Dismantlists play instrumental music that is moody – and by that, I mean it captures the mood of our era. In Evidence, there’s something overbearing, almost oppressive in sound but there’s a warm undercurrent as well. You can hear it all live at the new Evidence release show at the Bryant Lake Bowl on Nov 14.
1. Please tell us about yourself and your music.
My name is Steve Seel and I make music under the pseudonym Dismantlists. It’s minimalist, slow, and instrumental – and made with guitar and electronics. For many years, the level of my guitar ability was only as good as it needed to be to “generate the sounds” that I would then manipulate after the fact with electronics and software; in the past couple of years, though, I’ve realized that performing this music live is important, because experiencing music live is important for us as human beings. So, this project is now entering a new and pretty exciting phase for me as I put it onstage.
2. I rarely ask about influence but given your experience as a MPR DJ on the Classical station and The Current. What have you learned or picked up from the music of both stations and how might we see that in the upcoming release for Evidence?
I actually grew up listening to both rock and classical music, and I suppose Dismantlists is the bi-product of that; I never had any formal musical training and what I gravitated to personally was rock (I’m actually a drummer by experience), but being in a family that attended classical music concerts — and having a dad who was very versed in it — rubbed off on me considerably. So while I’ve always written songs with lyrics and sung them too, the only music of mine that actually ever felt truly original was the weird stuff I made when I was putting my total unfiltered personality into it. The result was something relatively simple, but which was perhaps a bit more reflective, like classical music can be.
3. In the Twin Cities these days, we see everything from a lens of current events. I may be reading this in too much, but the music seems both oppressive and warm, like the a community under siege that comes together as neighbors. How much has the world around us had an impact on this album?
I’m so glad you asked that! All three of my records as Dismantlists have been influenced immensely by living in America since 2016, but also, how I process all of these horrible events as someone who escaped a conservative upbringing and all the weird scars that come with that. All of my records have menace on them, because we are being repeatedly traumatized and menaced in our world right now and I have a lot of pet theories that fascism grows out of a kind of male psychosis which is just as much present in families as as it is in governments. But then you find love and warmth, and often, it’s in your broader family. For me, that’s Minnesota and the family I’ve grown here. I could talk a lot more about this and how it relates to this music, but that’s the long and short of it.
4. How do you set out to create a song? Does it start with a vibe, a title, some playing around musically? Or do you wake up and there it is?
When I’m making Dismantlists music specifically, the compositions almost always emerge from playing and stumbling on something, and then expanding on that idea. I often begin with just a guitar and a looping pedal, and often I’ll create a loop and think “that’s a keeper,” and then I’ll develop it further or put it in a file with tons of other recorded loops that I come back to later. One of the most thrilling experiences to me is playing around with combinations of loops and tracks and suddenly stumbling upon something that just works – it’s like everything just fell out of the sky, and suddenly, I’m not a composer, just an “editor.” Which is incredibly fun. The only problem is that half of the things that I make that way can’t be reproduced live!
5. Please tell us about the upcoming release show.
I’ll be playing a handful of pieces from the new release, “Evidence,” plus a smattering of older pieces and at least one surprise “cover.” It’s at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater, Saturday, November 14, at 10pm, with my friends PRGRPHS opening. It’s a late show! But I’m certain it will suit the vibe of the music very well. I’m excited that I managed to get a date at the BLB the day after the CD itself comes out on Friday, November 13.
