Futureproofing #15: An interview with Walt McClements

The American artist on making the turn to almost-ambient instrumental music, using the accordion like a synthesizer, and making a living as an artist.

Edited by Tom Gledhill.

Walt McClements first caught my ear with his 2021 solo album A Hole In The Fence, an album of drone-y ambient music made with an accordion. It felt totally divorced from what canonical music "ambient accordion" might make you think of, focusing on the instrument's rich, varied textures and its potential for wistful melodies instead of durational stamina. It was kind of like if Kranky put out a Pop Ambient record—approachable but still ambient, seemingly formless but still composed. A song like "Thresholds (through a hole in the fence)" is grand and almost over the top, basking in its own layered maximalism instead of more austere, tone-focused music of composers like Kali Malone or Sarah Davachi.

The American musician came at this style of music from a singer-songwriter background, touring with bands like Dark Dark Dark and Hurray for the Riff Raff, and releasing solo music under the name Lonesome Leash. Sick of playing to audiences who didn't seem to care (which McClements talks more about below), he instead focused on the instrument that became the backbone of his practice, and tried to figure out exactly what he could get out of it. In his words, he tried to use the accordion like a synthesizer.

A Hole In The Fence was a slow-burning career pivot that put McClements in company with a crossover experimental scene that includes artists like his future collaborator Mary Lattimore (a harpist who he collaborated with in 2024) and Rachika Nayar. These artists infuse instrumental electronic music with heartfelt, often soaring melodies, striking a middle ground between cinematic film soundtrack and pop performance, and positioning themselves between "indie rock" (scare quotes on purpose) and ambient. The result is music that can feel universal in its appeal, granted you like both sometimes-syrupy melodies and words without music. 

McClements' second solo album under his own name, On a Painted Ocean, brings the two sides of his musical identity together—pairing sweeping, sustained compositions with vulnerable songwriting and increasingly ornate instrumentation. (Even if he says making this kind of music feels less vulnerable.) Made with a synthesizer as well as the ultra-trendy pipe organ, it's an album that collapses the difference between air moving through space and electricity moving through wires. 

On one of the record's best tracks, "Cloud Prints," McClements makes a sonic canvas for saxophonist Aurora Nealand to scribble over, both wailing and distant, like listening to hope dissipate in real time. On "Sirens," assisted by Rachika Neyer, McClements spools out poignant melodies that eventually swirl and soar. And on the lengthy "Parade," which sounds like a synthetic orchestra made entirely from strings, organ and accordion, a recording of a Narcan workshop surfaces from the din, a reminder of the danger that lurks underneath most artistic communities, but also the prevailing spirit, too.

On a Painted Ocean is tagged "post-rock" and "neoclassical" on Bandcamp in addition to ambient, which are probably some key words to keep in mind, even if the album isn’t exactly those genres either. Walt McClements doesn't make background music or music to chill to—he puts his whole body into the instruments, even if that instrument is a synthesizer. It can feel maudlin one moment and revelatory the next, intensely private and then gloriously communal, with a sense of dynamics absent from most of the music McClements is compared to.

I sat down with McClements at a bar in Eagle Rock to talk about his turn to electronic(ish) music, which you can read below. For length and clarity, no reviews/highlights this week. Another post of recent favorites will come next week instead. 

The interview

What made you start making music like this, under your name. The music before was much more poppy, right?

Let me collect my thoughts here. It might take a second to think about.

Don't be alarmed!

The last songwriting project I did, I was touring a lot with and doing a lot of shows. I felt a bit burnt out. I was asking myself—why? Why would you keep on doing? something that wasn't necessarily fulfilling? That project didn't propel me to fame. It was a labor of love. I was contemplating what I really wanted to do. And around that time, in 2019, I was playing the accordion a lot and applying some effects to it, trying to make it sound like a synthesizer in a certain way. I don't know why I didn't just use a synthesizer. Would have made my life so much easier. [laughs]

But I started to do a few performances, and just playing around with it, I found a signal chain that seemed more… generative, like I could get a lot out of it. And then I thought, with this type of performance, I could keep myself out of it. It's less vulnerable in a way. And people enjoyed it more. I liked that people were supportive of what I was doing. There was a feeling that I wasn't sure if I was allowed to make this kind of music, but in LA I'd been hanging out with a lot of people in that world.

You mean the ambient and experimental world, right?

Yeah. I guess there are broader questions of what compels anyone to make anything. Up to that point, it felt like one thing leading into another. And this time I just needed a big change. Then the pandemic happened, so it was a good time to make a record. 

It's interesting that you said it feels less vulnerable. Is that something you think or worry about when you're writing song-based music?

I just spent a lot of my 20s and 30s singing songs close to my heart to empty bars in, like, Phoenix. Or just to a chatty room. That takes something out of you. So there was this sense of power in being able to hold back, not tell anybody anything about yourself.

Do you find people pay more attention when you play your newer music?

It depends. In Los Angeles, yes. I think that someone singing songs with an accordion is a hard sell right now, or it has associations that are difficult to get over. But also, I moved from New Orleans to here [LA], and audiences respond to things very differently in these two different places. A lot of my time in New Orleans I was playing on the street, where there's this sense that you need to keep grabbing onto people's attention. And it's hard to get over that. It can backfire, or it's hard to take a step back and trust that the audience will be with you. 

You’ve said you don't really have that much of a background in, or knowledge of, drone music. What led you down that path—were there any records you discovered around that time? 

It's funny, when I was making the one-sheet for that album, with that line, I remember sending it to a friend and she was like, "Why are you putting that in there?" Honestly, I was afraid that someone was going to drill me on every Pauline Oliveros record, or call me out as a fraud for not knowing them all. And here I am answering for that line a few years later. But it's the truth. 

When I was growing up and generating a musical identity, I was listening to lots of different things, and there were a few that carried over to today. I was a huge Godspeed You! Black Emperor fan in high school, and the Dirty Three, so more the indie or post-rock end of the spectrum, though at the time, in the punk scene I was in, we just called it “pretty music”, and then through the Velvet Underground, like, La Monte Young's drone work. But I didn’t get much deeper than that til much later. I do feel like a newcomer, and I definitely don't have an electronic music background. Computer-based stuff is really new to me. 

There were more modern records that had a big impact on me, like, Kali Malone's The Sacrificial Code, I listened to that so much that I feel like it changed my brain a little bit.

It's funny to me because Pauline Oliveros is an obvious throughline, but I wouldn't consider your music in the same vein as hers—aside from the instrumentation

I agree. I connect to some parts of her work more than others, but I'm inspired by her as a person, and her writing. I imagine I'll keep going back to her work for the rest of my life and find more things. But I don't think I'm making anything like that, though.

So you started making this music because it felt like the right thing to do, basically. 

It seemed exciting to change course. I barked enough lyrics out into the world. I didn't feel compelled to do that anymore. One of the moments where I felt like, "Wait, what am I doing," was in 2018. I'd been doing a lot of solo touring, alone in a car, and it was exciting to do that after playing in bands and having to be around people all the time. I was listening to some podcast in the middle of the first Trump presidency and people were talking about resisting fascism and I remember thinking it was a strange time to be doing anything alone—like, why am I doing a solo project? And I know I'm still doing a solo project, but I thought if I was working with these sounds and this textural approach, it would be easier for me to collaborate with other people, than if I'm like, "here are my deepest, darkest thoughts."

It's funny, because I still get drawn into wanting to make music all alone, but the goal is to be in this world of, like, verdant collaboration. 

When you're making this kind of music—which you described as less vulnerable—how do you put emotion into it? Or is it just improvising and seeing what develops? 

I'm still approaching it from a songwriting perspective, and trying to break it down from there. Maybe it’s almost like still starting with a song and then taking more and more elements out and seeing what you are left with. I'm trying to get to this point where something clicks in my head and I can decide, "Okay, this is compelling. This is something worth holding someone's attention, this is something I should put out in the world." It's a tricky question.

I guess I'm asking the difference in meaning—like, the difference between a song where you're singing your heart and soul, versus instrumental music.

With instrumental music, it's all under your control to what degree you attach an external meaning to it. It's useful to have some context, but I think with this more abstract music, you can have emotional melodies but they feel more open-ended. Something doesn't have to have a meaning to be powerful. And anyway, word-based music can also mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

I do feel like there's a tension here that hopefully carries through, even if it's not verbal. There's an emotional tenor similar to the songwriting work I've done. 

What's your history with the accordion?

I just picked it at some point. I borrowed one from a friend in high school who had one lying around, and I really enjoyed it. I was drifting through other instruments—I'd been playing banjo and fiddle for a period, before I moved to New Orleans. I ended up in Seattle, where I was playing old-timey tunes with an accordion player, and I broke my wrist and couldn't play the banjo. So I borrowed an accordion again, which I could play just the left hand of while my wrist healed, and that was my first time playing a full-size one. 

Then I moved to New Orleans, where they're a little more common, and picked one up and started songs with it. Then, strangely, I got a good accordion job playing in a jazz band. [laughs]

Do you feel like the accordion is part of your identity at this point?

I do keep coming back to it—I love it. The visceral sensation of it vibrating your body is really nice. I'm still excited by it. I could see myself making a record with no accordion, but it's also so convenient to travel with, which also adds to the physicalness of it. So yes, it's part of my identity.

You said earlier when you were working on the first album, you were trying to make it sound like a synthesizer. What does that mean exactly—how do you do that?

That first record was all just run through guitar pedals, chorus, and reverb. The new album actually has some synth on it. 

How was making this one different from the first one, then?

The first album really was pieces that I had already played live, that I had conceived inside of a room, and then putting them onto record. Since then, I got Ableton and have been trying to find my voice inside of the computer. I'm not a total luddite, I know how things work. But I am pretty new to recording my music with any program. I got Ableton and was stumbling around trying to figure out what to do with these infinite possibilities all of a sudden. It's a bit like... “what is what? Is throwing a preset on something a musical decision?” You need to know what is possible with a tool before you can know what you want to do.

A lot of the decisions I've made around this record were based around learning what is possible—figuring that out first and then being like, "OK, what do I want to do with this?" This one was written in the computer, not written in a room. So more like, finding a texture or something else, and then trying to do something with it. 

It was a real pain in the ass. [laughs] And it created a lot of work I didn't realize. My first record, which I recorded with Logic, those songs had like, maybe eight tracks. The new record was way more complicated to dive into—some things had 50 plus tracks, which did take a lot more time to mix and edit and get my head around.

Why did you want to try writing with a computer in the first place?

I was just trying to make more complex music, or music that was newer to me. I've always been a musician working primarily with objects vibrating in real life inside of a real room, so I've been trying to break down the hierarchy of that and of what I value in being a musician. Like if you're playing an electric piano that is weighted the same as a piano, and the samples are there to make it sound like the real thing, you are using a lot of technology still, just to trick your brain into thinking you are playing a resonant object invented hundreds of years ago. So if I’m already interfacing with music technology all the time, just in real utilitarian ways, why not try and use it in more interesting ways? I was trying to break down the whole of my musical upbringing. Synthesis is a fairly new exploit for me, as opposed to…

…air moving through an instrument.

Yeah. It's built into me, but it feels outdated and limiting to restrict myself to it. 

How did you use synthesis on the new album?

There was one point when I was on tour with Weyes Blood, spending most of 2022 and 2023 on a tour bus. I had my first synthesizer that I liked, which was a Hydrasynth. I tried some stuff before but with this one I had a basic grasp of how to sculpt sounds with it, and I tried to make my processed accordion sound—I tried to reverse-engineer it. 

It's funny that you try synthesis because you want to explore new sounds, and then you try to make it sound like an accordion.

Yeah, I mean, I remember seeing Colleen play here a few years ago. I was really into her older stuff and hadn't followed her later records that much, and I was worried that I wouldn't like it because she gave up her viola da gamba. But honestly it kind of feels the same, she makes the Moog sound like the same thing—like air moving through things. 

The new record was also about trying to blur the boundaries, and forgetting what started as accordion, what started as a synthesizer, what started as an organ. And thinking of the accordion like a synthesizer in a certain way.

What does that mean?

Some accordion history book I read posited that Alan Lomax was biased against the accordion because he studied with European folklorists, who had a negative view of it because it was displacing bagpipes, flutes and fiddles, which were the traditional folk instruments of Europe. Because in that sense, the accordion is fairly new. 

So there's this idea that Alan Lomax didn't record Leadbelly playing the accordion very much because he thought it was a less important instrument in American folk music. And I found some quotes from Irish folk musicians in the 1900s talking about the accordion disparagingly, similar to how some people talk about synthesizers—there's no skill, all you do is push a button and the sound comes out. 

So I like looking at the accordion as part of this trajectory in music technology. In white, European descent American culture, it's viewed as an old-world instrument but it's actually fairly modern. And in Mexican-American music it's quite a vibrant, modern instrument. Like, the way I hear it in Norteño music, it's this ripping lead, and it's percussive, sometimes it’s used as a pad— it is used how one might use a synthesizer, with a lot of different roles. You can control the attack, sustain and decay really well and play chords. There’s not a lot of acoustic instruments that are polyphonic and have that much “envelope” control.

While we're talking about this connection between accordions and synthesizers, do you ever feel insecure about being an artist associated with an instrument seen as being old-fashioned?

I think I've just gone so far beyond that feeling of insecurity, like trying to sell myself as an indie singer-songwriter with an accordion, that was a losing proposition. Now that I'm doing this music with it… I don't know. It's just what it is. There are as many positives as negatives. Maybe it's a turn-off for some people, but it's an entry point for others. It's probably net neutral. I have a lot of older folks come up to me after performances and say they’ve never heard an accordion played like that, which is really cool to hear, and be able to connect with people whose parents played for example, when it was a common instrument.

There's a pipe organ on the record, right? You had access to a record in Pasadena?

I said yes to a kind of random invitation to play an organ at a church for an art opening. I had sat down at smaller electric organs before, but never a pipe organ. I had once answered a Craigslist job playing an organ at an art gallery for a Halloween art show—they wanted someone to play spooky organ music on this little electric organ in the corner. I thought it would be like that. 

But this gig I showed up to a huge beautiful church with a full pipe organ. The church was for sale and an artist had taken over as caretaker in the interim and he hosted art shows. They took me up to the organ and were like, "Alright, here you go." It felt like trying to learn how to fly a spaceship in real time. But it was very satisfying and fun. Afterwards the artist said I could come whenever I wanted to play, and record. There was a summer where I would go about once a week, to just play around and do some recording. Some of that ended up on the new record.

How did you use it on the record?

The first track, I tried to hide it, but it's basically a whole organ piece, even though it starts out with melodica, and then I’m blending the accordion with the organ. And another track is basically all organ, but it's reversed. And another, it's gated and panned to make it sound sort of bell-like. So it's not on every track, but it is on quite a bit of the album. 

Pipe organ is so hot right now.

When I got access to it I thought, "You can't make an organ record." And I don't think I'm making music like Kali Malone or Sarah Davachi exactly, but at least if I tried to rip Kali Malone off on the accordion, it would sound different than doing it on the organ. But it felt like such an opportunity to have access to this huge beautiful instrument, it would have been foolish not to take advantage of it.

Do you feel you were able to express yourself more intentionally with this new setup?

I just like learning new stuff. To be honest, I'm surprised this record happened. Some of those sketches were from 2022, and then in 2023 I was off doing something else. Coming back to it last year I thought I was going to start over completely with these new skills, and do something really focused and concise. But coming back to those sketches and then piecing things together, that was new for me in a different way. And it was hard. But I'm more excited for what comes next. 

The last thing, which I like to talk about on here: do you make a living from music, or do you have a day job?

Sometimes, sometimes not. I think that's a very good question to ask in Los Angeles in particular. When I first moved to LA, around 2013, I delivered pizzas and washed dishes and all sorts of things. When I started playing with Weyes Blood on those album cycles, that would usually pay my bills, and then off cycle would usually be able to pick up random jobs to pay for the rest. I'm newly married, so now I have a buffer—if I don't make enough, I'm not going to lose my entire life situation. That's huge. It's starting to affect decision-making processes in terms of, like, what do I need to do? Do I really want to join a band on a tour bus for another year? I like the idea of not being a performer for the sake of a performer, or not doing things out of obligation.

So what's next, then? 

I don't know.