Imaad Wasif Talks Where the Wild Things Are, Streams MP3 From New Album

As he planned his new life, he heard a sound. It wasn’t the wind and it wasn’t the trees. It was a scraping, yearning sound. He paused, his nose twitching and his ears pricking up. It was like bone against bone, though there was a rhythm to it. He followed it toward the water, a hundred yards away. He jogged down the ravine and met the stream that led to the shore. He jumped from rock to rock until he saw the bay’s black glass, cut through the middle by the reflection of the moon.

At the water’s edge, amid the reeds and the softly lapping waves, he saw the source of the noise: a wooden sailboat of average size and painted white. It was tied to a tree and was rubbing against a half-submerged rock.

Max looked around to see if anyone was close…There was no sign of anyone nearby. The boat was his if he wanted it.

This is the boat that will take Max to where the wild things are (as told by Dave Eggers in his novelization of the Maurice Sendak's book, now being serialized in The New Yorker). Max has spent the evening lashing out against his family, roaring his bitterness like a boy-wolf, then running away, seething, meditating on their foul play against him. And what he stumbles upon when he follows this sound to “the bay’s black glass” is more than a boat. It is an escape. It will take him to something bigger than the life he knows. It will take him to another dimension.  

On Oct. 16, lovers of Sendak's childhood classic are invited to this other world, as the highly anticipated Spike Jonze-Dave Eggers collaboration hits theaters. The majestic landscapes and emotionally nuanced wild things hinted at in the film’s trailer warrant an equally epic soundtrack, and on the job are Yeah Yeah Yeahs frontwoman Karen O and a small assembly of friends. Los Angeles-based solo artist Imaad Wasif was playing guitar on YYYs’ Show Your Bones tour when Jonze approached Karen about working on the soundtrack. She quickly pulled Wasif on board, and in early 2007, on a break from the tour, the two got in the studio with producer Tom Biller and a handful of other musicians to begin work on the project.

Awaiting the busy month of October, when he’ll hear the soundtrack for the first time in two years and release his own third record, The Voidist, Wasif takes some time to discuss with Paste both projects from his house in LA. We begin with Wild Things. 

“The group of musicians that was involved—we all do such different things, and so that was key in creating a new form of music,” Waasif explains. He lists Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, The Dead Weather's Jack Lawrence and Dean Fertita, and YYYs’ Brian Chase and Nick Zinner as part of Karen’s hand-picked team. “A lot of the songs that we came up with are a combination of these almost disparate elements… It was just totally amazing to see everyone in their element working there.”

Wasif recalls the process of writing songs to capture the sentiment of the film. Karen took the lead in the studio, but as he tells it, gave loose directions about what needed to happen in the music. “Nothing was fully ever revealed, but at the same time we knew what the basic emotion was, and that’s the most important thing to capture," Wasif says. "Once you have the most simple element, building around that is where things really get fun.”

In the studio sessions, which happened in several two-week long installments between 2007 and 2008, Karen came up with lyrics and melody and the rest of the musicians constructed music around that. They watched clips of the film and worked from there. The result? “Ultimately these are songs that could be sung as lullabies," Wasif says. Their time in the studio yielded a combination of tight lyrical songs and more sprawling score-like pieces. “It is some really organic, pure, beautiful music."

“One of the most beautiful songs that will be on there is a song called ‘Hideaway’ that came almost immediately," Wasif continues. "I think it was like the second day of the first session, and I actually can’t wait to hear that because I haven’t heard it for like two years. It’s just really, really hauntingly beautiful.”

It is no surprise that Wasif would be enlisted for this project. His solo music captures the same haunting beauty that the film promises, with a heavy emphasis on mystical other-worldliness. “I’m a seeker,” he says, “so I’m constantly trying to keep myself ripped open to receive from the world and other, I guess you could say, dimensions.” On The Voidist, out Oct. 13 on Tee Pee Records, the lanky, frazzle-haired songwriter sings of “seekers of the holy mountain,” of the devil, sorcery, karma, auras, visions, the rapture and redemption in his layered vocals, tapping into a world that is wider and broader and deeper than what we see.

The Voidist follows in the vein of Wasif’s first two records, exploring the spiritual complexity of relationships. “I have sort of a relentless obsession with love and understanding it because I think it is kind of the most mysterious element of life. It’s also something that sustains me and inspires me to create.”

His dark, alluring aesthetic and impassioned warble echo the Jeff Buckley of “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” as Wasif seeks to put music and lyrics to love and longing. It is a scraping, yearning sound; it is bone against bone. It is the sound of a desire to understand and be part of something bigger than what is tangible. And we can expect to hear something of the same sort come October, as we cozy up in our theater seats to watch as Max zips up his wolf suit, casts that little boat to the sea and gets lost in an alternate universe where the wild things are.

Listen to Imaad Wasif's "Priestess" from The Voidist on the Paste Station.

Related links:
Imaad Wasif on MySpace
WhereTheWildThingsAre.WarnerBros.com
Imaad Wasif on Amazon