Chad Vangaalen makes work. We hear it, see it, and in Calgary we covet it. The works are shingles between music, drawing, animation and process. For every album, zine, or animation he puts out, an enigmatic other is thinly emitted and received by his audience. Beyond the works these notions exist as a portrait of the working man en route, and are reminders of his creative ethics at play. I visited Chad just after the release of Diaper Island (Flemish Eye Records), to discuss matters of his approach, process, and relationship to his work. Nestled in the side of a hill in the residential community of Montgomery (Calgary) is Chad’s home and backyard studio. The energy for me surrounding these grounds of creation and assembly is reminiscent of Hans Namuth’s photographs that depict Jackson Pollock’s infamous potato barn (circa 1950). I recognize that sounds pretty heavy, but in terms of Calgary, there is a specialized sort of fandom and acclaim that surrounds him, being one of the very few golden eggs to never leave the nest. What I gathered from our conversation wasn’t much beyond the reputation of ‘him’ as we already know ‘him’, but in this case, it is a beautiful thing.”

How long have you been living in Montgomery?
We’ve been here for just over two years.

Where were you before, still in the city [Calgary]?
Montgomery, lower Montgomery, so we moved like ten blocks up the hill.

It’s so beautiful, what a find.
We weren’t getting booted out of our place, but we’d been renting for years. [The owners] were getting ready to sell the house, and it was getting torn down. It was an old house, and I kinda had to find a studio space anyways because my studio was in the basement of that place, and it was just getting too crazy to have like a full rock band and a tiny bedroom. And [we were] recording too, so I knew that I had to rent a studio and then rent a house. So we were just like, “Fuck it, let’s just buy a place.” It’s worked out so that our mortgage is cheaper than what we’d be paying to rent a studio space and a house. My stepdad’s realtor showed us this place. This was a teardown, like the house was free, so we’re kind of like hippy hobos. So Sara’s dad [Chad’s father-in-law] and my uncle came out, and we renovated it for like a year.

Well it looks amazing now. Tell me about the spaces that you occupy while you are creating. Would you say that it is all confined to this area? Or are there other locations?
Well we do some tracking down in the basement, just for like reverb. (Chad starts walking downstairs)

We did a drum track down here. It’s just a giant wood chamber there, so there’s a couple holes in the roof and you can run all the mics down and get full separation if you don’t want any guitar bleed. This space is like the other kinda zone [an additional cordoned off space with resources for creating and a four foot mini ramp taking up half the space], where I kinda break stuff down or skate.

Rad. Do you do a lot of skateboarding?
Just ramp skating now because I don’t want to ruin myself anymore. It’s too much of a liability for me to break my fingers and fuck myself up. I dunno. I’m not very good I just like… for a winter activity. I was excited because I had a halfpipe in my last place, and it was really nice. It was like a fur halfpipe, but it got wrecked by the weather, so I’m excited to make [this one] mint.

So like definitely all of your work, either approaching it or entering it, is all confined to this space?
Production?
Yeah for sure, like my main recorder machine is over here. This is what everything gets recorded onto, and then I kind of process it however. It’s badass. I’m workin’ on some drone tracks right now.

When I’m asking you questions about your work are you also thinking about your animations and more visual pursuits in this space as well?
Oh no, no. I have an animation studio in the basement of the house. All the visual work is in the house and the audio work is in here.

Do you find a large separation between the two?
Oh yeah.

How do you strike that divide?
Usually with animation you start with sound. You can sync to it, so I just usually end up picking something that I think would be fun to animate. Or you know, like, I finished a video for J Mascis a couple months ago. Now I just kinda either get given songs, or I just pick whatever I think is interesting. I’m slowly working toward building up my muscles. I’ve been basically teaching myself how to animate with music videos, cuz they’re like compressed little shorts essentially.

So you are doing them in response to music, and the two are always tag-teaming one another? Or would you ever see animating standing on its own?
I’m working up my muscles on the music videos. I did one short last year called “Bald Static” that I screened a couple of times, and it was like thirteen minutes, I think? It was more or less just kinda odds and ends.

Was that the one that you would have had at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery during their summer show [With Nothing you Starve, With Little you Survive]?
Yeah, yeah it was there and there was a quasi storyline where this dude finds some sort of dream recorder thing on the black market, and then it just falls into total stoner nonsense.

(Laughs)

At this point I’m kind of working towards developing some sort of a screenplay. I would love to make a full-length science fiction animation. The more I work towards it, the more I realize I would probably need a team of animators to be working with me. The basement of this studio might possibly turn into a proper animation studio where there will be a few computers and a few of my best friends.

In 2009 you did that zine, Dark Piss, with Nieves. Would you want to talk a little bit about how that came about? Or how you’re able to see drawings as opposed to animation?
Well, drawing is still my favourite thing to do. Nieves just kind of contacted me… they put out hundreds of zines and stuff. I’ve had a few gallery shows but never to sell anything, so yeah I was really excited when those guys approached me just cuz there’s a lot of artists that they put out. They’re awesome too. I said “Yes,” and “Can I send you a mess of kind of random stuff?” I sent them I think like 30 or 40 drawings, and they just kind of picked what they liked, which was perfect for me. I have a hard time putting stuff together I’ll just randomly do stuff, and it’ll kind of pile up in a corner. Then somebody is like, “Hey you should do something with that,” and I’m like, “ I already did.”

Is this because you have a lot of material?
Yeah, it’s just kind of overwhelming to think about it once it’s done. I feel the same way with songs --I’m always working on songs. It’s just really weird to imagine them unless they’re recorded in groups, and if they are recorded in groups, there would only be three or four of them.

When you say ‘groups’ do you mean sequencing or as in like ‘a session’?
As in a session. I’ll write and record 3 or 4 songs within a couple days. Then the next day I’ll be focusing on drone tracks. It just doesn’t make any sense to really make a record, but I guess it kinda does.

Anyways back to what I was saying. It’s good cuz Nieves kinda took care of [assembling the zine] and Sub Pop and Flemish Eye, they kinda help me with songs.

Is that something that you embrace, that curatorial outsider approach?
Well, I mean I’ll definitely give them a selection of things I think are appropriate, but from there I really need more outside help to focus. It gets really boring, that part’s really boring to me for some reason, the sequencing.

With ideas of representation among Sub Pop and Flemish Eye, how do you feel you are being promoted? Are you happy with the way you are developing through them?
Yep, for sure. It seems like everything happens really slowly because they are focusing on one sort of thing, you know, like putting the proper promotion behind it and preparing this sort of thing, which is weird because it is me, but it isn’t really me.

So would that be a persona?
Yeah, I don’t even know. It’s weird because it’s just me; it’s just Chad VanGaalen. I mean I feel like the piece on the rise video is probably the most representational thing. My animation pieces are probably more representational of what I would be wanting to put out into the universe or drawings. I love making music and stuff but songs are just really abstract as a form of entertainment or whatever sorta media consumption. It’s just strange to be like o.k. “I’m going to make a minute long [song] and it’s gonna have lyrics and… like, “What?”

How do you feel about performing and touring?
Or being you elsewhere?
It feels better now, for sure. In the beginning I wasn’t really prepared. I wasn’t really that good of a musician either. I feel like I’ve gotten better at playing guitar. Guitar has been my biggest obstacle --to really love it. I’m not well trained at it, and I get stuck in ruts with it really quick. It’s a strange instrument of choice. You know like, I’m a producer maybe more than I am a performer. I mean I have a lot of fun making a rock song, it’s like a chess game or something, you know? It’s like “Oh well, let’s try and make a rock song,” and that’s super exciting. Then when it’s done it’s like, “Oh weird, totally made a rock song.” But then, that comes before actually like, “rocking” the song.