Sufjan Interviews His Brightest Diamond

Last Tuesday, Tear It Down, a remix album from My Brightest Diamond, was released on Asthmatic Kitty.

To commemorate, Sufjan Stevens, asked My Brightest Diamond a few questions about the remix process:

Sufjan: You've collaborated with remixers before, successfully. How does your music lend itself to this kind enterprise? Or, more generally, what makes a song remixable? I've never embarked on this before, and I have the feeling my songs don't lend themselves to remixing. Do you agree?

Shara: Often the first level of remix-ability in a song is the beat. However, songs like "Magic Rabbit", "We Were Sparkling" and "Gone Away" were more spacially oriented than beat oriented. In most cases, if there are too many chord changes in a song, electronic music doesn't really deal with that well, so the fewer harmonic changes the better. Another interesting thing is that the dramatic sections in songs like "Workhorse" or "Something of an End", got smoothed over, to create a less jarring emotional world. Genre is a bit overrated, so I like the concept of taking these tunes out of the indie rock world and letting them breathe in a different context. I think your songs would be very remixable, but the emotional content that your music and arrangements supply, would be really affected. In the case of "Robin's Jar", that wasn't something I wanted to lose control over. I think it's all a matter of choice and what you are comfortable with.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Also, go to AKRadio for some more My Brightest Diamond content, including her performance on Session Planet Claire as well as some of her previous work with the band AwRY.

[credit: David Garland]

It seems like Sufjan is very reluctant to have his own songs remixed. But I think it would be really interesting to hear other artists' takes on his music. What artist would you most want to remix a Sufjan song?

DOWNLOAD: Sufjan Stevens - "Casmir Pulaski Day" [Demo] (MP3)