Coyote Music: Phil Zeo! I appreciate you taking some time to visit with us today. Please take a minute to introduce yourself and share a little bit about who you are.
Phil Zeo: Thank you for having me! I’m a musician, audio engineer (full time), and an infrequent actor. Vocals are my forte, and my priority as far as music is concerned. I take on the occasional voice acting project, but this time I took a chance and joined a Rock Opera! I’d always wanted to do one, to be honest, but I didn’t know what that would look like. I come from the world of punk, pop punk, emo, death metal, metalcore, hardcore, etc. Literally anything heavy, I love it. So this rock opera tickles a part of my brain that craves theatrics and performance!
CM: How did you come to land the part of Dorne in Artifact: The Dream of Luna?
PZ: To tell you the truth, I was pretty late to the game. I was one of the last people that was cast. I went through all the parts and thought “I’d love to do that!” Then I’d listen to the people who auditioned, and said “I won’t get this part if these are the people I’m up against”. Most of the roles were cast, and I knew they were better for that part than me. I could not imagine now having anyone else in those roles. However, the moment I heard Dorne? I read his lines and said “Yes.” Literally, the character description for Dorne was the first one I read that actually had my mind racing; I felt like I could do Dorne better than the description of how it was supposed to sound, and give him little details in his performance that really brought his character to life.
So Dorne was the only character I even tried out for--I hinged it all on Dorne and was genuinely pleased (and a little surprised) to see that I’d gotten the part! I took a risk portraying Dorne the way I thought he should be portrayed instead of just the way he was presented in the casting call. I’ve identified HEAVILY with Dorne, and have honestly been given a lot of freedom to interpret him as a character, which is far more than I ever could’ve hoped for.
CM: What was it about Artifact that piqued your interest enough to audition?
PZ: I’ve gotten so used to doing death metal vocals, and session vocals where I’m the only performer, that I really missed singing with other people. Joining in on a fun story like this isn’t just about the story; it’s about the personalities and the voices and the expressions and the collaborative environment. The whole cast of people were incredible, and I wanted to shine right next to them. The people who had already been cast by the time I tried out were SO good, and I wanted to stand beside them and say, “Hey, I helped to make this too!” The music was really unique, as far as Rock Operas go. It wasn’t quite like Meatloaf or Weber, but had its own creative vision that separated it from anything I’d ever heard before. That level of intrigue, and the skill level of the people who were already attached, cemented my desire to be a part of it. Oh, and I love Dorne. Probably almost as much as Dorne loves Dorne.
CM: Artifact is pretty a pretty intense work--the depth of the story, the duration is akin to a full-on onstage production, and the combination of dialogue and singing. How did it compare with other productions you've been a part of?
PZ: Well, if I was just Dorne it probably would’ve been less work than a typical project for me. The real struggle was being put in charge of post-mixing and mastering. The end result is thirty-some tracks, when split up into the distinct sections, and getting a consistent throughline for that is very difficult. Especially when the work was done over the course of a year, you don’t want track 33 to sound “so much different” than track 2, you know? But line for line, my parts for Dorne were a ton of fun but really wasn’t that much work at all. I’m used to working with recording, mixing, mastering bands that I’ve taken some degree of control over the process for in order to ensure everything is consistent. This was all remote, with people all over the world, and that includes difficult parts of the process like consistency across re-takes and making sure that everyone is satisfied with their own parts, too! The scale of the collaboration was really, really big compared to the maybe 3 or 4 dudes who wrote an EP and needed it to be released within a year or so that I’m used to. It was an amazing experience, though, and I’m really happy with where we ended up.
CM: Can you speak to recording your own parts? I mean, were you working with final scripts, songs and sound effects, or was did you essentially do a read-through and handle the assembly in post-production?
PZ: I actually can’t vouch for many other people, as a lot of the cast was self directed. I know that between me and Jai, the voice for Roland, we worked on hammering things out together a couple of times. That’s why I think that our songs together have a sort of intensity to them that changed the overall direction of those tracks. We had final scripts, but we had control over adjusting things. Sometimes I’d compose entire melodies based on what I heard other people doing, especially when I could try and paint an image with notes that felt like a proper response to the other person’s tone. There are definitely times when there were a frustrating amount of takes just to get everyone’s timing to jive in a way that flowed beautifully into each other instead of cutting each other off, or feeling disconnected. It was a process that could only really have happened once all of us knew each other and had our personalities there. Often times, one main vocalist for a song would do their parts and then everyone else on the track would change up their own parts because they really liked something the other person did. It was quite a fun experience, some combination of controlled chaos and absolute planning on Aza’s part. Everything was laid out for us, we just had to decide how “on the rails” we wanted to stay, and when we took risks we trusted each other to know how far to take those risks and how much they might pay off.
CM: So it wasn't really a group dialogue. Each cast member recorded their own parts, then sent them in to be assembled?
PZ: It was 100% assembled. But that didn’t stop us from practicing together occasionally! Some of us needed that more than others, at times. It’s me; I’m some of us. But at some point, this weird thing happens. You get to know how the other person delivers their lines, and it influences your own tone, as if you’re having a shadow-boxing match with someone whose moves you’ve seen a million times. It’s really unique. I’ve done stuff where I’ve had dedicated reading sessions with entire casts, and I’ve done stuff where it’s all “Just do your lines!” This was neither. This was “Do your lines, but if you need to work on it with one of the other members, we can arrange for that as well.” It was like, very self directed but with more freedom than most projects.
CM: When it was all complete, was your understanding of the project similar to when you first auditioned, or had it grown into something new?
PZ: Oh, it was very different. The scope changed completely. More songs and cutscenes were added; additional dialogue was written, the story had ballooned in size and suddenly we had the equivalent of a 3-LP series of albums. A trilogy. All wrapped up in one feature-length rock opera. I expected to do a handful of songs, maybe 2 or 3, and then some lines of Dialogue. But no, the more we worked on it, the more the cast actually came together and started to discuss the lore, the world, the characters, the interactions, and we started to fill in gaps. Those “filled in gaps” eventually became more songs, more skits, more world building. It was kind of amazing. And that’s not even mentioning the change in scope for me, personally, from VA to audio engineer!
CM: Can you talk a little bit more about how the original script morphed into something bigger and new, the more time everyone worked on it?
PZ: The script was great! I literally did read all the script parts the way they were written, although sometimes I did prefer Script V1’s wording to Script V2 and so I’d sneak in the V1 wording into the production. I’m sure Aza noticed more than once. I think the real character development was in the delivery of the music, the tone of the vocals, and the varied levels of intensity and expression of the voice. That includes things like timing, where I come in earlier or later than was anticipated so that it changes the flow of “conversation” between the characters, even if we’re singing. Even the way I laughed as Dorne at the end of one particular song, that was a moment of in-character real-time choice making. Everything I did was for the benefit of Dorne, and I spent a lot of time discussing these minute details with Aza. In the end, I think we all just enjoyed making these characters our own.
CM: Any behind-the-scenes moments you can share?
PZ: Honestly, yeah. Being told “I wrote more parts for your character once I heard the way you performed” was a shocking moment for me. I’ve only ever been told that once or twice in my entire career, and one of those times was a call-back because of late-production edits and rewrites, and they needed me to re-do a line and add another one. I had a LOT of extra opportunities in this musical once I’d recorded my audition. Some other fun moments were getting to get to know Jai, especially since he and I are kind of “from the same culture” as metalheads, even though we are thousands of miles apart in real life. I didn’t expect to make as many friends as I did! It was also fun recording some stuff for Aza’s other projects, whether or not those ever see the light of day.
CM: Do you have any 'most' moments--a fun plot moment, or a particularly challenging aspect in the script, etc.? I think readers would love to hear what it was like to bring life to Dorne.
PZ: The moment that Dorne’s mind starts to break because things aren’t happening the way he thought they would. You just get through over an hour of Dorne being calm, collected, and at times, smug, only for things to start to unravel. As he said, “Everything is as I have seen!” It’s kind of like his motto. But suddenly, you have Dorne no longer playing with the threads of fate so clearly defined in front of him; his melodies and his deliveries are all almost playful throughout the musical. And then, in “What Shall Transpire”, he’s far more frenetic. His melodies are full of callbacks to past songs, he modulates constantly, he’s losing his clarity and his tone is far more strained and frenetic. Finally, he is on the back foot. In that moment, he and Roland are in complete sync. But within seconds, Roland overtakes him and leaves him shocked. In that moment, Dorne is broken. In that moment, Dorne is finally free from the deterministic outlook that had taken him this far. It truly makes me question, was Dorne wrong this whole time, but had done everything in his power to force events to conform to his vision of the future, just like everyone else? Or was he right, until someone like Roland could come along and force the threads of fate to change through sheer force of will and an indomitable spirit?
That moment, to me, is one of the greatest moments of storytelling through melody and speech in the entire musical. It’s my proudest moment. Just harmonizing with Jai in perfect sync was also my favorite moment from a musical standpoint, because throughout the entire musical Dorne is always forcing himself into other people’s melodies, or cutting them off entirely. Now, finally, he has found someone who can meet him where he is as an equal. And that it simultaneously the greatest moment of euphoria for him, but also the most horrifying moment in the whole story. It’s catharsis.
CM: I love asking about gear-head details. What equipment did you use to record? And did you have any challenges recording at home (pets, neighbors, etc.)?
PZ: Absolutely! I have a knockoff Neve 1073 preamp, from TNC. It’s a great preamp that has that transformer, and an EQ that sounds really sweet. Plugged into it, I’ve got a Lewitt LCT 540 S. It’s one of the quietest condenser mics I’ve ever used, and it sounds so good by default. It’s my ideal mic. From there, I’ve got a slight boost in the 12khz on the 1073 preamp, as well as a high pass filter at 80hz and a low shelf boost at 110hz. This is kind of that old school Pultec technique, but a little bit different. Basically just creates a resonant high pass filter. The upper midrange is also scooped out a tiny bit, at about 3.2khz. That area in my voice is really obnoxious to me, so I tame it before anything else. The 1073 knockoff runs into my La-2a knockoff, the KT-2A. It’s my favorite of all the knockoff LA-2As, because it has that nice edge or aggression that I enjoy from the original LA-2As. A lot of people seem to like really smooth LA-2As, and those have their place, but I enjoy the aggressive attack on mine. The LA-2A does maybe 10db of gain reduction at the height of my passages, so it REALLY smooths things out. I then run that into my Audient Evo 16 interface. I could run it into my Audient ASP-800 pres, but I’ve got so much gain and character already that there’s not much left to do to my vocal.
In post, pretty much all of the vocals were mixed with Fabfilter PRO-Q, usually into Pro-MB (the multiband compressor), then Kiive Audio’s XT Comp (a distressor), and finally El Juan from Korneff Audio. Any and all denoising and editing was done on the individual wav files in Reaper, my DAW, before being mixed. This particular workflow helped immensely with creating some degree of consistency between the vocals that were all recorded in very different environments. For example, since mine were recorded with compression on the way in, I didn’t have to hit the distressor as hard. For some people, that was the biggest stage of compression before hitting the limiter.
And yes, my dog did make some noise during my recordings. I usually just redid it though, rather than try and bother to get rid of the sound. Better to record it well than try to repair it after the fact!
CM: I asked Azakaela if she planned to adapt Artifact to the stage at some point. Would that be something you'd want to be a part of?
PZ: I would love to partake in anything where I can be Dorne. Simple as. ;)
CM: This has been great, Phil. Do you have any final touches to add to what you've already spoken to?
PZ: I loved being part of this project! It was so much work, but in the end I only did so much because I wanted to see it become the best possible experience for the listener AND for the other people who made this musical possible. It was a lot of long nights talking to Aza about every detail; multiple revisions for mixes, making sure that the cast was all in agreement about what the priorities were, and of course, making sure that it was consistent in both performance and mix / master. It was easily one of the biggest projects I’ve ever worked on, and for that I’m extremely grateful.
Getting to work for Aza was an absolute dream. It’s rare that people get to work under a true visionary, but Aza absolutely meets that criteria. This story was incredible. The people involved were amazing. Everyone was wonderful. I’m so excited to hear how people react to it, and I hope they love it as much as we loved making it!
Also check out our review of Artifact & interview with Artifact's Jai Isla (aka Roland)