Twenty years ago Ego Likeness‘ debut album Dragonfly was released into the wild and earlier this month that momentus occasion was commemorated with a re-release. We caught up for a chat with Donna Lynch (DL) and Steven Archer (SA) about the first step in an amazing musical journey.
Dragonfly was recorded over a nine-month period in self-imposed isolation. Twenty-years later would you do it again?
DL: I am proud of the result it yielded but no. It was probably my first realization that pain and hardship does not necessarily make for better art. It just makes it harder to produce.
SA: I am always kind of isolated, I am not a social animal. However us being isolated together is not good for us. It served a function at the time but I think both of us need breathing room to do our best.
“[…] we don’t know how to do anything else so we better figure this out […]”
Did you find the isolation hard or was it liberating?
DL: Neither. It just was. And it was necessary. Or so I thought at the time. Now, all these years later, I am honestly not even sure of that. It does not even feel like my life anymore.
SA: It was not something we decided to do. It was an accumulation of a bunch of choices and pulling back in to regroup.
It was a different world back then, with the advent of MP3 and file sharing, the music industry changed and rock stars were being found and not manufactured. Did you have a plan to make a career in music or was it art for arts sake, or maybe a channel for creation?
DL: I do not recall thinking we would definitely be able to make a career of it but I knew that was Steven’s goal. Not in some dream big kind of way more of a we don’t know how to do anything else so we better figure this out kind of way.
SA: I have always, for better or for worse, lived an artist’s life. Which is to say choosing the freedom of creativity over stability. At the time the major focus with Dragonfly was just making something we felt was missing from the world. Creating something we wanted to hear.
What lessons did you learn through the recording of Dragonfly that you still use in your creative work today?
DL: It was the beginning of us learning how to work together and communicate. Working in tandem when you are an artist can be a challenge since you are not in each others head, so you have to have a shared vocabulary. That does not come naturally when you are both schooled in different mediums and use different processes.
“[…] this is where we are trying to go and this is what we have the ability to do.”
SA: That we can do it. I have a fine arts background, and even now, I barely have a working knowledge of music theory. I am a visual person, I have a very hard time translating it into something I can see and wrap my brain around. Dragonfly was the first time I felt that I kind of had a handle on the whole songwriting thing.
How do you feel about Dragonfly in comparison to when it first came out. Would you change anything about the initial release?
DL: It is not really what we sound like anymore but that is okay. It still works and it was who we were then. Or at least the best representation we were able to create.
SA: I think what we sound like now is a very natural progression from Dragonfly. In the same way you can look at chimps and say: oh, I can see how people have a common ancestor with these guys! In many ways our newer material is simpler and more efficient than what we did on Dragonfly. But I think it still holds with the sonic ideals.
I think the couple that made Dragonfly would like what we have done since. Of all of our early material I feel like the updated versions we do live reflect the ultimate intent of the songs. We were able to get much closer to the ideas in our heads on our later records.
Dragonfly was […] a manifestation of this is where we are trying to go and this is what we have the ability to do. I am a big fan of limitations, manufactured or otherwise, and that might be one of the elements that gives the record some of its charm.
Find Ego Likeness on the net:
http://www.egolikeness.com/
https://egolikeness.bandcamp.com/
https://www.metropolis-records.com/artist/ego-likeness
