We were lucky to catch up with Oliver Ralli recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Oliver, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

In August I released What’s To Come Is Calling Back under my project UN INSTRUMENT. I had an absolute blast making it. I wrote and recorded most of it in a studio I set up in the top of an old elevator shaft in the West Village. The room is about 7′ x 9′ with one window where you can see the Hudson River. It was a dream to set up a mic, trip out on music, watch boats roll by and sing in New York City. I call the studio Room In The Sky.

I designed What’s To Come Is Calling Back to have seamless playback with each track weaving into the next. Alot of time was spent walking the city and recording sirens, trains, saxophones and car horns. Then I would chop up the sounds and reconstruct them as a bridge from one song to the next. I was up in Woodstock last winter and recorded my kids smashing ice, knocking sticks against trees and walking through snow. I then translated those recordings to a drum kit ala kick, snare, hi-hat, etc… and then turned them into beats on several of the songs on the album.

After releasing the album I made the theme song for the podcast “We’re Here To Help”. Jake and I have been collaborating on stuff since high school and I’m always psyched that we continue to do so. The theme song is goofy and annoyingly catchy and sounds like a bunch of 4-inch, electronic elves jumping around your head while offering their help. I’m quite proud of it. I made it entirely on the Casio SK-1 which is the most amazing keyboard. Casio started making it in 1985, and it’s little and funky and a synthesizer for everyone! Your mom, your kid, your dog. No one’s getting excluded. It’s got a simple, intuitive sampler, so I sampled my voice singing “we’re here to help” and then built each word into chords.

I’ve also been scoring my friend Brian Farrell’s short film series “South Pasadena”. I love the wonderfully weird world that Brian is creating with the series, and it’s been so fun for me to have a hand in coloring that world via music and sound. I’m incredibly excited for South Pasadena 4 to drop soon. I felt like I turned a corner in terms of my abilities to score, and let it rip a little more in the process. It was fun to make bolder choices and go to town on the synth.

Next stop is Berlin. My buddy T Punkt and I have a band called Distructo. Last winter T came from Berlin and we headed up to Woodstock with a bunch of instruments and my trusty whippet-mix Mia. The house is amazing. It used to belong to the manager of The Band. There’s a piano there, a ton of light, and big time musical vibes. (It’s also where I recorded my kids knocking trees for my nature drum machine.) T and I got a fire going every day, drank amazing beer that my buddy PJ brews at West Kill Brewery, and wrote and recorded a bunch of weird stuff. Now I’m heading to Berlin to finish mixing and release the next Distructo EP.

Oliver, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I live and work in NYC. I moved here in 1997. New York City is epic. It’s a city full of hustlers, and super diverse. There’s so much incredible music and art that continues to come from here. I love being in and around it.

When I first got to NYC I was into writing and theater. My buddy Jake Johnson and I formed a comedy troupe called The Midwesterners. We performed sketch and improv at the old Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre when it was on 22nd Street, and we toured the country. Theater was such a fun way to get out big ideas on a shoestring budget. The Midwesterners is really where I started heading down a major DIY path that I’m proudly still on. We would rehearse in parks and run lines walking over bridges. Costumes and props were kept to an absolute minimum and brought up on stage in garbage bags.

The Midwesterners hit a fork in the road. One guy was headed to LA. The other to Berlin. It was clear who had to go to which town. My mom’s side goes back generations in Berlin. My grandfather was born in Prenzlauer Berg and my grandmother was born in Neukölln. I moved there in 2003 and landed my first professional acting job in a play called “Lobby Hero” by Kenneth Lonergan. My girlfriend also helped me bid on German eBay for a little, digital 4-track recorder, and I won big-time. It was my first venture into multi-track recording and it was glorious. So I started writing songs and making cassette tapes and sending them to friends.

After a year, I moved back to NYC, and pretty soon after that moved to Bushwick. It was a tremendously exciting time, and there was a really great art scene happening here. My buddy Adam Brown and I formed a band and art collective called Pass Kontrol and went HAM. We independently released alot of music, but the album B38 (named after the bus that runs down Dekalb Ave) is still one of my favorites. It’s got so many jams on it. Pass Kontrol shows were cathartic. We had a great crew of friends who came out to shows and we would collectively dance, sweat and get the floor shaking in some places. There was alot of positivity and affirmation in those gatherings.

Pass Kontrol had a legendary run at the Bushwick Starr with our sci-fi rock-opera New Hope City. It was a super-DIY-scrappy-multi-media-show about some sketchy dudes broadcasting pirate radio in a post-apocalyptic city run by MediaCorps. I directed the show and kept the scenes pretty improv forward. We had a huge crew of musicians, dancers, painters, sculptors, photographers, actors, poets, etc… come and lend their talents. The whole experience was a party. I felt like I had finally merged theater and live rock n’ roll in a way that really excited me.

Pass Kontrol hit a fork in the road. Everyone was headed separate ways. I had to re-invent. After having a pre-midlife-crisis-panic attack in LA (check out the song “Tripincalifornia” by UN INSTRUMENT if you want the rundown), I realized that I had to figure out a career that I was psyched on. I enrolled at the Institute Of Audio Research, worked my ass off, and graduated as the valedictorian of my class.

Once I graduated I started working as an audiobook engineer, and I continued to produce music. Since then I’ve produced four albums under my name and three albums under UN INSTRUMENT.

I love making music and being creative. Whether it’s playing live, writing a song, scoring a film, recording an album, or soundtracking a podcast, I’m just thankful that I can do it. I’m excited to keep collaborating with cool, open-minded people.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

For the people whom I consider true artists, being creative isn’t a choice. It’s a need. An instinct. You can’t not do it in some form or other. If I’m not making something/working on something, I”m miserable. I feel stifled and agitated. Being creative is also a way for me to take care of my mental health. Making art relaxes me, excites me, connects me to other people, and let’s me process the insane world around me. It’s catharsis and communion.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I had to pivot when my wife (the girl who helped me win big on German eBay) and I were having our first kid. I was still hustling as an actor and working nights in bars and restaurants. My situation was not groovy. I had lost interest in the business of acting. I still dearly love the craft, but a lot of the outside stuff was feeling corny. And working in bars at night was a super drag. Waking up hung over to take care of a wet baby-toddler is the 6th or 7th ring in Dante’s Inferno, I think.

It was pivot time. I had been playing, writing and recording music since I was a kid. I had taught myself a lot, so I had an interest, as well as a good base of knowledge. I just couldn’t clearly see how to further continue the journey. My wife encouraged me to go to audio school. I enrolled at the Institute Of Audio Research and loved the hands-on approach. I took daytime classes at IAR and guided bus tours through Times Square at night. I worked my ass off in school and graduated as the valedictorian of my class.

Afterwards I got a job recording audiobooks with a small publisher and pretty soon thereafter became the studio manager. Recording audiobooks is awesome. It’s generally one mic, one person. I love that! So simple! Now I do a lot of work with Macmillan Audio. Their team is top-notch and I absolutely love working with them. I’ve had the pleasure of recording so many fantastic books and working with incredible narrators.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oliverralli.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/o_rallisound/
• Other: https://vimeo.com/oliverralli

Image Credits
PHOTO CREDITS What’s To Come Is Calling Back album cover – Oliver Ralli We’re Here To Help podcast cover – James Fosdike South Pasadena 3 – Kris Saintsing B38 album cover – Oliver Ralli Spaceworks studio photo – Oliver Ralli The Return To New Hope City Soundtrack cover – Oliver Ralli Room In The Sky studio photo – Oliver Ralli Ram Fries! album cover – Oliver Ralli