Getting to Know… S. Peace Nistades | Interview

For our 20th interview in our ‘Getting to Know…’ series, we get some in depth scoop from Thai-born film score composer S. Peace Nistades.

Ah, we’ve hit a milestone on The Musical Hype – get the confetti ready! The milestone you ask? The 20^th interview in our esteemed ‘Getting to Know…’ Q&A series where we interact with musicians. This particular interview is a bit different, tapping Thai film score composer S. Peace Nistades for our set of grueling questions. Well, perhaps our questions aren’t quite grueling or intimidating, but Nistades does a fantastic job providing in depth answers.  Without further ado, where is Getting to Know… S. Peace Nistades!  

Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype (BF): Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with you, what would you say makes you and your compositions distinct or unique?

S. Peace Nistades (SPN): I’ve always found perception to be fascinating, the way others perceive you and how that tends to differ from how you perceive yourself or how you think they perceive you and where you fit into their point of view. From what people have said about my work to me and my own background, I’d say that my sound as it were tends to embody something people often describe as cinematic or visual, even when I’m not scoring to picture or anyone else’ story, as is the case in this latest album In a Forest Dark. It probably comes from the fact that I cannot escape seeing visuals as I’m writing and creating some kind of story arc in everything I do. It’s a big part of how I try and create these evolving sonic tapestries to guide the listener on the journey of the piece or album.

BF: What what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a musician and composer early on?

SPN: It’s taken a long time to get to this point of formation which is this album. A kind of rebirth if you will from my past work in film and other mediums which I still work in from time to time. For me the biggest challenge was digging deep enough into my own backstory to figure out what I needed to say and how I needed to say it. And for me that started, oddly enough, with my return to writing, as in poetry, short stories and novels—not music. I’ve been working for almost three years now on a novel set in Thailand, my home country, which I haven’t been able to return to in about a decade. So, as you can imagine, it brought up a lot of emotions and memory and ultimately laid the ground work for this album as well as cementing a sound of the internal, of shifting memories and dreams and how they submerge and re-emerge seemingly at random sometimes throughout our lives. That became the basis of what this album and the form I’m pursuing musically.

BF: Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

SPN: In a way yes. But in others no. No in that my groundwork was always storytelling and I still start from there every time. Yes, in that it’s taken me a very long time to figure out how to ‘tell’ a story in the present (as opposed to the musical language of the past) with music and sound which, on its own, can never have the specificity that words carry but has a directness which few other artforms have. I’ve always viewed art as a mirror which the artist holds up to his or her society and times. Having said that, there is a fine line between exposing something, or commenting on something in one’s work and propaganda and I believe art is no place for propaganda, whether for good or bad. An essay perhaps can more clearly state the author’s point of view, an activist’s speech definitely. But in art, whether it be music, literature, film, theatre, etc. I think the goal is always to present the most flawed, fragmented fractured truth or truths as is possible which for me, mirrors life. The beauty of art is that it is one of the best and most profound ways of learning and practicing empathy.

Being in the shoes or thoughts of someone or some group of people that may not be your default perspective on life and having those points of views challenge what you’ve known to be true to yourself is what makes art enduring and why we have and always will need it. I think ultimately those are the goals I strive for in my own work. Of course, as is evident in the dedication of this album, I cannot help but try my best to use the work as a vehicle to bring attention to the various tragedies that have befallen many young men in Thailand, younger than I am now, fatal victims to military abuse and who, on a larger scale, were victims of a mass cultural flaw. Their deaths have haunted me over the many years I have been away, and a large part of the album is about remembering them and in doing so dealing with the core of what the music explores, the struggle between present and past.

BF: Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

SPN: My influences are not always musicians. Being inspired solely by other artists in your own medium can be incredibly restricting, as great as they may be, but being inspired by an artist in a different medium can challenge and even unlock something in your own art that you never quite saw before. For example, at one point I was reading a lot about the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor and his work, which remains staggeringly inspiring to me, and his description of playing with the relationship between stone and water in his design for the bath houses in Vals, allowed me to see what I was working on in another light which gave me the key I was searching for. Having said that, I greatly admire musical artists from composers like Krzysztof Penderecki and Halim El-Dabh (who created one of the first pieces of electronic music pre-tape with his piece Wire Recorder Piece in 1944) to Trent Reznor, Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and the Berlin-based artists Objekt and Stimming. I think in all cases—there are many more—it’s their point of view, the way they challenged (and still challenge) the norms of the musical structures and voices of their time or genre and, like Peter Zumthor, allow me to see music in a completely new way.

BF: Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

SPN: The last time I performed was several years ago in an outdoor arena with concert pianist Christopher McKiggan. We performed a number of pieces from an album we’re still working on which essentially is a collage of sounds all from one piano but manipulated to create a whole set of non-piano sounds. We’d been working on the album for several months at that point but the performance came together very quickly and was set for the day after my birthday so my actual 26th birthday was spent on a plane to Houston Texas, in a rehearsal room until 5:30 in the morning and sleeping under the Steinway grand piano in that room. It was certainly a memorable birthday and turned out to be a wonderful performance.

BF: Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

SPN: Probably the song “The Sacrificial Altar” from this latest album for many reasons. Firstly, like most of the pieces on the album, it began pretty much accidentally. I hadn’t planned it and it just came out of a kind of flow or trance but this one had a kind of ferocity to it that quickly fused with various memories related to my home country and the youths who were fatally brutalized while serving in the military there and the mass cover-ups that followed. So, for me, it was this rare thing of being able to fuse for the first time, certain very real, very specific events within a non-lyric-based musical piece. And finding the right balance of progression from the sound of the rice fields at the beginning to the Buddhist monks’ funeral chants to the cheering of the crowd at a Muay Thai boxing match with the building of piece. I’m quite proud of how it turned out.

BF: Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

SPN: Oh gosh. Well, art was my first love (I’d originally wanted to be a painter), I played the prince in The Nutcracker when I was six hence my first love musically being Tchaikovsky (though now my favorite is definitely Swan Lake), and I’d once dreamt of being a filmmaker. That was a long time ago and now knowing and having worked with some great ones, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not one myself. But film will always have a very special place in the arts for me.

BF: Closing this thing out, what are you currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.   

SPN: I’ve just completed my first solo album, In a Forest Dark, so that’s primarily what I’m promoting at the moment. There are a lot of hidden elements within it but most of it are things that either the audience picks up on or doesn’t. I wouldn’t want to over influence the listener more than what is already evident in the artwork, album dedication and track names. It’s one of the beauties of music and I’d be very curious to hear people’s reactions and experiences with it. This really has become much more than just one album for me. It’s laid the groundwork for a world and a sonic point of view that is very exciting to me so there are other projects I’m working on within this umbrella some of which include remixes and re-imaginings by close friends and musical colleagues as well as potentially working on a kind of performance piece that would be great fun to do live.

BF: Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions S. Peace Nistades, and best of luck moving forward. 

SPN: Thank you! It’s been a pleasure.

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Photo Credits: Benjamin Gabriel, The Musical Hype