Matthew Mercer is the other half of Microfilm. Here is his solo track from his ep “Meantime”:

Microfilm / Matthew Mercer “No No No” [MP3]

Lets continue this thread with a short interview:

1. what are you listening to right now?

Matthew Mercer (MM): I’ve been really interested in some of the output from Xela’s Type label, notably Sylvain Chauveau’s S and Nuage. James Blackshaw’s most recent instrumental guitar album, The Cloud of Unknowing, is really nice stuff. As far as more mainstream music, I have been enjoying the latest albums by PJ Harvey and Jose Gonzalez quite a lot, too. The new Burial album also is worthy of all the hype it’s gotten. Electronically speaking, I like the new stuff on Cocoon by Dominik Eulberg and Pig & Dan. Dominik Eulberg just gets better and better every time! Some of the new stuff on M_nus is great, especially the Dubfire track on their new compilation a lot. The new Smith N Hack 12″ is pretty interesting, and I’ve also been into Stefan Goldmann’s new Macro imprint… he put out two of his own records on there recently and they’re both very diverse and compelling, minimal without being what’s grown to seem like a generic “minimal” sound.

Matt Keppel (MK): Mercer’s more of the electronic music head than I am, but I think that’s what serves our band well; Mercer brings in the more obscure electronic & somewhat classical element and I’m coming from more of a pop angle. Hercules & Love Affair did a remix of the new Goldfrapp single that’s great. Love to get him to remix us. Appaloosa is great; love that melancholy disco sound. Of course Burial is great.

2. how did the microfilm name come about?
MM: Microfilm was an idea of Matt K and it sort of related to the idea of something reduced and somewhat mysterious, a tie-in to some of the paranoid 70s cinema that we’re both strongly drawn to.

MK: I love the idea of an item or an object that everybody knows the word for but no one really knows what it is, does or looks like. Microfilm, whats that? It’s simple and solid; maybe it was a rejection of ridiculous names like ‘Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah’ too.

3. is there an underlying concept that drives microfilm? if so elaborate.
MM: As simple as it sounds, it’s really an intersection of all the things that appeal to each of us, both musically and in terms of cultural touchpoints (film, art). For me it was nice to be able to work around actual pop songs with lyrics and choruses which is a change from my solo material.

MK: Just to make really good electronic pop music; something that people can find appealingly familiar but that sounds completely fresh. We have no interest in being retro ironic.

4. the online digital downloadable webaverse has undoubtedly changed the music landscape that we listen in. what is the most exciting and what is the most frustrating aspect about promoting yourselves in this digital medium?

MM: It’s both good and bad. It’s good in the sense that it was much easier for us to sidestep the entire process of finding a label (which can be a headache and demoralizing) and we could basically finish an album today, upload it and have it ready to go through a network like iTunes in a month or so. So in that sense it’s been great. However, we’re a drop in the proverbial bucket — we’re not alone in that process and so there are tons of new voices out there all clamoring to be heard. More choices is almost always better, though, ultimately, so I think that is a good thing still. At the same time, digital music is still somewhat disposable to a lot of people. It’s hard to place the same value on something even if you paid for it online without getting a real artifact. That was our experiment in pressing the 2CD set, to see if somehow that gave us more credibility in the print and critical world. The response has been mostly positive but given the costs of that process I’d say it’s not a fair trade-off; if you don’t have the cache of an established label name behind you, or at least a full-time publicist getting the word out, it’s an uphill battle to be taken seriously. That said, we’ve gotten on well with a lot of blog writers and have been promoting our music where we think it counts the most in reality, music listeners.

MK: It’s kind of wonderful and miserable at the same time. Like Mercer said, it’s so easy to record and upload your stuff to digital stores through a third party company and have it out there so fast (relatively) than be one of those bands that gets signed and has to wait 8 months to release it or it gets stuck on a shelf and never released. The bad thing being that, yeah, there’s a lot of bands out there now. Which is cool in the fact that getting music released isn’t an insurmountable task like in the days where a label would choose like 3 new bands a year,tops, to release and all the other amazing bands would go relatively unheard. That doesn’t mean that there’s not mounds of crap out there, there always has been. But blogs/websites are doing a nice job of being the filter.

5. any new releases in the pipeline?
MM: We have a lot of tracks under way right now and we’re tentatively hoping to evolve that material into a new album sometime later this year. We’re also working on a Magnetic Fields cover for a promotional fan-based tribute album.
MK: I’m really into the new tracks we’re making right now. The collection we have so far seem less dark, cold and sprawling, maybe, than our first album. They seem to be warmer and shorter, but still a strong sense of melancholy. I think we both really like the idea of melancholic disco, lots of sad strings and plaintive piano.

6. how did you hear about pampelmoose?
MK: I think I found your blog name on an MP3 aggregator site, and my limited French knew that it was a riff on pamplemousse/grapefruit. That was enough to send me here.

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