Coincidence, Kurt and Courtney Love

For a young Australian in Los Angeles, the internet and a famous writer's approval have prompted a career change. GRAHAM REID reports


For years Australian expat musician and studio engineer Simon Heselev can dine out on the story: how a famous writer's dog bit his leg when he went round for dinner.

"It was certainly an ice-breaker," says the former Melbourne jazz bassist as he tells of being invited to the New York apartment of Kurt Vonnegut.

This wasn't what he expected when he packed his bags after high school and headed to Boston's Berklee School of Music on a scholarship, where he did four years' study of music theory and studio engineering in two. He then headed to the warmer climes of Los Angeles. Heselev now lives and runs his own studio in Santa Monica.

"I got a job in Los Angeles the day I graduated at Boston. I'd spent a lot of time in recording studios but figured that if I had to pay some kind of dues I'd do it where it was nice and sunny. That was three years ago, and now I'm doing a lot of composition and it's getting placed in television shows like CSI, which is kind of a new thing.

"Record deals are not really happening anymore but licensing to television and film is where it's at for musicians.

"I started working here as an assistant engineer at Royal Tone studio in North Hollywood and worked on a bunch of pop and rock records and got to experience all that world. It was interesting. Chris Cornell and Audioslave were great, but then there were people like Alanis Morissette, Christina Aguilera ... It gets worse. Vanessa Carlton and Courtney Love, who was an absolute nightmare. That's why I wanted to move into my own thing."

He started recording his own music but his breakthrough came from an unusual place.

He had written a piece of music and was trawling the internet to find some vocals to put with it. He stumbled on Vonnegut reading a passage from his famous novel Slaughterhouse Five - the section when the protagonist Billy Pilgrim is watching a war movie on television and imagines time moving backwards, bombs being sucked back into aircraft, bullets being pulled out of bodies by an invisible force and going into the barrels of rifles while the bodies heal themselves.

"It just drew me to it. I hadn't read the book and hadn't even heard of Kurt Vonnegut."

So he wove together his six minutes of orchestral and electronic music with Vonnegut's reading from 1973 and played it to friends, who were impressed. He had never made such a recording, but tried to contact Vonnegut's publishers for permission to use the piece. His calls weren't returned.

One of Heselev's Boston teachers had a copy and gave it to the writer at a reading. Vonnegut loved it, drew the cover art for the CD (entitled Astronomy) and provided the title, Tock Tick, which refers to time running backwards.

"Then I happened to be in Philadelphia and was in the neighbourhood as it were so he asked if I'd come by for supper. And so I did and we just hung out and talked - and met his dog. He was a great bloke. He lives in a beautiful old brownstone on East 48th St, a really nice part of town and near a whole bunch of Irish pubs.

"There is something more with him in the works. I can't tell you too much other than it's new material from Kurt."

Heselev expects to release the Vonnegut album first, then his own, and maybe tour with a small band: "But there's not a live scene here in Los Angeles at all, it's mainly showcases for record company people. Three people in suits standing in an empty room watching a band, it's not much fun."

But his work with Vonnegut has opened a door: the piece has charted on college radio and community stations in the States, was on high rotate on Australia's Triple J and has had online sales through amazon.com and musica-obscura.com. It is also being included on the re-release of the Slaughterhouse Five reading done by actor Ethan Hawke. For a previously unknown musician from Melbourne working with pop-rock musicians, it has also changed his way of thinking.

"It opened my eyes. I was an engineer and I don't think that's being an artist. Then Kurt rang and called me an artist and I was like, 'Hang on, if Kurt Vonnegut is calling me an artist then maybe I should quit this and go and be an artist properly'.

"So I blame him."