Total Blue
An interview with the LA trio about closet synths, torturous perfectionism, the Pacific Ocean, and aftershave
At the very end of 2013, a white label 12” with only the name “Benedek” written on a blank paper sleeve in silver marker arrived in the mail, bereft of any other information whatsoever. That was my introduction to the music that followed from LA producer Nick Benedek, who was clearly indebted to the dank dollar bin aesthetic of Dam-Funk, but with his own unique spin. The music could feel familiar and unfamiliar at once. One descriptor of my original Pitchfork review guess “that [it] could either be from an obscure lite jazz album, a rare modern soul 12,” or some sort of boogie track that might have gotten aired one night at the Paradise Garage…a trick of the mind [wherein] it attaches itself to what you have stored in your own musical memory banks.”
Benedek’s projects branched out from there and they weren’t easy to keep track of cover the years, but when an email about Total Blue came through this summer, his name caught my eye. Total Blue is a trio featuring Benedek with fellow players Alex Talan, and Anthony Calonico. I loaded it on a playlist with a few other album promos and biked along the Hudson River with it on shuffle. Invariably, a track would make me pull over and save it for a future playlist. Almost always, it was a Total Blue track that stopped me on my tracks. It was like that one super cool, ethereal track on a throwaway ‘80s smooth jazz album, but an album full of such breathtaking moments. I wasn’t the only one smitten by such sincere smoothness. It became one of my favorite albums of the summer.
So I reached out to Benedek, Talon, and Calonico for an email exchange:
So was Coolwater the genesis of what became Total Blue?
Alex: No, Coolwater was not the genesis of the project. I made two remixes in 2013 and 2015 beginning to develop the sound, and I had an NTS show where I played a lot of ambient/downtempo/ jazz/soundtrack. All of this contributed to the sound of my self titled release in 2020. I had gone into the studio with Nick and Anthony and our percussionist friend Chris Parice and we spent a long time dubbing and mixing the live takes.
Anthony: We all seemed to gravitate more toward this kind of loose jazzy thing, and were influencing each others’ playing and production. Hearing my horn magnified in Alex’s beautiful spacious productions gave me the confidence to start wandering more with the motifs and worrying about hooks a little less.
Alex: Anthony and I have been making music together since we met at UC Santa Cruz in 2006! At the time I was focused on synths and sound design while Anthony was deep into Classical and Jazz composition and songwriting. After college we worked doing ghostwriting/production and logged a lot of studio time together developing a sophisti-pop project called Rare Times. We released two EPs Missionary (2013) and Mist (2013), and a one off EP with Benedek under the name Cool World (2014). We did a collaborative album with Groundislava “Frozen Throne” (2015) that had a Benedek feature on (“Under the Glow”) and as well as production and remixes for other artists.
Both of us were perfectionists with different focuses and while we were happy with the results we got, the process became torturous. The band dissolved, but we continued to work together in various capacities. We were both involved with our friend Akua’s Them Spirits album in 2019, Alex on co-production and engineering and Anthony on keyboards.
Anthony: Alex and I formed Rare Times and were introduced to Benedek through mutual friends. The three of us created Cool World (a sophisti-pop/new jack record, and moved into a studio space together in Koreatown, LA. And Nick and I deepened our musical bond (I was playing keys/horn with him live and on his records here and there from 2016) with various co-creations like Coolin’s “Angelus Vista” and Earlyman Dance’s title track and “Sixtern.”
Benedek: The RA live performance helped us move toward a new type of deep etheric jamming (our raw jams had titles like “Eternal Pt. 1”). There was a particular night in early ’18 when we had escaped a boring party to take refuge in our K-town studio and jam late into the night. We marked this magic night and set out to make a new age/ jazz fusion record with its own moniker.
Around the same time Nick and I were planting seeds, Alex birthed his brainchild Coolwater, which Nick and I contributed to. After Nick and I had composed and arranged most of what would become the Total Blue record, we invited Alex in. His creative mixing style and FX processing was so transformative, we realized our group was now a trio – meant to be all along!
How much of the collaboration happens in real life and how much happens with files online?
Anthony: Yeah, it’s mostly IRL at the K-town studio and also at Nick’s place at the time in Highland Park. Sometimes we’d each take the tracks to our home studios and work separately, or bring in new seeds to inspire the other. We also did some remote recording of our friend Chris Parise on drums and Sam Wilkes recorded the bass for ‘Corsair’ remotely and sent us the files. My dad, Bob Calonico and I recorded his tenor sax while jamming together in my home studio over the raw origins of “Jaguarundi” and “Heart of the World.”
Alex: Anthony and I both have worked on Nick’s music with its big funky bass and groove focus. My initial reaction was that it was a fusion, where Anthony had brought in longer chord forms. A Lot of Nick’s music is funky and uptempo, so this was more drawn out and epic in a way that was different from his previous stuff. I wanted to make the synthetic parts more human, and the human parts more synthetic, while achieving a trancelike undercurrent. We all love the sound of workstations. We did a lot of doubling of acoustic and synth parts to further that sound. I love doing lots of buried parallel processing that reinforces the source with subtle movement.
Did you have certain references in mind when you got together?
Anthony: At the time we were talking a lot about Joe Zawinul, Pat Metheny, Jon Hassell, Japanese ambient like Hiroshi Yoshimura and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and certain transcendent house like Larry Heard. Nick and I were also talking about making music as if we were painting. And the process of structuring/ editing like looking at big canvasses at a distance and saying, “hmmm, What if??” contemplative in that way.
I hear a lot of “smooth” in the playing and I'm wondering what led you to this particular sound palette?
Anthony: My dad, Bob Calonico, who is a pro saxophonist/clarinetist and taught jazz/symphonic band at UC Berekely (and is featured on the record!). He raised me on stuff like Miles, Coltrane, Michael Brecker, and Weather Report. So fusion and smooth for me rests on a backbone of the type of jazz I’ve always loved and studied. It’s the OG harmony and groove I love, and the smooth airy digital timbres help these to speak. I’ve also always relied on Al and Nick to show me the way to good music.
Alex introduced me to Hassell in ’07 and Abercrombie’s Timeless. I tend to gravitate toward music that is both smooth and deep, like Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes – processed pianos that take you far away and deep into the heart at the same time. Nick also pointed me to the Akai EVI1000/EWV 2000 synth horn I’m playing on a bunch of the tracks, which has a beautiful analog tone and begs for smooth riffs.
Alex: My dad, Len Talan, was a film maker and amateur synthesist and had a massive CD and tape collection as well as a closet synth setup. As a teenager I was more into guitar-centric rock and funk from the 60s and 70s – definitely not pro-smooth. Prince was a gateway to more synthetic sounds. In my early 20s, Sade, Paul Hardcastle, and Trevor Horn were big influences. Now I like smooth and raw. But in relation Tony, Nick and I like things that are more brash.
I feel there's a fine line when it comes to emulating new age and other such '80s tropes trying to not fall into irony or pastiche.
Anthony: Maybe the homies can speak more on this one, but for me a lot of the music making was a pure process, and instead of trope, maybe I think vibe or feeling. It comes down to the DNA — If I’m hypnotized by a chord or timbre, it’s an experience of pure being, not referential or ironic. I do remember a moment where we had a particularly strident pan flute on “The Path” that got clipped. When ‘worldy’ becomes funny and limiting instead of expansive and transcendent, that’s the line for me. Let’s come back to the “Heart of the World.” For real — does it feel stupid or feel real? These are good questions to ask.
Alex: Yeah, I think its a negative boundary where when you cross it you know it. We’re having fun and doing what we love. When people think of the 80s they think of wedding playlists not ECM. I like mainstream ‘80s too, so I’m not trying to put that down. We love music from that time enough and have processed so much of it that we have deep shared references that have shaped our instincts.
How did you settle on Total Blue as the name?
Anthony: We wanted a name that would reflect the expansive quality — pushing toward the furthest reaches of sea and sky, which surpasses the human, etc. I remember Nick like ‘ugh we gotta come up with a name,’ and Alex and I scratching our heads after hours hanging out at a diner in South Pasadena. Luckily it popped out and the three of us said, “yes that fits.”
Alex: It was really expansive, but also had this punchiness that made it sound like a cleaning product or aftershave! It seemed memorable.
The Total Blue gents also provided a few choice selections for further zonal reflection:
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