I’m sitting in a room where the air feels heavy, the kind of space where you can hear the dust settling on the speakers, and Martin Schiller’s latest record, *Abstracted*, is currently vibrating my molar. It is a punishing, beautiful and deeply uncomfortable experience. This isn’t background noise for your next dinner party. It’s a sonic assault that demands you sit still and take the hits.
Schiller has spent years lurking in the tall grass of the Canadian experimental scene, but with *Abstracted*, he has finally decided to set the field on fire. He operates less like a composer and more like a forensic scientist picking through the wreckage of a hard drive crash. He is splicing glitches and drones into something that feels dangerously alive.
“Working with sound and seeing how it can be manipulated and transformed has always been a fascinating part of the music making process to me,” Schiller reveals. It’s a simple sentiment for a complex result. He isn’t just twisting knobs; he is interrogating the very nature of what constitutes a song.
The record marks a sharp pivot from his previous, more digestible work. There is a sense of rebellion here, a refusal to be pinned down by the expectations of melody or the comfort of a steady 4/4 beat.
“While I was working on my last album, I was focused on making more structured and melodic tunes, but I also found myself wanting to play with sonic material without any preconceived structures in mind,” he says. And that lack of structure is exactly where the record finds its teeth. It’s messy. It’s unpredictable. But it’s never accidental.
If you’re looking for a bassline to groove to, you’ve come to the wrong place. Schiller has stripped away the safety net of traditional performance. There is a clinical coldness to the production that feels like staring into the glowing eye of a mainframe.
“This Abstracted stuff doesn’t really have any real instrumentation featured, I’m not playing any bass, guitars or drums,” Schiller explains. It’s a bold move for a guy known for his prowess on the four-string. Instead of physical strings, he’s pulling at the fabric of digital space.
The result is something that feels alien yet oddly familiar. It’s the sound of a world that has moved past the need for human hands. “It’s more like an album built from sound design from an experimental science fiction film, or field recordings from another dimension,” he says. And he’s right. It sounds like the wind blowing through a graveyard of satellites.
But don’t let the cold tech fool you. There is a ghost in this machine. While the album was being assembled, Schiller’s life was being upended by a diagnosis that would change everything. His father was battling Atypical Parkinsonism, a brutal and degenerative reality that bled into the tracks whether Schiller realized it or not.
“In hindsight though, I do think that there are themes I was unconsciously exploring that dealt with grief in a broad way (maybe more to do with COVID grief and fatigue), that also resonated with my eventual experiences with processing the grief of losing my dad,” he reflects. This isn’t just an academic exercise in noise. It’s a document of a man watching things fall apart.
The track “Gone Places” serves as the emotional anchor for the entire project. It’s a haunting piece of work that feels like a fading memory. The video for the track uses old home movies, creating a jarring contrast between the digital decay of the music and the grainy warmth of the past.
“Something about the material felt like it was connected to this music; I felt like I wanted to revisit and connect with my past and the experiences that I don’t fully remember but did have a record of,” Schiller muses. It’s a vulnerable admission from an artist who usually hides behind a wall of distortion.
The track captures that specific, disorienting feeling of being caught between two worlds. It’s the sound of a mind trying to be in two places at once and failing at both.
“It resonated for me on some level because I had been feeling like my mind was sometimes in multiple places, reflecting a lot on the past while I was also preoccupied with my present reality,” he says. We’ve all been there, especially during the long, grey months of the pandemic.
Speaking of the pandemic, *Abstracted* is very much a product of that forced isolation. When the world stopped, Schiller kept moving, digging through his archives to see what he could salvage from the silence.
“It was during the first lockdowns that there was this moment of feeling of ‘well, we don’t know what’s about to happen next and how long this will last, so let’s see what projects we can complete,’” Schiller recounts. That sense of impending doom is baked into every grain of the record.
The process of putting it together was less about writing and more about editing. It was a slow, methodical curation of chaos. He had to find the signal in the noise.
“It took a while to listen through and find selections that I liked the most. Eventually I started to see a picture emerging of how these things all fit together, and gradually just kept working until I was happy with calling it finished,” he says. The patience pays off. The album feels like a singular thought, even if that thought is a scream.
This Abstracted stuff doesn’t really have any real instrumentation featured, I’m not playing any bass, guitars or drums. It’s more like an album built from sound design from an experimental science fiction film, or field recordings from another dimension.
Schiller doesn't care about your genre labels. He’s mashing together ambient, noise and glitch with a reckless disregard for the rules. But there is a logic to the madness, a balancing act that keeps the listener from falling off the edge.
“I think it’s just the way I naturally approach music making, and that probably has to do with a lot of music that I listen to,” Schiller explains. He’s a student of the avant-garde, but he hasn’t forgotten the importance of the listener’s experience.
“I enjoy a lot of artists that take a similar approach of combining the serious and the playful, the experimental and the traditional. I tend to want a sense of contrast and balance. If there’s a lot of tension, there needs to be release, if there’s a lot of noise, there needs to be some quiet,” he says. It’s this push and pull that makes the album more than just a collection of bleeps and bloops.
The sequencing of the record is deliberate. It’s a narrative arc that moves from the claustrophobic to the expansive. Schiller knows exactly how much the ear can take before it needs a break.
“It felt important to create a sense of balance for the sequencing of this album, and so the first six tracks are all on the shorter side,” Schiller explains. These are quick, sharp shocks to the system, designed to keep you on your toes.
“It opens with a track called Estranger, which is designed to set the tone for the next 30 minutes or so. The next five tracks take the listener to some contrasting but familiar areas, and the first half ends with Gone Places which has some gloomy drones and some hazy rhythms,” he says. By the time you reach the midpoint, you’re fully immersed in his world.
The second half of the album is where things get really weird. It’s an exercise in entropy, a slow-motion car crash of rhythm and texture that refuses to give you any easy answers.
“The focus of the second half is a drum loop that has been dismantled and taken to extremes of entropy, reordered and transformed before we end up in a space that is calmer but never fully resolved,” Schiller explains. That lack of resolution is key. It’s honest. Life doesn't always provide a clean ending.
Schiller’s path to this point has been anything but linear. From his days with What Seas What Shores to his work with the Noiseborder Ensemble, he’s always been a bit of a polymath. His time at the University of Windsor was the forge where his workflow was hammered out.
“My time at the University of Windsor was very influential,” he reflects. It wasn’t just about the music; it was about the discipline required to make it.
“A lot of what I think I took away from my time there was just seeing someone having a plan, a clear workflow and watching them execute it while getting to help out,” he says. That professional rigour is evident in the precision of *Abstracted*.
His work with the Noiseborder Ensemble introduced him to the world of Max-MSP programming, a tool that has clearly informed the glitchy DNA of his current work. It forced him to step outside his comfort zone as a bassist and think like a coder.
“I learned some new skills that I wouldn’t have learned outside of that world, learning some Max-MSP programming for instance, and being forced to think a little differently in how to approach working within a multidisciplinary group and with a stricter timeline,” he explains. It’s that multidisciplinary brain that makes his solo work so layered.
Before *Abstracted*, there was The Greedy Echoes and the 2019 release *Early Reflections*. That project was a different beast altogether, leaning into the complexities of prog-rock and jazz. It was more about the "playing" and less about the "design."
“The material from 2019 could get a little bit rhythmically complicated in terms of arrangements, and had some sections for solos and improvisation,” he explains. It’s the sound of a musician showing off his chops, and while it’s impressive, it lacks the raw, emotional bite of his new material.
Still, Schiller hasn't abandoned that side of his musical personality. He still feels the itch to get back into a room with other humans and make some noise.
“I do feel like I want to revisit a band set up and revive some of the material because I really love it, and I think it’s a lot of fun to play,” he explains. There is a joy in the collective that a solo studio project can’t replicate.
Collaboration is a recurring theme in Schiller’s career. He’s a guy who knows how to play well with others, even when he’s making music that sounds like a solo descent into madness.
“I think it’s beneficial to learn how to help support someone else’s ideas in the spirit of cooperation. It helped me to grow and learn from other people because of the different experiences and perspectives they can bring,” he muses. He understands that the ego is the enemy of good art.
“Oftentimes the results of collaboration can be greater than the sum of its parts,” he says. It’s a humble take for a guy who has just released one of the most singular albums of the year.
Schiller recently made the move across the river from Windsor to Detroit, a city with a musical history so deep it can be suffocating. But for Schiller, it’s been an injection of new energy.
“I am starting to meet a lot of Detroit area musicians and finding a great spirit of experimentation and collaboration here,” he says. The city’s grit and its history of techno and free jazz are a perfect fit for his aesthetic.
“There is also a lot of free improvisation here which has been a fascinating element, and I feel like that has pushed me a little bit more in that direction,” he notes. You can hear that improvisational spirit in the way *Abstracted* breathes.
Even as he finds his footing in a new city, he’s already finding his way into the local scene, working with figures like Ben Miller. It’s a process of discovery that keeps his work from becoming stagnant.
“I feel like I’m just beginning to collaborate with the local scene. I have been jamming a little with some people and a bit with Ben Miller’s groups which involves some written material and open improvisation. There’s so much music happening it can be a bit overwhelming, and I feel like I’m still finding my footing,” he admits.
But he hasn’t forgotten where he came from. Windsor’s DIY spirit is still the foundation of everything he does. It’s that border city toughness, the ability to make something out of nothing, that defines his approach.
“Windsor can be a small place, but it did have a lot of independent spirit and do-it-yourself attitude that has contributed quite a bit to my approach,” he says. It’s a sentiment anyone from the 519 can relate to.
Growing up on the border gave him a dual perspective, a mix of Canadian industry and the massive shadow of Detroit’s media machine. He was raised on a diet of radio waves that didn’t care about national lines.
“Growing up in Windsor gave me a unique exposure to the Canadian music industry but also a heavy influence from Detroit radio and television stations. Electronic music and jazz were always in the air. I can’t overstate how much access to the range of musical diversity has shaped my tastes,” he says.
As for what comes next, Schiller isn’t slowing down. He’s already looking for ways to bring this complex, digital world onto the stage. He wants to find a way to make the static and the glitches performable.
“I hope there will be a combination of collaborations with other artists as well as deepening my own musical language,” he says. It’s about growth, not just repetition.
“I am keen on exploring both electronic music and music composed for musicians, and I hope to develop a set up that will allow me to adapt material to be performed for live solo performances,” he explains.
*Abstracted* is a difficult record, and that’s why it matters. In a world of algorithmic playlists and background music, Martin Schiller has made something that refuses to be ignored. It’s a jagged, uncomfortable and ultimately rewarding exploration of what happens when you stop trying to control the sound and start letting the sound control you. It’s not just an album; it’s a reckoning. And it’s one you need to hear.
