As a born esthete, Tyler the Creator has always thought in terms of shapes and colors rather than hard numbers. He leaves those things to people like Silent House president Alex Reardon, a creative director he's worked with ever since Igor.
On Sunday night (October 27), fans at LA's Intuit Dome saw the pair's synergy unfold for Tyler's audition event for Chromaticityhis eighth studio album released this morning. With flashes of Kelly Green lights dimming across a cruciform stage and emanating from pocket squares between the seats, it was both trippy and understated – both functional and aesthetic.
“We create a semi-static lighting and graphic appearance so that hearing is the sense most activated by the experience,” he explains in Bulletin boardwhich refers to a lighting arrangement that avoids dramatic fluctuations. “You go in, you see the thing that looks good, you photograph it and it anchors the experience, but after that, it doesn't start with massive color changes and set changes and costume changes and drama and fire and all the things that we would add to his performance because there is no performance to support this. And therefore, this will be visually distracting and therefore reduce the auditory or auditory sensation.'
The set for the project, which began about six weeks ago, is set to be a part of Chromakopia's upcoming tour featuring Lil Yachty and Paris Texas. It's just the latest entry in a 30-some-year career that has seen Reardon work alongside everyone from Tyler to Tears for Fears to The Weeknd. Blending all his creations together is a methodological philosophy his architect father taught him years ago. “A designer has to be as creative as an artist,” explains Reardon. “Except for a specification.”
In a conversation with Bulletin boardReardon talks about some of those specs, his working relationship with Tyler, and more.
How would you describe Tyler's thought process when it comes to merging the aesthetic with the sound of his music?
Each album cycle creates a unique aesthetic that goes with it. Now if we just look back Call me if you get lostwhen we were at this stage of this album cycle, we started talking about the tour and he said, “Okay, I want video screens, I want augmentations, and I want things like that.” And I said, 'Let's pause on that for a second and take a little higher level look at the album as a whole. What does the album mean to you? What are the underlying patterns that you think are relevant and you don't think about the setting? Just talk to me about the album.” And it was about travel, world travel, expanding your horizons, getting away from where you are, just looking at the world in awe — but always with luxury.
Wherever he appeared at an event, he always had luggage with him. So I said, “Okay, if I'm hearing you correctly, that sounds like the Slim Aarons picture. It sounds like a mansion on the shores of Lake Como. Sounds like Riva Powerboats, that kind of vibe. And he said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.” That made my job a lot easier — because for that tour, we literally built him a mansion on the shores of Lake Como with a Riva motorboat that took him up to a stage B. It made sense, because I asked him what the album was, no “What do you want in your tent?”
So with this album, we had these conversations about what is the central visual iconography that Tyler wants to associate with this album. Well, we had those conversations, and those are the conversations that created the design direction we're going in. It's so refreshing to be able to talk to an artist about the album's higher intent instead of, “I want lasers, I want fire.”
What were some of the logistical challenges of putting this whole thing together?
There are three metrics for a successful design in a live production: There are aesthetics, logistics, and finances. The aesthetics, obviously we were talking about the logistics now is, “Will it fit the space? Will it fit in the trucks to get you from A to B, C to D, and will it fit in the budget?' And I think because we at Silent House have been doing this for so long, we're pretty good at gut-check estimates about, “Okay, this is going to come in at about the right amount of budget. This will fit.”
But what we do is we've been doing this for quite some time. We know what questions to ask, and I think if it's a new space, our first questions were, “Okay, we need to go to A, go down there, B, meet with all the relevant technicians in the company, and then C, come up with a plan, a creative one that will fit considering what we're told we can and can't do.” I think it would be completely wrong for him to sell this concept, to do this amazing thing and get to the venue and realize he couldn't do it.
So I think we as designers have to really think, 'Where is this event happening? What can we do? [in] there?” Then we apply his input, then we apply our input, stir it into a big cauldron, and then the idea comes which we then refine with his input. So logistically, we have to work very closely with the team production management, with the venue, with the vendors, with everyone. And it creates a huge amount of work.
But because we've been working with all these people for decades, it becomes a kind of shorthand. There are many things to it. Will this item we are designing fit into the loading dock? Can we get it on a truck? How do we put it on the floor? How do we do this? We had a lot of meetings on the ground, a lot of meetings with very helpful people, and I want to give a little shout out to Intuit in the middle of their first Clippers game. They got another gig and continue to answer emails. They're still dealing with us, they're still great and cooperative, and I know they're hammered right now.
What is it like working with Tyler?
He is such an incredibly pleasant person. We all have notes from people we care about. The artist has notes, and normally that's taken with a slightly sharp intake of breath and “Oh, here we go” – but with him, it's like, “Cool.” I wonder what he will say. We walk into an awards show and he shakes everyone's hand and says hi to the operator and the guy who brought him a coffee. He is simply outstanding.
He is very good at storyboard sketches. Sometimes, he will actually narrate loose ideas. “I feel like he should do this, then this, then this and that.” And then we who work behind the curtain, the production team, the creative team, the video content, everybody, mix and match some different concepts. And he says, “I like this. I don't like this. Let's do a little more of that and that looks nice.” And then the process continues. But sometimes he is very specific, sometimes not. Sometimes, it's like, I feel like it should be like this. There is no real prescribed path per se. It's just a sketch or a conversation or how he feels at the time.
It's nice Tyler appreciates the two way communication. A lot of artists just have a lot of yes men around them, and it shows. They put in some of the most inventive stuff with their graphics.
There is something [to] Many great artists where nothing is invented when they literally open their souls to the listening, watching, absorbing world. And we, as humans, instinctively respond positively to this honesty. Tyler is a completely no-nonsense man. I think this transcends the genre of music. I think it works with painting, poetry, music, any form of artist expression. This genuine revelation of the soul is something that people who absorb this music will empathize with and love. And I think he's always had this completely no-nonsense being. This is one of the many reasons it is so successful.
I imagine you're a “form follows function” kind of guy, being a designer. Lasers and explosions aren't as important as the big idea.
No, and I think there are a lot of design firms or designers in live event production design who come from a technology background. So they tend to emphasize new technology or look at that lighting rig. It has so many amounts of lights in it, or they look at its physics. And this works for certain acts. But I think if you have an artist who doesn't think like that, why force them to get excited about some technology. Technology should serve a higher purpose, and that higher purpose should be the artist's goal in creating this album.
If you had to compare Tyler's aesthetic instincts to anyone in history, who would it be?
This is a very good question that may take me a lifetime to answer. And I don't want to sound offensive. I'm not at all because my references to artists would be so different. It's such a subjective answer that I don't want to light up the internet with people saying, “Are you kidding me? How can you? This guy?' But one of the things, and this is totally subjective, and just my personal thing, is that obviously having grown up in the UK, I think Tyler is, just to me, kind of the David Bowie of his generation.
Amazing success.
He is an artist of his generation. I don't think comparisons to anyone else around are really relevant because that would be derivative and he's not. But if I'm explaining why I, in my own humble opinion, believe there is a David Bowie outrage, it's because he exists as a musician and with just as much power in the visual medium as in the audio medium. He has the ability to reinvent without losing himself, which I think he and Bowie both share. I think neither of them really followed a particular pairing. They just thought, this is what I think is great. And the whole world said, “Yes, I'm on board.”
And I think as a result, I think his career will be as long as David's, I think there's absolutely no reason why it wouldn't be. I mean, he'll continue to be his honest self for as long as he chooses to do so. And I think that in whatever form of creativity he chooses to engage in, if he brings these characteristics and he will be hugely successful.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/tyler-the-creator-chromakopia-listening-event-interview-1235812786/