Scott: It's always hard to describe original music, and especially our music, since it doesn't sound exactly like anything else. It's heavy, but it's not really metal. Parts of it are very "progressive," but that's just a word that people use to say their music is complicated, and many of our most complex songs (like "Out There") are also our most naturally grooving songs. I normally describe our music as thrash/prog/jazz/fusion/??? partly as a joke, because I think it has all those elements in it, but trying to label truly original music is impossible and even silly.

PD: You talk about very different influences such as Bjork and Cynic or Anton Webern and Lethargy. How does it get melted? Could you tell us a little more about this?

Scott: That list of influences is compiled from a lifetime's listening for three people, and each of us is a fan of very diverse types of music. I believe everything you hear and experience gets blended in your subconscious and becomes part of the artist that you are. That said, the giant list of influences on the web site is also partly a joke -- not every one of our personal favorites ends up in the _actual time_ melting pot. I think the most major influences are probably Meshuggah and the Police, and above all our theoretical style of composition, which is something we arrived at as a theoretical exercise and not something we got from a musical influence.

PD: Is Actual Time a band for everybody?

Scott: Really, _actual time_ was started as a band for only the three of us, doing exactly what we wanted with no care at all for what anybody else thought. We still write that way, completely ignoring what other bands are doing and what music fans want or don't want. The warm reaction among a very small group of fans across the world has been very exciting, since they are really into this music that we wrote just for the three of us.

PD: Could your albums be labeled as conceptual? Do they maintain the same characteristics in both albums you have up to now?

Scott: I don't think the albums are conceptual. On the first self-titled EP, some of those songs were written two years earlier for use in another band, one ("Crank") was written by Brad (Derrick, drums) years before we ever met, and only a couple others were written by _actual time_. The second EP "time frame" we wrote as a group, with a conscious effort to make the songs more textural and melodic. We are moving even farther in that direction on the new songs we have finished writing for our third EP. We do seem to have developed our own "style," arranging our riffs in similar patterns, and using similar chords or modes in different songs, so those are similar characteristics that are in both EPs so far.

PD: What do you exactly try to do when composing and arranging what you do? What do you want to transmit?

Scott: I don't think we try to transmit anything, we are just taking a theoretical challenge with each song. We usually start with a nugget, a mathematical or musical pattern, and then expand it from there. For example, I started "Out There" with the idea of a riff based on the first six Prime Numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. Then I wrote the riff and the shifting chromatic bassline around that idea. It's almost a dare - can we make a musically interesting song out of this weird number pattern?

Our arrangement process is the most rewarding part of the writing -- when one person brings an idea, the other band members transmogrify it into a song. Often my arrangements of my ideas are too awkward and boring, so the other guys will add other riffs or cut things out. We often work out our own parts or modify what the original writer of the nugget wrote, and then we mold the idea into a song. This can often take months, as we experiment with arrangements, trash them, and come up with new ones.

PD: Derrick and Andrews seem to be the main composers. How do they work? How do you mix all your ideas?

Scott: Brad and I are the main writers of the ideas or nuggets, partly because we are good at coming up with little theoretical nuggets that work for the way _actual time_ expands those into songs. Tom (Snyder, bass) is a fantastic musician with lots of ideas, but he'll think of cool riffs on the fly and then forget them. Brad and I have been telling him to tape them so we can use them! On the new songs for our third EP, there are more riffs that Tom wrote.

Our ideas usually get mixed in the arrangement process I mentioned above, where the other band members mold the nugget from the principal writer into an arrangement. For example, I wrote the riff, bassline, and chord progression for the main 'verse' sections of "Out There." Brad thought it needed a different section to provide some contrast, so he wrote the rhythm for the two bass solo breaks. I wrote the guitar chords, and we put my 'verses' and Brad's solo breaks into a final arrangement.

PD: Just three musicians... why? Have you ever considered add a keyboardist or another guitar player as most of the common progressive bands do? Why not?

Scott: It actually started with just two, Brad and I, after the other band we were in ended. Brad knew Tom from a band they were in 10 years ago, and Tom joined after six months or so. We've never considered adding more instruments, partly because of the way we write exactly what we want -- if we added someone else, they would have to want to write the same things. They would also have to fit into our writing process - the three of us work very well, molding and arranging the nuggets. The practical realities of finding another musician who met those criteria are virtually impossible. In addition, since _actual time_ is a studio project, we can overdub guitars and do whatever we need to in the studio with only three musicians.

PD: Tracks as "Down" sounds really heavy and technical all at once. Are you full-time musicians? Do you study and practice with your instruments in addition to other tasks in your life?

Scott: We are not full-time musicians, although Brad is a full-time freelance sound designer and composer for computer games (see www.bradderrick.com). We try to practice, and Brad and I are in other bands, so that helps keep us sharp.

PD: There are many bands that are now trying to make music style like yours (i.e. Dysrhytmia in Philadelphia). What do you think about it?

Scott: Honestly, we are way out of touch of the entire "prog metal" or "technical metal" scene. I'm happy for any band making music that they enjoy, and I'm doubly happy if like Dysrhythmia, they can do that and still get signed to a label like Relapse. After Dream Theater made it big, and with the decline of metal in the USA in the 90s, "prog metal" became a genre for lots of 80s shred rejects playing ultra-fast guitar or pompous art-rock without worrying about writing good songs. "Technical metal," if you listen to the people who talk about that genre, includes some really amazing projects like Spiral Architect and Spastic Ink, but there are so few really good bands and so few records. Really complicated music will always be hard to sell to record companies and general listeners.

PD: All the Watchtower/Spastic Ink/Jarzombek influence is very common all along the "Time Frame" album. Ron seems to like it, and so we do. Are you planning touring into Europe with any other bands? When will be able to see Actual Time live and loud?

Scott: I don't think we have a real Spastic Ink/Jarzombek influence - his stuff is beautifully melodic while ours is mostly rhythmic - but I do think we both share a theoretical approach to composition. We both start with an idea or a concept rather than a riff or a groove.

As for live shows, _actual time_ has always been a studio project, partly because of the severe difficulty of gigging anything instrumental or progressive here in the USA - even in big cities, there just aren't places to play heavy progressive music. In addition, as a second project for all three of us, the time commitment isn't enough to add regular gigging to our writing and rehearsing. I would love for _actual time_ to play a couple prog music festivals in the US, but the ones in our area like Progday and NEARfest don't have second stages for smaller bands like _actual time_.

PD: The Progressive Disease crew thinks a new era in music and metal is growing up nowadays. Do you think the progressive metal could be the new era of the heavy metal scene? The next step?

Scott: Unfortunately, I think progressive music will never be a big thing. Kind of like really long novels, progressive music requires extra work from the listener to enjoy the music. Combine that with the fact that most fans of prog don't like heavy music, and most fans of metal don't like progressive music, so I think heavy progressive stuff will always be on the outside looking in.

PD: Thank you very much guys! Keep the good work.

Scott: Thank you for enjoying our music and broadcasting it on the radio in Spain! Look for our third EP sometime late in 2003, and check out our website at www.his.com/sha3u/time/ . Thanks!

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