The Consulate General – “Person Number”

For a few weeks now, I have been listening to and loving the debut-album from The Consulate General, “Person Number”. The album is released today on Circle Into Square records, and it’s a record you should spend both your money and your time on. Well worth it!

The man behind The Consulate General is no debutant in the music industry. This is the new project from Boy In Static‘s Alexander Chen, a Taiwanese-American multi-instrumentalist who is currently living in Gothenburg, Sweden. The album is full of lovely, warm melodies, thoughtful lyrics, very interesting arrangements and creative instrumentation. Chen has a playful attitude towards composing, and I am fascinated by the way he builds his rhythms and harmonies. Often, I get those “wow, how did he think of that!?”-experiences, – even after numerous listens.

“Person Number” is a beautiful journey in sound and words.

Chen is accompanied on the album by several of my own favourite artists, which makes this even more interesting for me. Antoine Bedard of Montag, Simon Scott of Slowdive/The Charlottes/Televise/Seavault, John Chao of Misha and Ryan Fritch of Sole & The Skyrider Band have all added musical elements to Chen’s music.

(Short interview with Alexander Chen below the cover-art)

Fascinated by the project and the idea of it all, I sent over some questions to The Consulate General himself. Here are the answers.

The title, – what is the story behind “Person number”, and what’s the story behind “The Consulate General”?
A.C.:
I recently made a big move to Gothenburg, Sweden. The summer of 2009 was full of relocation logistics, including applying for residence permits. We basically had to file all this paperwork with “The Consulate General of Sweden” here in the US, but they were really a mysterious entity. They would only open their phone lines for an hour on a particular day of the week. Anyways, I was coming up with a title for this new project in the middle of that mess, so it came to mind. It sounds so old-fashioned and cryptic, I just liked it.
As for Person Number: A “person number” is what Sweden uses for identification, like the US’s Social Security number. They seemed to be asking for it everywhere when I arrived – at the bank, the post office. But I don’t get one because I’m not a citizen. So I don’t really count here.
Could you please tell me a bit about the process of making the album, why you chose Bedard/Scott/Chao/Fritch as your collaboration partners and how you have collaborated?
A.C.:

I became acquainted with each of those guys in a completely different way. Antoine and I were always aware of each other’s music, but we met accidently for the first (and only) time in a hotel lobby in Japan, when we were each on separate tours. Simon Scott emailed me shortly after the first Boy in Static album “Newborn” had come out, saying he enjoyed it. I am a huge Slowdive fan so I was obviously flattered. John Chao from Misha and I have never met, but we just found a strong connection musically. Ryan Fritch and I met at a hip-hop show in San Francisco last year. Ceschi Ramos introduced us.

Each collaboration was very different. For example, I sent a basic demo of “17th street” to Simon Scott. He turned it into this beautiful ambient drone which I ended up using as this soundscape draped over the whole song. Ryan Fritch plays a ton of instruments, and I sent him two songs (“Sweet Solano” and “Have You Seen My Girl”) and he just went crazy, with some great tangents like the long clarinet outtros and upright bass solos. Antoine’s was the simplest,  as he just added backing vocals. John Chao really re-arranged “Lonesome Sunday” quite a bit into a whole new production, even adding whole new chord progressions, I was very happy with that one.
There seem to be a lot of travelling and places mentioned in almost every song. Is there a theme on the album? How much is influenced by your move to Sweden?
A.C.:
My writing tends to be pretty biographical, so a lot of it is influenced by the move. A couple songs like “YWCA Trixie” and “Make A Church Movie” are older songs where my wife wrote the words. Certainly “What Time Is It Now” is all about relocation. My mind was just numbed that I wanted to write a dry account of all the technical logistics – SWIFT codes, NTSC/PAL conversion, Nordea bank, etc. The title comes from one of those time zone converter websites: “What Time Is It Now In…” and you choose a country.

Here is a new video for The Consulate General’s song YWCA Trixie:

If you want to check out more of the label behind Alexander Chen and The Consulate General, you should download their free compilation, where you can listen to another of The Consulate General’s songs, “Halfday Honeymoon”. You can find it here:

http://www.circleintosquare.com/item/cis-compilation-vol-1

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Knut in Interviews, Nordic music, Recommended Releases, Reviews

About Knut

Knut loves warm & melodic music (mainly indiepop, folk, electronica), illustration, art, writings, creativity, coffee, nature, technology, good things, nice things, small things... He started Eardrums in 2005.

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