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Interview

Cliffdiver p2

Andrew Jernigan talks about the more pronounced classical guitar sound on his latest Cliffdiver album Pursued by Memory…

READERSVOICE.COM: Your latest album Pursued by Memory has some more pronounced guitar sounds on some tracks than on many previous albums, with an almost flamenco influence.  But what made you decide to put some more pronounced guitar sounds on some tracks?

CLIFFDIVER: For years I’ve been in love with the sound of nylon string acoustic guitars but I never really incorporated them in with the Cliffdiver aesthetic because I wasn’t sure how to combine the rather ancient instrument with the modern sounds of synths and electrical guitar effects. The way that the songs are ordered on the record intentionally mirrors this search where it kind of goes back and forth between synth and electric guitar songs, to nylon guitar only, and back again until finally the last track on the record, Streaked with Rosy Dawn, features synths and classical guitar complementing each other.

What made me add more guitar is that I love the guitar and I think it can be under-represented in ambient music. Especially acoustic guitar. So I set out to write pieces that don’t necessarily look to the synthesizers or electric guitar effects. I think for Cliffdiver stuff I’ll continue to add more classical guitar in the future.

RV: One listener said your track of Hour Long Melodic Space, Electronic Droe, Ambient Synths was like the soundtrack of his visit to the Arctic and the northern lights. And the song Streaked with a Rosy Dawn, to me, sounds like someone sitting on a Greek Island at sunset and looking at the turquoise sea, thinking about the past or the future. Do most people get a visual scene from your songs? 

CD: I really love to get this kind of feedback and I think it’s awesome that you shared your own visual interpretation of where the music took you. I think a lot of people get very introspective with ambient music and I believe that’s what draws me, or all of us who are fans, to the sound because it immediately engages the imagination. If you’re like me, you get caught up in the day-to-day race through life and we don’t interact with our imagination enough. To answer your question, I’m not sure that most people get visualistic with my music but for those who do it makes me really happy. I know my favorite ambient music is mind-expanding and teleportive.

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