Chll Pll

Zach Hill probably won’t read this interview. For a musician who has almost as many guest spots and side projects as Lil’ Wayne, he remains refreshingly disconnected from public opinion. On his latest project, Chll Pll, Hill partners with Zac Nelson of Hexlove to create a genre-bending sound that reaches far beyond their musical comfort zones. The tracks are strangely sensitive and shockingly relatable, as these two drummers address the classic questions of love.

Chll Pll’s debut album, Aggressively Humble, dropped this fall and the duo is already itching to take to the road. Hill, of Hella fame, recently sat down with Stereo Subversion to discuss the band’s formation, their unique creative process, and why he stays so busy.

SSv: How did you and Zac Nelson get together and decide to do this project?

Hill: We had talked about it for a long time. We’ve been friends for quite a few years. I met him in Portland, Oregon in 2002 through a mutual friend. He had just moved out here from Illinois, rural rural Illinois, originally. So I met him up there and then we became friends. Later he happened to move to Sacramento, he had a group here called Who’s Your Favorite Son God who my other band Hella had taken on U.S. tours before. So we became close and always talked about doing musical things together. We’re both drummers and he’s this really great singer, and I like to mess around with that too…

SSv: Did you both have a specific sound or idea in mind?

Honestly, it’s about me trying to fill this hole in myself that I’ve had my whole life. I feel like a have a deficiency and the closest thing that helps me fill that is being very busy with projecting creative things.

Hill: No, actually we did not at all. At the end of January of this year, we had made a plan to spend a couple weeks at a friend’s place with a home recording set-up just to see what happened. So we went there and then we had a certain idea of concepts and stuff we wanted to work with, but as far as musically, no, not so much. We started improvising together mainly with drums, vocals, and loops.

We had a couple drum set ups and a really powerful PA that we could run any instrument through to create soundscapes, loops, and other things we could play drums to. We started creating all these abstract samples and compiled a really massive amount of material. Then we spent a good amount of time just sifting through those things. We started over-dubbing and transforming those into songs and cleaning them up. We elaborated on those spontaneous ideas, making them more like formed pieces of music.

SSv: Who took the lead lyrically?

Hill: Both of us were interested from the start. We both have such backgrounds in more aggressive music, or more experimental abstract, kind of non-literal forms of music. When we were making this we thought it would be really interesting to write songs having to do with human relationships, specifically between men and women, or men and men, or women and women. Basically love, you know, the concept would be love relationships, something outside of the box for both of us that we could have fun with.

That’s something we’ve never literally approached. Not that it’s so literal now, but on this record I’d say there are more suggestions literally to that subject then there are on our other things. Individually, on other records, we’ve talked about those types of things but in a more abstract type of way. So that was a concept we talked about a lot lyrically.



SSv: What are you most proud of on the new album?

Hill: That’s really difficult. I’m proud that we actually completed something together. Zac is one of my best friends and a really important and special person to me. I am really happy to document anything creative with him. Other than that, its one of my favorite records I’ve ever made. It has a very specific, unique vibe to it. When I listen to it, it sounds very different from a lot of things I’ve done. I feel like it sounds really positive. It makes me feel really upbeat and there’s a lot of balance to it. I’m really happy with how that came through in the songs. It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what I’m most proud of. Probably just that it got completed.

SSv: I was reading about you and I see that you are involved in so many different collaborations. How do you balance your time between Chll Pll and everything else you have going on?

Hill: I don’t really think about it too much. I’m aware of all the different things I have going on and sometimes it doesn’t always work out, to be perfectly honest. I end up neglecting things, unfortunately, but I always come around to doing what needs to be done or what I’ve committed to. Honestly, it’s about me trying to fill this hole in myself that I’ve had my whole life. I feel like a have a deficiency and the closest thing that helps me fill that is being very busy with projecting creative things. So I think I get wrapped up in doing a lot of things because it really helps me temporarily fill that hole…I don’t rest that much.

SSv: How do you think die-hard Hella fans will feel about the album?

Hill: I’m really grateful for anybody to listen to anything I do, but at the same time, I don’t really seek out a lot of feedback. I don’t read things on the Internet unless they happen to be put right in front of my face. I’m not big on reading comments and that kind of stuff. So I’ve never really paid too much attention in that kind of way but I feel like there’s something within the album they would definitely get into. People that are into Hella in general probably have a really broad taste in music. If it’s not their thing, though, that’s cool too. I never make anything to cater to any specific audience. I just make things and if people like that, that’s great, and if they don’t, that’s cool too. I’m never too familiar with feedback. Good or bad, I try to avoid that stuff.



SSv: Do you have a tour planned in support of this album?

Hill: We’re talking about doing one in the spring. That’s something that’s really important to both me and Zac and that’s something that I get into trouble with. Going back to taking a lot of things on, the majority of the time that’s the one problem that seems to be consistent. It’s hard to make the time to do a tour and commit to fully support the record. This one specifically we’re really trying to make happen.

We’d prefer it not to be a project but actually be a band and do it for rea. But as of now, we’re thinking of trying to go out in early or later spring of next year and maybe having something else ready, like an EP to release upon a States trip or something like that. It’s definitely being kicked around and I feel like it will happen at some point.



SSv: How will the songs translate in a live setting? Will you have to rework them a lot?

Hill: Somewhat, but I’m kind of a fan of that anyways. We’d need a couple other people to join us…help us out filling in lines and stuff which is totally cool. And I would always encourage those people to do their own take on whatever the material is. Personally, I like when I go see bands do something live very differently then they’re doing it on the record. Or representing it in a different way. For me that’s why I go see something live. The songs would probably get reworked in a cool or interesting way.

SSv: That will keep it interesting for you guys, too.

Hill: Yea, that’s how I prefer it. Live to me is a whole different thing than recording. It’s really like night and day. Live to me is all about projecting energy and the people projecting energy back at you. An exchange of energy, rather than playing things right or being in key…The audience basically becomes the band when they’re in there and its more of a physical exchange, so I’m never really worried about things being different as far as tune, you know?

SSv: Definitely. So as far as your career goes, do you see yourself sticking with this for a while or are there other people your dying to work with right now?

Hill: Oh man, yeah, there’d be a long list of people I’d love to do things with. Its hard to say, but I see myself sticking with this along with everything else I am doing at the same time. I have a lot of things I would like to do in the near future. But I do things one by one and see what happens. Im also in the process of making a new Hella record. There hasn’t been one for a couple years. We’re making one as a two-piece again. That’s something we haven’t released for four years so that’s exciting…There are a lot of things in the works but I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing.

SSv: Well I think people will be happy to hear that. My last questions a silly one. Do you just really like to work with people named Zach?

Hill: [Laughs] Yea, that’s definitely not intentional. We thought that was awesome. Even before we started making music we were like, “Yea, Zac and Zach! We gotta find another Zach.” And we did find another Zach. We just happened to have a lot of friends named Zach…We’re like five or six Zachs deep.

SSv: Hopefully next time you can get all of them together.

Hill: It’ll happen.

*Photos by Shoka