Mike Einziger The science of sound
Fear sucks. Who in their right mind wants to consciously be scared, especially when it applies to the realities of one’s own life? Well, apparently Mike Einziger, celebrated guitarist of the multi-genre band Incubus, does. “There’s a part of me that kind of enjoys the prospect of something terrible happening,” says the thirty-two-year-old from his Los Angeles home about his latest project, an orchestral piece to be performed live, for one time only. After having surgery on his wrist for a debilitating bout of Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, Einziger was forced to step away from his guitar for a while. It was during this period that he sat down at a piano and began to compose. The result was ‘End.>vacuum’, a forty-minute orchestra inspired by his longtime love of scientific studies. HUCK spoke to Mike about his new venture, his love of science and what it’s like to watch your ambitions crumble before your very eyes.
How did you come to compose an orchestral piece of music?
I started writing it after I had to have surgery on my wrist for Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. I’ve had it for five years and it really started to affect my playing, and while touring it progressively got worse and worse. About a year ago, it got to the point where I just couldn’t play anymore so we had to cancel a bunch of tours that we had going on. All this happened in 2007, right in the middle of all this touring we were doing to promote the record that had just come out. So I had surgery and obviously I couldn’t play for a while after that. I was stuck at home without being able to play guitar for a couple of months and, during that time, I had an idea that I really wanted to write music for an orchestra and have the piece performed live rather than make a record. It was the idea of writing a piece and having it performed live that was really appealing to me.
What inspired you to write this thing?
It’ll sound somewhat vague, but the best way I can explain it is that I spent a lot of time thinking about the concepts that are discussed in physics and cosmology and a lot of the sciences that I’m really inspired by. There’s a tremendous amount of mystery underlying all of it. The more that we find out about these things, the more light that’s shed on them, but at the same time the mystery only gets deeper. And that’s what, in a general way, inspires me to write music. Actually, the first part of the performance will be a lecture from a particle physicist named Dr. Brian Cox. He’s a science correspondent for the BBC. He’s taken part in all these great documentaries about physics and about cosmology and the origins of the universe and the Big Bang and all these kind of dense contexts. He’s a really great speaker and he’s really good at taking concepts that are very difficult to explain and difficult to understand and explaining them in a way that people like me can visualise.
Being a musician and an artist, as well as a person with an interest in science, seems like a pretty cool dynamic. It’s rare that art and science are paired together…
You’re right. I don’t think that most people would put those things together, but for me, they seamlessly melt together into one thing. It’s weird. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring those concepts in my own mind and trying to make sense of certain things and it all ties together. For me, it’s really all the same thing.
It’s a brave thing stepping away from your comfort zone.
Yeah, I feel like I’m really throwing myself out there. If it goes wrong, it’s going to go horribly wrong and everyone there is going to see. This is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this before. So I’m kind of just really swimming in the deep end.
“End.>vacuum” will be performed on August 23 at the UCLA’s Royce Hall Theatre.
The original story appeared in Huck #011.
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