Bell Monks (Jeff Herriott and Eric Sheffield) create slow, dreamy, haunting music. They call their music sleepy rock, blending lush sonic textures with slower, mostly traditional song structures. The Onion’s AV Club, back when they still had a Madison-focused section, fairly accurately referred to the band as “combining the minimalism of Brian Eno’s ambient work with the gloomy songwriting of Low“, though experimental composers like Morton Feldman and John Cage were equally on their mind when the duo first started working together more than fifteen years ago. Eric and Jeff cherish the creative aspects of the recording process, often finding songs in the studio; recording and mixing become tools to conjure aural magic, almost like sleight of hand, through the misdirection of multi-tracking, layering, and the subtle use of processing techniques they’ve developed in their academic careers (both are music professors). Inspiration for their music regularly comes from their natural environment – the birds, the sun, the trees, and the landscape. Jeff routinely walks in the parks near his home in rural Wisconsin, spaces that have served as lyrical inspiration for much of their recent music, both in the specific description of visual environments as well as the philosophical sensations that these spaces conjure. For their new album, Watching the Snow Fall, Bell Monks have partnered with Wayside & Woodland Recordings, a label that is focused on “a psychogeographic approach to the exploration of music, photography, field recordings and landscape.” In some small way, this music invites people to slow down and take a break from technological onslaught, perhaps so they might notice more of these kinds of spaces themselves, or at least to enjoy the sound of some cool synthesizers.

What They Say: “All of us have those mornings where we just don’t want to get out of bed, when we stayed up too late and the alarm hits at the wrong time. Even after a good night’s sleep, I’m never eager to wake up, and I need a cup of coffee and some time with a book before I really get going.“

“Heidi Johnson, who has sung with Bell Monks since our earliest days, asked if this song was about a real person, about a real story. It’s not, but I was happy when she asked. A lot of our songs are about abstract ideas or imagery, but I was trying to capture something more immediate and tangible when writing the lyrics for this one. The songwriting started with a guitar lick that Eric sent me, which I chopped up and rearranged. Pretty quickly I landed on the main chorus line and then fashioned a story around it.“

“I spend a lot of time walking through Dorothy Carnes County Park near my house in rural Wisconsin. This song is intended as a kind of dream, evoking a similar landscape in the mind, with the disembodied voice slowly dissolving into a wash of delay and synth growls. We’re always happy whenever we find a good use for our Moog Model D, because that thing is so much fun. For the opening of this track, we stole a compositional technique from epic45’s Ghosts on Tape, as one instrument (keys) enters and then drops out, leaving a guitar playing a different pattern, before the song really gets going with all of the parts together.“

Their Mixtape:

E.L. Heath – Tir a Mor

We were delighted to connect with Wayside & Woodland for our new album because we feel such a kinship to their roster of bands, whose music and artwork highlights society’s discarded structures and their relation to the natural world. E.L. Heath’s recent album, Cambrian, takes as inspiration the Cambrian Coast Line in Wales, which passed nearby his home as he was growing up. Tir A Mor is the second track on the album, and it translates as “Land and Sea”. In the song, Heath observes that “waves fall behind the seawall” as “empires crumble and fall, the waste of it all”, accompanied by overlapping guitar patterns atop a pulse that almost feels like the gentle churn of an old train. It’s gorgeous, understated music that I wish we had more of in the world.

Neil Young – Out On The Weekend

Our song, Keep the Sunlight Out, grew out of some floating Wurly chord patterns I had written, though they were kind of formless. To make sense of it, I added a simple drum part so that I could start to work on vocals, figuring Eric would create a cool drum idea later. Instead, Eric leaned into the simplicity, suggested we record a straightforward, dry drum part a la Neil Young’s Out On The Weekend. Of course he was right – the fun in our song is that the electric piano chords don’t outline the same 4-bar patterns that the drums suggest. The push and pull between somewhat simple material is what gives the whole thing its flavor.

PJ Harvey – Lwonesome Tonight

PJ’s music always has an incredible mood. Lwonesome Tonight comes from her latest album, I Inside the Old Year Dying, though we could have picked countless similar tunes from throughout her career for our mixtape. Her songs often only have a few layers, but they’re always distinctive. This one features a chill acoustic guitar over top quiet toms, played with mallets, and a couple of sustained, deep keys-type sounds. Then her voice comes in, thin and high, to float effortlessly atop everything. She uses instruments that don’t necessarily sound perfect, but they have character and mood, which is way more important.

The For Carnation – Snoother

Speaking of mood, The For Carnation’s self-titled album, their only full-length release, may be our favorite evocation of mood ever recorded. It’s swampy, dripping, and ominous, remaining subdued throughout. I love the vocals on this album, which, despite the reduced range and understated delivery, carry distinct little melodies. In Snoother, a barely-audible female voice doubles the main voice an octave up, a technique we employed for On the Ice (this was Heidi’s idea). The simple 3-note piano gesture that appears at the 2:30 mark is a great example of perfection in simplicity. Music doesn’t have to be elaborate or virtuosic to be entrancing.

Califone – Eyelash

We admire the way Califone’s music works live. The recorded songs are great, but there’s something magical and quaint about their live performances, with the way the delicate little parts fit together. Of course it helps that all of these songs are anchored by Tim Rutili’s unique voice, but there’s so much detail in the way they arrange their songs for particular performance forces. I’ve seen Califone in person twice – once with just a couple of people and another time with a much larger outfit, and both were excellent, intimate experiences, just different. We sometimes struggle to find ways to make our music translate well in concert, especially for our songs with lots of layers. Califone is one of the bands we think about when trying to figure out not just what we have to include, but how to make it shine.

Duster – Isn’t Over

It’s hard to beat Duster vibes – rich bass, floating keys, some washed out guitars, simple drum patterns. Just when it seems like Isn’t Over is going to be an instrumental, that disaffected voice enters to settle perfectly into the texture. It’s a little weird picking a single Duster song for a mixtape, since so much of what works about their music is the way they sustain and manage energy from track to track.

Blonde Redhead – Elephant Woman

One of the biggest lessons that we’ve learned as songwriters and audio engineers is the importance (and elusiveness) of good orchestration. We’ve spent many hours chasing lushness by constructing dark layers of electric keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers, which Blonde Redhead does effortlessly in this song with string quartet swells, violin pizzicato, and bright strummed acoustic instruments. This works in part because of the great mix of layered percussion, which interplays with the plucks and strums to create a percolating texture that builds throughout the track. There’s a sort of alchemy in the orchestration of our favorite Blonde Redhead tunes that keeps us chasing.

Watching the Snow Fall will be out on November 8th via Wayside & Woodland Recordings. Look HERE for more information on Bell Monks.