Mechanical Nation recently had a chance to ask Matt Gifford of Encephalon a few questions regarding their just released new album, The Transhuman Condition.

MN – Encephalon may not be a name many people would recognize in the industrial circles. Can you give us a bit of history about how Encephalon came to be?
MG – Encephalon was started in 2005 by Sam Mainer and myself, however we grew up together and have had several industrial /electro/punk related projects since before we were in high school so Encephalon was sort of a natural evolution and culmination of the experiments we had been doing leading up to that point. Alis Alias joined us in, first by contributing art to our Drowner cd cover, and later joining us on stage for vocals and synths, and eventually her vocals made it onto The Transhuman Condition
as well.

MN – The new album is named “The Transhuman Condition”. How did that name come about?
MG – The “Human Condition” which can be thought of as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc and encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. Transhumanism is an international intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities.
I chose “The Transhuman Condition” to reflect a state of existence that desires change in a world too tied to old world traditions and out of date ideals to evolve at the desired pace. In the internet age where everyone has access to unlimited information its getting harder and harder for the powers that be to pull the wool over our eyes, so I’m very against established traditions and adhering to “the norm” when there are much better solutions/futures/view points available.

MN – What influences (music or otherwise) do you have that shape the sounds we hear from
Encephalon these days.
MG – Musical influences are all over the place, the classics that have and always will inspire me are The Cure, Depeche Mode, Faith No More, Curve, FLA, and Skinny Puppy but I have been listening to a lot of the newer bands (Comaduster, Necrofacility, Dym) coming out in the scene and its really inspiring to see some intelligence and integrity coming back after so much whack hellektro.
Non-musical inspiration comes from scientific sources like medical dictionaries, BBC documentaries, and Carl Sagan books/shows, as well as futurist philosophers like FM-2030 and Raymond Kurzweil. Science fiction atmospheres of movies like Alien, Terminator, and Event Horizon were a huge inspiration for the THC. I’m planning to make our next album continue down a theoretical/fantasy evolutionary path of life on Earth, specifically what would happen back on Earth once the posthumans are out colonizing the galaxy and whatever life that remains gets a hold of the technology that’s left behind. Lets just say HG Wells is giving me some pretty good ideas.

MN- How does Encephalon go about putting together/writing the music that ended up on the latest album “The Transhuman Condition”? ie. do all the members get together in a “jam” style session, or is the music more carefully crafted and manipulated by the members over a period of time?
MG – Each song begins with a sequence that I make and start writing lyrics for, once I think I have a good idea I send it to Sam and he works on it sometimes changing the beats around, adding synths, or doing intense audio editing, glitches, and sound design to the raw material I sent. We usually pass stuff back and forth a few times and what we end up with is always a lot different than my initial demos. Most of the mixes we use are Sam’s but I have done quite a few as well. When I work with Alis its much more relaxed, for “The Killing Horizon” I already had the acoustic guitar and string parts recorded and she came over and we recorded about 20 takes of her improvising various melodies and then I took all the audio and doubled them up and created harmonies from her separate vocal takes so it was a surprise to all of us how it ended up.
MN – How do you feel you have evolved (musically) since the last album Drowner in 2009.
MG – I’m still proud of the songs we put on Drowner, I regret not promoting it whatsoever but I just needed to get it out there so I could be done with those early songs and focus all energy and concept on what would become the THC. Drowner was purely a blast of chaotic energy where as the songs on THC are much more epic and structured and hopefully show a stronger song writing side that has been infused with the club sound we started on before. There are more complex acoustic melodies this time around but I think the depth of the electronic programming and sound design has increased too.
MN – The new album “The Transhuman Condition” has been out for over a month now. How
do you feel the album has been received?
MG – Pretty well thanks to the awesome support of Dependent and Artoffact and all the awesome DJs, bands, fans, and promoters who have kept pushing our music. We have had consistently good reviews in the media/blogs/magazines too which was a little surprising, but maybe it shouldn’t be after all the time we spent on it.
MN – And lastly, what’s next for Encephalon? Are there plans to release more albums? Any tours scheduled for the release of “The Transhuman Condition”?
MG – The most important thing to us is getting another album going that will outdo THC on every level! While we do that we are playing some one off shows and are starting to plan a mini tour of Canada and maybe a few shows in the US for 2012. Alis and I are always working on various mixed media so we hope some type of video will surface soon as well.

Thank you Matt, for taking the time to give us a bit of insight into the inner workings of Encephalon. Looking forward to seeing you live sometime soon.

Pickup your copy of this excellent album from the Artoffact Records through Storming the Base: Encephalon, The Transhuman Condition