Jimmy Tamborello has been making music of some form or another for some time now: from the sublime eno-core of Strictly Ballroom to the clinical 80’s electro-pop of Figurine, from the lush soundscape experimentation of Dntel to the spry and accessible Postal Service collaboration with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. This fall, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jimmy at his Silverlake house and talking about his endeavors past, future and present. Here’s what he had to say. 

LAS: I wanted to ask you a few questions about older projects of yours, if you don’t mind. I remember reading something about a band called Arca. What was that? Is there anything going on with that these days?

JT> Arca was Strictly Ballroom, but afterwards. Some people left the band, but we wanted to keep doing it and decided to change the name. There were new songs but it was basically the same thing. It was just three people. We’re not playing together anymore. We still see each other and play on each others stuff, but… Chris (Gunst), the singer, lives in Santa Cruz, and everybody else has other projects going on. 

LAS: Is Chris the only person in Beachwood Sparks from Strictly Ballroom?

JT> Near the end they had Jimmy Hey drumming for them, and he was in Strictly Ballroom.

LAS: What’s going on with Figurine?

JT> We’re still doing that. It’s been really slow because we all live in different cities. David lives in San Francisco and Meredith lives in Boston or Northampton. We’ve been waiting for Meredith to move back over this way because she doesn’t have any way to record there. Me and David both have computers and both work on our own anyway for Figurine. But with her out there, it means we can only record when she’s in town, which is rare. It’s always rushed and we haven’t done anything (recently) that we’ve been happy with. We’re still thinking of doing more stuff, but we’re kind of waiting. 

LAS: She performs with you occasionally when she’s out here, right?

JT> Yeah, she’s performed at a Knitting Factory show (spring of 2003) and one time in New York, she was there. 

LAS: You did a split 7-inch with Styrofoam (“Don’t Get Your Hopes Up”). I read that there was a broken up Smiths sample...

JT> That was wrong. It was actually a Depeche Mode sample. The guy at the label (Safety Scissors) got it wrong. I told him that it was a Depeche Mode sample, but I was kind of worried at first about having a really obvious sample in the song. Somewhere between when I told him and it was released, it became a Smiths sample.

LAS: How much sampling do you use in your work as Dntel of source material?

JT> I try not to use too much, I don’t like to worry about it. Sometimes something will really stand out that I want to use, but I usually try to disguise it. A lot of times it’s stuff like old classical records.

LAS: Do you use any found sound samples?

JT> I do a lot of mini-disc stuff. I record with a mic and a mini-disc player. I spend time just walking around and recording stuff to use.

LAS: Do you prefer sounds of the city or nature?

JT> It really depends on the sound. I don’t get as many chances to go into nature.

LAS: What is next for Dntel?

JT> I’m working on a new album. The Postal Service (who have been ordered to change their name by The real Postal Service) is sort of done for now, so I’m gonna try to get an album done by the end of the year. 

LAS: What can we expect?

JT> I’m still going to do it through Plug Research. I’ve been talking to a bunch of people about singing. I’ve only sent out a few songs that people are actually already working on. I’m still trying to get songs together to send out. I feel like I’ll jinx it if I talk about people that don’t actually have songs yet. But people that are already working on stuff are Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes, Jenny Lewis from Postal Service and Rilo Kiley, and Andrew Broder from Fog. I’ll also be singing one.

LAS: Will you be singing more than you have in the past?

JT> I think it’ll just be one song on this album. Originally I wanted to do the whole album myself, so it didn’t seem like I was U.N.K.L.E. or something, like having a guest was the whole thing behind Dntel. But there are so many people that I’m excited about working with and that I want to do songs with so I kind of got carried away. 

LAS: How did you move from more rock-oriented stuff to electronic? Is your approach similar at all?

JT> I started doing electronic music first, in junior high school. My dad had a little set up at home – a keyboard and a sequencer and an eight track. I started off doing stuff like that, industrial music and then ambient stuff. So that was always in the background, even when we were doing Strictly Ballroom, and as we went on I started working more of that into it too. By the time Arca was happening, we were playing to a DAT, a lot more electronics. Then I just went off and started focusing on Dntel. It was kind of like these two different paths finally met up.

LAS: Do you approach writing a Dntel song like you would for Strictly Ballroom?

JT> Yeah, it’s a little different because for (Strictly Ballroom) we always wrote out of jamming. We would work on one part and keep playing it until you liked it, and then try to figure out the next part. It’s sort of the same with Dntel. I’ll work on one loop until it seems done… it’s pretty similar. 

LAS: Do you enjoy working on your own?

JT> I like working on my own. Especially with electronic stuff because it’s not immediate, it takes an hour or two just to get something started. It’s hard to have someone else sitting there while you’re doing it. Even when I’m working with singers, they’re usually working separately. I send them what I’ve done and they send back what they’re doing. It’s a weird version of collaborating. 

LAS: Your music as Dntel has an organic and emotional feeling to it, whereas some electronic music gets criticized for a lack of that. Is that intentional?

JT> I think you can make music that is purely electronic that has emotion or warmth to it. One of the main things is that I’ve never felt totally comfortable with my production. One of the things about electronic music is that it has so much to do with the exact way the sounds are sculpted, how clear and crisp everything is. I have trouble with that sometimes. It’s easier to hide it under a massive noise or organic instruments.

LAS: On the last record, each singer gave the song a different feeling to it. The songs were textured and emotional as opposed to the clinical feeling of Figurine. Are you intentionally going for a lush, emotional feeling?

JT> I do approach a Dntel song different from a Figurine song, but it’s not very conscious. It’s not a set of rules that I have to follow to get to one or the other. It’s more just accidents…

LAS: Do you record at home?

JT> Yeah. 

LAS: What is the basis of your set up?

JT> I work on a computer, Cubase, for the sequencing. But I have a sampler and a couple of synths and keyboards, and a microphone. That’s pretty much it. 

LAS: People respond to Life is Full of Possibilities like it’s almost a pop record with a hook, but it’s not really that. Do you have a pop music sensibility?

JT> With the new one, there’s a little more of that focus. I think doing the Postal Service stuff sent me in even more of that direction. Early in the making of this album, when I am getting a song ready in rough form for a singer, it’s more concise and there’s kind of a verse-chorus type of feel to it. But once I get the vocals back and I can lay it out and sort of start expanding on it and take some of that away, but they do start out more as pop songs.

LAS: How do you feel about the term IDM?

JT> Whenever you use a genre name, it feels a little silly. IDM is attached to so much weird pretentious stuff, like is that smarter than techno or something? It’s kind of connected to trekkies or something, people that take music way too seriously, who attach it to their intelligence. 

LAS: How seriously are we supposed to take Dntel? Is it intellectual or visceral?

JT> I like to think it’s more of a visceral thing. It comes more from the gut than thinking it out and trying to attach a lot of meaning to it. Although I think you end up getting meaning out of music that you like. I don’t want to say that music shouldn’t be taken seriously, but I think it’s more of a way to enhance your life than to be your life. 

LAS: Does Los Angeles have a big effect on your music?

JT> I think it has to do more with the people you’re around. I don’t think being in a city as opposed to being in the country has much of an effect on me. It depends on the people you’re around, the people you’re inspired by, the life you live, where you are. 

LAS: When you are doing a DJ set like you did last night (at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles), what kind of stuff do you play?

JT> It’s usually pretty random, I like to put together songs that aren’t usually in the same set. Anything from the 60’s to the present, rock stuff, electronic, pop, techno, etc. I’m not a skilled beat matcher or dance DJ, so I have to figure out other ways to make it interesting, make it more than playing one songs after another.

LAS: Do you just use mixer and turntables, or do you use any kind of effects?

JT> I usually just use CD players because I don’t buy much vinyl. I’m too lazy. I can’t afford to buy every 12-inch. I’ve been playing around with effects. I like that, I like the idea of being able to catch loops of something or doing delay. I want to do more of that, make it more like playing a live show.

LAS: What are you listening to these days?

JT> The new Shins record, I like that a lot. I’ve been listening to a lot of Brigitte Fontaine, I discovered her recently. Also, Alice Coltrane. And then a lot of Fennesz, that kind of sound sculpture stuff. It’s melodic but has a certain amount of noise and no real structure. And Stars of the Lid and more ambient stuff like that. 

LAS: Do you have a day job now?

JT> Not right now, it’s full time right now. We’ll see how long that lasts.

LAS: Were you surprised by how successful Postal Service became? 

JT> It was really surprising, because the way it was made was so casual, it was like something fun we were doing. It took us almost a year to do it because we were kind of randomly sending a couple of songs to each other. As for my part in it, I wondered if it would end up being an embarrassment or something, coming from the Dntel stuff, which is so different. This was more straight-forward pop music. When we booked the tour and started going around, even at that point, it was really shocking how many people were coming out. The shows kept having to get moved to different venues. It was exciting.

LAS: When you play live with Postal Service, you seem to take a back seat as the sound manipulator, compared to when you play a show as Dntel, you are the focus. Which do you prefer?

JT> I think it’s pretty similar with both, even though with Dntel I’m usually a little more front and center because there’s not a central singer or something. In general I feel more like a producer than a performer, so I try to stay as far back as possible. 

LAS: Is there anything else on the way from Postal Service?

JT> I’ve been doing some remixes. I did one for the Flaming Lips recently, for Azure Ray and I did one for Madonna. It’s called “Nothing Fails.” I just turned it in, I don’t know if they’re gonna use it. 

LAS: What Flaming Lips song?

JT> “Do You Realize?” Those are under the Postal Service name, with that kind of attitude, instead of the Dntel mindset. They’re sort of more poppy. 

LAS: So is the Postal Service name more of a reference to you working with someone else than just you and Ben Gibbard?

JT> No, it is me and Ben. But Ben’s not around to work on little things like this. It’s more just in the spirit of that. But actually the U.S. Postal Service sent us a cease and desist letter. We’re talking to them right now, it’s not figured out yet. So all these remixes I’ve had to do under different names. We’re gonna do another album next year. We’re doing some more touring in January.

LAS: Does music stem at all from a political mindset for you, or is it more emotional?

JT> I’m definitely more from an emotional place than a political place. I have trouble keeping track of the world around me right now, besides this apocalyptic feeling, like the world is gonna end soon. That would be the closest I get to a political thing that comes out in the music. I always feel like I’m gonna die, violently, soon.

LAS: Do you have a release date for the next Dntel?

JT> I really hope I can finish it by January and get it out in the spring. It’ll really depend on the singers and how long it takes to get to everybody, and getting enough songs together. 

LAS: Thanks for talking with me.

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SEE ALSO > www.plugresearch.com 
SEE ALSO > www.subpop.com 
SEE ALSO > Postal Service "Such Great Heights" video