Setting the Record Straight: An Interview with Blank Banshee

Blank Banshee at Brighton Music Hall, 11/9/23

I made my way up the stairs of Brighton Music Hall, one of my favorite music venues in the Boston area, to interview Blank Banshee, an artist that molded my music taste into what it is today. A left-field electronic music producer, the Canadian artist was an early adopter of the genre “vaporwave” as a descriptor of his work in 2012. It would be a project he released that year, Blank Banshee 0, that got me into his discography when I discovered it years later. 

As his manager and I made our way to the top of the stairs and into the green room, Blank Banshee was seated on one of the couches, awaiting our arrival. His manager introduced me and we shook hands, ready to begin. He towered over me in terms of stature, but he exuded a friendliness and tranquility that calmed my nerves a bit. He had a few things on the glass table between the two couches, which included a bag with his iconic mask and a cup of orange juice, seemingly one of his pre-show favorites. We first chatted briefly about the wonderful publication that is Melisma Magazine and what the interview would entail, but before long, we got right into it.

Andrés López: Sweet! just to start off, how are you? How is the tour going? I know it’s been a while since your last one, right?

Blank Banshee: Yeah! I’m doing good, it’s great to be touring again. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I had a tour planned and announced, actually, for 2020. It was obviously derailed due to the pandemic, so it was a bummer to have to cancel that, so it's great to finally be back on the road, for sure.

AL: For sure! And in your approach to live music, I was wondering how you approach that, because I know as an electronic musician it might be a little bit more difficult to engage your audience or do something new, so I was wondering what your approach is in terms of live music.

BB: How do you mean, specifically, like…

AL: Just, in terms of trying something new, not just playing your music back, or doing something live, something like that. As someone who hasn’t been to one of your shows before.

BB: So, my live set runs on Ableton, and the way I do it, I use something called Max for Live to design a custom interface patch that basically works like a VST, and for anyone who doesn’t know what that means, it stands for virtual studio technology, which allows me to control, mute, or perform different song elements like bass, drums, synths, using my MIDI controller. And if anyone was curious about Max for Live, it is a platform for Ableton built around a programming language developed by Cycling ‘74 called Max. And since Max is a programming language, you can essentially do anything with it. With my interface I can select and trigger and play certain song elements using the pads and controls on my MIDI controller, and the interface also provides feedback through my controller, which helps me manage the performance efficiently.

AL: Hell yeah! And going to your latest album, 4D, would you consider this your biggest deviation from your signature sound? I know you still have some elements of that, but I was wondering what caused the shift into this IDM sort of direction, if you could even call it that?

BB: Yeah, I would say so. I mean, so for 4D…I wanted to make something…different, for sure. I wanted to make an album, essentially…I wanted it to be basically bangers front to back, you know? The last album I released, Gaia, I would call it pretty subdued. I think that you could hear that it was an album made during the pandemic. There were some upbeat songs on there, but I think that for the most part it was a pretty subdued album. And after Gaia I made an EP called Music for Menus, which was fully ambient, so I wanted to kind of take that same approach, but with a more upbeat approach to that, where the whole album just consists of upbeat tracks.

AL: Going back to your earlier work, I’ve noticed that you’ve sampled and revisited your work with Shinjuku Mad quite a bit, and you even got your previous bandmate on Gaia for vocals. So, I was wondering what keeps you coming back to your time with Shinjuku Mad and does it serve as a motif of sorts in your discography?

BB: So, I’ve never been a big collaborator. I found that my old friend Cormorant is one of the few people I’ve ever collaborated with, and we do seem to have a good working relationship in that regard. I got my start playing in a band with him. That was where I started, and that’s always going to be my reference point for whatever I do musically.

AL: Following up on the topic of sampling, you’ve sampled a ton of different stuff ranging from Rihanna to Geinoh Yamashirogumi, and I guess some prevailing sounds are from video game soundtracks and internet sounds. So, I was wondering what your relationship to sampling is and how it has changed over time? Obviously, 4D doesn’t use much sampling.

BB: I think it’s just the evolution of my creative approach, I guess you could say. I really enjoyed sampling in the early days, but as any musician would, I’ve tried to evolve as an artist, and to continue to sample just sort of feels like staying within the same territory. I’m continuously wanting to evolve, I guess you could say, so it's nice to just sort of leave sampling behind. I’m not saying I won’t come back to it someday, but I love it. It’s a great artform, there’s so much that can be done with it, and it’s so fun to experiment with. But, as I said before, I got into music initially playing guitar, so that’s always going to be my reference point. I wanted to evolve as an artist basically, and I don’t like to repeat myself, so to make another sample-heavy album like Blank Banshee 0 would sort of feel like repeating myself.

AL: I can definitely hear it throughout the discography for sure. Going back to your early days, even though you may not agree with the “vaporwave” label, are you glad that community embraced that sort of sound? I mean, they still follow your releases up to now, so I was wondering what your relationship to that was.

BB: So for vaporwave…I moved from the East Coast to Vancouver in 2012, and vaporwave was not on my radar at all until I moved to the West Coast. And it was during my stay at a hostel in Victoria, B.C. that I discovered vaporwave shortly after I released Blank Banshee 0. That summer, it led me to the realization that I had somehow, on the other side of the country, been making something very much in the same vein as this new thing called vaporwave. Mine was kind of different, but it felt like it was in the same vein, so I tagged it vaporwave on Bandcamp just in case, and the rest is history.

AL: I actually did not know that. That’s wild that it came in parallel. 

BB: Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s very strange how that worked out.

AL: Going back to your artistry in general, I know that you have a few side projects such as DJ Bloody Sunday, Hypermall Corp., and Geo Jams. My question is what determines whether you want to release something under a certain name?

BB: Generally speaking, everything that I create and everything that I work on is going to be for Blank Banshee, but I think it’s fun sometimes to take a break from your main project and sort of just branch out and try new things, you know? Something that feels like there’s no pressure. It’s not something that I’ve done for a while actually, but I think a lot of artists would agree that it’s fun to just start a side project purely for fun sometimes.

AL: Yeah, just branch out, experiment.

BB: Yeah, branch out and experiment, yeah.

AL: Following up on that, I saw on Twitter that you recently confirmed at a live show that you are behind the Eco Virtual project. Is this true? Or no?

BB: Eco Virtual, yes. That was a side project that I started in 2013, again, after I had moved to the West Coast from the East Coast, and I think I was missing home. I was feeling sort of homesick and I was sort of remembering my childhood watching the Weather Channel. There’s not much of a winter out there on the West Coast, not like we get over here on the East, so I was feeling nostalgic and I kind of thought it would be cool to make a project that sort of references the music that you would hear on the Weather Channel. Up in Canada it’s the Weather Network. That was where it started, again, it was just something for me, just for fun. I had no intention to make that an actual thing, but people enjoyed it, so I kept it up for a while. Again, that’s a very low-stakes, no pressure sort of thing and those songs were very fun and easy to put together, and it was just a fun project.

AL: Yeah, that’s awesome! Also, is that a thing of the past, or is there always a chance for revival?

BB: In regard to Eco Virtual, I think I’ve sort of done all that I want to. I don’t think I’ve got anything left to contribute to Eco Virtual. I mean, honestly I haven’t thought about side projects in the future, but I can see it happening, for sure. It could definitely happen. 

AL: Shifting directions, I was wondering how Hologram Bay changes the game for you as an independent artist, having your own label?

BB: I really enjoy having Hologram Bay. It’s fulfilling to be in charge of everything and run the show on my own. Hologram Bay is a really fulfilling thing for me and I do enjoy it. I like to be in control of every aspect of my music, and it’s nice to have that hands-on approach. And I should say that I don’t run that alone, Hologram Bay is equally run by my girlfriend Erica and she’s a huge part of it. If anything, she probably does more for Hologram Bay than I do, so shout out to her. We both enjoy it, it’s a lot of fun, and it’s cool to know that we have end-to-end control over everything in regard to Blank Banshee. 

AL: For sure, having that control, like you say, and controlling your own destiny, for sure.

BB: Yeah, it is, it’s nice. I really do enjoy it. I have zero regrets starting it and I’m glad it’s still going. It’s awesome.

AL: I also wanted to follow up on the whole aesthetic of Blank Banshee. In terms of your music videos, I know that you have these geometric landscapes, and I was wondering how music and art come together for you, for visuals.

BB: For the visuals, those videos I make are definitely heavily inspired by the early 2000s-era video games, that kind of low-poly, CGI sort of…I grew up in Canada, obviously, and there was a segment on YTV called Short Circutz where they would play clips from the Mind’s Eye series and I think that had a big impact on me as a kid. And it was just sort of these very strange, CGI, short animations set to new age music, and I always remembered that. And I think once it got to the point where I was thinking about making my own music videos, I think that those were on my mind a lot. I always come back to those because they were, I think, really important for me.

AL: Building off of that, I was wondering if there was any sort of deeper meaning or storyline to this Blank Banshee universe that you’ve been building?

BB: There definitely is a kind of storyline within those particular CG videos that I make, for sure. There is a storyline, for sure. It’s kind of a lot to get into, but…

AL: Right. Just leave it up to interpretation, then?

BB: It exists, yeah, it exists for sure. I like people to sort of be able to watch those and to be able to recognize the storyline that exists, and there are definitely clues online. There’s a lot of information online that sort of brings it all together. But yeah, there’s a definite storyline with those videos for sure.

AL: I’m going to have to look into that! I know you also have a lot of corporations and things like Doldrum Corp. that show up throughout, and things of that nature.

BB: Yeah, I try to make it ambiguous at the same time. While making them, I inject a storyline into the videos, but I also try to maintain a level of ambiguity there because I don’t want it to feel like you’re supposed to be following a storyline. But, I want people to definitely know that if they pay attention enough there is a storyline there for sure.

AL: Sick! Going off, what have you been listening to lately?

BB: Lately? I mean, lately and throughout my whole life I have always been listening to video game music. Video game music is definitely one of my favorite things and it’s something that I’ve listened to from the age of 15 until right up until today. I mean, there’s a lot of bands, a lot of artists that I like. I’m someone who listens to all genres, and I just love music in general. There’s really no genre that I detest, I love all music. At the end of the year when Spotify tells me my top artists, it's always a video game music artist. It’s either Nobuo Uematsu from Final Fantasy or Yasunori Mitsuda, who does the Chrono Trigger and the Chrono Cross music. Both of those guys are always my top artists, for sure.

AL: I was gonna ask if you had any particular soundtracks that you were listening to.

BB: I have always loved the Chrono Cross soundtrack. I would even go so far as to tell you that’s my favorite album of all time. I don’t know what it is about it, but it’s been there for me since day one. And the Final Fantasy soundtracks are great, I love that stuff. That stuff has always been really important to me.

AL: Did you play a lot of the Square Enix games growing up?

BB: I did! Absolutely. I mean, growing up, I was a big gamer, for sure. Not so much these days, but I was a big gamer when I was a kid, for sure. Starting off with Game Boy in like ‘92, and I think I owned almost every major console. And I reached this weird point when I was 16, when I started playing guitar, I actually pawned off all my consoles and all my video games and I decided I was just gonna dedicate myself to music. It was probably pretty unnecessary, but I’ve since gotten back into gaming and got some stuff back in the early 2010s. But gaming’s always been with me. If I have spare time these days, I’m just probably gonna be making music because that’s what I love to do. I wouldn’t say I’m a huge gamer these days, but growing up I was, so it was a huge part of my life growing up, for sure. 

AL: We’re almost at the end, but I wanted to ask a somewhat unrelated question. Your early work has been used in a lot of edits, memes, and even has a whole parody album. So, I was wondering how that interaction with your work…what are your thoughts on that?

BB: I mean, I love it! I think it's great, for sure. I forget who said it, but it’s definitely been said that if you’re an artist and your song gets a Weird Al parody, then you’ve really made it. I don’t have my Weird Al parody yet, but the parody albums are great. Of course, it’s flattering. Stuff like Simpsonwave, it’s flattering to be part of that, to have your music be used in that capacity. What’s not to love about it? It’s funny. I’m glad people find alternate uses to my music. I’m glad people use my music in ways that I never thought that it would be used. And that’s what it’s all about! I’m all for it, for sure.

AL: Hell yeah! Wrapping up, do you have any plans for the future, or any sort of vision beyond the tour?

BB: Well, I would say a banshee in motion tends to stay in motion, so I’m not slowing down any time soon. I think if anything I’ve got more ideas that I can keep up with, really, you know? I’m always thinking of new album concepts, styles that I would like to try. And I’m always experimenting and coming up with things on my own that I would like to expand on. For me, a lot of the time it’s just finding the time to sit down and complete projects, really. I’ve got no shortage of ideas and no shortage of ambition in that regard.

AL: For sure! I know your fanbase is always eagerly awaiting literally anything that you put out, even those one-off tracks from Missing Numbers, or things like that.

BB: Oh yeah! For Missing Numbers I do plan on releasing an actual Missing Numbers collection. It will probably be called Missing Numbers Volume 1. Hopefully it will be a collection of the best of that first batch. That alone is a great thing for me because there’s a lot of songs that just don’t fit on albums, and so it’s nice to have a defined collection to put those songs into. I will be expanding on Missing Numbers probably until the bitter end!

AL: Wow! That’s awesome. That’s an awesome outlet. But yeah, that's about all I had.

After the questions that I had initially prepared for the interview, we decided that we would use the rest of the time we had together to set the record straight on a few misconceptions. This was a space for him to fill in the gaps on some Blank Banshee lore and simply let the public know what he’s all about. Before this, though, he had to start his hour-long pre-show countdown, a Blank Banshee custom. When he came back, we started with the origins of the Blank Banshee project, a product of the innate creativity he has had since he was a child.

BB: I loved painting at a young age. I began drawing my own comics at 12, moved on to flash animations in my early teens before discovering guitar at 16. My dad showed me some basic chords and I just taught myself from there. In high school in the early 2000s I formed a band with my friends Joe and Curt, and as time went on I got into DAWs, digital audio workstations. First GarageBand and then Ableton. I started writing a lot of things on my own, and I had been making instrumental compositions, and I came up with the name Blank Banshee as a pseudonym to release them under. Blank Banshee was just a side project initially, because I was already in a band called Shinjuku Mad, but I wanted to start over with a blank slate, no pun intended. I think I was trying to avoid being that local musician guy who’s in like three or four side projects. I made the mask to just sort of, not necessarily be anonymous, but just to sort of create an interesting persona. It was never my intention to be an unknown figure on the internet. I wanted to set myself apart from the average, just regular dude producing electronic music.

I had been producing songs, living with my girlfriend in a small apartment, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with them. But at a certain point I ended up with a collection of about 15 songs that I liked a lot, and I wanted to release them, but there was sort of a sense of disillusionment living in my small town where after years of playing shows in bands and just essentially trying to make it there, I felt like I needed to leave and get to a bigger city to gain perspective, really. Things can feel sort of stifling in a small town, and it gets old. So, I felt this new music I had written needed to be around people and that I needed to be around people. Regardless of the internet, I needed to be where people were. I remember listening to the album and just thinking that this is something that could really resonate with people, basically.

I decided to go to the complete opposite coast. I packed up my laptop and some clothes, and I had the album essentially completed when I left. My girlfriend and I took a Greyhound and a train all the way out to the West Coast without a plan at all. We wound up in Victoria, B.C. and we didn’t have an apartment yet. We were just living in a hostel, and it was at this hostel that I released Blank Banshee 0 over the free Wi-Fi. I just uploaded it to Bandcamp, and I didn’t even think anything of it, but I remember specifically by the end of that day, the free downloads had completely run out. I honestly thought that someone was just trolling me. I was like “someone just downloaded this like 100 times just to troll me. There’s no way 100 people have downloaded this album.” But as time went on, it became obvious that people were actually interested in it. The hostel was called Ocean Island, I don’t know if that’s relevant. But, I was really happy with the album, and it felt like the new beginning that I wanted to have when I left Saint John. I posted it on a few forums, and I didn’t really market it, but it very quickly gained a life of its own. It was mind blowing for me because I had never experienced that kind of recognition and reception from anything that I had ever released before. It was an important time, and it was really cool to be part of that, for sure. 

I just recently actually moved back to Saint John from Vancouver, too. So, I’m no longer located in Vancouver, for the record. I’m living back on the East Coast, still with my girlfriend, and we just kind of decided 10 years was enough. I went out there with that one goal, really. I had this album and I wanted to do something with it. And after 10 years I made some great connections out there, met my managers and so many opportunities were opened up for me on the West Coast. And after 10 years it really kind of felt like “mission accomplished” and I felt like I had done everything I wanted to do. I’ve always kind of appreciated small town life, and I do like living in a small town, but at the same time, as an artist, I think it’s also important to be where the people are sometimes, too. Now, I tour and it’s nice, and that gives me that same kind of fulfillment. It allows me to connect with people on a personal level, and I think people appreciate it as much as I appreciate it. But that’s where I’m at now. That’s how it began and where I’m at now. 

…

A lot of people ask me about this “Shoreline Trail” page that I run. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.

AL: I don’t know, there’s a lot of stuff going on…

BB: There’s a lot of Blank Banshee stuff going on. This is a Facebook page that I started back in the day, but basically, Shoreline Trail is a trail I walk every day in Saint John. It’s close to where I grew up, and it’s either to get to my studio or to just walk. I walk a lot. I’m like a 10,000 steps a day kind of guy. But the photos on that page, however, they’re from a specific time. They’re from that period of June 2011, when I started working on Blank Banshee 0 to June 2012, when we moved out West. So, I was walking through there every day, and I just decided to take a picture of that same location every day. It really wasn’t meant to be a big thing, but I started posting them on this Facebook page every day on the corresponding days. That is also something that sort of has taken on a life of its own. I think there’s a lot of people on there who don’t even know it’s related to Blank Banshee, they just sort of appreciate the photos. But yeah, that’s the story behind that, for what it’s worth, if that’s of any use to you.

AL: For sure!

It is 100% of use to me, and more importantly, his die-hard fans. I’m sure they will appreciate any sort of information that will make their Blank Banshee icebergs more complete.

BB: For the record, I was born June 28, 1986, and I’m pretty sure Wikipedia says I was born in 1987.

AL: Alright!

He and his manager joked about the internet making him seem younger than he is and how he could very well change this discrepancy himself, but that someone else will surely do it for him. I laughed along with them.

BB: We’re going to set the record straight here today! Another thing too, I’ve always had my albums available on Bandcamp as pay what you want, and that’s something that’s important to me, actually. It’s always been really important for me to not have any kind of a paywall in front of my music just so that kids or anybody can just find my music. And I’ve always found it kind of disappointing when there’s really cool music but you just can’t have access to it unless you pay. The reason for that is because I come from the Napster generation. When I was 13 and I was first discovering music, Napster was my gateway to music and I downloaded huge amounts of music and I fell in love with so much of it, and I paid for none of it. But some of the artists I discovered in those days have become lifelong favorites, so I’ve always wanted to kind of at least give people that same experience, the ability to just discover music without having to pay for it. It’s becoming even harder these days where everything seems like it requires a subscription or everything seems to have a paywall in front of it, right?

The interview was coming to a close. We could have covered more if only we had more time. I’m no Nardwuar, but I thought that I had done some decent research in addition to the knowledge I already had as a listener. I’m very glad Blank Banshee added all of this wonderful information in addition to my questions, though.

BB: I’m happy to talk about this stuff. Like I said, I haven’t had a chance in a while to do an interview and sort of set the record straight on some things, and I think there’s some things that people just weren’t aware of, so it’s nice to have a chance to let people know what’s up.

As we wrapped up, I thanked him again for the opportunity. Not everyone gets the chance to interview him, especially not in person. In fact, his last notable interview was back in 2016 for Bandcamp Daily. I left him with some time to prepare before the set, suit up, and finish the orange juice he had been sipping throughout the interview.

As I made my way down the stairs, I was beginning to process the fact that I had just interviewed someone I had been listening to since I was in middle school. I not only got to know more about the mask-donning artist Blank Banshee, but also Patrick Driscoll, the kind and easygoing person behind it, and I am forever grateful for this chance.

I made my way over to the box office to get my ticket and press pass. His pre-show mix played as the timer projected on the screen behind the stage counted down the minutes. The show was starting soon, after all.

Make sure to check out the show review here: Blank Banshee at Brighton Music Hall, 11/9/23