Recording under the name tweaker, Vrenna has put together a concept album, an emotional cycle based around his impressions of a piece of art. The Attraction of All Things Uncertain is, in his own words, "melancholic ambient rock," and while mostly instrumental, contains four vocal tracks--four important key points in the evolution of the character of the record. Vrenna says that tweaker is meant to be a collective idea, it won't be just him and his rack of instruments and gear. He puts together the music, pens some ideas about the direction of the song, and then attaches the music to an appropriate voice.

The Attraction of All Things Uncertain begins with David Sylvian's voice--a perfect voice for melancholy if there was to be one--and continues with contributions from Shudder to Think's Craig Wedren as well as Will Oldham.

He's also got an eye for fine art.

I notice that you're getting ready to go on tour. How is that planning coming?

Chris Vrenna: Well, today was a monumental day. My guitar player and myself actually played a song together. [Laughs] The whole tour thing has been on again/off again since the record came out. We were going to do a tour. The record came out on the 18th of September and then there was the whole 9/11 thing--it threw the whole world into a tailspin.

A lot of tours got cancelled because people didn't want to travel. For awhile, it was looking like the tour wasn't going to happen. So what we're doing at the moment is that we're going to do three shows at the beginning of December. It's looking like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle. Just as warm-ups. Practice shows. Get our feet wet. See if the technology that I'm trying to figure out will even work. It could be quite a hoot. We'll do those before the holidays in preparation for more next year.

A lot of the tweaker stuff appears to be just you with maybe someone else assisting, but predominately you in a studio putting these pieces together.

Chris: Totally. The whole thing was done at home minus a couple of the vocal tracks. Yeah, the whole thing was done in ProTools and is very experimental in the sense of how it is put together. It is kind of challenging right now trying to figure a way to interpret it live.

What kind of process are you going through as you are work with other musicians in preparation of playing the material live? What is happening now that you are bringing other people into the mix? It's not just you and a bunch of machines any longer.

Chris: It's going to be me and two guys: a guitar player who will play some keyboards, and a bass player who will also do some keyboards. My only goal for doing it live was that it will be performed. I'm not very big into rolling the DAT machine. You know, DJs as a rock concert--I just find that offensive as a live musician. As long as I could do it in some sort of live way frankly I didn't care if it didn't sound anything like the record.

I'm building this crazy acoustic patch trigger hybrid stupid-looking drum set and I'm going to be triggering lots of stuff off of pads and changing arrangements through triggers and through my drum set. The whole thing will be live; my goal is to really not have a "start" button on anything. I'm working out unique ways to work in the guest vocals as well, obviously, that's kind of the ultimate challenge here really. It's easy for a singer/programmer to just hit "start" on the DAT player and sing his song. For me, it is kind of the opposite. The material that is normally pre-recorded is the thing that I do, and I don't want just anybody singing those vocal parts because I think they are very unique. That's why those particular people are on the record: because of who they are and the way they sound.

You just don't want to grab some guy off the street to fill in.

Chris: Right. "Here, you sing this." I could sing it. [Laughs] It'll be cool though. After last night's rehearsal, I'm pretty excited about it.

What else are you working on right now?

Chris: I am finishing a production with a band called Red Delicious. It's pretty cool. They're a three piece: female singer, two male programmer/guitarists. Electronic kind of thing, but still rock. I'm working on that record right now and, actually, it'll be done next week.

How does that kind of work differ from working on the tweaker stuff?

Chris: You know, it's kind of like you get to join the band for a limited amount of time when you are producing. You don't have the writing thing to deal with--that's probably the biggest part of it. I've done this with the tweaker stuff as well. Sometimes I let my friends or people I trust hear it. "You can tell me. Does this stuff suck? What am I doing wrong here?" Just to get some feedback. I need a sounding board for my own stuff. As a producer, you become a sounding board for someone else who is in way too deep on their own material. You can offer that one backwards step of hopeful objectivity.

And, you know, every project is different. Some need more help musically, some need more help logistically. There are so many little angles that come into it. And when it's done, you can send them off.

Your kids are all grown up.

Chris: [Laughs] Yeah, kind of.

How does that differ from the remix work? You sound like you've been very busy.

Chris: I just finished a remix for the band Live. You know, remixing is really fun. Remixing used to be... Well, remixing has changed over the last couple of years. Remixing has always been one of my favorite arts. In Nails, we were always big fans of it. You can look at Fixed or Further Down the Spiral. Remixes can be more of an artistic endeavor just to see what would happen, what would it sound like if...?

But, of course, that costs money and you're doing it more for the sake of, say, "What would it sound like if Coil remixed this?" or whatever. Now, with the economy and the way labels operate and everything, there is not as much of that freedom. Now remixes tend to be very specific in nature. The label is only going to do a remix if they need a specific thing done. For example, here we have a rock song, but we'd like to see if we can go to clubs with it. You ask the remixer: "Can you give me something that is a club thing, specifically?" And a particular type of club mix, too! There are so many variations.

The kind of remixing I've been doing lately--the last four, five, six remixes I've done--have been for radio. Alternative radio right now has gone very, very rock. Our big station is KROQ and it's probably one of the biggest, most influential stations in the country. They're top ten play-list is Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Puddle of Mudd, that sort of thing. They just added the new Ozzy Osbourne song last week.

So, what do they send you? Being a complete neophyte to the studio environment, I'm curious as to what are you given to work with.

Chris: They send me the multi-track, all the individual components. It used to be all be on two-inch multi-track tape, and now it is a big fat ProTools session on CD-ROM. It's pretty much your only option, everyone has gone to that format. I'll get the multi-track on CD-ROM, put it in my computer, and see what is there.

If the remix is designed for radio, then arrangement becomes the biggest issue. The song may be five minutes and ten seconds long and, well, we got to get it under four for radio. So I have to figure out the arrangement and figure out the style that the label looking for. I'll re-cut parts or I'll re-effect parts that are already there. I did a song recently where the singer had this rap part, this bridge. The label said, "You know, it's not really a rap band and this may not seem right." So I built a whole new bridge out of background vocals and little hooks that he had in other parts of the song--a whole new bridge to get away from that. They wanted a version that didn't have that in it. It all depends on the end application that the label wants for the record.

Wow. It's kind of scary when you consider that Clear Channel owns some obscene amount of the radio market and everyone thinks that they know what the audience is and what it wants. It's interesting to hear that a label, who has a song produced and recorded by an artist, when they move to sell the song to the public, they have no compunction in changing the song. It sounds like there is a much different mindset between creating the song and marketing the song.

Chris: There really is. I'm not sure why, maybe it is the Internet, maybe it is 900 channels of satellite dish that everyone has--every house on my block has one of those RCA satellite dishes on the roof. You have an artist who may be doing well in one niche of radio, but can't get into another niche. I did some work for a band called Cold that did fantastic as "active rock," and the label kept trying to get them over into "alternative rock" which, in some markets, are almost identical play-lists, and in others are completely different.

[Laughs] So what is the difference between "action" and "alternative"?

Chris: I have no idea. I look at the Billboard charts and the radio charts every week and they're almost identical. KROQ added Ozzy Osbourne last week. KROQ is, technically, a "modern alternative rock" station and Ozzy is about as "active rock" as it gets. Yet he's on our alternative rock station and active rock stations elsewhere. Then you have something called "heritage rock" which used to be "classic rock." A band like Creed is on all three of those charts, all the time. How can Creed be "active rock," "modern rock," and "heritage rock" all at the same time?

It must depend on the nostalgia factor when you hear it.

Chris: There are very fine degrees of separation between the three.