Paul Duncan was born and raised in East Texas, schooled in Savannah, GA, and called Atlanta home before moving to Brooklyn in 2003. This web across the American map made for the early construction of Paul's complex and self-made history in song. Living rooms became studios, scrap wood became vocal booths, and open windows yielded a sea of sound. The racket of everyday melded with the skilled hand of a multi-instrumentalist. At age 26 and in the flurry of NYC, Paul has created Be Careful What You Call Home.
His 2003 debut, To An Ambient Hollywood, introduced a multi-faceted musician and vocalist – and perhaps a mysterious voice from the South. While Indie Workshop called it, "a beautiful soft-shoed singer songwriter album full of fleshed out, full bloom songs" and Fake Jazz saw its "influence from electronic, progressive music like Brian Eno and Talk Talk," Paul Duncan was well on his way to an entirely new document. A mental score. A geographical response. The architecture of Be Careful What You Call Home belongs almost anywhere, but it found itself at the source: "I began by wanting to hear and experience things that might take me out of a small town mentality – and I realized that small town experience is something that makes me exist," Paul said.
Like its precedent, Be Careful What You Call Home is home-made with a range of musical ingredients. Self-taught, Paul utilizes guitar, bass, piano, electronics, cello, drums, etc. His move to New York reunited him with longtime friends/musicians and introduced him to new ones, enabling him to create an ensemble for live performance and for accompaniment on recordings. Claudia Deheza (of the late On Air Library and longtime collaborator with Scott Herren in Savath and Savalas and with Prefuse 73) has workedclosely with Paul over the past few months, lending her voice to live performances and to an upcoming limited 7" release. Joe Stickney, an Alabama-born painter and drummer, provides percussion (as he does for Eastern Developments’ Bear In Heaven, as well). Adam Wills (also of Bear In Heaven), who is working on a video from Be Careful What You Call Home, plays guitar. James Elliot (part of the label Antiopic with his own release under the name Ateleia) plays bass. The translation into live performance has added a dimension to Paul’s entire process – one more confident and apt to embrace the very avant-pop dynamics that set him apart.
Introduced to and compelled by the likes of Luc Ferrari, Morton Feldman, Arnold Dreyblatt, et al while studying sound design in college, Paul took to a language that combined with his own real and imaginary scenarios. "A drunk uncle and his third wife, a love that never happened, a death that I’ve dealt with…" he lists. The cerebral and the emotional come crashing, existing in a balance characterized by Paul in references to his reading habits, where Hans Bellmer and Knut Hamson exist side-by-side. Be Careful What You Call Home comes complete with a lyric book, allowing words to accompany the record’s inherent sonic storytelling. Despite this lyrical reveal, which might convey a desire tocommunicate beyond the sole power of the recorded uttered voice, Paul said, "There's a brevity to some of the songs on the new album for a reason - some of those songs don't have a long life." He compares the thirteen tracks to "fleeting thoughts or feelings, things that I wouldn't indulge in for more than a little while. I’m writing about things that are beyond me because I don't know enough yet. They're sketches of things we all try to figure out."
Paul Duncan has collected many comparisons – from The Sea and Cake, Nick Drake, and Iron and Wine to specific works by Eno and to the varied nature of Jim O’Rourke. He hovers in good company, but stands alone at the end of the day in his recency, offering something best described by the bigger picture of everyday life. Perhaps more interesting about Be Careful What You Call Home is the light it sheds on the
