Spotlight on...Philippe Bronchtein '10

Author: John Patrick Allen

Last October, Philippe Bronchtein '10 released "Scarecrow," an EP produced under the moniker Hip Hatchet. Bronchtein discussed with The Campus what "Scarecrow" sounds like and why.

The Middlebury Campus: "Hip Hatchet" - does that mean a hatchet worn on the hip, or a very stylish hatchet?
Philippe Bronchtein: (Laughs) Hatchet worn on the hip. That [name] was a danger. But I think alliteration justifies pretty much anything.

TC: Was this your first attempt at writing music?
PB: In high school, I was really into emo, and I was writing lots of songs that were pretty bad. Like, really bad. After a while I realized, "I'm writing terrible music, and I should stop." But I've started listening to music and thinking about music in a different way. I was living in Montreal this summer. For the first month, I didn't know anyone and didn't go out at all. So I just stayed in my apartment and wrote.

TC: You tried the whole "artistic solitude" thing?
PB: It wasn't like, "I'm so alone and I must create!" I just didn't have much else to do. I didn't write lyrics in 15 minutes like when I was in eigth grade. It was much more of an elongated process.

TC: How and by whom was the album produced?
PB: This is really fun for me. I live four houses down from Tim Shrout, the kid who produced this album. We've been best friends since I was three years old. Now he's a Music Engineering major at USC. The album sounds good, and that's all to his credit. We recorded [Scarecrow] in August, after I got back from Montreal. Then, he took all the files back California and mixed them. I felt really comfortable experimenting musically because I've known him my whole life. He didn't ask for any money, although I am going to pay him, once I get some profit.

TC: You mentioned an arc. Did you imagine Scarecrow as more than a collection of songs?
PB: It's definitely not a concept album, but it was conceived with an idea of continuity.
The first and fourth tracks are parallel. There's a build in between, then a return [to the first song's style], then a conclusion. It has a sort of a-b-a-c structure.
I wrote more songs than I recorded - maybe seven or eight. I thought about which would make sense and which would be realistic to record in the time frame available.

TC: In what genre, if any, would you place "Scarecrow?"
PB: Just sort of indie-acoustic-folk-rock, whatever you want to call it. It's not groundbreaking in terms of genre; that wasn't my intention. I'm just trying to write songs.

TC: If you could have made any album, which one would it have been?
PB: That's a tossup, and it's between two very different albums: "I See a Darkness" by Bonnie Prince Billy [real name: Will Oldham] and "Music Has the Right to Children" by Boards of Canada.

TC: Would you consider them your biggest influences?
PB: Oldham & Springstein are the two biggest influences on me lyrically. I love Oldham's dark elements, and I love the way Springsteen takes the simplest things and makes them into the most important moments of your life - brilliant.
When I was younger and listening to bad music, it was "Music Has the Right to Children" that first got me listening to interesting stuff. I actually just wrote a 15-page paper on why that album changed the way I listened to music.

TC: Are you working on any other projects?
PB: Tons. I've been doing a lot of DJing. I'm also working on a fist-pumping, electronic solo album. I think I'm going to call it Bearplane. John Gloucevitch '09 made up that name - I have to give due credit. I have an Old Stone Mill space, where I play with Eamon Fogerty, Charlie Freundlich and Josh Wessler. We've got two songs written so far. I'm playing synth, electronics and guitar in that. We're playing in the battle of the bands this weekend. I also have a band back in New Jersey called The Early… And Hip Hatchet is trying to make a full-length by next year.

TC: Wow.
PB: Yeah. All I do is music.