Beirut! Part One of an Interview with Zach Condon

You began the “RealPeople” project when you were like what, fifteen? Why did you wait to release that? What was the difference with the “Beirut” project that made it something that you wanted to develop?

Some of the “RealPeople” stuff is out there. But yeah, obviously a lot of it isn’t. I guess I thought of it in the same way that most artist don’t like showing unfinished or partly finished pieces--I guess in some way I kind of considered it that way. There’s some real delightful melodies and oddities throughout all of that, and I still share it with friends and family all the time, and get a kick of it late at night. But it’s so obviously developmental for me, that I kind of like having it as a secret. I like having what I have out in the public as a much more refined version of the things I was practicing throughout the years, but that’s tough...although I find myself going back to some [of RealPeople] and re-recording, which is funny.

You developed a lot of your songs by yourself. How is it when you bring it to a large band?

It obviously works out pretty well, but I definitely wouldn’t claim it was easy to do. When you start alone like that--see it’s funny because in the city I grew up in, I just assumed that there weren’t that many like-minded folks where I was, you know? Like you couldn’t find [folks to] collaborate with--I was wrong.

After that it became kind of funny control issue. Having someone take a melody of yours and play it stylistically different or something can be a scary thing at first, until you realize that it's only helping to broaden your horizons a little bit, which is never a bad thing. So that was fun and it was scary, but nowadays it's second nature. I actually end up writing things and I can't even begin to play what I write. I'm just like, ‘The accordion player, he can do it. I'm not even going to try; I'll just show him how and he'll make it better.’

What was your initial reaction when you found out about the Beirutando street performances?

Kind of incredulous really. It's one of those things that doesn't seem quite real, but I don't know, it was intense. I was down in Brazil last year and got to meet some of the people and see some of the same performers, and it's still fresh enough that I don't have any clear-cut answer for it. You've just got to, 'Wow yeah, that's crazy!' ...and it seems to kind of really legitimize certain things I've been trying to do, and that's a good feeling.

You've worked with Alma Har’el a lot with your [music] videos [she directed videos for “Elephant Gun,” “Postcards From Italy,” and Concubine] and then recently with the score for her film, Bombay Beach. That collaboration seems like a really good fit, how did you guys come to work together?

Kind of randomly. Actually I think we were doing an interview and she mentioned that she contacted me on MySpace, which is funny because I mean, I think she's right, but man, that was awhile ago!

But anyway, it was good. She came out to New Mexico and I had been dealing with other directors. Well, I was trying to do film scores around that time. It was always just kind of a frustrating experience, you know - sending in a demo of something I had thought of and they would just send it right back and say, 'That's great, but could you make it sound more like someone else's work?' It's just over and over again. So, I wasn’t too happy with the idea of film scoring.

And so with [Anna] it was so relaxed, you know. She'd just drop by and I'd be playing something on a pump organ and she would say, 'Oh, can we record that? Are you recording that? Why aren't you recording that?' And I would say, 'Oh, but I didn't know if you would like that.' So yeah, she said it was beautiful. It actually just won best documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival.

There's a real visual quality to your music--it's very imaginative. Do you feel like the visuals that Alma pairs with your songs fulfills that quality, and provides that counterpart?

Yeah, definitely. There's something about the-I mean it's beautifully shot--but there's also something about the kind of melancholy longing, the day-dreaming eye that she has with all her visuals that I tend to really like and I can definitely relate to.

Do you have any future projects in the works with her? Now do you think you'd want to go back to trying to do a film score again as a side-project or something?

Yeah, definitely, you know. That now seems like a plausible thing to do. As for any future projects with her, I'm sure that something will happen. But we've kind of made a deal that we would never force it, you know? If it seemed right I think, I think we'd do it. Yep, then it would happen.

I recently read something where you were talking about a dream. Do you have vivid dreams? Do you wake up with a song in your head and go write?

It happens, yeah, but my god if I can remember a melody from a dream though [laughs]. Often what will happen is that in the dream an idea will come to me--almost like a certain arrangement of instruments, but never like a clear cut melody, or chord progression which is like hey wouldn’t it be crazy if we could do this one song, and then I’ll try it, so…ha, yeah.