BY MIKE METTLER – OCTOBER 16, 2017

Artists who have world-renowned and critically acclaimed musicians as parents have an especially hard time forging their own individualized creative identities. This is especially true if your father happens to be, say, the late George Harrison of The Beatles.

Yet his son Dhani Harrison has taken it all in stride, by both embracing and nurturing his father’s legacy with projects such as 2002’s Concert for George and 2014’s George Fest, while subsequently developing his own sound by composing movie and TV soundtracks (Beautiful Creatures, White Famous). He’s also creating electronic-influenced original music with thenewno2, the intriguingly experimental band named after a key rotating character on the cult 1960s TV show The Prisoner.

That EDM-tinged aura permeates all throughout Harrison’s first full-fledged solo album, IN///PARALLEL, out now in multiple formats via HOT Records. Much of the album stemmed from the expansion of musical snippets and cues Harrison and his creative partner Paul Hicks had come up with for their film and TV gigs.

Over in my Audiophile column on Digital Trends, Dhani and I discussed how he developed the electronic sonic template for IN///PARALLEL, his long-term battles with fake news, and how he’s embraced his role as “healer-in-chief.” Here on The SoundBard, we discuss how IN///PARALLEL would translate into surround sound, scoring for television, his favorite albums on vinyl, and his contributions to the two Traveling Wilbury albums (and what his unique Wilbury name was on both of them).

Mike Mettler: I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but I’d really love to hear the whole IN///PARALLEL album in a 5.1 surround sound mix. It’s a fully enveloping kind of piece to me.

Dhani Harrison: If Paul Hicks ever gets the spare time in the 27 hours in the day that he works, I’ll get him to do a 5.1 mix of it. That would be pretty good, actually. I would like to hear “Admiral of Upside Down” like that.

Mettler: I would too, so I say let’s give Paul 28 hours in his day to do it. (both chuckle) Maybe you could put out a deluxe edition of it sometime later, in early 2018.

Harrison: A special edition of IN///PARALLEL in 5.1 — wow. I never thought about that, but I suppose you’re right. I might have to get onto that right away.

We are doing a live taping of it this month. We’re going to perform the whole record from start to finish, and I imagine that will be released as a live show, so that will be in 5.1. That’s going to sound just like the record — and will probably sound better than the record, when we get to it.

Mettler: Live surround mixes can be quite special. Some of them put the listener in a very specific place in the room and the audience, and make you feel like you’re sitting right there watching and listening to the performance. Some artists have an idea of a very specific seat they want you to be in when you’re listening to it. We may have to call that live performance of IN///PARALLEL something like the new no. 5.1. . .

Harrison: (chuckles) Yeah, the new 5.1!

Mettler: And sidebar to that, since we’re both fans of the show — we’re actually at the 50th anniversary of The Prisoner. [The Prisoner debuted on British television on September 29, 1967.]

Harrison: Yeah, I know — I was trying to get down to play the No. 6 Festival, but it had scheduling conflicts with me, so I couldn’t get down there. [Festival Number 6 was held Sept 6-10, 2017 in Portmeirion, UK, where The Prisoner was often filmed on location.]

Mettler: There’s a new show coming up on NBC called Reverie that I saw some of at the New York Comic Con, where people go into virtual reality dreams that represent the best aspects of their life, and somebody else has to go in there to monitor them, because they might get stuck there and not want to come back.

Harrison: What, to bring them back from their happiness? Oh, I want to check that out. Talking about reveries — Westworld was my thing. It made me start listening to [French impressionist composer Claude] Debussy’s Reverie again.

Mettler: Such an amazing show, and an amazing soundtrack that went with it too. Speaking of TV, you scored the WGN show Outsiders, correct?

Harrison: We did two seasons of Outsiders, which predated Stranger Things — we had the string-based synths thing first.

Mettler: I’m sorry WGN pulled the plug on that show.

Harrison: Yeah, that was a shame. I liked working on Outsiders. Everyone on that show was fun, and Peter Mattei was such a great showrunner. We still all hang out, and I hope to work with those guys again. It wasn’t like the show wasn’t doing well; they pulled the plug because they pulled the plug on all of their creative. Their two shows [Outsiders and Underground] were doing really well — they just didn’t want to do any more creative, I think. Just a bit of a shame, now.

Mettler: Sadly, I have to agree with you there. One other thing I want to check with you — you are on The Traveling Wilburys record, correct? You played or sang on them? What specific songs?

Harrison: I’m on both of them. I was on a track called “Margarita,” on the first one [Vol. 1] — I’m the little kid singing with the really high voice. (both chuckle) On the third album [Vol. 3] I’m on “The Wilbury Twist,” and I think I played on “Cool Dry Place,” too. And I was definitely on “Maxine,” and then on another called “Like a Ship.” [The latter two songs eventually appeared as bonus tracks on 2007’s The Traveling Wilburys Collection.]

Mettler: Did you get an official Wilburys name like everybody else did?

Harrison: I chose my Wilbury name. My dad had Nelson Wilbury, after Nelson Piquet, the Brazilian Formula One champion. And I chose Ayrton Wilbury, after Ayrton Senna, [another] Brazilian Formula One champion, so we could keep it in the family, you know? [Both of these legendary drivers won the Formula One title three times each.]

Mettler: That’s another nice “in parallel” kind of moment.

Harrison: Yeah. I think on the first one, I might have been credited as Cyril Wilbury, and then on the next one I was credited as Ayrton Wilbury, because we all wound up changing our names.

Mettler: I love that. Are we going to get a vinyl representation of IN///PARALLEL?

Harrison: Yeah, I just got my vinyls through the mail, and they look great. I’m really happy with it. we did the 180-gram heavyweight vinyl. I feel this record was more made for vinyl — it’s more than two sides, really. I think it goes 2, 3, 2, 3.

Mettler: Oh, good. That way, you don’t have to compromise any of the low end in the final mixes.

Harrison: It was just too long to fit onto just two sides. It was the same that we did for the soundtrack to [2016’s] Seattle Road and for my dad’s catalog, the vinyl box set. . .

Mettler: Yeah, I’ve got that in the other room, actually.

Harrison: It was all done at the same time, the same mastering people — me, Paul Hicks, Gavin Lurssen, and Reuben Cohen. It’s a great team, and I really love working with those guys.

Mettler: Do you have a personal favorite vinyl album talisman, one you listen to yourself in that format?

Harrison: I love Portishead [Roseland NYC] Live, the one with the Orchestra [recorded live at Roseland Ballroom in NYC in 1997]. I think that’s one of my favorite vinyls. It’s a great vinyl.

The Wonderwall Music vinyl is also one of my favorites. [Wonderwall Music is George Harrison’s Indian-music infused instrumental soundtrack to Wonderwall, released in November 1968].

Mettler: I think people gave that album a reassessment, once it came out again.

Harrison: I still think people haven’t discovered that as much as they should. That record is really great.

Mettler: In a way, that’s a precursor to a lot of electronic things that people kind of take for granted at this point.

Harrison: That, and Electronic Sound (1969) as well. The Chemical Brothers wrote the Foreword for us to that reissue, and they got really deep with that.

Mettler: Would you say IN///PARALLEL has lineage with either or both of those releases?

Harrison: I mean — I listened to Wonderwall Music over a million times, so it has to be in there somewhere. (both laugh)

Mettler: If anybody has a nice takeaway from IN///PARALLEL, it’s got the DNA of where you came from, where you are now, and where you’re going. It’s a spiritual awakening kind of piece that takes you into a different plane — and that’s what the best music does. You go on a different journey, and you get lost in it, especially in the headphones universe.

Harrison: Oh, thank you very much. That’s like the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.