Breakdown | Michael Brook

Could I jump back to... I'm curious about your recent focus on film music. Particularly Albino Alligator and Affliction. How did you come to be working in feature film music?

Well, I'd... actually, I'd wanted to for a long time. And a common comment about my albums, solo albums, was that it sounds like film music. And so then Albino Alligator happened because Kevin Spacey asked Peter Gabriel to do the soundtrack, and Peter was in the middle of his album. And he and his publicist recommended that maybe I should be appropriate for it. And so then Kevin approached me about it. I think Affliction happened to a large degree because of Albino Alligator.

That was one of my favorite films of the past year, I think.

Yeah it was amazingly good. I mean, very dark and hard to take but amazing acting. Just incredible.

And the Russell Banks novel, I think, was very powerful material.

Yeah, he's good. I don't know if you saw The Sweet Hereafter, which was his as well.

What about Heat? I read you actually recorded some original material for it that wasn't used? Was it significant?

No, it was for two or three scenes. And I think the style, that the way Michael Mann works is... he wants to have like six music pieces for every scene, so he was commissioning a lot of music. And ended up using I think a remix of one of my pieces, and a lot of people told me there was a lot of my music in the film, but I don't think there was, I think it was just that one piece. It was just some things that sounded like my style.

I think there's a lot of Eno stuff thrown in there, here and there, so maybe that's what people are hearing. I don't know.

Yeah I was confused, I sort of heard all that, from people that knew my music, and then I checked it out but I didn't really notice much, but I actually don't remember what I did for those cues, so maybe they used it somewhere else and I never ended up with a copy of it. Maybe there is a bit more in it but I didn't think so.

What about the film scores that you've released as albums, like Albino Alligator and Affliction. I heard that you reworked much of the music for Albino Alligator. Was that because it was separate from the images of the film?

Mostly, yeah. I mean, you know, when you do stuff for a film, it's really tailored to go with what's going on in the film. I think that often is unsuitable for album material. Often the pieces are very short, or they're kind of overly minimal, because they're underneath dialogue, and so on. So I kind of rearranged them and sometimes used parts, ideas that had not made it to the film mix. Because often for a film you're always stripping it back a little bit to leave room for dialogue and so on. So I put some of the stuff back in.

Are you working on any film projects now?

I may be doing some stuff... I've done a couple of films in the mean time, kind of low budget ones. And I may be doing a documentary. It sounds... it's actually pretty cool. It's about this foot race through Death Valley in the middle of summer.

Oh my god!

Yeah, a 135 mile race. It's kind of a cool film.

Oh, here's a burning question. I wanted to ask this one first, but I forgot. You had trouble putting together a tour to support the Black Rock album. Because it was too expensive to get the musicians together?

Yeah.

So I had a question about how that works as a professional musician. To put together a tour, does it come out of your pocket and not the record company's? Or the management?

Essentially, the tour creates income and has expenses. And then depending on the record company's good will, sometimes, if there is a shortfall... Our goal was to try and not have a shortfall. But we did have a shortfall. The record company will sometimes agree to, essentially, loan you the money for the shortfall up to a certain amount. Sometimes they will cover 50 percent of it, but in our case they didn't, they just loaned us the money out of royalties. So it's just an advance out of royalties. So essentially we're paying those costs.

So aside from the joy of playing live, seriously, I guess the only other benefit is... do you see it back in further album sales or further public recognition?

I think it's good to get your name in the papers a little bit. I'll wait until I see... I don't think it's reflected in sales, myself. You know, particularly, we weren't playing huge venues, so it's not like you're reaching a lot of people in the first place. And we weren't selling merchandise or things like that, so I'm sort of... I'm glad we did it but it turned out to be a lot more expensive than we had hoped. And I think it's kind of... Well, hopefully it's kind of an investment for the future. But I don't think it really is reflected in album sales.

Is it feasible to tour solo?

Yeah, I mean I've done that and actually pretty well broken even before. That works because the expenses are lower. And if I had a solo album coming out, I would. I love performing so I'd certainly be up for it. Probably the next thing I'll do, if we can get this to happen, is an album with Nusrat's nephew Rahad. And he and I strongly hope to tour.

I was at the Bottom Line show in New York. Was that him who joined you during the encore?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was great.

Yeah, he's an amazing singer.