Tuning into the everyday with Zander Raymond
Zander Raymond sees the world as an archive—where objects, sounds, and memories gradually gather meaning through time and context.
In both his sound and visual work, Zander Raymond collects overlooked materials and fragments from his surroundings, layering and reworking them through a process that’s both intuitive and deliberate. Material, sound, and autobiography fold into one another, often blurring where one ends and another begins.
A year after releasing courage left in a tree, Zander reflects on how his practices overlap, how he works with sound, and what continues to draw him to the everyday.
There’s something open in his approach that makes space for serendipity and uncertainty, leaving room for things to unfold without a fixed direction. It’s a way of paying attention that moves from passing details to bigger questions—and can shift how you look at things too.
You move between sound and image—between sculpture, collage, and music. How do those practices relate or influence one another?
I think the output exists in different ways, but many of the same compositional techniques in my collage work also appear in my music-making. I’m interested in texture and layering, and I think that’s evident in both areas of my practice. Sometimes it feels like the lines between the two are blurred, but in my studio, there’s actually a wall that separates where I make collages from where I make music. Even with that separation, there’s always a “door” between them. They share the same air.
Do you have a certain routine when you head to the studio?
I go there every day for at least half an hour. It’s around the corner from my house, so it’s very easy to get to, and it’s had a big impact on my work. It’s on the second floor, with insulation above and below me. In the summer, I open all the windows, and it feels like I’m in this strange treehouse in the middle of the city.
Sometimes I go back and forth between making music and making collages. Sometimes I stick with one thing—it always changes.
There’s a huge archive of your collages on your website. Do you consider archiving to be part of your practice?
I’ve been archiving my entire life. I have binders full of childhood drawings, all numbered and sleeved. I’ve been scanning and documenting every drawing and collage for as long as I can remember.
In the same way I use old field recordings, I also incorporate old collages and drawings into new work. I’m constantly referencing my own archive. Everything is just layers. It all feels sedimentary, like things settling again and again on the same plane. My favorite part of making—whether it’s music or collages—is when that sediment gets disrupted and resurfaced. That’s where the making really happens.
It sounds like your process is less about starting from scratch, and more about responding to what’s already there. Can you tell me more about your approach?
I think that embedded in every material is a question. Every single object around me holds millions of questions. And that question is always: What’s possible? That’s where the thing begins. I’m listening, looking, reacting, and responding to the pre-existing qualities of that object, or sound, or whatever it is.
I never scrap anything, and I only ever do one take. If I don’t like it, I won’t redo it—I’ll just make a new one. Or maybe I’ll set it aside and come back to it later. I think failure and mistakes are the work.
What inspires you at the moment?
I’m obsessed with saunas and steam rooms. There’s something inspiring about the strange silence, the buzzing, the condensation. Sonically, steam rooms and saunas are so weird—that feels kind of exciting.
I’m also intrigued by how I can integrate new forms of storytelling. The autobiographical aspect of my work is already there, but I’m curious about exploring new narrative forms, like experimental opera and the use of repetitive or non-repetitive language. I’m interested in obtuse storytelling.
Is there something you’re trying to capture in your work?
I think a common thread running through my work is an interest in weaving in mundane things—like a field recording of me biking home from work, or a scrap of paper I found on the street. These little elements find their way in, and the work becomes a record of time, like an autobiography.
I use a really small conference recorder to make field recordings, and I never take the files off it. There are no file names, only numbers, and it’s become this ongoing, random archive. I’ll skip through these while performing live or recording and end up making music with a version of myself from two years ago. A sound from the past becomes part of the present.
It’s almost like you’re in conversation with your former self. Do you consciously make recordings with that in mind?
Yeah, I think that’s definitely part of it, but my impulse to make recordings is also rooted in a discomfort with certain sounds in the world.
I recently worked next to a loading dock where trucks would back in and unload. There was constant booming, creaking, garage doors opening and closing, people talking—all these overwhelming, loud sounds. A lot of my field recordings over the past six months have captured that—all these abrasive noises. By recording, I can shift my mental perception of those uncomfortable sounds. Suddenly, they become music in that moment, just through the act of recording. I like the idea that everything is music.
Do you see a distinction between sound and music?
I’d like to believe they’re the same. Chaz Prymek and Matt Sage made this bumper sticker that says, “Keep honking! I’m listening to aleatoric music, and it’s your turn to take a solo.” I love the thought that everything is music—or at least that music is always happening, ever-present.
Like right now, I’m sitting here talking to you, but I’m also listening to a pot bubbling quietly behind me. And in a way, that’s the music—I’m too much of an active listener for sound to ever just be in the background.
Do you try to make space for that kind of listening in your work, too?
Over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with what I can slip into music that will encourage listeners to lean in. I’ve also been thinking about the moments before a show as part of the performance. I recently made a recording of myself brushing my teeth and taking a shower before leaving, and then played that recording back during the set. I love moments like that—when I can fold in something personal, something so ordinary that everyone in the audience has experienced it too, and then notice when people recognize it.
That’s really the thread that runs through both my music and my art—pointing to overlooked things. I love pushing that as far as I can.
You seem to work really intuitively and spontaneously. How long do you usually sit with a project before you know it’s finished?
I tend to make collages quickly, but I just wrapped up a new album, and it actually took a very long time. I kept leaving it, coming back, tweaking one thing, thinking it was done, and then returning. My life also felt much slower—especially in contrast to the period when I was making courage left in a tree—and it’s the first time I really gave myself that much space to work on something.
Sometimes I feel like I’m improvising my way through. I don’t have it figured out yet, but I think intuition is always there. I’m eager to know what my music will sound like 10 years from now.
You talked about how different life felt when you were making courage left in a tree. What do you remember about that time, and how do you feel about the album now?
Listening to it brings me back to a very specific time. I had just finished school and was working four different jobs on opposite sides of Chicago. It’s a huge, sprawling city, and one night, while cycling home late, I put my field recorder in my sock so it was close to the spokes of my bike and the mechanism that makes a clicking sound. That’s what you hear in the opening track of the record.
It was a very disorienting, confusing time, and I continue to feel connected to those emotions and to the experience of moving through a place. I’m still just as confused now—but more at ease than I was back then. I think being confused can be a good thing. It’s more like a state of being.
