Today we’re listening to Heathered Pearls, a Polish-American electronic musician based in Brooklyn. He was born in Częstochowa and moved to Michigan with his parents as a kid, growing up in the Detroit exurbs. He gravitated toward beatless electronic music, but also found influences in the local Detroit scene – from which he highlights two memorable tracks below. Jakub Alexander started the project Heathered Pearls to collect ambient electronic music that are minimal in style, with focused attention on the details of the synth loops, their effects, and interplay. “When I make music,” he told us, “I think of it as the prettier side of the noise scene.” We’re first playing his new album, Window, which came out in March, followed by his 2012 LP, Loyal, which is more atmospheric. A conversation with Jakub follows the streaming links.
Window - Heathered Pearls (30m, no vocals)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
Loyal - Heathered Pearls (57m, no vocals)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
What’s your earliest memory of music?
Watching my mom and her friends up late at night listening to The Police’s Synchronicity through the cracked open door.
How were you first introduced to ambient music?
In the early mid-90s, Deep Forest, Enigma, and Orbital were probably the firestarters. I wanted more of the beatless moments, so I went down a few different avenues and found trance and local Detroit dub, which were enough subgenres, but they opened up a can of worms for me.
What early listening most influenced the direction of your sound?
For Heathered Pearls specifically, which was the aughts, so probably just what I have had listed for years on my Facebook in 2010: Gas, Casino Versus Japan, High Wolf, Dettinger, Maurizio, Markus Guentner, burger/ink, Lawrence, Kaito.
What acts / tracks in the Michigan scene inspired you the most and stick with you to this day?
This Juno track my friend Danny Scales played for me when we lived together.
And this Underground Resistance cut:
Both together, I think, marry the spectrum of music I make but come from different sides of the sound that comes from Michigan’s scene.
As Heathered Pearls, you’ve oscillated between ambient and more four-on-the-floor music. Tell us about that journey, and maybe some of the similarities or differences between those production modes.
I wish I could make music for the dance floor; when I make music, I think of it as the prettier side of the noise scene. If I were talented enough, I’d just make IDM. I’m not a piano player; I can’t strum a guitar, keep a beat on a drum kit, or have the balls to write lyrics, but if you leave me with your melody and let me affect it, then I feel at home.
You’ve also been on the other side of the table as an A&R. Tell us how you approached that job, how you assessed demos and such. Did that experience affect you as a musician at all?
Rarely do I sign a lot of the music that aligns with the lane of music that I make. I think I do my job really well because I can relate to everyone involved. I’ve made myself do the work that some people find boring or shitty, and I’ve seen enough outcomes in so many different scenarios in the last 30 years that it gives me more compassion than most. If it’s in the studio, before a show, over dinner, or just a phone call, I feel like I understand it better than most when people start asking the tougher questions. Listening to the music is the fun part.
What was your studio setup for Window? What instruments/gear/software did you use to make the record?
Reason and no samples. I know it’s not the prettiest answer or the answer that you might’ve wanted to read, but I try to push what the program comes with to make it my own.
How do you discover new music these days? Any recent notable finds?
YouTube still. I’ve recently been on a newer jazz kick, sitting on a lot of trip-hop I found over the last few years, and I like what the kids are doing with shoegaze.
Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.
Casino Versus Japan
What are you working on next?
I’ve been dealing with dizziness for a couple years now, which has kind of shrunk my world a bit if anyone out there also battles with it. This sort of hinders the part of me that can make ambient music, since I find most sounds like what I wanna put out, but I’m feeling slightly better very recently. I hope to make a few more singles or an EP next year and then eventually another album which I’ve already sort of collected the influences which is a process that I love to do before making new music.
