Neither/Nor Records
Sean Ali interviewed by Webb Crawford in January 2025 for the release of Quartets for Plucked Strings (n/n 027)
Webb Crawford: What is your relationship to mandolin-family instruments? What drew you to them, and what drew you to plectrum instruments more generally?
Sean Ali: Basically, I love the sound of plucked strings of all sorts: guitar, banjo, mandolin, shamisen, pipa, kora, harp, etc. There is something about plucked instruments (compared to the sustain of arco strings) that, when played a certain way, evokes atmospheric or ambient feelings. Winds and bowed strings, to me, handle directness of feeling very well. However, when I'm exploring atmospheric or ambient spaces, I prefer the sound of plucked strings. It's hard to put my finger on why, but I think it has to do with how plucked strings decay immediately after being sounded. As the sound decays, the ear is led back to the environment into which the sound vanishes. How I stumbled upon the mandolin family specifically started with the pandemic. When the pandemic happened, it became difficult for me to practice at home, since my wife was working from home and I would be interrupting her meetings in our one-bedroom apartment, so I started going to Forest Park in Queens to play. This is where the mandolin entered the picture. Although I do take the bass outdoors from time to time, I began looking for something that I could play that was portable. Since I could play the guitar (it was my first instrument actually), the mandolin seemed like a good idea. I soon fell in love with it and acquired an octave mandolin (tuned one octave lower than the standard mandolin) as well as an oval-hole mandolin, which has a more throaty tone. All three of these instruments are on the album as well as the guitar. Two mandolins, octave mandolin, and guitar to correlate roughly to the traditional string quartet format of two violins, viola, and cello.
WC: I love the concept of the string decaying back into the environment that it emerged from. I wonder how this idea interacts with your work with field recordings—how does sound in your environments impact this record? What is the role of the bird calls on "Waiting", and are there other ways that you see yourself gesturing towards outdoor elements in Quartets for Plucked Strings?
SA: I think it impacted it in several ways. The most notable perhaps is in the material itself. The mandolin melodies and motives and guitar chords were all discovered while improvising outdoors. The final forms and arrangements happened later, but all the raw material was born outside. Even the approach to arranging the material was inspired by the way I listen to outdoor sounds, a type of sonic whole that is made up of disparate parts that (perhaps) have nothing to do with each other. This is probably most salient on "Amniotic Dreams" and "Waiting," where the mandolin parts and guitar chords were drawn from different occasions improvising at Forest Park, and I just thought they might sound good together, the way bird calls and wind in the trees do. The other significant way in which the outdoor sounds have impacted the record is, as you mention, through the field recordings. I have no qualms with being obvious and literal at times. Most of the record is just the instruments suggesting these ambient spaces, but I also think what is obvious for me may not be for a listener, so I'm happy to add some actual outdoor recordings to accentuate that element. The bird calls on "Waiting" were recorded on San Miguel Island in the Azores in the summer of 2023. Yan was pregnant at the time, so my son was there listening to those birds too. I wanted to add something that he was, in a way, there for too, because being an expecting father was a large driving force behind making this album.
WC: I think that literal gestures are a gift in so many circumstances. And on that tack, I'd been avoiding asking you about fatherhood—but it is clearly in this record! Has having a child affected your approach to art-making (on a practical level, on an emotional level)? If so, how?
SA: It definitely has. On a practical level, I have to prioritize time differently. The emotional aspect is a bit more complicated and difficult to unpack, but I would say the sincerity of emotions feels more direct to me now than ever before, as does the lack of sincerity. I don't have the interest or patience any longer to listen to or perform music that lives only in the world of form, style, or idea. There's a certain "something" that must be communicated: a feeling, an intention, a purpose. The music has to matter, and that sense of urgency springs from the ticking of the mortal clock that parenthood makes you hyper aware of. And now I find myself always asking, regardless of solo or ensemble, composed or improvised, is this good music? Are the notes/rhythms/textures/noises there because they absolutely need to be? Does the band gel? And, most importantly, do you feel something when listening to it? If not, it is a waste of precious time. Obviously, you don't have to be a parent to arrive at this mindset, but, for me, becoming a parent solidified this stance because I realize how precious time is.
WC: Where does Quartets for Plucked Strings fit into the continuum of your solo recordings, and how do you view the relationships between (or trace the trajectory of) your solo projects?
SA: My first solo album, My Tongue Crumbles After, is all one-take, single track improvisations (with the exception of a little bit of tape collage that I added to a few of the songs). It is the closest to much of the live performing I have done over the years in the sense that it is all freely improvised without very much planning. My second album, A Blink in the Sun, moved in more of a compositional direction. All the raw material was improvised, but it was then "assembled" into pieces into which I wove spoken word. I didn't go into the studio with pieces planned out, but what emerged as the final product was very compositional in nature. Quartets for Plucked Strings, however, is nearly entirely composed. "Amniotic Dreams," "Waiting," and "Childhood" are mostly through composed with some space for controlled improvisation. "Sessile" is the only piece that is improvised, but even with this one, I had a premeditated texture in my mind. So, formally, I guess I would say that this album fits into my trajectory by moving in a more compositional direction. Aside from form, I think there has also been a gradual shift in the aesthetic content in my solo work. 
My earlier work is marked by a modernist aesthetic that embraces harshness and tension reflecting both my existential malaise and a refusal to sound "pretty" lest it should be complacent with the musical vapidness or trite sentimentality of songs produced in the consumerist vacuum. Although I still stand by my earlier work, it wasn't a sustainable model for my mental health. I have struggled greatly with depression and anxiety. I’ve begun to look at music differently. Could it be something healing and that provided connection both to nature and to others while still maintaining artistic integrity and not succumb to cliches? Much of this learning came from playing music outdoors. Although Quartets was recorded in a studio, it carries this outdoor element that is absent from my first two albums.
WC: This record very much felt like a method of grounding oneself for me and I really enjoyed that aspect of it. The layered melodic gestures at the beginning and the ending of "Childhood" are so strong, and had that aspect of groundedness for me in a particularly potent way---how did you find that material?
SA: I think groundedness is a good way of thinking of it. I was probably subconsciously trying to ground myself when I found the material for "Childhood." The opening mandolin riff came first. I was in Ohio for my brother's wedding, and I somehow came upon it while playing in the backyard of the AirBnB we rented. Maybe it's because Ohio is where I spent my actual childhood that this childish spirit found itself into the playing that morning. At the same time, however, we had just learned that Yan was pregnant. It's a very exciting and joyful thing waiting for a kid, but it also carries with it certain anxieties, and the extremity of these feelings can definitely leave you feeling ungrounded. So, somehow, at that moment, this little mandolin riff which is upbeat and also naive was grounding for me. Later, when I started adding parts to it, it occurred to me how layered childhood is, especially in the memory. There is something paradoxical about childhood in that your memory of it is both close and far. Close because they are your memories and they formed the adult you are today but far because you no longer have a child's view of the world, so the world of your childhood memory is both crystal clear and yet inaccessible. I think this is why even happy memories of childhood can be tinged with sadness. Layering the mandolins and guitar the way I did was my attempt to capture the emotional quality of that layeredness of memory.
WC: Does music-making have a function of documenting emotions or emotional memory for you? Does recording (field recordings, instrumental music, words) feel like placing something in a relative timeframe, or documentation in a filmic sense? Or does it feel independent of larger circumstances in your life? On a case-by-case basis?
SA: It is somewhat a case-by-case basis, but the older I get and the more I record, the more each recording looks to be a chapter in a larger story. Earlier on, I would've felt that it was more of an art for art's sake approach and that it was independent of larger circumstances, but now I'm not so sure. I don't really think any creation can be totally decontextualized from the life of its creator. Perhaps for the listener it is, as they don't know the details of my life as intimately as I do. On the performing side of it, however, they're inextricably linked. 
Quartets, in particular, documents a time in my life when I was an expecting father. All the music was conceived, written, arranged, and recorded during Yan's pregnancy. Without knowing there was a child on the way, I think I would've kept all this stuff to myself. It would've just continued to be me and my mandolin meditations in the park. However, waiting for Desmond to arrive had a momentous feeling that just begged to be documented. Also, I am already working on material for my next record. This music centers around my emotional life in the first year of parenthood. So, I do think I am increasingly moving in the direction of documenting emotional memory in sonic form in a relative timeframe. I am not sure if it would be considered filmic or not. To me, the music does suggest a succession of images, so perhaps? But this suggestion is more an effect of listening back afterwards. It wasn't really present in the writing or performing in any intentional way. It's some wonderful paradox of music that while playing my mind tends to be at its most imageless, and yet what is heard becomes so bound up with imagery.
Photo credits:
The album cover is a painting by Sean Ali.
The photos in Forest Park were taken by Sean Ali.
The portrait if Sean Ali was taken by Yan He.
