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Brian Harnetty: Appalachian winter

By Wes Flexner

A sample-based producer's main obstacle is usually copyright infringement. On his latest record, that wasn't an issue for Columbus-based composer Brian Harnetty, an OSU grad with a master's from London's Royal Academy of Music.

When he began work on American Winter, out on respected experimental imprint Atlavisitic and celebrated with a release party Friday at Andyman's Treehous, he had full permission to use his source material. Berea College in Kentucky was actually paying him on fellowship to dig through their catalog.

And just as Madlib's access to the Blue Note catalog for his Shades of Blue album was a goldmine for a jazz fiend, Harnetty was very pleased with the folk collection he rummaged through.

"The [Berea] sound archives, as far as Appalachian music, is second only to the Smithsonian," he said. "It's really impressive and they are very knowledgeable about the tradition of music."

With sampling restrictions out of the way, Harnetty's challenge was to create new art without disrespecting the historical and personal value of the music.

"My approach was kind of like an outsider," he explained. "I was trying to find the balance to using it as material and also respecting the people that made the music. Beforehand, I was doing stuff with samples—old turntables, using material to just layer on top of one another. But when I got down there, I was meeting the relatives of the people that were on the recordings, and I got freaked out."

Harnetty's initial involvement with Berea stemmed from his membership in the art collective Fossil Fools, which did a project paralleling war in oil-rich Iraq and coal mining in Kentucky, comparing the effects on soldiers and miners in pursuit of energy. It hooked him up with Appalshop, an Appalachian arts and education center, which led to his contacts at the college.

From a listen to American Winter, I think Harnetty can put his concerns about exploiting Berea's resources to rest. He nails his chosen themes of war, travel and winter.

Layers of folk songs, news clips and interviews, primarily from the 1950s through 1970s—over a collage of bells, pianos, organs and strings—capture the sadness, texture and beauty of winter, and the underlying hope that can be found in a dark period of transition. At the same time, the essence of the source material isn't tarnished.

Harnetty's also gotten a positive review from one of his most feared critics. After presenting parts of his composition to relatives of people whose lives were on the sound clips, one family member described it as hearing a relative's ghost.

November 8, 2007

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