Interview: Adore, 1996
Adore, 1966 is the latest project of Wellington-based musician Daniel Johann Lines. After only two songs survived a house fire from the artist’s home, Daniel has been recreating his record entirely. It’s been a few months since the release of those two tracks and he’s recently uploaded a mix featuring electronic, drone, ambient, shoegaze, and slowcore sounds that have influenced his upcoming album. We spoke to him about recreating the album, the Internet, Drake and much more.
You’ve created several album under your own name and the name Salvia Palth, can you give us a little introduction about your latest project Adore 1996 and yourself?
I guess when you come down to it there’s not really any difference between any of these projects like… they all kind of picked up where the other left off in terms of sound and stuff. Like the first Adore songs are essentially just an extension of the themes and sound from the Salvia Palth album. Same goes for the entire first Adore album, which I lost in the fire, but that’s pretty much the same kind of music so I view it more as a continuous thing.
I’ve read before how you’re interested in how artists revisit older ideas and songs and I was curious how you were going to approach making new songs for the project. Are you focusing on rewriting songs off of memory or creating something totally different since your flat caught on fire?
I flirted with the idea. There’s an acoustic version of Went Home About It on the album that I’ve been working on and originally I was just going to rerecord everything from scratch but in a much cleaner and minimalistic style. But I decided that I would rather just do something completely different for the whole thing really.
How did your flat end up catching on fire? What was it like and what followed after?
I’d rather not talk about it too much, but what it comes down to is that someone left a candle burning. It was not much fun. I was in bed asleep at the time and the only person up was one of my friends who was using our internet to watch anime in the kitchen because he didn’t have wi-fi or something. He smelled smoke and then evacuated everyone. I didn’t have time to get dressed so I stood outside watching flames pour from my friends bedroom in a dressing gown, it was cold.
I’m glad you guys made it out safely. “World Anti-God Freedom X” is the title of your upcoming album. Why did you decide to change the name from “Winter” to “World Anti-God Freedom X” and what does the title mean to you?
It’s not so much a change in name as it is a totally different album. Like, I still have unfinished versions of all of the tracks from Winter, so to me that album has been made. It’s probably almost in the condition that I could release it honestly, it sounds better than melanchole and some of the songs are I think are written really well. I’ve given it to a few people.
I’m excited to hear it. I heard your 1996mix you released on Soundcloud a month ago. Other than the influence that the songs on the mix have had on your new album, to what extent does internet culture and the internet have an influence in your music? I was wondering due to the internet collagy trailer you released on youtube a while back.
“Internet Culture” is such a loaded phrase. I mean, I’ve been using the internet since I was 5, like I’m so heavily ingrained in the world of the internet. The name World Anti-God Freedom X comes from a picture I saw on the internet actually. It’s from this picture of an internet clipping selling like New Age books and that was the first part of the first sentence, the bold and capitalised bit and it just said WORLD ANTI-GOD FREEDOM. I was like that’s such a powerful statement. As far as the culture of the internet goes, though, I’m not so much influenced by that as I am influenced by just the things that are on the internet, pictures of families I’ve never met and uncensored speech.
Ever treat a girl out to snacks like Drake did to Nicki?
I wish. I’m too poor. I bought my girlfriend a bird clock that makes bird noises every hour once and apparently it was like deafeningly loud so she had to take the batteries for the bird noise part out. It still functions as a clock though.
I heard you make “comedy music” with your friends, do you guys ever make full out rap songs?
I was going to do a full rap album a while ago actually, I really like rapping. We did make a comedy rap song once called “YOLO or Swag?” but it was more a parody of online mixtape culture than of rap itself. The DJ tags on like Trapaholics mixtapes and stuff like that are just the funniest thing to me, they’re all so hypermasculine or done by “sexy” sounding girls it just so funny. We also made an emo song that sounds like TWIABP or something all using like preset sounds in Logic with me singing over the top but that one is more scarily accurate than funny.
You ever plug in a “damn son where’d you find this”?
Yeah there’s definitely one of those, but it went even deeper than that. We were on YouTube for like 2 hours maybe just like listening to like, collections of DJ tags that people had made for some reason, and then we just downloaded them using a YT downloader and piled them all on top of each other.
No Nathan Fielder or Hannibal Buress samples?
Nathan Fielder’s the On Your Side guy right? My friend showed me him the other day, I love it. Until the new Eric Andre season comes out then that’s what I’ll be watching. My favourite on is the one about the old man who drinks his son’s pee or something.
When are you deciding to drop your album? Will it be released through a certain label and will you be doing a few shows?
I don’t know when I’ll drop it. There’s a lot of work involved in finishing an album and I don’t want to make a date until I’m very close to having everything done. I would love to release it through a label but I would only want to release it through an electronic music label, because that’s what most of the new album is. I’m happy to release it independantly though. So far as shows go probably not. I don’t really play shows ever any more. I’d like to but the main obstacle is that I don’t have the tools to play electronic music in a live setting.
Thanks for your time! Any last words or people you want to mention?
Not really. I’m content.
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