James Krivchenia has recently released his fourth studio album, Performing Belief. The record is an experimental-instrumental record that shows Krivchenia flexing his creativity through off-the-wall production and atypical instrumentation.

Krivchenia has been the drummer of Big Thief since 2016. He produced the band's latest record, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, which was critically acclaimed and nominated for a Grammy.

Performing Belief is an album built through experimenting with field recordings as well as synths and drum machines. Krivchenia collaborated with bassist, Sam Wilkes, and multi-instrumentalist, Joshua Abrams to flesh out the the album.

James just recently got a new place and was kind enough to take some time away from unpacking to chat with me about his new record.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Wade @ The Needle Drop: Performing Belief is an experimental, instrumental, I guess you could say "plunderphonics collage" album. Where did the inspiration for this record come from?

Krivchenia: This particular record, I think the seed of inspiration was wanting to experiment, find and play with rhythm outside of the drum kit context. Which is, you know, so loaded with history and influences. I listen to so much music based around drum kits and rock bands, and I love it all. Y'know, you've already got these opinions surrounding that. It's kind of interesting to me to be in an improvisatory setting where I was outside of the drum set. So, when I would be taking walks or hikes or found myself in some inspiring place, if I found a tree that had tuned branches, I would just do a performance, for like... five minutes. In tandem with the rhythmic thing, it was also about doing something special and intentional and musical for nobody but myself. I just wanted to perform in the woods, and make some sounds, because it's fun! That was kinda the genesis of the record, and the basis of how the field recordings started. The impetus to play around in a more "removed" context from how I would normally do it while in a band or on a computer. If you're an electronic-head, you know all the sounds of a drum machine and you know what synths you've got access to. I thought like... "I just kinda want to break out of that," you know for like five minutes here or there.

Are you a super outdoorsy person? Do you find yourself in these situations a lot?

Yes, there definitely is that, too. I was living up in Mount Baldy in California which is like an hour out of LA in the mountains, a beautiful place. Especially on tours, I just look at the map and find the nearest big green chunk and I'm just like "well, I'm gonna walk there and see how far I can get once I'm there." Which is what I love to do, just wandering and kicking around.

Before you even thought about making field recordings, or like, making music, were you the sort of child who would just play on whatever you could find?

I was definitely one of those kids who found myself banging on everything before there was even a drum in front of me to bang on. I definitely had that impulse. Me and my friend, my next-door neighbor in Chicago, Peter, we would actually go to nearby alleys and make instruments out of stuff we found. Sorta pretend drum sets and stuff like that. It's been an impulse for a while.

What I really enjoy about the record is the marriage between the field recordings and studio instrumentation. It's got this sort of primal vibe throughout the whole listen. How much of the record would you say is outside recordings versus inside recordings? Is it like a 50/50?

I would say it's probably a 50/50. I had all of these outdoor performances that I was just gathering and thinking I'd probably use them for something. I have a lot of those kind of like exploratory phases where I think "this could be something," but half the time I'm like "oh this is fun... but it doesn't really sound interesting." So this album started with that mindset. But then one day I just decided to put one of my recordings onto the computer and was kinda like chopping around and messing with it. That's where I noticed it was exciting for me. Doing audio to MIDI, syncing my drum machines so they're right in time with the stuff I was playing, hearing the sounds combining in these cool ways. So, it really was sort of a 50/50, but I wanted each element to maintain its raw... I really like the sorta "dry" and exposed drum machine along with the "dry" super zoomed in field recording. I feel like there's something about that raw texture, that's not too shrouded in reverb or effects. I wanted that raw and dry aspect to be the Venn diagram that brought the whole thing together.

That's so true! There's a lot of "dry" drum machine passages on tracks like "Filling in the Swamp" with the stabbing 808s. There's also "Bracelets for Unicorns" that have those sudden piercing synth leads. There are so many sudden musical moments that happen and then they're gone before you know it. When you were in the studio, were you deliberately trying to avoid reverb, or was that something that took shape later on?

When I'm making an arrangement, sometimes I put something together and think, okay... that sounds cool. Then I'll come back to it a week later, dance to it without getting caught up into mixing and stuff. I've generally got kind of an ADD-arrangement-brain. I like that psycho music that changes fast and I like all the details to just fly by, kinda puts you in that feeling of slight overwhelm. One thing I noticed when I was moving to it more and sticking onto certain sections, I'd be like "okay this needs to trance, this section doesn't." I'd rather be listening in a headspace where I'm really open and feeling like I want to listen to the stuff, like maybe I haven't touched it in a few weeks and I can just hear it as a track, without being super in the weeds.

Was there a track that came together really quick? Where you're like, "oh shit, I've got this figured out already?"

I feel like there's certainly moments in tracks that came together really quickly. But like, the sessions that these tracks were in were these psychotic and massive Ableton sessions. They'd be like twelve different parts, and I'd only end up using like the coolest three parts, but I'd have so much material from all the chopping from the improvisation and I'd have all this stuff and I'd get super excited!

Then you start "Frankenstein-ing" them together?

Exactly! Yes! Moving them around all over and then you've got the best bit here and some over here. I think that's how I work with solo stuff anyway - over saturation and then edit, edit, edit. There's a LOT of editing, and a lot of experimenting with putting different field recordings together and finding out what worked and what didn't. Nothing came together quickly, but once I was in it, things eventually came into place.

How long did the record take from beginning to end?

Once I started working on it... probably a year, maybe a year-and-a-half.

I'm really curious about this aspect of the recordings, because I know you recorded a ton of improvised stuff while on hikes and all that. Did you use the locations where certain recordings took place as inspirations for the general tone or ambiance of each track?

Totally. And the nice thing about field recording, like I'm a "point-and-shoot" type of recorder. There's so much natural ambiance in the actual recordings themselves which was really nice. Like maybe it was a windy day, or there were birds around, which was really helpful. I'd listen to a recording and find myself going back to those experiences. I noticed I had some like weird imprinted memories of like "oh yeah, this was in the snow, on that hill in Wisconsin." You know? Like you don't actually remember it, but now it's taken on this new thing where it's like [mimics wind noises] and now there's a new memory in its place. It's interesting connecting those moments where the only thing they have in common is that I've just got a document of them that's kind of frozen in time. Without that, you're just filling in memories. Yeah, the tracks were definitely inspired by those places.

I know that a constant with your records are some of the more outlandish song titles. "Bracelets for Unicorns", "Judge the Seeds", "Metaphoric Leakage." Where do those come from?

Well... I love titles. They're very challenging in instrumental music that doesn't have a word or a lyric to get the title from. But I think you also get the leeway to make a lot of really cool titles, but you've also got the leeway to make really bad titles. Sometimes I'll read a title of a song and think "oof, that doesn't evoke what I'm hearing." Honestly, I just collect titles. I've got a full phone document listing things that I've come across while reading, stuff I see, or things I've heard people say. When I'm recording a record, I'll take the things I'm feeling when writing, and just start to compile lists of those titles I've documented. They start coming in halfway to the end... that's when I'm thinking of titles. Especially with electronic music, like you'll find a song called "11-29.03xz." I just want say a name of something that I can associate what the track is in my head. But I do love a good title!

I do too! Do you have a favorite title on that album?

Maybe "Probably Wizards", which was taken from the cave painting book that the drawings from the album cover are from. It's a book that's got all these beautiful line-drawings of cave paintings in Southern-Europe from 30,000 years ago. I love that stuff anyway, and I'm always kinda researching that. But these particular line-drawings stood out to me. The track got its name from the description of one of the drawings of just two little guys that says "probably wizards." Having "probably" as a description, I like it, because it's kinda humble and also, who knows?

You did some collaborative work on this album with Joshua Abrams and Sam Wilkes. How did that come to be?

I had gotten the record to a certain point. I had the form of stuff, and I had the sounds. Things were working, stuff was happening, but I was procrastinating the low end of it, sort of intentionally. I wanted to maintain the sharp percussiveness we talked about earlier. I just sort of hit a wall and I wasn't really inspired by anything. Then my brain was like "uhh that means you have to collaborate." Like yeah! Of course! Call the bass players you know who actually play bass and can fill out the low end better than you can. I'm not alone! I thought Sam and Josh would be such a cool combination because I love their bass playing so much. I was super open-ended with the whole thing. I had a form and showed them the shape of what I was trying to make. They would listen, and then improvise once or twice. I'd give a little feedback, they'd play it one more time. It was very much like "first thought, best thought." I wanted some humanness in the sound and I really felt like they brought that.

Have you done much collaboration on your solo work before?

No! This was kind of a first for me in this context. I do so many collaborations with Big Thief, and producing for people. I like that idea of getting stuck and then having someone swoop in and completely reignite your energy.

So you didn't feel like you were surrendering at all, more like a "let's help each other out" kind of deal?

Totally, and it completely reinvigorated the process too. After those sessions with them I was like "Ohhh!" Then I made some huge edits because you know, whatever they were doing I was like "that's the part now. Who needs the old shit anymore?" Having something new to react to really clarified what we were doing, and gave me so much new stuff to play with.

I've been listening to Performing Belief for a while now, and it had me thinking about some other acts who've used field recordings before. Matmos has an album called Plastic Anniversary, where they sample plastic objects ranging from Tupperware to riot shields. I know this record is fresh and new, but do you see yourself using high concepts in your future work and focusing on one type of sample? Is that something that interests you?

Totally, yeah. Or at least as part of a project. Having just moved to New York, I've been thinking a lot about trash. Like sort of... worshipping trash a little bit. I've been turned on to all these amazing discard artists. People who make these crazy art pieces out of other people's trash. From a sound perspective, I feel like there's a ton of interesting potential there. I've got two mallets in my backpack right now, two different kinds of mallets, just in case there's some good metal in the world to be sampled. I love a tuned piece of metal! There's this incredible place I recently went to called Dr. Evermore's Forevertron. It's basically like this spaceship that this guy built out of old farm machinery and equipment. There's instruments built into it, too. It's kind of like this metal paradise of sound.

It looks like something out of The Dark Crystal.

It's amazing, it completely blew my mind. It's massive too! Stuff like that inspires me. I think the guy actually thought he was building a time machine, so that's fun. But it's also this sculpture garden, and it's this sound place, kids play there. That sort of stuff completely inspires me. It would be a pretty cool place to make a record.

Is there a non-single track that you were excited for people to listen to?

I'd have to pick the second track, "Judge The Seeds". I really like it. It uses a lot of the prepared piano stuff, and it's got the most "solo-y" moment, with Joshua soloing on the upright. I'm excited for more people to hear the transparent, bright, textural sorta vibe. Every time that comes on I'm like "I don't know if I've ever heard anything like this..." so I'm very happy with how that one turned out.

Performing Belief is out now. Purchase it here.