Songwriter and producer Robert Hinrichs has built his music around the meeting point between meticulous production and immediate songwriting, bringing classic melodic pop together with new wave, funk, neo-soul and contemporary electronic textures. His latest release finds that eclectic approach accompanying a particularly significant period of personal and creative reinvention.
New single ‘The Road’ emerged after Hinrichs stepped away from a stressful relationship and simultaneously rebuilt his recording setup in a new studio. Rather than documenting the relationship itself, the song captures what happened afterwards: the exhilaration and uncertainty of moving forward without necessarily knowing where that movement will lead.
So with the new single out now, we sat down with him to find out more about his origins and what has been inspiring him most over the years.
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What was the first instrument you fell in love with?
The main instrument in my household growing up (along with a saxophone, clarinet, banjo, and piano) was a Hammond T-500 series organ, their flagship organ in the early 1970’s. It was an elegant wooden piece of living room furniture, yet at the same time resembled a pilot’s console of a starship, with mysterious electronics and mechanics inside, including mechanical tremolo as well as a drum machine with chiclet buttons along the top - the white buttons played rhythms such as “march” and “waltz,” while the black buttons, of which there were an equal number, would perform “rhumba,” “mambo,” or “cha-cha.” If you laid your left hand upon the lower row of keys, with a drum rhythm playing, the tones would pulse along with the rhythm, and if you ventured to place your foot upon the foot pedals, the resulting oom-pa bass line would pulse alternately. It even had a built-in cassette tape deck that could record and play back your performance via a springy red square button, which you could then accompany with your live performance to result in a true symphonic event. In retrospect, this was amazing technology at the time.
Eventually, our household got a new, alien instrument, a Roland Juno-60! This came out of the blue and rocked my world. It oriented me permanently toward making music the likes of which had never been heard before. Suddenly all tape decks in the house, Dad’s cassette deck, Grandpa’s reel-to-reel, etc., were commandeered in service to recording part of a piece, usually performed with some experimental space-age preset, whilst another that was recorded before, was playing. I later learned this was called “bouncing,” and was used in real professional studios in the days of limited tracks. The results were noisy, messy, over-ambitious, but when it was done, I’d sit in my room with the resulting overlay of sloppy yet intentionally architected performances in my walkman, listening on the foam orange miniature headphones.
Through a fluke, some of these recordings have actually survived. In the late 90’s I had a Gateway personal computer, and it occurred to me that I could make digital files out of my old cassettes I made in high school, before they deteriorated. Those are now on Bandcamp, and to my great surprise, there is a pretty strong market for weirdos like me who are fascinated enough to seek to own bedroom recordings of a nerdy high-schooler in the 1980s! I think those get my best reviews.
What kind of music did you love when you were younger?
My parents had the soundtrack to “The Sting,” and I always had a love of Ragtime music. It’s esoteric, but I think it is because it is rare that people have had adequate exposure to that music - it is really brilliant. Ito my ears it is basically early - very early - EDM. Way ahead of its time, but yet emblematic of its time. And let’s take a moment to shout out the true genius of it, Scott Joplin.
The defining album of my late elementary school years (played on an 8-track deck in the car!) was Walter (now Wendy) Carlos’ ‘Switched-On-Bach,” a true work of genius that everyone needs to hear, which is a humbling experience to put us in our place. It is not on Spotify, fools!… Sigh, anyway, I guess in sum, stylistic inconsistency was always my taste. To generalize a bit and move on in my life, I was attracted to music that had strong melodies but also some kind of mystery inside it. ELO may have hit me first, with the album Out of the Blue and its grand, cinematic production. Then I found a local radio station that devoted entire weekends to playing The Beatles. My tape deck was recording nonstop, and I drank it all in at once. The radio also generously provided new wave, synth-pop, funk and all kinds of more electronic music. I've never been particularly good at respecting genre boundaries. If something has a great melody, an interesting rhythm or some sound that makes me wonder, “How did they do that?”, I'm usually interested.
What was the first album you remember owning?
Here’s the first memory: The Mary Poppins soundtrack. I played it on one of those little plastic record players, over and over. In retrospect, it may explain more than I'd like to admit. Those songs are incredibly well constructed, very melodic, funny and theatrical, and they move effortlessly between different musical worlds. But my goodness, I listened to so many different things - The Wizard of Oz, “Mister Jaws,” even sound effects records from Disney, as well as records I stole from my parents — Parliament, the Talking Heads, Eric Clapton, Queen. And quite a bit of classical music - Tchaikovsky, Bach.
What is the one song you wished you could have written yourself?
So many, as I’ve often listened to a song and thought, “in a parallel universe, I think I wrote that song!” Some of George Michael’s, some of the (later) Beatles, Ben Folds, Steely Dan.
If you FORCE me to name one on the spot… I’ll say “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles. It manages to be beautiful, strange, emotionally direct and structurally audacious at the same time. It doesn't seem concerned with whether all of its pieces are supposed to belong together. But they do. Experimentation that somehow ends up accessible is the prize worthy of chasing, so that is why I will give you that one.
Do you have any habits or rituals you go through when trying to write new music?
I am lucky enough that some of my songs have come to me nearly fully-baked. When this happens, often early in the morning in bed, but sometimes during odd chores, it’s like I come in range of a broadcast from a radio station that I can hear inside my head. I can sometimes hear it in high-fidelity, all the parts, and sometimes even the vocals with lyrics and different movements. It really inspires awe and I feel so lucky when this happens, even if it’s not very good or I can’t figure out how to translate it, which can be a huge challenge. The song “INLT (I Need Love Tonight)” is probably the best reproduction of a song that came to me in this way.
There is another, more nitty-gritty process. I’m usually more iterative than ritualistic. I like to incorporate the time at hand, my life situation, what I am learning musically and technically. I tend to start with a small thing that has some life in it, perhaps a chord progression, a melody, a rhythm or just a sound, and then keep throwing things against it, transforming it, and not being at all precious with it. Near the end, these songs are like engineered machines. I keep changing the balance of the parts until something begins to operate on its own.
For these, I try not to decide too early what a song is supposed to be. Some of my favorite moments happen when the song starts resisting the original plan.
Who are your favourite artists you have found yourself listening to at the moment?
This year, I am liking Balu Brigada, Ninajirachi, Ginger Root, Young Gun Silver Fox. At least, those are some notables in my liked songs.
If you could open a show for anyone in the world, who would it be?
Hard question, I think I’ll go with Djo. There is enough overlap in the love of synthesizers, melodic pop and left-field production that I think the music would make sense together, but it wouldn't feel like hearing the same artist twice. That's probably my ideal opening slot: enough common language to bring the audiences together, but enough difference to make the evening interesting.
What do you find is the most rewarding part about being a musician?
That moment when something that didn't exist becomes inevitable. You can spend hours or days with fragments that don't quite belong together, and then suddenly, one night as you sit there with them, massaging them, listening deeply to the void, there is a song. Once that happens, it feels less like you've manufactured something and more like you've discovered something that was waiting for you to find it.
And what is the most frustrating part?
The enormous distance between making music and getting music heard. We have extraordinary tools now that allow one person to make a record that would once have required an entire studio, but releasing it puts you into an almost infinite supply of other, often really high-quality music competing for attention. It is humbling to know your ingenious creations aren’t even a drop in the ocean.
There is also the more personal frustration, alluded to above, of hearing exactly what a song needs before you necessarily know how to make it happen. Sometimes you're chasing something that exists perfectly in your imagination and rather less perfectly in the speakers.
And what is the best piece of advice you have received as a musician?
My son gave me a book, The Motern Method. It is very small and unassuming, but it is full of pithy, brief statements that can set you right. I’ll recommend that book. Some good advice I keep coming back to is essentially to muster the courage to sit down and do it, and to know that it is possible to finish the thing, one way or another, even if the path is not clear and the result might end up completely different than what you are aiming for. It is very easy to protect the imaginary perfect version of a song. At some point you have to let the song become what it actually is, release it, learn from it and make the next one.
I've found that persistence is probably a much larger part of creativity than inspiration gets credit for.
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Robert Hinrichs' new single 'The Road' is out now. Check it out in the player below.