The Obelisk Questionnaire: Dan Moriarty of D. Majestic & The Spectral Band, A Troop of Echoes and Public Policy
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Dan Moriarty of D. Majestic & The Spectral Band, A Troop of Echoes and Public Policy
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
If there’s a single phrase that captures what I strive for, it’s: “Take something kinda weird or fucked up and turn it into something that feels good.” It’s a consistent theme among several very musically-diverse projects I’m involved with: exploratory sax-fronted post-rock with A Troop of Echoes, sinewy stream-of-consciousness post-punk with Public Policy, and, more recently, noisy/jazzy/electropunk with D. Majestic and the Spectral Band.
When I was younger and felt like I had more to prove, I had a tougher time navigating the continuum between “weird” and “good”. My drum parts at the time were colored by playing as much bullshit as possible in an attempt to create something unique. It might have been unique, sure, but was it good? Not reliably.
As a fairly new dad with a completely non-musical job, I have a lot less time these days to write and record music. But, in the time I can eke out, I’ve been able to make some really exciting progress in my songwriting and production techniques. I’m really proud of the Spectral Band EP I made this year, and it got a surprisingly warm response considering how weird it is.
Describe your first musical memory.
Norma, my elderly piano teacher. A shitty Yamaha consumer keyboard. Sheet music for Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”, from the 1997 film Titanic. Needless to say, it all got a lot weirder from there.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
Oh, other than playing “My Heart Will Go On” from the 1997 film Titanic on a shitty Yamaha consumer keyboard with an elderly piano teacher named Norma?
Touring with A Troop of Echoes will always be special to me. We started off as a few high school friends screaming through saxophones in my parents’ basement in 2004. It was bad. But that band has been on a fucking journey. We went through some rough patches early on, when we were making aggressively weird and abrasive music and couldn’t figure out why nobody wanted to listen to it. We were 17 years old and were doing our best to become friends with Lightning Bolt and The White Mice on MySpace and Providence noise music forums.
Eventually we started making music that we actually wanted to listen to. It was still kinda weird, but in a much more satisfying way. We moved to a big warehouse with a ton of natural reverb, our songwriting got better, and we got better at playing our songs. It all clicked on our 2014 album The Longest Year on Record, and when we brought those songs out on the road, damn.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
I used to believe that metronomes were a crutch, and a hindrance to recording songs that felt natural. After a few studio sessions with and without using metronomes, I’ve changed my mind completely. When a band is comfortable playing to a metronome, everything locks together in service to the groove. Very satisfying.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
For me, personally, artistic progression is taking weirder and weirder stuff and being able to turn it into something that is fun to listen to. Children’s toys through fuzz pedals? NICE. Electric drums with a bunch of digital clipping and delay pedals? NICE. Atonal dance music? Hell yeah.
How do you define success?
Success is creating something you’re proud of.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
You see A LOT of things when you’re sleeping on people’s floors after shows on tour. Let’s leave it at that.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
I love collaborating with other weird musicians. Someday I’d like to write a song with like 30 people playing drumset and 8 bass guitars or something like that. Take some chaos and make it catchy.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Art is a pressure release valve for the brain.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
My day job is doing lunar geology at NASA, so I’m really looking forward to the return of humans to the surface of the Moon through the Artemis program.
https://linktr.ee/thespectralband
https://linktr.ee/atroopofechoes
https://publicpolicy.bandcamp.com/
