Premiere/Interview: Vanden Dool
Friday, July 3, Vanden Dool welcomes his newest project, a 5-track EP entitled The View From Here, to streaming platforms everywhere. But today’s your lucky day, as Cups N Cakes has the exclusive premiere of the new EP and an interview with Vanden Dool himself.
Using his last name as an artist name, Ty Vanden Dool delivers a high-energy, explosive synth-pop sound with a unique storyteller energy; his thematic focus? The prairie city of Lethbridge, Alberta, of all places. Calling Lethbridge his hometown, Vanden Dool gives us a window into his life in this “small-town city”, reflecting on feelings of contentedness in familiarity while also wrestling through desires to leave and longings to be somewhere else. It’s always fascinating to listen to a concept album around a physical landscape, and Vanden Dool does an exceptional job of transporting listeners to not only the geographical location and features of Lethbridge, but also the social landscape of the land. Vanden Dool comments on the university students, the “big city kids” who break local kids’ hearts, the increasing crime-rate in the city, and yet, he states “some days I like to run away, some days I hate to leave”.
Vanden Dool sets all these thoughts to a powerful, synth-pop background, with waves of growling bass, fluttering treble lines, and the occasional acoustic guitar strum. The sound is incredibly rich—there isn’t much more Vanden Dool could have packed in here, yet everything remains clear and crisp, each sound effortlessly filling the space.
I interviewed Ty on his upcoming release, where we talked about the music scene in Lethbridge, his sound and inspirations, and his university days. Enjoy!
- Lana Winterhalt
Lana: So I’ve been to Lethbridge twice in my life, and the first thing that struck me is... I’ve never heard music like this coming out of Lethbridge! So maybe first things first, what inspired you to play this genre and how has it been playing synth pop in Lethbridge?
Ty: Synthpop and other electropop genres appeal to me in a way that not a lot of genres do. There’s a hugeness and a dreamlike quality to it that only the use of electronics and effects can accomplish, which also reflects how I feel about bigger cities and how grand and exciting they appear to someone like me who has only ever visited rather than lived in them. It’s also extremely easy to make: thanks to computer software you don’t need to organize a band or bring in other musicians to make it; in fact you don’t even necessarily have to play it thanks to MIDI instruments and sampling - everything you hear on the EP that isn’t a natural sound was purely composed and produced through VST instruments.
The rarity of synthpop artists here in Lethbridge also means I have to be totally open to shows that are stylistically eclectic. There are other artists here making electronic pop including Open Channels and Stars from Streetlights (both of whom opened for tour kickoffs I’ve done), but I mostly share the stage with local indie and alt-rock bands that I enjoy; although there is the occasional touring band that asks me to open for them and their reaction tends to be one of surprise that someone like me exists here.
Lana: So then leading into the first track, “Small-Town City”, you talk specifically about life in Lethbridge. I’m most struck by the chorus, which is a great anthem of “sometimes I like to run away, some days I hate to leave”. Do you write this as an anthem for Lethbridge young people, like everyone feels the same way, or did you write it more as an “outsider” who doesn’t quite get why everyone’s sticking around?
Ty: It was very much written from a local perspective. All my lyrics are written autobiographically with slight fabrications for the sake of songwriting. In this case it’s an expression that like- minded people here feel, that they don’t belong here and want to move somewhere bigger with more opportunities and more progressive politics, but at the same time there’s that sting of all the friends and family you’d be leaving behind if you were to follow through with that. I’ve never seriously attempted to leave Lethbridge, mostly for employment reasons, but this was sort of a reminder to myself of how bittersweet it’s going to be if I actually succeed in finding somewhere else to live.
Lana: Right. So musically, I love the mixture of synths, pulsating beats, and sometimes some acoustic strumming. When approaching creating these songs, where do you start? I know this is such a classic chicken or egg question, lyrics or music, but I wonder specifically how inspiration comes to you for writing, if you build the music around the theme, music first, or if it all comes at once?
Ty: My songs can start off from every possible direction, but for this EP I almost always would start with the title, come up with the chord progressions and a few lyrical hooks, then flesh out the rest of the lyrics before or during production of the actual track. I think “Harsh Winter” was the only one that didn’t start with the title. “Rust on the Train Bridge” was a combination of coming up with the title and spontaneously coming up with and writing down a riff one night, which became the lead synth line in the chorus. After the self-titled album was released I started coming up with titles that I felt worked for hooks or were striking in some way; it was a way for me to get into that kind of catchy pop instinct more easily.
Lana: Speaking of approaching creating a song, what sort of sounds are going on in “Rust On The Train Bridge?"
Ty: These are samples I recorded of scraping and hitting a water pipe in my upstairs bathroom with a screwdriver - both with the metal end and handle. Then I arranged the samples rhythmically and added compression, reverb and distortion to give the sound more intensity. After reading up on Depeche Mode for a class project in my last year of university, it inspired me to record my own industrial sounds for future use.
Lana: I was hoping you’d say that it was a self-recorded sample, very captivating. “Hours Away” builds on some similar themes as “Small-Town City”, however this one sounds like it holds a lot more longing for another place. Why was this song important for you to write?
Ty: “Hours Away” was actually one of the more difficult ones for me to flesh out - I did mostly so I could have something that sounded like the 90s instead of the 80s. Lyrically it was an expression of how I feel when I’m visiting a big city, mostly Calgary or Edmonton as those are the ones closest to Lethbridge. It’s basically saying that I feel more at home in a bigger city and that those places don’t carry the same emotional baggage that exists in the place you’ve lived in your whole life and thus feel like an escape.
Lana: I love how much you talk about the landscape, from valleys and coulees to the weather. In “The View From Here” you talk about the repetition of these striking landscapes, and in reflection about how the view is, you state “I donno, I’ve gotten used to it”. This song almost sounds like a monotonous resolve to something you just can’t change, especially because of the repetitive fade-out. Was that intentional as the last song on the album? Or what did you intend with the song placement?
Ty: There was definitely a bit of deliberation with track placement. To me there’s a theory and art to how the tracks of an EP or album are arranged that even career musicians don’t follow. For example: the best song should never be the first or second, the first slow ballad should always be the third or fourth track on an album, and the last track has to have some sort of finality to it stylistically and lyrically. By the time I had most of the tracks down I made up my mind that “The View from Here” had to be the last track, because it seemed to sum up the feelings that led to the EP’s creation in the first place in a way none of the other tracks did.
Lana: So I believe you also went to school for music at the University of Lethbridge, yes? I know that university students make up a lot of that small-town city, and you talk about it quite a bit on the album. Besides your musical skills, obviously, how else has your time as a student of music impacted the creation of these songs or the album? Sometimes it sounds like the university students spark some resentment in you, but perhaps I’m “hearing” into that... is there a story there?
Ty: I don’t think the EP would exist in any capacity without my time in university. The music program I enrolled in is called Digital Audio Arts, and I chose that program because I knew basically nothing about music production and felt they would be the most practical skills to have in the music industry. Pretty much everything I’ve produced is a direct result of being formally educated in the more technical side of things, and without that I would probably not even be making music unless I got lucky and found people interested in forming a band. Once we got into research-based classes in senior year, I took it as an opportunity to explore electronic genres further, which as I said earlier is how I discovered Depeche Mode’s discography beyond “Enjoy the Silence” and fell in love with them. I even learned how bands like them arranged parts when I tried to imitate them for a project. I think if there’s any resentment towards students, it’s mostly out of jealousy as I feel like I could have done better academically and just didn’t put in the effort it would take to maintain the high grades, and that there’s a part of me that wants another degree battling the other part that’s concerned about the money and stress levels involved in doing so.
Lana: Will you ever leave Lethbridge? That’s the question. What’s the relationship now?
Ty: I honestly can’t think of a time in my life I didn’t want to leave Lethbridge, and I think the lyrics have that much more clarity when the listener remembers that this was the mindset that went into writing them. My only real tether is employment, as finding work elsewhere when all you have to go on is a Bachelor of Music Degree and some minimum wage job experience and all you can do is part-time because of touring makes it essentially impossible. That’s also one of the reasons I put a lot of effort into teaching myself to write and make songs that can appeal to a large, albeit alternative, audience; as I feel that making and marketing pop music creates a best-case scenario for it to get the kind of support needed to make at least a modest income off of it. That said, even if I were to leave Lethbridge I would continue to come back for shows, so I have no intention of disowning it in any way.
Lana: I guess that leads to, what do you hope for the future of synth-pop in Lethbridge? Or is there any?
Ty: I think there’s a small potential for it to become a noticeable subsection of the local music scene, and I like to think that I helped accelerate that process. We already had a post-punk scene and synthpop is closely related, and there are a healthy number of electronic acts that tour through here especially from Calgary, so I think it’s only a matter of time before other musicians with the same ambition and drive as I do see this genre as a viable option. I think we had that with an artist named Howells, who started a little earlier than I did and has real pop instincts, but he relocated to Hong Kong so it was a bit too short-lived to really build a foundation here. That’s really my hope in staying here, is that I can create that foundation.
Huge thanks Vanden Dool for giving us the inside look into The View From Here, which will be out on all major streaming platforms Friday, July 3. For those wanting a physical CD, pre-orders are currently available via e-transfer or PayPal ($10 in Lethbridge, $15 in Canada, $20 international). Once the pandemic has subsided, Vanden Dool plans to hit the road, touring The View From Here across Western Canada. Be sure to follow him on social media for all the updates and from Vanden Dool himself: “Please wear a mask when you go outside!!!”