The Fourth Wall on Identity, 90’s Inspirations, and Virtual Instruments
Photo Credit: Lisa Haagen
Portland indie/rock band The Fourth Wall write profoundly emotive songs that face the complexities of life head-on. Their next album Return Forever will be released on March 15, 2024 via DevilDuck Records, leading with newest single “Darkness of Heart”. What starts out as a soft acoustic track, explodes halfway through with resounding guitar lines and cinematic synths. Inspired by Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” band leader Stephen Agustin reverses the roles of colonialism and allows the 'other' to infiltrate and assimilate into the ‘civilized’ world, only to find that the endings are not dissimilar; something akin to madness awaits. “From this thought exercise came a character who experiences a disillusionment with the American dream.” Agustin says.
Growing up in Oahu, Stephen was ten years old when his musician father took him to a B.B. King concert. He quickly thereafter begged his parents for a guitar and soon started forming bands with his middle school friends. He played in various projects until the formation of The Fourth Wall, and eventually moved to Portland where the band continued to find a growing audience while opening for acts such as The Shins, Andrew Bird, Menomena, Band of Horses, and Typhoon. We caught up with Stephen Agustin to chat about the evolution of The Fourth Wall, inspirations, and how the band achieve their expansing sound.
REVERIE: How would you describe your sound and forthcoming release?
Stephen: It sounds like an indie rock band trying to understand classical music, without any formal training. In all seriousness, I think we were trying to take elements from film soundtracks and contemporary classical music we were really into (Steve Reich, Max Richter, Olafur Arnauld, Hania Rani) and see how some of the gestures and movements could work when added to a pop-ish song structure. I think because of that there might be a depth and intensity to this record that is a little different from our last albums.
REVERIE: What themes inspired the songwriting process on Return Forever?
Stephen: Much of this was written as a contemplation of the fractured nature of my immigrant family's history. It's about how those fractures repeat and return, while remaining unintelligible--my family, along with many others I've known, does not really speak of their past and when they do, it comes in fragments, always with a sense of an irreducible remainder that I feel I will never have access to.
As someone born in the states who has family who came from elsewhere, there has always been this sense of liminal aspect to my identity. I was trying to explore the way this barred access to a 'heritage' affects notions about my own identity: as a hyphenated identity, so to speak, I've never felt fully 'Asian' or 'American'
The album also tries to think through this peculiar notion of 'joy' that involves the willed forgetting of a traumatic past, a 'return' to a tabula rasa (blank slate).
REVERIE: Your songs have a bold fullness to them; they sound sonically cinematic. What’s your recording space like and are there any go-to gear essentials you use when producing music or playing live to achieve this sound?
Stephen: Wow, thank you!
As far as recording spaces and equipment goes, we decided to self-produce this album in our rehearsal space here in Portland. Vocals would often be recorded at home or at the rehearsal space. From a technical standpoint, I don’t know if it’s the ideal way to do things. All of it was recorded on gear that is pretty outdated onto a barely surviving 12 year old laptop. But we have a modest collection of microphones we’ve gotten pretty used to using in a variety of scenarios. Working this way also afforded us a lot of time to be really thoughtful and intentional about the sounds and composition of the songs.
One new thing with this record was that we experimented a lot with synthesizers and other virtual instruments. With each record we'll often try to play around with something we've never done before. I had recently discovered the ipad and all the wonderful sounds you can make with it. There's a dizzying amount of apps out there and many of them try to emulate some 'analog classics' which I think was great for someone like me who is pretty new to the synth world just trying to get some sort of an initial reference point. So a lot of the ‘cinematic’ synth sounds are from that.
We also often try to do things with guitars to make them a little less guitar-like and a little more orchestral sounding. There's a pedal called the superego that sort of lets you glide between notes in this cello/Violin-like way. So that was used a lot. We also definitely have to give our friend Dan Bjorke at liltrees guitars a shout out. His beautifully hand crafted guitars and pedals are all over this record as well.
REVERIE: Looking ahead, what’s next for the band? Any touring plans?
Stephen: We'll be doing a west coast tour as the main support for Typhoon in March! We absolutely love their music. We’ve been on tour with them before and are stoked to join them for this west coast run. We are hoping to add some more tour dates soon as well.
Aside from that, we have begun writing the next record. I have a few demos that have been kicking around. We’re looking forward to returning to the studio for the next record.
REVERIE: Any artist’s you’d like to give some love to that have helped shape your sound as a band?
Stephen: Oh there's so many! I think we really do try to pull from a variety of different artists too. As mentioned earlier, we listened to a lot of contemporary classical and more experimental composers while writing this record in particular. Just to throw a few more names out there in that vein: Kronos Quartet, Nils Frahm, Terry Riley, and Meredith Monk. In general, we’ve been influenced by a lot of the classic 90s indie and shoegaze music like My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Medicine, Galaxie 500, Cocteau Twins, etc. We’re also all pretty big Springsteen fans, which might come through on a song like “Darkness of Heart.” Some current artists we’ve really been enjoying include Tomberlin, Wednesday, Blake Mills, Spirit of the Beehive and Slow Pulp.
Watch The Fourth Wall’s new music video for “Darkness of Heart” below: