Interview Series: [F]luisteren with Michael A. Muller
[F]luister is excited to present a series of musician’s interview, creating a channel for the continuous communication between musicians and audiences, and promoting a deeper understanding of music and discovering of new music/musicians.
Fuister is happy to interview Michael A. Muller, he is known for an American minimalist instrumental duo, Balmorhea. The band he started with Rob Lowe in 2006. He is coming back to Dordrecht with his first solo show on 12th of Octobre.
The Solo Journey:
Exploring the Creative Evolution of an Artist.
(Picture 1) photo by Rich Stapleton
Fluister: The first time we met was during your very first European tour with Balmorhea back in 2009. You performed in Dordrecht at Fluister, an intimate art centre show, CBK. I still remember that day vividly, partly because I was quite nervous about whether you’d actually make it — you were driving all the way from the border of Wales, UK in just one day. Fluister was scheduled for the early afternoon, and I half-expected a cancellation. But you arrived right on time, and it showed how professional and dedicated you were as musicians. Do you still remember the Fluster show on that day?
Michael: Wow, I don’t remember having driven that far in one go. But it’s likely very true. That must’ve been our first or second tour in Europe. We were so eager and driving 500km in a day was no big deal. I remember that concert very well. Such a beautiful space. You were so accommodating. We went for a walk after the soundcheck and had an afternoon coffee with ‘poffertjes’ (small sweet pancakes). And I will never forget your amazing record collection and the dinner Su prepared after the concert. I’m so excited to return to Dordrecht and see you all again.
Fluister: It’s been a while since your last tour in Europe. You’ll soon return to Fluister show at Dordrecht, this time as a solo artist. What’s it like to be returning, and what can audiences look forward to during your 2025 European tour?
Michael: Balmorhea played some concerts in Japan, Türkiye, UK, Italy and Germany in the last year or two but none in NL. Hope we can return in 2026. This October’s solo concerts will be my first official tour as a solo artist. The idea started when ‘Fluister’ contacted me. I will have shows in London, Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Hanover and Dordrecht in the 2025 European tour. I’ve done some listening sessions and audio exhibitions with my music – but never a traditional performance. I will be previewing some of my forthcoming material which is all very sparse open-tuned guitar works. Not too dissimilar from my contributions to Balmorhea — but in a slightly different spirit. In the set, I’ll also include a few of the Balmorhea pieces from over the years which I wrote on guitar. The intent of the music is one of engaged listening. I hope the concertgoers can have an immersed time just being in the space and truly feeling the music. I’ll also have a very limited pressing of the music on cassette tape to share which won’t be available online or anywhere else after the fact.
Fluister: You’ve released 2 solo albums in recent years, many of which are rich with cinematic references. I saw an interview on YouTube and knew that your album Mirror Music was inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1975 film (Russia) of the same name. Tarkvosky’s film Mirror is widely regarded as one of his most difficult works. What was it about the film that resonated so deeply with you that you decided to release an album of the same name? How did you translate its visual and atmospheric language into a sonic one?
Michael: Yes, Mirror Music album isn’t so much a direct reference to the film so much as a nod to the object of a mirror and its nature — a diptych of an image — two halves forming. I happened to watch Mirror around the time I was composing the pieces and the name stayed with me. The cover image of the album in turn (a large oil painting by John Zabawa), also deals with this duality — two asymmetrical halves converging at a centre point.
Scoring for film and creating my own music are different processes. Film music is a collaborative effort focused on evoking specific emotions that synchronize with the on-screen narrative. This often requires adapting my work to a director’s vision, sometimes with specific musical references, and balancing my creative voice with the needs of the project. It’s a challenging but rewarding process of negotiation and adaptation.
Mirror music, painting by John Zawaba
Fluister: Your love for cinema even led you from Austin to Los Angeles. How has life in LA shaped you as an artist, and does the city’s atmosphere find its way into your music?
Michael: I follow the film world and watch a lot of movies. I keep up primarily with the realms of horror, sci-fi, and suspenseful dramas and am enamoured with the evocation that a film might provide. There’s so much to be drawn out and applied in various ways to music. I relocated to LA with a mind to do more work in the film composing arena and have done much more bespoke work under my own name in this world in the last few years. I am very fortunate to have found a rare and secluded house (and studio) to work in. I am so close to everything happening outside but tucked away on a hillside behind many layers of trees and flora. It’s provided a lovely foil to reside behind and focus on diving into these varying worlds inside whatever project I’m amid. It is a little tricky to create very dark and emotional music; for a film set in the winter for example, while I’m in the warm, bright sunshine with palm trees swaying outside my studio window.
Fluister: Do other art forms, such as literature or poetry, influence your creative process as well? You’ve mentioned poetry in other interviews—how does it shape your music, if at all?
Michael: I would say film is the number one inspiration that bleeds into my music. Though, I am drawn to concepts posed in literature. I definitely (always!) draw ideas from poetry primarily in naming songs. Putting a fitting word or two as a title to a possibly very ambiguous piece of instrumental music is sometimes a challenge. For Mirror Music – the album was quite conceptual, and it felt right to have all the tracks embody a continuous flow. Thusly, the titles are simple “Mirror 1,” “Mirror 2” and so on. But other releases find the whole of the song titles pulled from poetry. Ideas from words really stem from the feeling they evoke. Sometimes a word or series of words so aptly concentrate the loose “feeling” I’m striving for emotionally in a piece of music.
Fluister: Can you sketch your workspace for us? Do you work in a dedicated studio or mostly from home? Does the environment influence the type of music you create, and do you have any rituals or habits that help you slip into a creative mindset?
Michael: I have a studio room in my house that is simple but very effective for my work flow. I have the computer, monitors and main heart of everything on the short wall, with the longer two side walls filled with some shelves of instruments, smaller synths, my guitars and basses and effect pedals, etc. The far end of one wall has some guitar amplifiers and the other side has my Rhodes and a Juno-60. The far short wall opposite is a series of sliding glass doors. I have some acoustic panels on wheels covering this façade, as well as some more panels hung above the workstation and flanking the sides in the first reflection points. There is a large rug that covers the middle of the room on the floor that also provides some sound dampening. I’ve recorded pretty much everything in this room that I’ve released — albums and film scores, both. It sounds good to my ears, and I’ve been there now 5 years, so I am very familiar with its nuances. I can comfortably fit about 2-3 people playing at once. But usually it’s just myself or one other person tracking. I do like to have a candle or some soft incense burning to sort of prepare the space for a creative energy at the start of a work day. When I’m not recording or mixing in the studio, I always have music playing through the monitors. I also open all the sliding glass doors when it’s nice weather outside to let some air in.
Fluister: Although your recent work has been released as solo albums, you’ve collaborated with remarkable artists like Clarice Jensen, Jon Porras, Douglas McCombs, and Hania Rani. How do these collaborations come together? Do you usually create the basic track with a specific person in mind, or is it more spontaneous?
Michael: My first release, Lower River, was mostly just me playing the tracks and layering ideas on my own. I did have cello and double bass on that record but only on a few tracks. Mirror Music was quite the opposite, as there were 11 different featured artists joining the recording. I composed the base layers and set a limitation on myself to contain the general world within an Oberheim 2-Voice synthesizer, a Rhodes and a Mellotron. From there, I asked different friends (the ones you mentioned, and a few more) to play on each track. I didn’t necessarily have specific people in mind before I wrote the material. I just found the tones and feeling that was right to me on my end first — then asked myself what instrument or texture would pair well with each track. So, the foundation in the audio was congruous from track to track with the top line instrument on each possessing a variation in timbre. The tones oscillate from very sparse (modular, cello, voice) to more complex and dense (percussion, bass VI, pedal steel guitar, etc). There is a sort of swing of modulation and tone from track to track but the world all feels the same in the end.
Fluister: In recent years, your focus has shifted more toward solo work and film scores. What is the current status of Balmorhea? What is the big difference?
Michael: Funnily, Balmorhea has just released our first full original film score album. A rare thing for us — as we’ve primarily only focused on putting out albums and performing. We have our 20 year anniversary next year (which is insane to think about). We are planning some ideas around that milestone and have some concerts getting booked for next year, as well. In my career as a solo artist, I’ve almost purely sought out bespoke scoring, with the album work coming on the side (in my mind, at least). I compartmentalize scoring and releasing albums as sort of two sides of a coin. The scoring work has become more of a job and how I earn my living, whereas the music I record and release is more of an overtly creative endeavour. With film work, it’s more of a collaborative effort with the director of the project and with my own music, it’s a bit more of a freeing place I can express my ideas without the expectation of trying to expressly earn a living from it.
Fluister: Your track “This is the Water and This is the Well” is incredibly beautiful and calming. Can we expect to hear music in a similar vein during your upcoming Fluister concert? More broadly, in another interview, you mentioned you’re interested in creating music to be a more personal experience to each listener, audience feel certain space and sound wave. I really connected with that thought. To me, listening to music can be a very solitary, almost lonely journey in some way.. Even when we hear the same piece, it can trigger vastly different personal experiences, emotions, and memories in each listener. How do you try to achieve this intimate connection with your listeners?
Michael: I’m so happy to hear it impacting you in that way. I will play that song and many more that are more or less in that same plane of consciousness, so to speak. Perception IS reality. And there is something to the notion of solipsism in art — meaning, that each person’s interpretation and understanding of something is in some ways solitary and true. It doesn’t so much matter what the artist intended or meant to communicate with a piece. The only true and real thing is what it means to the iterations of singular viewers, or listeners in my case. There is some magical beauty in that, to me. Every song is ingested and morphs into some amalgam of that listener’s current state of mood, emotion, sensorial textures and so forth; even mixing in their memories, histories and other wide-spanning influences and impulses that are tapped into while being in a specific place listening to a specific song. In this way music becomes “ours.” It’s one of the most personal external factors that can imprint on us. All I can do as a musician, is to try to make music and harness something that means something to me. I play the music that comes out of me and shape it in a way that feels natural. I share it and hope that it may also elicit some movement inside someone else. How that shape appears or doesn’t and the subsequent impact it may or may not have is beyond my control. It’s kind of the opposite of what I do with my film music, where I have to elicit certain emotions.
Fluister: For listeners who are new to your work, what is the best way to experience your music? How do you hope they listen to it?
Michael: The entire impetus for Brian Eno’s definition of “ambient” music rests on the theory that it works in the subconscious — that it transmits some subtle influence and underpinning in the background. I love that idea. But it also doubly works and rewards an attentive and engaged ear. If you have some nice headphones, lay down and listen to Eno with your eyes closed it’s a truly transportive experience. Both of these natures exists in tandem. I think (and hope) this applies to my music, too. It serves a function in the background as you clean your house or are cooking dinner but it also can be a rich experience, when you’re listening on a train — just looking out the window and letting your mind roam. There’s no right or wrong way to approach this music. I hope people can feel something deeper when they sit with it and allow it space to breathe. The live version is an iteration of this mindset of experience. We will all have a memory of that room and space together; how the light and shadows were arranged, the fragrance of someone sitting close to us, the reflection of sound off the ceiling and so many other details that will play into our collective and personal memories of that time. It’s the most special thing I can imagine.
Fluister: Lastly, can you share any upcoming projects?
Michael: I have a film score album coming out on 31 October for a film called How To Make A Ghost. It’s a chilling story about a young boy dared to do a prank on Halloween that goes horribly wrong. The music is ominous but has some tender moments between some intense bursts at the pinnacles of the narrative. It revolves around choral, brass and percussion with some long strands of cello, double bass and organ tying it all together.
I have a dark and quiet collaborative EP coming in the late winter with a Norwegian pianist and of course, I will have the full album version of this guitar music presented at this concert, which will have its release (hopefully) next May/June.
Fluister: Thanks for your time and interview. Looking forward to seeing you at Fluister.
Michael: Thanks for having me. See you at the Fluister show.
Article by Su-Young Kim
copyright@Fluister.org
The live show of Balmorhea at CBK in 2009 is still online.