Saapato (Interview)

Today we’re listening to Saapato, an American ambient music producer and multi-instrumentalist based in upstate New York.

Brendan Principato

’s project combines recordings of the natural environment with synthetic compositions from human beings (mostly himself). The fusion has the effect of dissolving the nature / human divide, as exemplified in his latest record, Spring at Home. It’s a single 48-minute track blending field recordings (of mostly birds) and sporadic synthesizer notes and chords. We’re also re-upping On Fire Island, the LP we recommended in May, which originated during a residency with the National Parks Service. A conversation with Brendan follows the streaming links. (We’ll be off Thurs-Fri this week.)

Spring At Home - Saapato (48m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

On Fire Island - Saapato (50m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

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What's your earliest memory of music?

My earliest memory of music is my dad playing Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik at top volume and me running around my parents’ house naked jumping up and down on the couch. I think this was when I was about three or four years old. Loved those frenetic strings and still do! My dad is a big classical music head on top of being a music teacher and band director for 40 years, so most of my earliest music memories are pieces by his favorite composers: Mozart, Chopin, Scriabin, Debussy, and Liszt.

Which artists were the most influential early on when you started making your own music?

Well, beyond being a classical listener, my dad was an early electronic music enthusiast. He composed using the very first version of Max, studied under Herb Deutsch in college, listened to New Sounds on WNYC since John started the show back in 1982. When I first started experimenting with electronics and recording in high school, I hadn’t heard much experimental music outside of what dad would play around the house. So artists like Tomita and Suzanne Ciani were all subconsciously influencing me, even though at the time I couldn’t really name their albums nor was I actively throwing that sort of stuff on my CD player. Some of the first artists I found on my own that really opened my head to what was possible with sound were people like Steve Halpern, Harold Budd, Edgar Froese, and Wendy Carlos (the Clockwork Orange soundtrack is something I was totally obsessed with when I was about 15).

How'd you get into field recordings?

As a kid I collected everything, but I’m not a super organized person, so after a while I just had a closet full of boxes with rocks, shells, trading cards, bottle caps, stickers – basically anything you could imagine a kid collecting. I was a big Pokémon fan, and the idea of completing a Pokédex was like valhalla to me. At some point there was a shift from wanting to collect physical things to wanting to capture and catalog less tangible things. I loved found sound (dad was also playing lots of Stockhausen-informed music when I was young), so the thought of being able to record things and create my own library was really interesting. I vividly remember thinking, I will be the only one who has these captured sounds as they are. This idea of a private collection that could not be replicated I think got me excited. At the time there were no phones with real recording capability (I didn’t even have a phone), so in sixth grade I asked for a microphone that plugged into my iPod for my birthday. That thing would go everywhere with me, and I just started recording conversations and trains and environments wherever I went. This was years before I seriously started making music, so field recording and sound collection came way before the idea to make music with found sound.

What was it like working with the National Parks Service on On Fire Island?

It was awesome – a dream come true honestly. To be dropped in a remote location with my microphones and synthesizers where the only objective is to document and compose for that landscape is my ideal state of being. If I could, I would do that all day every day, all over the world (NatGeo let me know if you need a guy). Getting to know a place so intimately as I did with Fire Island and the land around Juneau Alaska was really special.

What gear did you use to make Spring at Home?

This one I can actually pull from the album description on Bandcamp because I felt inclined to document this! So Spring at Home is in some ways is my ambient/environmental take on Peter and the Wolf by Prokofiev. Not in the sense that any one synth is directly representative of an animal heard in the field recording, but just because I composed with the field recording’s biodiversity in mind, mimicking the quick calls of some elements and the longer tones of other organisms. I basically only did one layer per synth to ensure that no one sound was too dominant, sometimes only hitting a few notes or chords every few minutes. I wanted to give each instrument room to breathe and create nice interplay with other voices in a way that was natural and similar to an ecosystem’s sonic structure.

In terms of the synths I used…

A myriad of analog and digital synthesizers were used including: Roland Juno 60, Roland Juno 106, Moog Little Phatty, Teenage Engineering Op-1, MicroKorg, ThumbJam iOS (can’t recommend this synth enough – Don Slepian showed it to me when we played together last year and I’ve been hooked!), Korg Polysix, and Slate and Ash Spectre among others.

All of these were processed using a wide array of Sound Toys and Valhalla Plugins as well as a number of guitar pedals including: Old Blood Noise BF-44 Reverse and Black Fountain V3, Strymon NightSky, Eventide H9, EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run, and Moog MF-108M.

This list isn’t exhaustive but it’s the majority of what was used across the album.

Are those animals on the cover the animals heard on the record? Love that cover.

Yeah the artist is a guy named Andy Senken. He’s my best friend since fifth grade and really knocked the cover out of the park (NatGeo again if you need a guy…)

Most of these animals were seen the evening I captured the soundscape but not necessarily heard. I’m again pulling from the album description here – the animals that can be heard throughout the field recording include (in approximate order of appearance): Spring Peeper, Canada Goose, Red Wing Blackbird, American Robin, Pickerel Frog, Wood Frog, Eastern Phoebe, Northern Leopard Frog, Song Sparrow. 

What artists/albums are you listening to the most now?

Lately I’ve been listening to tons of albums released by Siel Records. Weareforests, KMRU, and Jogginghouse are all on heavy rotation. I’ve also been listening to a lot of dungeon synth! This is a fairly new genre for me to be spinning, outside of when it’s in video games or whatever, but there’s a lot of really interesting crossover between the type of ambient music I like to make and dungeon synth. Oftentimes there are field recordings and almost always the instrumentation is very emotion/mood driven. I’m not necessarily trying to make music that evokes a fantasy world/magical mood, but the idea of that being the driving emotion behind music is interesting to me. As summer turns to fall and fall turns to winter, I’ve found it extremely cozy and satisfying to have on this sort of music on in the background.

Some artists I’ve discovered recently that I’m really liking include Hole Dweller, Tales Under the Oak, Wooden Vessels, feth, and Rune Realms. Beyond Siel Record’s latest releases and dungeon synth, I’ve been listening to tons of Austrian/yodeling music (been obsessed with this for the last year or so), classic country (always on rotation for me), and Air (saw them play moon safari last month and it sent me down a rabbit hole). Oh! One more… I am definitely the last guy to the party in loving Bonnie Prince Billy, but I saw him live in September with a friend while we were on mushrooms and both of us were brought to tears. I’ve been listening obsessively since then.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

Oh man… This sort of question makes my head spin because unfortunately there’s way too of these folks unfortunately. I think in the spirit of trying to help an underrated artist get their due praise, I’ll stick to a contemporary artist and in that regard my brain bursts with the name Paco Cathcart. Paco is the musical genius behind The Cradle. They live in brooklyn and I think they are one of the most important living songwriters. The Cradle should be a household name. There are over a dozen records that all kick ass. They offer a relentlessly varied live performance format, and they’re an incredibly sweet person. Go check The Cradle out if you’ve never listened to them before as well as the seemingly endless list of projects that Paco’s wizardry has touched (Palberta, Sweet Baby Jesus, Climax Landers, Old Table, Big Neck Police – the list goes on and on and on).

What are you working on next?

I’ve got a lot of different things cooking at the moment which is really exciting. Speaking of the Cradle, I’m actually doing a record with Paco! We recorded hours of improvised guitar and vocals, and then I’ll be processing the raw audio through effects and interweaving them with field recordings in a sort of Eno/Laraaji Ambient 3 format!

I’ve got a collaborative record which is almost done that aims to explore animal decomposition through sound. I’ve been organizing this thing since 2021, and it will be coming out early next year. I’m working with one of my favorite labels, and it has over a dozen of my favorite artists on it. Needless to say I am beyond stoked for people to hear it.

I’m also working on a collaborative record with my friend Chazz Knapp. He put out my favorite album from last year (microfolk), and I’m getting really excited about the direction we’re moving in with our own sound (think overgrown machinery and abandoned factory sort of energy).

And I have a few non-ambient projects in the works including a folk-leaning double album with my band Boon and a bizarre post-apocalyptic sort of concept record with my friend Connor who makes music as Aisle Knot (another killer underrated songwriter).