Kevin Bronson on August 23rd, 2018

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Composer Gueorgui Linev originally planned to release the next Kan Wakan album as a triple-LP. Attention spans weren’t ready. After some time “back in the lab,” “Phantasmagoria Vol. 1” arrives next week.

The abridged story behind the Kan Wakan album “Phantasmagoria” comes in this mea culpa from composer/producer Gueorgui Linev:

“As you might remember, I was planning a triple-LP release last year, and I ended up realizing, the hard way, that the world didn’t have the attention span to listen to all of that. Subsequently, I decided to go back in the lab and work on releasing each LP as stand-alone versions.”

Like Kan Wakan’s music itself — a surrealist blend of orchestral pop, trip-hop, classical minimalism and celestial R&B — scotching the triple-album’s long-planned release was no easy feat. Then there was re-imagining the project as three self-contained statements, which wasn’t exactly quick work for a composer so obviously fastidious.

Originally, “Phantasmagoria,” teased with a live performance in February 2017, was due to be released that spring, then pushed back to the fall, then …

Fast-forward to now: “Phantasmagoria Vol. 1” will be out Aug. 31, more than four years after Kan Wakan’s debut “Moving On.” Of the Bulgarian-born, L.A.-based composer’s impressive cast of collaborators, “Vol. 1” features vocalist Elle Olsun, drummers Ian Chang (Son Lux) and Gene Coye (Flying Lotus) and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra. At 11 tracks spanning 49 minutes, it owes to Bristol-era trip-hop and includes the project’s early singles “Molasses” and “I Would,” along with the new single “Indigo.”

||| Stream: “Indigo”

Over coffee recently in Echo Park, Linev — who next month will host the Outlier fest (featuring George Cosby, Rachel Fannan, Ivo Dimchev, Jessica Childress, Alexander Vincent and others) in his hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria — chatted about his massive do-over:

Buzz Bands LA: So how much trouble was it to un-release a triple album?

Kan Wakan: (Laughs) More trouble than it’s worth. I’ve found that through this whole process of making this record — in a lot of ways, doing it mostly myself — there are a lot of limitations involved. Like the actual physical medium, which has really affected my experience in creating music. You see things that are obstructive in a way and then you have to find ways around that. And before you know it, you’re making a record based on what you’re able to do. Releasing that triple-record on vinyl and getting everyone to listen to all of that, in 2017, was pretty difficult. I mean, what would happen if someone emailed you a triple-LP right now? When would you get around to it?

Not quickly.

It’s difficult for artists because it’s not as if they didn’t just spend the last three years of their life making this piece of art. You know what I mean? But they did. But [promoting the release] is so disproportionate to the amount of effort they put into writing, recording and producing. I feel like you have to switch on a different part of your brain to promote. To think about the business side.

What were the business-type things you had to do to cancel the old release?

I had a whole pre-order campaign set up for the vinyl, so I had to refund everybody. Then it was about splitting up each one into its own stand-alone release. And with that, there were problems. Because as a triple-LP, it was six tracks per LP. But when you split that up into three releases, each one becomes an EP. Six tracks is not a full album. So I had to go back and re-approach each one. I had to write a bunch more music and record more songs. I spent about another year on it. I had to go in an open up some sessions from some songs that were already finished and mess with those until they were cohesive.

I wanted to … find a story that had an arc, and that arc was very tricky to make happen when you’re putting the pieces together after the fact.

There are older songs on “Phantasmagoria Vol. 1” that are not the original versions, right?

True. I wanted to make sure it felt like a record, that it felt cohesive and had its own unified character. To find a story that had an arc, and that arc was very tricky to make happen when you’re putting the pieces together after the fact.

But in a way I learned a lot through that whole process. I used to think that you just have to go into the studio for a few weeks and record an album and that was it. And you would send it off, and somebody would mix it, and you’d call it a day.

It’s easier to maintain a narrative arc when the process is linear. Does this have a narrative arc here?

I believe it does, and I think that’s why it took me a long time to finish it because I wanted to make sure it did. I wasn’t going to put out a record without 100% believing that it had a purpose, an arc and that there was intention behind everything.

So what’s the breakdown of new songs to old ones?

There have been four songs released and there are 11 songs on the record.

Did you have to have Elle come back in and work on some songs?

There are a few things that she came back and recorded. It’s been interesting working in that way with a vocalist. … I’ve maybe gotten together with her in total five or six times maximum for this whole record. Each time only few hours. She doesn’t live in L.A., and she’ll swing through whenever she has something going on here. We’ll have a quick session — get together, have some tea, talk about life and then I’ll open up a session and … 20 minutes later she’ll sing a vocal, one take, and she’ll leave. And I’ll work with that.

It’s interesting to work that way because I’m used to having many sessions over weeks and weeks and spending a lot of time. This way, I feel like I’m just being given a few little nuggets and I have to figure out how to make that work. In a lot of ways, that limitation also informs the whole process. I think it’s been good for me, too, to not have too many options.

How would you answer the question, ‘What’s this record about?’

Well, “Phantasmagoria” is like a sequence of dreams or ghost stories using a lamp. At the core of it, all of these songs, whether written on piano or guitar, are stories that could be told at a campfire. A lot of it has to do with loss, and contrast of light and dark. Over the past few years I had a lot of family pass away — in fact, every year for the past four years, I’ve had a family member pass away, including my uncle, who conducted the strings on the first record.

So these are really well-orchestrated campfire songs but not necessarily happy campfire songs?

They are not happy per se, but there are certain moments and sentiments that are romantic. There is happiness within them. It’s not this sad, morose record about death. There’s a lot of light, a lot of hope.

It feels like the whole thing is on autopilot and I just have to work, and whatever comes out is contextualized after the fact

When you had to go back and write new songs, was it hard for you to get back in the “zone” or your musical groove? To try and make the songs mesh?

Yes, it was hard. After the first record I went straight to working on other projects. I spent some time producing other artists, I scored a film, and some other things. And when you take an extensive break from your own creative headspace as far as your own project, it can be really hard to tune back in to that.

At first, when I tried to tune into that, it didn’t work. I had to step away from it, a few times actually. It wasn’t until I went off to Bulgaria and played with some musicians there that things began to flow. I just kinda started to jam and write without thinking that it was for my project. I was just writing and demoing ideas. After doing that for some time and then looking back on it, I started to see a common thread. It has an emotional consistency that felt unified — and it felt like a collection of songs I should continue developing. Once I was able to identify what that was, then I could continue contributing to it. It was important to not intend on writing a record, but just discover that I did after the fact.

In a way, it feels like the whole thing is on autopilot and I just have to work, and whatever comes out is contextualized after the fact. It’s almost as if I’m not in control of it.

||| Previously: “Phantasmagoria Pt. 1,” “I Would,” “Molasses”