No Surrender, No Retreat:

Hmm. That’s quite the bombastic and aggressive quote to start off with isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ll address its claims later so just put a pin in that for now.

It’s March and although there are many worthy areas of awareness associated with the month, including Folk Horror & Cryptid Month that we are celebrating here at Screaming Eye Press (1) March also marks the birthday of one of the best friends I ever had, and one of the best audio dramatists to ever weave sonic tales: the late Bill Hollweg.

In addition to being an accomplished guitarist, illustrator, writer, and voice actor, Bill showed his artistic mastery most explicitly as an audio drama producer. A number of Bill’s old friends and fellow audio dramatists decided to do something to honor Bill this year on the anniversary of his birthday (and please listen to the audio drama offerings over on the Mutual Audio Network (2) ). In addition to those audio treasures, I wanted to add a modest essay that would honor Bill and also, perhaps, start a more scholarly discussion about our art form, bringing it into the greater critical conversations about art. As I thought deeper about Bill’s approach to mixing and producing audio drama (an approach I also share since he was my main mentor as I was learning my art and craft), I realized that there was much that needed to be communicated; explained in such a way as to increase both understanding and respect—both within the theory of how he approached his art and in the experiential joy his voluminous body of art provides.

So, here I am with another Screaming Eye Press essay. This time about a philosophical and practical approach to creation that best describes the art that Bill loved to create. An approach that art theorists have termed “maximalism.”

One of my goals with these essays (3) is to explain what can be obscure genre and artistic terms in ways that enhance the readers’ or audience’s appreciation and enjoyment without redefining the understood and accepted meanings that might be taught in schools or used by critics—and this essay is going to touch on at least three of those (maximalism, minimalism, and essentialism). Also, as I consider myself a creator and receiver of art first and foremost and any sort of theorist second my approach is always toward the practical. There is so much in art theory (even more so than in just pedantic genre definitions) that can lead away from appreciation and understanding—much that gives truth to the quote from Nietzsche about how whenever one defines something they begin to lie about it (4). I’m aiming for clarity and empowerment instead of academic navel gazing which often leads away from a practical application. Because, if nothing else, Bill was always about actually making art that people would love to listen to, hopefully over and over again. Art that he simply would have called “groovy.”

Bill approached his art instinctually. When I would talk theory and philosophy, he would, in his deep gravelly Texan voice, say things like, “Never thought about it that way Amigo, but that makes perfect sense.” Or, “You’re the deep thinker Brother; I just do what I do.” And what Bill did was make some of the absolutely best audio drama I’ve ever heard.

Bill would never have used the term maximalist. He just would have said that he loved making “rich” or “dynamic” soundscapes. So why am I labelling him a maximalist? Because, that term is the most technically accurate I’ve encountered so far. I’ve never really liked previous terms I’ve heard applied to his (and my) style like: “overproduced” (which is just dismissive completely as it defines by its perceived sins); the “Every Blade of Grass” style of mixing (as defining by absurdity—asserting that people who produce in that style are trying to portray the sound that “every blade of grass” makes when someone is stepping on a lawn—is passive-aggressively pejorative in effect if not intent); or “Cinematic” (as defining through a term specific to another art form is indistinct and relegates audio drama to cinema’s wannabe sibling).

I’ve been familiar with literary maximalism to some degree for years but decided to dive deeper into the subject and that quickly led me to its use in film, music, and areas I was completely unfamiliar with such as maximalism in fashion. Maximalism in the varied arts all have slightly different meanings and definitions (5). I’ll address literature, film, and music here as they have similarities that are pertinent to audio drama, and I hope that professional art or media theorists will continue this discussion by listening to the wide variety of audio drama out there and add their own analyses and thoughts regarding our underappreciated yet resurging art form.

Although I am focusing specifically on maximalism, the term minimalism needs to be addressed as the two are commonly contrasted with each other. The two are not always linked so take what follows as a way to provide context, not to create a binary distinction that all art needs to fit into.

Based on feedback I received from some readers of early drafts of this essay, it is unfortunately necessary to state that if an audio drama isn’t a maximalist work I am not automatically defining it as a minimalist work. These definitions are not hard taxonomical boxes and there are many other styles and approaches that I am not covering here, including but not limited to: midimalism, romanticism, realism, modernism, postmodernism, surrealism, and plain old “I just make audio drama and damn your definitions”-ism. Also, many works have multiple approaches present at the same time. The production of the soundscape might be maximalist while the writing minimalist, or vice versa, or any combination of styles. In my own work, my plans and mixing style are more maximalist while my prose style leans more to the minimalist side of things. To any fellow audio dramatists reading this, I’m only defining Bill’s works. If I don’t mention your work by name, I’m not defining what you do.

Ok, back to our topic.

One thing that I think is misleading is that many sources state that literary and musical maximalism is a response to minimalism or a form of anti-minimalism. As far as I can tell this is too reductive because while minimalist literature is thought to have its earliest precursors in Stephen Crane (born 1871) and Ernest Hemmingway (born 1899), the first novel to use prototypical elements that would define literary maximalism was Melville’s Moby Dick; or, The Whale in 1851 with James Joyce’s Ulysses in 1922 as an early quintessential example of literary maximalism.

Similarly, musical minimalism is a postwar movement with Moondog (born 1916) influencing Philip Glass (born 1937) and Steve Reich (born 1936) who along with Terry Riley (born 1935) really defined minimalist music. Musical maximalism came earlier. Starting in the modernist compositions from 1890 to 1914 and developed independently owing much to other threads of musical evolution like Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” production method which I’ll touch on below.

The confusion lies, in my opinion, because, similar to “noir,” both “minimalism” and “maximalism” are terms created in postwar criticism applied retroactively to various contemporary and historical works.

While I’m sure there are individual artists from one approach that are “responding” to the other in some form or another, from a historical perspective I don’t think that either “movement” was a “response.” They are contrasting philosophical approaches to art with that contrast invites comparison. 

When I first started writing this essay, I shared some initial thoughts with close friends and colleagues in life and in the audio drama community, who were also close friends with Bill (6). The question of how does the “essence” of a piece came into the discussion? What about “essentialism?” One person believes that the term essentialism works better than minimalism but there are a few reasons I reject that use, beyond my already stated priority of not redefining existing terms within art criticism.

My main reason is because naming any approach “essentialism” inherently implies that such a particularly defined approach has essential elements while others have non-essential or extraneous elements, this is similar to the previous charge of things being “overproduced.” It logically creates a semantic hierarchy of what is essential, intrinsically not just rhetorically, through the language used in the label “essentialism.” It also, fundamentally and logically, excludes contingency, and all art—and what is essential to a particular art piece—is always contingent.

Another key reason I reject that usage is because the term “essentialism” already exists and has a specific meaning and use. Art theory terms are already slippery enough without adding to the confusion of redefining existing terms. Especially, as the existing terms do work extremely well. Essentialism in the arts is an extension of platonic essentialism that posits that people, objects, etc. have core attributes that define their identity. The philosophical controversy around essentialism is that essentialism negates the individual’s ability to grow or change from free will as their nature was defined before they were born, including the parameters within which personal change can happen. But the pros and cons of philosophical essentialism is a whole other rabbit hole.

In the arts, essentialism is the belief that a strict set of aspects defines a type of art. With this school of thought, no art form can ever evolve and would just break into other definitions. Its definitional rigidity is unhelpful and focuses more on how to label a work instead of focusing on appreciating it for what it does.

Essentialism isn’t even a theory of artistic approach, it is more of a statement about the ontological state of the art in question. Also, as I mentioned above, it negates the ability to judge an art piece as contingent or within its particular context, which is abhorrent to me both as an artist and an art lover.

As we’ll see, maximalist and minimalist approaches are just that: approaches, not taxonomical absolutes. Both have what is essential to them as pieces of art. As do all other theoretical approaches to style. If one defines “essential” not as an intrinsic platonic property but as what is necessary for a piece of art to be effective and affecting, then, all art that touches someone is essentialist art.

Minimalism is often reductively defined by the ethos, “less is more” and maximalism by “more is more.” Throughout human art there have probably been people who fall on one side or the other of that divide. (Or neither. As mentioned above there are plenty of art pieces that qualify as neither maximalist nor minimalist.) While, when one has a better grasp of the specifics and nuances, the short-hand of “more is more” vs. “less is more” can be indices pointing to a greater definition, they can be too reductive and misleading when used casually. In literature, film, and music, what those contrasting ethos actually mean provides a clear distinction as I’ll explain below.

Another defining criteria is how they each use heterogeneity. Heterogeneity is the use of a great diversity of themes, styles, forms, media, references, prosody, etc. bringing them all together into new syntheses.

In literature, maximalist works are explicit, putting everything on the page with elaborate descriptions. The sumptuous, accumulating elements build into an ecstatic experience that provides many ways of reading the various meanings as the reader navigates the prose as an active explorer, finding many obvious voices, styles, discourses, references, and digressions.

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Minimalist literature is implicit. It hides things between the lines. Lines with economic prose and matter-of-fact descriptions. It omits on purpose while allowing the reader to specify meaning. Meaning that will vary from reader to reader as each ends up being a co-creator. Hemingway is perhaps the best known proponent of this approach and his “iceberg theory” or “theory of omission” champions the implicit over explicit approach to writing fiction.

Minimalist films imply whole scenes, events, or worlds off-screen through a sparse visual field and prolonged edits. The viewer, through contemplation realizes suggested heterogeneity through a singular or focused narrative thread that is heavy with implications. Visuals can be rich and evocative but focused.

Maximalist films are dense with a rich excess of images, sounds, and plot threads that are delivered through rapid editing. Self-referentiality provides mythic context and the viewer is bombarded by a menagerie of images explicitly displaying the work’s heterogeneity. Visuals are rich through vibrant and concentrated variety.

Maximalist music is dense with often sudden and obvious shifts in movements, time signatures, and keys. The listener is absorbed—carried away by a wave of sounds, instruments, and explicit heterogeneity acting as a huge orchestra.

In music, minimalist works are sparse with gradual or small changes to time signatures or keys. The listener, through attention to what emerges over time, finds meaning and a piece’s heterogeneity is revealed subtly. Similar to literature, meaning is found in the silences.

For all the arts that I love, I do my best to truly appreciate and enjoy many different styles, forms, or approaches. It’s a rich world of so much beauty that I consider confining myself to a limited selection of types of genre, prose, film, or music to be anathema. So, in addition to the various styles not even mentioned in this essay, I love both minimalism and maximalism. I love Bret Easton Ellis and Herman Melville; Raymond Carver and Mark Z. Danielewski; Terry Riley and Jim Steinman; Philip Glass and Pink Floyd; John Cassavetes and Alejandro Jodorowski; Yasujirō Ozu and Terry Gilliam. Also, artists or their works don’t always fit into these definitions easily. Stanley Kubrick is a director that is maximalist in how he focuses on detail and in his general production approach while being minimalist in the way he conceives the shots and approaches his narratives (7).

Now that some foundations have been laid, let’s shift over to more specifics within the world of audio, both music and drama, and explore some of the things that define minimalism and maximalism there. Elements which, along with what I described above, should be seen less as essential aspects of those definitions but instead as aesthetic strategies. Strategies that could include the following while keeping in mind that not all of these have to be present. These elements should aid in understanding and appreciating. They should not be used to nail art taxonomically to a board like a dead butterfly. They should aid in appreciating the beauty of the butterfly flying, not just list what makes it what it was after its death. Also, as mentioned above, except in extreme examples many pieces of art will have several different approaches combined.

In some pieces of music, or any art, it can be extremely apparent as to whether something fits into either category or neither of them. In other times, for me, it depends on what the apparent or stated intent of the piece was and which elements drive and are crucial to conveying that intent.

A good film example would be the 1979 film Alien. It is both sci-fi and horror. But, most people recognize that the horror elements are more important and crucial than the science fiction ones. You could take the story and set it on a merchant marine ship with a religious demon as the monster set in 1979 and the story would still work. Take the horror elements out and you have merchant marines in space arguing about their overtime pay, or if they decided to lean into the sci-fi more explicitly and perhaps have the alien not be a threat, it changes the story completely. Using that criteria, Alien is more horror than sci-fi even though both are present.

Terry Riley is a definitive modern minimalist classical composer. While he can have dense layering of electronic synth music, it is more minimalist (and he’s almost the quintessential minimalist) because that layering is the same phrase repeated over and over in slightly different ways.

Richard Wagner is a classic maximalist composer. Even though there are times of silence or quiet progression which can seem minimal, his work brings in hundreds of recurring motifs that merge, transform, and even contradict each other and he directly merged music (that heterogeneous thing again) with stage design, philosophy, myth, psychology, etc. in interdependent ways.

And now, perhaps, is a good time to return to the epigraph from Toop I began with. If you read his full essay it’s clear he’s not being a pompous jerk with that statement but the reason I entered it here is because, despite this being an essay championing maximalism and Bill Hollweg’s expression of it, I don’t think that this type of complexity is the only type to be explored. Nor do I think that all talented audio dramatists should or need to increase their mixing complexity in maximalist ways. What I do think is that any creator does their best work when they push the edge of their abilities, when there is a danger of falling completely on your face. When the artist takes the attitude of “no surrender, no retreat.”

Complexity doesn’t mean complicated. It is what adds levels of beauty, richness, and the sublime to art. It creates multiple levels of meaning. It reflects the human condition in ways that illuminates the understanding of our lives and the lives of others (10).

Most of us audio dramatists are DIY creators, wearing many hats. For those who prioritize their acting, I think the talented ones will increase the complexity of their acting, where one line can convey a multitude of emotions, making us all wonder how they brought us to tears with a few simple words. Writers will increasingly complexify their text, subtext, allusions, themes, and characterizations, bringing us fully into their worlds—whether they write in a minimalist, maximalist, or completely different style. And those of us for whom sound design and mixing makes our tails wag will increasingly work to have complex soundscapes that immerse into story without obscuring it. Or, conversely the producer might take a minimalist approach and have the sparse sound design and silences speak more than any sound effect ever could, making us wonder how they added that complexity with such sparse elements.

I want to explore one last musical component to popular maximalism before moving on to Bill’s techniques and style. Something that emerged from Richard Wagner’s physical orchestral arrangements (where the musicians were literally physically “arranged” specifically within the Bayreuth Festival Theater to create an aesthetic effect for the audience) and later applied to American popular music was the term “wall of sound” (11).

As it applies directly to Bill Hollweg’s work, it was how this term was used to describe Phil Spector’s production style by Andrew Loog Oldham (12). Spector’s style would influence much of the pop, R&B, and rock that would follow. He increased orchestration, bringing in other instruments like strings and woodwinds. He used effects like echo, chorus, and reverb (and a lot more) but the main factor, more than the specifics, was in how the production of the final recording was intentional from the beginning of the process. It wasn’t an afterthought. It was similar to film directors who envision the final edits when shooting scenes. This approach is very similar to how maximalist audio dramatists might conceive of something before scripting even begins.

I remember Bill telling me when he was working on his science fiction epic, 2109: Black Sun Rising that he “heard” certain scenes—not just dialogue but the full soundscape—in his head before he even wrote them and did his best to manifest that in his notes for the final mix. I had something similar happen when I was first conceiving my sword and sorcery audio drama The Sword of the Crimson Tatters in that I “heard” the brief few paragraphs I wrote to be the core of the world, that ended up being the intro to each episode. In my mind the text was spoken with a multitude of voices all overlapping in different pitches and speeds. It took me a while to figure out how to make that into something produceable, but it was as essential to the whole piece as anything else. Interestingly, once I had that figured out, other things (both while writing and while mixing) moved almost effortlessly by comparison. For maximalists (and Bill in particular) the “mixing vat” (as we, old timers, used to call the post-production, audio editing, and mixing process) was one of the most important “instruments” in our “orchestras.”

Just as important as the general approach to production was the musical origin of that production process. A lot of the aforementioned hard and progressive rock that came out of that “wall of sound” approach would directly influence Bill’s style. Especially albums produced by Bob Ezrin who was known for his dense arrangements, layered instrumentation, orchestration outside of the core bands in question, choirs, detailed sound design, use of sound effects, and big dramatic arcs (13).

During one of our regular, long phone conversations, Bill and I reminisced about how some of our early “audio dramas” were actually concept albums like Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia, and KISS’s Music From: The Elder. This musical component, especially considering that Bill was a damn good guitarist, shouldn’t be under emphasized when listening to his work (14).

Speaking of Bill’s work, now is a good time to discuss some of the things that defined his personal voice and style as an audio dramatist.

A little context for what many of us call the Golden Age of Modern Audio Drama (not to be confused with the Golden Age of Radio) will be useful. Since most audio drama producers, especially back in the mid-2000s to mid-2010s, had absolutely no budget, the choice of music, sound effects, and other sound elements were limited to either what was cheap and royalty free, public domain, given to the producer to use as a way of getting more exposure, or created by the producers themselves. Actors were lovers of the medium and often produced shows themselves, with many people acting in each other’s shows. It was a tight-knit and mostly open and welcoming community. Most of us were self-taught or taught by someone else in the community in exchange for helping them with their shows. It was an exciting “punk rock” era. It allowed for people to not only mimic the more dominant art forms they were inspired by but to also completely break with established patterns and accepted models and do their own thing, however they saw fit. This worked really well to Bill’s strengths as his style and direction was both instinctual as well as perfect for finding creative solutions to the limited resources I just mentioned.

Bill produced a wide variety of shows. He made fan adaptations or extensions of his favorite movies or tv shows, like Planet of the Apes, Logan’s Run, Battlestar Galactica, Jaws, and Escape From New York (the latter was adapted by Bill but mixed by Stevie K Farnaby). And he also produced original shows like his fantasy epic The Saga of the Grog and Gryphon, the action pulp serial Jake Sampson: Monster Hunter (which was a joint creation by Bill, Paul Mannering, and Mark Kalita), his science fiction epic 2109: Black Sun Rising, as well as numerous one-off audio plays.

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I’ll go through the maximalist criteria mentioned earlier and explain how Bill incorporated these into his production. Sometimes as a calculated decision, sometimes as the way his natural approach and style dictated, and others as those aforementioned creative solutions.

As I mentioned at the beginning, this essay was written to honor the memory and legacy of one of my dearest friends and I hope that I’ve convinced at least a few of you to listen to the massive corpus of Bill’s work. A retrospective of that work can be found here at Jack Ward’s The Sonic Society.

This whole essay is honoring Bill in another way. This piece wasn’t really calculated and just erupted, emergent, from what was happening at the time, just like so much of Bill’s style.

I was looking into different prose and artistic styles for personal reasons when I started exploring maximalism. During that process I realized, “Holy sheep dip! That perfectly explains Bill’s and my style of doing audio drama!” Then, a few days after that, Jack Ward, during a meeting of the principal members of the Mutual Audio Network, announced that March was going to be a month honoring Bill’s memory, and it became obvious what form this essay was going to take.

So, here we are, carried along with the riptide of some strange maximalist current that broke the barriers of story and flooded the shores of life. To paraphrase “Hannibal” Smith, “I love it when synchronicities come together!” I can almost hear Bill saying, “Groovy Amigo!”

As the email that I quoted indicates, Bill wasn’t about glory or praise. He was always about community. He reached out to almost everyone in our little world whether a listener or a creator. His “mission” if he had one was to spread, as far and wide as he could, the love of listening and making audio drama. He thought everyone was an artist. He wanted everyone to know the joy and pure fun of creating the way he did.

Making everyone feel like they were truly special, to both him and the world, was one of his gifts.

This is my, much more long-winded, way of trying to do something similar. To any art or media theorists who might be reading this, please consider audio drama as a worthy subject of your analyses. So much of our stuff was unpolished and raw but, goddamn if it didn’t have heart and a belief in itself! No surrender, no retreat indeed! I’ve barely touched the surface of maximalism or minimalism so I hope academia might add to the discussion in any and all ways.

To people who love audio drama as listeners but don’t believe themselves to be any sort of “artist,” consider taking a chance and letting us hear your voices and visions, or find a show to act in as we always need more actors.

To actors, writers, mixers, or whatever artist you identify as, who maybe never thought too much about theory, consider that a good approach to theory will empower you to go even deeper and make cooler, stronger, or dare I say groovier art. A lot of these terms can be empowering when approached as those aesthetic strategies I mentioned and not as stuffy definitional boxes.

Audio drama has been called “the theater of the mind” and our minds can hold entire universes. Universes of wonder, joy, tragedy, horror, loss, victory, and hope. Whether you like maximalist, minimalist, or “I don’t give a damn for anything but good story”-ist, stories. Close your eyes, open your ears, and explore the human condition through one of the most awesome art forms we have.

Ready to take it to the next level?

Check out Lothar Tuppan’s No Surrender, No Retreat playlist!