Imaad Wasif on working on Where The Wild Things Are

[filter-mag.com] Imaad Wasif talks Wild Things
by Lynn Lieu | 10.16.2009

Today, many of us will be reliving our childhoods through the eyes of Max and his kingdom of Wild Things. And to make it all possible the creators, contributors and collaborators of the anticipated flick, Where the Wild Things Are, poured much of their own childhood memories into the film. Among those collaborators is Imaad Wasif, who worked with friend Karen O on the soundtrack. Here, Wasif shares with FILTER a little bit of what his childhood was like and relives some of those memories:

You’ve worked with different sounds and bands from Alaska!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The New Folk Implosion and your solo work. Was it a natural progression for you working with different minds on the soundtrack for Where the Wild Things Are?

It’s never really natural working with other minds, but that’s the beauty of the experience: The alchemy creates music that could have never been imagined.

For someone who has said he’s blocked out a lot of his childhood, what was it like working on a movie that in a way demands you to go back to your childhood?

It was inspiring to tap into the feeling of being a child again. I may have blocked out a lot of those memories but there are amazing things to be found in the void.

What did Palm Desert mean to you as a child and what does it mean to you now?

The part of Palm Desert that I grew up in was an alien landscape as a child, desolate and the scene of some of my favorite nightmares… Imagine a real-life Persistence of Memory with me being peeled off of vinyl car seats in the128-degree heat. Now, all of the wilderness and space that I grew up in has been filled—the skyline and the mountains still have a majestic beauty, but when I'm there I only think of past-lives. The sea once covered that entire landscape. There’s a sense of fear out in the desert that if I close my eyes for too long I could be submerged.