Pitchfork: You and [twin brother and fellow National member] Aaron [Dessner] are also doing a multimedia piece,
The Long Count, at BAM in October. What can you tell us about it? It sounds really interesting and mysterious.
Bryce Dessner: Yeah, I think it
is interesting and mysterious. Those are good adjectives. The National played at BAM for a few shows in February 2008, and at that time we met Joe Melillo, who is the director of the Opera House. He's commissioned tons of new music. Their Next Wave Festival every fall is-- in the States, anyway-- one of the primary places that commissions new work in theater, dance, music, and collaborations.
I had been working with this visual artist named
Matthew Ritchie, who does these big sculptural installations and paintings and some film. I worked with him on this sound installation called "The Morning Line" that happened in Spain last year. It was a big, massive, multi-channel, 58-speaker sound structure, basically. Really, really interesting. And he asked me to both write the music for it and help find other people who would. Riceboy Sleeps, the guy from Sigur Ros' side project, did a piece for it. And Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth did a big multi-guitar piece. I did a piece. Bruce Gilbert from Wire did a piece. Tons of people were involved, and it was just really fun working on it, doing something really freeform
http://www.matthewritchie.com/morningline/flash.php