film by David Hartt for a multimedia gallery installation. “The piece itself is black and white, and a lot of the footage is between Athens, Greece, and Detroit,” says Prekop. “Conceptually, I can’t say I’m up on every detail, but it’s pretty much about the roots of city planning and a whole lot of stuff.”
The tracks on the second half of the album are “more song-oriented, less cue-based, although the tools are the same,” he says. Those tools? Mostly a modular synthesizer, which patches together oscillators, limiters, filters and sequencers in variable configurations. It’s a technology that goes back to the Moog synthesizers of the ’60s, although Prekop also employs digital components. The process is both “addictive” and “frustrating,” he says. “A lot of the work I do is just setting up situations where something good might happen, and then hopefully I recognize it when it does.”
At times, as on “The Loom” or “A Geometric,” moments recall the intricate minimalism of Philip Glass, Steve Reich or Terry Riley.
“I’ve had a longtime interest in that sort of music, but it’s only recently that I’ve embraced that influence,” says Prekop. “Of course, I’ve always been interested in African music and Javanese, and a lot of Steve Reich stuff comes out of being influenced by that. It’s an interest in patterns, and using a modular synthesizer with sequencers and all that stuff really lends itself to that. On my last synthesizer record, (2010’s) Old Punch Card, I deliberately tried to dodge that sort of regular rhythm and patterns; it was much more cut-and-paste, musique concrète and angular trajectory. But on this record, I just let all that kind of stuff come through.”
The Republic is a headphones record, full of tiny, incremental details. The nine segments that form the 17 minutes of “The Republic” melt and meld and mutate. The subsequent six tracks are more discrete and melody-forward. But this isn’t pop: “Weather Vane” is the rare track that uses a discernible rhythm track.
“I feel there’s a lot going on that’s not going to beat you over the head—a lot of the strengths are in micro-sound details and stuff like that,” says Prekop. “I definitely don’t feel like it’s for everybody, that’s for sure. It’s going to take a sort of pre-interest in this sort of thing to really get into it. But in comparison to Old Punch Card, I think my sensibility is more exposed. If you’re familiar with the Sea And Cake, you can hear a lot of melodic sensibility as a bridge between the two. I think it’s not a terribly difficult listen.”
For his part, Prekop says he enjoys the mix of abstract impressionism and precise coordination that goes into composing for a film soundtrack.
“As long as they let me do pretty much whatever I know how to do, then it works out fine,” he says, laughing. “But if someone needed car-chase music or something, I would not be the guy for that.”
—Steve Klinge
