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Deepriver

Thanks for answering a few questions for us guys; let us start with the project itself: Some may not be aware, but you've worked together in the past on Trance compositions; what brought the two of you to collaborate on something in the ambient sphere?

Joni - I think we were always both interested in exploring genres outside of trance. Ambient was something we were always talking about and were both inspired by. Jason of course, has also released more music in the genre, and I eventually ended up doing work in the genre as well, so it felt very natural to create a full album together like this.

Jason - Definitely. Even back when we were making trance, whenever we’d send references over or things to spark inspiration, most of the time, it was from the ambient and experimental genre. I specifically remember Brian Eno and Stars of the Lid were big favourites.

Eno and SotL are good signposts for sure. Eno has a wandering aesthetic, where as Stars of the Lid are masters at glacial paced ambient. The works on Volume One, to me, seem to have a sense of purpose, a traversing of something, slow soundtracks to grand actions. It's difficult to actualise but It seems like there is a form of exploration in the songs and a poignant endpoint to these explorations. I might be reading too much into the nature of the tracks but they surely aren't "ambient to have on in the background" nor "tranquil music to relax to". I am drawn to this sort of visceral ambient, which sort of demands listening. Was there conscious thought from the two of you to make the album more permeable?

Joni - I do think we made all the music on Volume One for conscious listening rather than something you'd have on in the background that melts away with everything else. Perhaps we didn't say or think it outright, but there was definitely intention and purpose with each piece. I like how they flow together in such a way that requires you to listen to each piece but also the album as a whole. I think I can speak for both of us in that we have always leandt more towards mood and feeling as the main focus of our music, and that sort of sound requires a more focused approach from the listener.

So why the name Deepriver? Is there some significance to the name?

Joni - We are both quite big cinephiles and love the work of David Lynch. “Deepriver” is a reference to that as “Deep River” is mentioned in at least two of his films, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. One of us suggested it as a project name, and it stuck. I know there is also a Deep River in Cape Town, but I can't remember if that at all influenced the name...

Jason - The Cape Town link is a complete coincidence. There’s a suburb here called Diep River. A few people have asked if it was named after that. It isn’t, but it’s a cool connection, I think.

Cinephiles eh? Many a musician has been influenced in one way or another by cinema. I can personally call out movies that have been of inspiration to a subset of my output. Care to share any influential movies or directors (other than Lynch of course)?

Joni - There are so many! Having known Jason for some time, we've touched on quite a lot of directors and films...and we still share tips and discoveries to this day. Just this week, we were discussing Cronenberg and Friedkin. We are also both big David Fincher fans (I think the music and mood in "Gone Girl," for example, is brilliant), as well as Bergman, Kubrick, Malick, Tarkovsky, Fellini, the list continues. But there are so many, it's hard to pinpoint...I could probably ramble for a whole day on this topic.

I feel like I can hear each of your input on Volume One. Maybe I'm off base, but the album has Threads (van Wyk) meets Rymd (Ljungqvist) feel. Were these songs written from previous uncompleted works that you each had that you then allowed the other to complete? Or was the album written from the ground up with the explicit idea of collaborating on something fresh?

Joni - I think that's a very good observation. It was mostly music we wrote from the ground up by sending ideas and pieces back and forth over many years. A few of the tracks were also from the "original" Deepriver project, which was very beat-centric. That music sounded a lot different from what you hear on Volume One. I'm very happy with what we achieved and how we managed to get it to where it is.

Jason - We had a completed version as far back as 2013, but it wasn’t quite there in terms of us wanting to release it. Over the years, we kept coming back to it. Once the beats and the heavier sounds came out, things started to come together. A big part of the process also came down to choosing which tracks worked together to form the album. The track count was huge, as you can imagine from around a decade of sending ideas back and forth, so getting it down to around the 40-minute mark was a bit of a challenge.

Yeah, when things are flowing it can be difficult to edit things down to the limitations of a LP pressing. I feel you did a really great job with that though. In regards to the LP pressing and specifically the art: how did you guys find and come to agreement on such an iconic cover image? Were you fans of Karen's work prior?

Jason - We discovered Karen on Instagram actually and reached out to her on there. After days of searching, her image “Scenic Elevator” caught my eye. I sent it over to Joni, and he agreed. We reached out to Karen, and she very kindly allowed us to use it.

Coming out of the gate with an album called Volume One implies there will be more volumes. What do you collectively think we might expect from the project in the future?

Joni - We have, as time permits, talked already about a follow-up and even exchanged some ideas. There might be another concept for that follow-up, and I'm sure we will manage to do it in a shorter time than Volume One!

Jason - I think so too. Further exploration of this sound is what you can expect.

Great news for n5 and fans of Volume One! Volume One is out now: https://n5.md/318

[n5md]

Jason van Wyk

Jason van Wyk's fourth full-length Threads is out now. We wanted to learn a bit more about this South African composer.

Thanks for taking the time to chat with me in our continuing "Learn more about..." articles.

Let's jump in with a sort of elephant in the room regarding the van Wyk musical canon, Trance. I often see on social media people ask you about your early discography and if you will ever revisit that genre. It seems you have quite a following within that scene.

There seems to be some overlap in that style, and say your debut album Days to Remember. While there is an emotional core to each style, they almost seem like night and day, regarding mood and construction. It seems some switch was flipped around 2013. What prompted the change?

Around that time I started doing music for film and that really shifted my interests in music altogether. I was listening to more electroacoustic and experimental music then too, whereas Trance was going through a bit of a stylistic change at the time. Days You Remember I still consider, in hindsight, a Trance album in many ways, but after that came out I decided to take a break from it. As for returning to Trance, I'd like to return to doing club music at some stage. What style and genre that will be though, I'm not entirely sure yet.

I can see where doing music for film would facilitate a change to be more cinematic. Electro-acoustic and ambient lend themselves to film very well. You do have a good number of documentaries and a couple of features in your filmography. Because your current output is very cinematic, was there any one film soundtrack you were involved in that might have been pinnacle in the trajectory to where you currently are musically? It would be also interesting to know which of these works for film you enjoyed doing the most, as to give readers a jumping off point if they wish to seek out your soundtrack work.

Not particularly. When I started working in music for film, it was in an “additional music” capacity. I worked under other composers on many different types of projects, ranging from shorts to documentaries to independent features. It afforded me the opportunity to work in different styles and familiarize myself with new ways of working. That all broadened my outlook on composition, music production and the type of music I wanted to make in my solo career moving forward.

So far I’ve been credited on only one feature that’s been released—a horror/thriller called Triggered, which came out last year that I co-composed with fellow South African composer Andries Smit. That narrative process of writing music really works for me and it’s something I’ve followed when approaching my album work too.

This very sort of narrative is woven through your new album Threads. Everyone I think will assume, based on when we are releasing it, that it is a "pandemic record" but it was for the most part completed prior to everything going to shit. You had sent in some tracks prior to its completion that had a more electronic style but Threads morphed into, for lack of a better term, visceral ambient. Not something you can just have on in the background, it demands your attention. As the pandemic hit I really gravitated to it. I kind've think of it as a dark record for you. What influences if any affected this shift in tone and mood?

That’s correct. I started it back in 2018 and the final mixes were finished during our lockdown last year.

I can’t say there was a specific influence. Threads went through quite a long period of experimenting before something started to take form. I remember those first drafts I sent over to you were definitely on the brighter side to what eventually became the album, but in the end, I just went with what naturally took shape from those months of experimenting. I worked in a similar way for my previous two albums, but Threads took a lot longer to nail down.

I seem to remember you posting about getting some new gear while writing the album. Have there been some new studio purchases in the last couple years that were paramount in the direction the experimentation in composing for Threads?

I actually ended up using the SH101 the most out of my analog synths. I started using it for Light Burns Out at first, then before I knew it, it had worked its way onto most of the tracks. The Juno 60 and Moog Voyager were also used a fair amount as well as my Roland tape echos. I bought an Oberheim OBXa in 2019, which was intended for the album, but it needs a service and I haven’t managed to get that done yet. Hopefully, it finds its way onto the next one.

Nice, a surprising number of mono synths on there. Those synths are also tough to spot, as the music on Threads seems to have no clear reference point.

Definitely. Everything was heavily processed. A lot of the synthetic sounds, if you had to single them out, would probably surprise you as they were more than likely acoustic to begin with.

This brings me to theme, while the album is solely instrumental, was there a specific theme behind it?

Well, with all four albums so far, I’ve tried to rely more on an overall mood and atmosphere rather than a specific theme. While there is a narration that runs through them, the “theme” I’d say is the mood.

Threads is out now. https://n5.md/291b

[n5md]

Cloudwalker

In our newly relaunched "Learn more about..." interviews, we switch up the continuity slightly and focus on just one release: Gimmik's Cloudwalker. Martin kindly agreed to answer a few questions to kick off what we'll refer to as v2 of the "Learn More About..." blog.

While Entre Les Chambres was the actual return of Gimmik to the public eye, Cloudwalker is more of a return to form. It is undeniably Gimmik; however, Cloudwalker treads some new ground for you. Can you shed some light on how the creative process changed from Entre Les Chambres / Deux Nouvelles and how those two albums might have influenced Cloudwalker?

Very well observed - they did influence Cloudwalker! Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were both produced under technically limited circumstances. On top of that, I thought that no one will ever hear this material. Luckily it was not the case, and I got the chance to become a member of the n5MD family. When you produce with the idea that the material will never get released, it gives you a lot of room and space. You are not concerned about expectations. The music can flow and evolve freely. The calm nature of those albums helped that process. It was research where I experienced myself more as a witness than a composer. For me, that is a new approach. This approach was still the same when I produced Cloudwalker. That is the reason why the tracks are so diverse. Short Wave Memories and In My Family do not have anything in common, but that is the way they evolved, without me constructing anything. The most significant difference is that Cloudwalker was produced in a proper studio environment. Plus, I took a step into eurorack, which brings a very unpredictable element. And yes, that is Mutable Elements "Rings'' what you hear on In My Family. I was working on a self-generative patch with "Marbles'' when all of a sudden, the melody appeared...

I think you sent me In My Family shortly after you finished it, and it was one of the darkest days of the early pandemic; where our local government-issued curfews and such. It was the track that I needed at that moment; it brightened my day. It's very cool that the melody was a generative experiment gone right. I seem to remember you have quite a bit of the Mutable Instruments modules. Modular, to me, seems like a bit of a wormhole of experimentation. So, how do you stay focused when experimenting with new sounds and textures to bring, say, one of your Modular Nature tracks, which you have on your Youtube channel, to life.

Working with a modular system is entirely different. My approach is always a question. What will happen if I connect this with that and modulate with this? Then you start patching, and the results are entirely different from what I expected - a lot more exciting and better! In the beginning, I thought modular was about rebuilding synth voices. So I started emulating the signal-flow path of a 101 for a start. I missed the whole point of modular... A system has a life of its own and takes you to completely different places, and sometimes I do not even understand the results. (-: But that is not important. The decision to work with modular is to avoid walking down paths I have taken too many times when composing. What keeps you focused is your ear. The trick is to learn when to stop. In the beginning, I lost a lot of great patches when the result was already at 90%. When trying to reach 100%, my tweaks destroyed that patch's beauty, and I never found a way back to 90%. That happened a lot of times in the beginning. A modular system really helps to learn when to let go… (laughing). I chose Mutable Instruments because those modules are very focused on musical and harmonic results.

So, going back to Cloudwalker, how did it feel getting back to basics as far as Gimmik goes. People may not know that Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were made for very personal listening. Care to shed a little light on those two, and more importantly, what made you want to go past those themes and bring Gimmik full circle for Cloudwalker?

Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were NOT a conscious decision. Those were a necessity! The title Entre Les Chambres means "between two rooms", the space that is between two rooms. That is nowhere! It mirrors how I felt at that moment. There were many significant changes in my life, luckily nothing concerning my family, but still major changes. In order to cope with it all, I started making ambient tracks. It was the only thing that helped me to cope and focus again. The tracks happened by themselves. Listening to them and working on those albums was a calming experience. When they were finished, I played them to Chris, and he convinced me that he liked them. That led to the decision to make those first tapes. Later I sent them to you. Your reaction was very motivating because the music got released. With that motivation and getting back into a studio environment, the Cloudwalker tracks just poured out of me very quickly - it felt terrific to go back to the studio. My family gave me the time to work in my studio, and you and Chris gave very motivating feedback! From my perspective, this makes Cloudwalker my most important album so far, and I am very thankful for this chance! Another key element is that you gave me total freedom regarding artwork, choosing tracks, and their order. Just great!

Well, I knew going in that you know what you are doing. So I shouldn't have needed to step in and manage such details. For release prep, I'm available to take care of the details that an artist doesn't have access to or the working knowledge. You and Chris ran Toytronics, and you are a graphic artist as well, so I knew that you know the drill. If something was glaring or didn't work under the n5 stylistic umbrella, it is my job to say something, but I was pretty confident that wouldn't happen. I also know that after you completed the tracks, you took a great deal of time to get them to flow perfectly and also fit on four LP sides—your care in craft shows, and it's been great to work with you.

You brought up Chris, and there is an Abfahrt Hinwl remix on Cloudwalker, so; I'm going to ask. Are we going to hear some new Abfahrt Hinwl soon?

Thank you, as I said, that means a lot to me. And I still think that it is a fortunate situation. The AH RMX of Sailing Everest on Cloudwalker was just me, to be honest. That is why I used an abbreviation - AH. It is more a hint. It has a lot of the Abfahrt Hinwil ingredients. We tried to revive the project and realized that working over a distance via the internet does not work for either of us. The key of Abfahrt Hinwil was that we worked in the same room, at the same time, with the same equipment - listening to what the other one does - giving an immediate reaction. The most important point is communication, which has to happen immediately - you need to respond straight away, not with a delay. Today we find ourselves in two different life situations. We both would like to continue. After an online experiment, we realized it would be only possible when we visit each other and then work in the same studio. That is not possible at the moment, and Covid plays a significant role in that.

Ah, I see; Abfahrt Hinwil was you and Chris basically feeding off one another; also, there are cheques and balances, which is great to have. I completely understand why it would not be feasible to do it from a distance effectively. So, I'd like to pivot to these little builds I see on your Instagram. You recently sent me a pic of a peculiar little box that looks to be a synth. Assuming this is something you built (loving the stickering, by the way). What is this, and does it appear on Cloudwalker?

(laughing) That is a drone box handmade by a guy in Russia. Six oscillators, each one with a kill switch. Three standard range oscillators and 3 Sub. A very rough-sounding machine, great for drones. The filter sounds very nasty, just great. There is a little bit in the track Cloudwalker itself but washed out by Big Sky. The downside is that there is no midi, trigger gate, or voltage control. It is more of an experiment tool. The important parts of the track Cloudwalker have Mutable Instruments: Plaits and Tides 1, using the Sheep mode. Both outputs went into Warps, modulated by Stages. The little melody was played live on the Yamaha DX Reface, going into the Big Sky. It was all recorded live onto tape to 4 tracks to a Tascam 234. Then it was mixed the classic way, patchbay, fx, analog mixer main out to digital. 75% of the album was recorded to a Sound Devices MixPre-3 II.

It sounds like your Big Sky gets some action! Strymon makes some exceptional pedals. It seems like you can almost entirely make music out of the box if you needed to, which is excellent. So one last question: When we collaborated on the Cloudwalker one sheet text, you added something about the production tools "representing technology from 1958 to 2019," and I asked if 1958 was a type-o that needed to be corrected to 1985 when it was not. When people read that, I think they will be very curious as to what technology you utilized from that far back…

Yes, it is a great pedal, I love the sound and the fact that you get nice results very quickly.

1958- (laughing) There is an on oscilloscope from Russia, which can be seen in some of the videos on HIDDEN REALITY, and 2 vintage function generators. I got those old function generators from a close friend, he is an electronic engineer and professor for physics at a university. They got rid of all their old equipment, and he asked if I wanted to have something. He could not throw those old machines away, so he rescued them to his cellar. He changed the connections for me, so I can use them with the modular environment, using my standard patch cables. I used them a lot as modulation sources, as they can modulate extremely slow (like MI tides). But I have to admit that I got them for their looks in the first place…(laughing) - Those machines look like the machinery you see in Qs research center in old James Bond movies...

Order Cloudwalker now: US / UK / EU

Learn even more about Gimmik

[n5md]

(ghost)

Let's start with your more recent full-length "A Vast and Decaying Appearance". I might be the only (other) person that knows there is a theme to it. There is a poem in the liner notes that in conjunction with the song titles is a somewhat cryptic framework. Care to elaborate on the album's narrative? 

The narrative behind the album is all based off of a vivid dream I had. The day after I wrote 'Invisible Handcuffs' and structured the rest of the music around it. Picking up where Departure left off, A Vast and Decaying Appearance begins as a tragic story where a young man is lost inside a coma. He believes he is being held captive by a group of men, all dressed in black suits. Each day he makes his escape out of his cell in the asylum, always finding himself running up a hill where a small glimpse of light can be seen. Atop the hill is a young girl with light blonde hair dressed all in white. Each time he reaches for her shoulder, the men in black suits pull him back and return him to the asylum. In reality he is just in a hospital and his nurse is the girl he keeps picturing on the hill.

So does the story keep looping around like that or is there a finale? How does the new Elas EP fit in with the narrative?

Elas EP is just the next chapter in this massive story that I'm writing. This character suffered a massive injury that put him in a coma after the conclusion of Departure. In the Elas EP we are following his final moments in the coma and his struggle to escape back to reality. It is also safe to say that he has not made a full recovery. At this point he has only just woken up and met Elas for the first time, outside of his dream world. Without giving too much away, the next album/chapter will focus on his struggle to return to the man he was. Elas will play a large part in this next chapter as well by helping our main character return to a normal life.  

In the last year or so you moved from Connecticut to Colorado. What prompted the move westward? 

It really came down to music. I played shows in Connecticut for years, but it didn't really have the music scene I was looking for. One of my old bandmates moved to Denver a few months prior and I decided to follow. I think I've been to more shows this past year than I have in my whole life :) 

Ah yeah. I can see that. In Connecticut you probably had to drive into NYC to see more established underground acts. 

Care to share any of your recent Denver show highlights?`

Exactly. My friends and I would either go to Providence, New Haven, or NYC for shows, but it would have been on my days off of work. Now I can walk 10 minutes down to a venue and see any number of acts. I saw Machinedrum when I first moved out here right when he released Vapor City. I figured it would be a dj set, but he came on stage with a guitar and then a drummer walked up. It was probably one of the best performances I've seen in the city. Run the Jewels, Seth Nichols b2b Kevin Callison, and Death Cab for Cutie were also noteworthy shows.

And speaking of Denver show highlights, you've been playing out there as well. How are the shows going over?

I have been playing a lot more shows in the past year. I've played a few live (ghost) sets where I focused solely on my own material. So far the shows have gone over really well, but the attendance has lacked a bit. I recently became a resident dj at Milk Bar in Denver as part of The Underground. I focus mainly on techno/idm at these shows, and tend to play other material outside of my own compositions. That being said I recently played Nocturnal.04 with L'Estasi Dell'oro and Paul Fleetwood, where I created an entire set filled with original techno compositions all based around my (ghost) sound. It was the first time I've played for over an hour with all original music, and everything was improvised. 

I remember you mentioning to me in conversation before that you own some of Richard Bailey's (Proem) old equipment. How did you come to own it and, i'm curious... have you ever been tempted to use any of his patches/banks? 

 I saw he had put his Korg R3 up on ebay and bought it without hesitation. I've used a couple of my favorite patches, but I usually end up mangling the audio files. 

So you've used some "mangled" Proem patches? That's actually kinda cool that there is some connection. Maybe one or more of those have been on an n5MD release before.

I'm really inspired by his music so its great to have the chance to work with his sounds in my own compositions. I used a few of the patches on the new album but most of the time I just use them for improv sessions.

Indulge me and other gear-heads a bit...what does the (ghost) studio consist of?

A 13" Macbook Pro, Maschine Mikro, Korg R3, a number of guitars and pedals, and a basic 2 octave midi keyboard. I have a lot of various plugins that I've been collecting the last few years. Most of my sound comes from resampling inside of Logic 9. I tend to "destroy" sounds and use layering techniques to make those big ambient sections of the music. By the time the listener hears the sound it is almost unrecognizable to the original. I think it is important to have a unique sound especially album to album. There are a few sounds that I stick to consistently .

So you guy share 'studio space" and equipment then? Either of your flatmates on "A Vast and Decaying Appearance"? 

Yea most of the "studio" is at our apartment and then we have a practice space where we jam. My roommate Jacob Porter was actually in two tracks on the album. One night he was messing with his pedalboard and came up with the ominous sound at the end of 780.03. It was originally kind of a joke, but I stripped out a bunch of the layers and ended up really liking the sound. I wanted to include other musicians on this album, and it was great to have some of my friends improv over the tracks.

‘A Vast and Decaying Appearance’ and its companion release the Elas EP is out now at n5MD’s Bandcamp

[n5md]

Ocoeur

Q: Hello Franck. Thanks for taking the time out to answer a few questions and let your fans get to know you a little more. Lets start with your new album 'A Parallel Life". What is the meaning of the title? The title refers to many lucid dreams that I've made several times, and that have been an influence for me. They were mostly weird, irrational. As time passed, things seemed confusing, so every morning I took the time to describe precisely what I was feeling. It felt as if I was living in other dimension, a different reality, as if nothing was real. I wanted to express very carefully what was going on in this universe. Q: Lets talk production for a bit. How do you go about making your percussion sounds? They aren't 'standard' by any means. What might the sound design process for your percussion be? I often start with numerous, peculiar sounds that I have in mind. Which is to say I never start from scratch, whether it relates to rhythms or melodies. I try to make it so that those two elements live together in harmony, without infringing upon the other one. Depending on the atmosphere that I wish to convey, I will then start with heavier or more cinematic beats, giving them more texture. Or I will take a different route and choose percussion that borders on the dancefloor (as on Resonance, Astral Projection, First Highway), but are still put in the background, in order to give the synthetic pads some space. I try to order things in a very deliberate way, without randomness, with kicks answering to glitches, so that every element can find its own space.

Q: 'A Parallel Life' seemed to take shape very quickly. When writing music do you often work non-stop until it is finished or did this album just flow out of you naturally?

My production and writing timing always changes, but it is never rushed. Light as a Feather for instance was longer to write, but I put just as much care in composing A Parallel Life. In general, I need to work as quickly as possible on what I have in mind, on the sounds that appear in my head. I will never stop a track sketch until it is completely done, even if that means I have to stay up all night – which already happened. Q: There has been some surprisingly fluid piano vignettes sprinkled throughout your music. I think the most evident would be on Elise's Sur l'Océan and your track My Love. The piano on these tracks is very expressive. Are you a student of the piano?

I had a big crush on a few piano tracks when I was a child. I soon started to learn how to play it, for 8 years, on very classical pieces. Whether it be because of my technical formation or because of my listening habits, I would say that I am a classical music lover (Chopin, Edvard Grieg, Tchaikowsky, …), and that my emotions are mostly founded on those bases. I am also influenced by soundtracks, as they leave me wanting to create cinematic atmospheres.

Q: Do you have any shows planned that we should know about? Festivals? Tour?

I started with the « A Parallel Life » release party at the iBoat in Bordeaux on the 26. Then I will also play for the new edition of the Electropark Festival in Gênes (Italy), on October 30, alongside Âme, Port-Royal and Abstraxion amongst others. Then there will be a gig in Paris on November 14 for the first edition of Transient Festival, with Arovane, Fennesz, Kangding Ray, as well as many others.

Ocoeur's A Parallel Life is out now

Ocoeur Elsewhere: Facebook | WWW | Soundcloud

[n5md]

Near The Parenthesis

Q: Let's get right into your new album Cloud.Not Mountain. You've taken Near The Parenthesis in a new direction. What prompted this change?

I knew that after three years since "Japanese for Beginners", I didn't want to return with a record that was too similar to the era of that album and also "Music for the Forecast Concourse".  In both records, I wound up featuring quite prominently the piano and EP meets synths and drums aesthetic.  It's an easy place for me to go, so I wanted to be sure to not let myself pull out of that playbook again.  I wanted to get more comfortable being able to rely on big and bold synth lines that stand on their own and aren't supported by a dozen tracks of atmosphere and noise.  This is best seen on the opening track "Madrean" and also on the eponymous track "Cloud.Not Mountain".  Both come up with nearly-monophonic lines and a general sparseness that is a little new for the NTP sound. The other aspect that's new for NTP is bolder drums, but also a serious loosening of quantization.  Not only a lack of it, but sometimes patterns that have kicks on the beat, snares off the beat, hi hats in triplet and other percussion in even further odd-tuplets.  I think this comes together with some success in Madrean where an almost tribal vibe comes through the beat.  Virga also, the third track on the record has a complete disregard for staying on beat, but my hope is that the melodies and other components manage to keep everything from sounding too ungrounded. In the end, I just knew I wanted this to be different and a step forward.  It's funny because whenever I finish a record, I swear that the next one is going to be more ambient, not less...but somehow I keep going this direction. Cloud.Not Mountain is not without its ambient moments though. And it is clearly an NTP album. You have a specific sound that I feel is instantly recognizable.

Thanks?  I think that’s good?  Is it?  I certainly want to be known for a certain “sound” and would expect people want to hear new material that is generally consistent with past material.  But, I’m also conscious of trying to move forward …I’m sure most artists agree it’s a challenging balance. Can you tell me a little bit about the title?

I was on a train platform one evening here in the bay area.  Clouds often roll in over hills, very densely, and sit massively at the horizon.  This particular evening, if somebody had said that what I was looking was not a cloud, but a mountain, I would have completely believed them.  I took a picture and captioned it "cloud.not mountain" at the time.  The words struck with me as a metaphor for something more, for overcoming.  I was just starting composing sketches for the new record at the time and this wound up serving to start to bind things together and take the entire project a focused direction.  The imagery encompassed in that title drove sounds that were at times large and massive and at times thin and frail.  So, Lets sidestep a bit and talk about visuals... You recently completed a video for your track Virga. I quite enjoyed the look of it and most importantly the editing. Is A/V something that you'd like to peruse more of?  

I love video.  Many of the creative processes between video production and editing and music are the same, so it allows me a way to work in a way that is familiar but in an entirely different medium.  All of that footage was shot organically in my kitchen, using light sources, glass, water, metal...whatever gave some interest on the monitor.  It was put together in Final Cut basically frame by frame, so with today's technology, it was a fairly crude production.  If time and money permit, I'd love to get more into this sort of work.

Getting back to music... Your music has always had such a cohesive flow to it. As a musician myself, who also works alone, I've always wondered what the overall creative process for a Near The Parenthesis' track might look like.

Trial and error.  I would have to admit that on any of my records, I probably had a vague idea of what tracks were to become in only a few cases.  L'eixample would be one case where this wasn't true as I had much of the idea of that record in my head.  But for others, including Cloud.Not Mountain, it flows out of a mood and an attraction to what sorts of sounds and combinations strike me as I experiment.

I do often prepare sound banks and patches in advance of making a record so I get a mix of tonal qualities that I like on their own and that I think will work together.  Setting up the palette really.  Some songs start with a beat idea, some with a chord progression.  I've found often times that the initial tracks I record for a song are necessary to write the next supporting tracks, only to have me trash those initial tracks again as they only served the purpose to inspire what came later, if that makes any sense.  Sort of the sacrificial lambs of the creative process.  Over the years, I've also found that setting yourself up to make 'happy accidents' in the production process can be rewarding.  I've concluded this is sort of a by-product of being a solo musician.  In a band (which I've been in a few), you have other humans playing with you to inspire new ideas or directions.  Since that's not possible in a solo project, I try to set up opportunities to be surprised by random production techniques to see if I stumble upon things that work.  This is a long process for me, which is why a single track can take me months to perfect.

You worked with Medard Fischer (Arc Lab) as Down Review for an EP a few years back. Are there any more Down Review releases planned? Any Other Collaborations?

I'm sure everybody has one of these by now, but Medard is one of my best friends that I've never met in person...all thanks to the internet.  We have a great respect for each other and I'm really proud of our work as Down Review.  Every year or so, we connect and play with idea of doing another record, but nothing is in the works as of now.  You've got me thinking though!  In terms of other collaborations, I would say one of the pieces I worked on and am most proud of was the remix project I did for you (as Bitcrush).  No one really knows it, but we did some dabbling on additional recordings after that, which had promise, but neither of us has had time to assemble that work and take it to the next level.  Might be something to dust off in the coming months... Ah yes. Those recordings were fun. More of a recorded ambient-jam i guess? I remember you asked me if my guitar was "always going to sound like that" and I asked "if your piano was as well" (Laughs).  So I guess you've just sort of announced a Arndt/Cadoo project here. So other than the possible editing of the sessions you and I did, what else can we expect from you?

I’m going to be trying to catch up on video projects I have in mind over next few months… no clue where those will go, but want to get that done to clear my head before thinking about another record.  There was a time that I thought I would only make records for a certain number of years and then I would stop.  But, now I don’t know why I felt that way.  As long as I’m able and interested…and as long as others are interested, I’m pretty sure I’ll keep producing.  That more-purely ambient and more experimental record has been elusive, maybe I’ll finally get around to it…

Near The Parenthesis' album Cloud.Not Mountain is out now

Near The Parenthesis elsewhere: Facebook | Twitter | WWW

[n5md]

Dag Rosenqvist

You are rather outspoken on your blog and I know from reading it this past year has been a tough one. How are things going? Well to be honest I take it day by day. Some days I feel sort of positive about things while other days I just wish I didn’t have to get out of bed. The last years have indeed been hard and I’m still trying my best to cope with the life I’m forced to lead now, but sometimes it’s just so brutally hard and unfair and I think a lot about why life had to turn out this way. That’s also the reason why I’m keeping busy, not staying in bed even if I want it. As soon as I have too much time to think, my mind starts going in circles and that’s never a good thing for me. I have a tendency of getting stuck on the same negative thought patterns over and over again, not knowing how to snap out of it. But like I said, I take it day by day, that’s the only way I know how to deal with it. So does creating music help with the day to day. Could it be considered a form of catharsis for you? Making music is definitely a form catharsis for me. I’m not a man of words (although I sometimes feel the need to write as well) and I have a hard time talking about things that I think about or that happens to me. Most of the time I feel totally removed from the majority of mankind. But when I make music I can express all of these things, albeit in abstract form. I don’t think that people necessary understand what I’m trying to express, and that’s not what I’m looking for either. But I know that my music moves and affects people and that’s something I am very proud of, although it can sometimes be hard to take in or understand. But in all honesty, I make this music because I need to make it. I know it may sound pretentious but I don’t really care. I do this because I have to, in order to stay sane and in order to stay alive. And when I make music I have to be totally honest, I have to mean everything I say, even if I say it without words, otherwise I would go against myself. That said, I don’t ever sit around waiting for inspiration, I don’t believe in some kind of “divine inspiration”. To me music is a hard work, it’s investing time and energy. I can spend hours shaping tiny sounds that will probably not be audible to anyone. But I’ll know they’re there, and I know that they are just as important to the finished piece as the bass line or the harmonies. It’s not all in the details, but it’s very much about paying attention to the tiny details, to give each track as much attention as it needs to be just right. But even so, I very rarely reach the goal I had in mind, I’m very rarely altogether pleased with something I release and I guess the day I am is the day I quit making music. I don’t believe in perfection, but I always strive for it. Do you often find making music exhilarating or is the effort more exhausting because of its cathartic nature? There are very few moments of exhilaration. Mostly it’s hard work, self-doubt, the inability to turn that which is in my head into how I want it to sound. On very rare occasions things fall into place easily, but over the last ten years I can probably count those moments on my ten fingers. And I know I may sound negative here, but the truth is it’s mostly hard work. But when those moments do come, those tiny moments, it’s something quite indescribable. I read somewhere that you don't find yourself to be a nostalgic person. I actually have very similar outlook on nostalgia. Do you think...just maybe... that due to the emotional immediacy of the music you make that you really don't need to look back at older things for 'nostalgic pacification'? The way I see it nostalgia is just a lie we make up for ourselves because we don’t like the life we lead. We look back at time in our lives and “man, things sure were simpler back then”. But the truth is things weren’t simpler then. You just had other problems, other issues. So you look back and think that life was golden when in fact, life has always been hard and it always will. Nostalgia is just an escape, it’s not reality. It’s the way you want reality to have been, it’s your candy coated version of your life. I don’t know if my view on nostalgia is tied to my music, if my music is my way of reliving things and that I therefore don’t have the need for nostalgia. To me nostalgia is just a lie and a poor excuse for not dealing with your life as it is now, however it is now. Can I use that? "Nostalgia is just a lie"? Make a damn good T-shirt! Lets shift gears just a bit... Your latest album Fall into Fire has been complete for about a year now. Why do you think there was such a delay in releasing it? To be honest I think a lot of people didn’t know what to make of it, that people didn’t really know where to place it. Almost everyone I sent it to (which weren’t really that many to be honest) liked it but didn’t want to release it. I don’t think that it’s a difficult album, but I guess it’s hard to label it. I mean it’s not drone and it’s not noise or rock, it’s not home listening or contemporary classical, or folk or abstract music. In my mind it’s sort of a mix of all of those things and I guess that’s not the easiest thing to market… I also think that, due to the state of the record industry at the moment, labels are more reluctant to release things that they feel a bit uncertain about. Sure, if it was a cd release I think I could have got it out sooner, but this was made with the vinyl format in mind and I wasn’t really prepared to compromise on that. I don’t think that everything necessarily needs to be released on vinyl but the trend today is basically vinyl or nothing at all, at least in regards of a physical format. There are a lot of music that, in my opinion, works much better on cd, but nowadays everyone wants that big slab of vinyl, regardless if it’s ideal for that or not. When making an album I think you should always be mindful of what format you want it released on, and keep that in mind while making it. But like I said, I made this with the vinyl format in mind and I knew that this had to be released on vinyl, or basically not at all. Another factor for this getting delayed might also be that I dropped the Jasper TX moniker. It’s not like I was a household name, but I think that letting go of something slightly established won’t make things easier if you want to get an album out there… Why not reinstate Japser TX and release Fall Into Fire as a Jasper TX album? The decision to put Jasper TX to rest was something that grew in me for quite a long time actually. Even when I released “The Black Sun Transmissions” on Fang Bomb in 2011 I played around with the idea of releasing it under my own name. It just felt that Jasper TX had become this persona that wasn’t me anymore. In my music I’m extremely personal so it just started feeling kind of weird to release music under another name. It had become something that I really felt wasn’t me anymore. I also felt that I had come to the end of something I started a long time ago. Sometimes you just have to shed skin and move on. I know it was a stupid “career move” but I can only do what feels right and be true to myself and what I want to do. Jasper TX was something I needed but now I don’t need it anymore. I’m very proud of what I did as Jasper TX, and I appreciate where it has taken me, but I don’t look back and I don’t ever revisit the albums. What's currently on rotation @ casa Rosenqvist? Right now I’m addicted to the latest Motorpsycho album “Behind the Sun”. It’s a very solid rock album and I love how they just keep evolving. They’ve been around for 25 years now and they just keep going, finding new impossible projects and releasing one amazing album after another. I’m also totally into Diamond Version, Chelsea Wolfe and Terra Tenebrosa at the moment. Also been going back and revisiting The 90 Day Men and The Afghan Whigs over the last couple of weeks. I tend to never get locked into one genre while listening to music. If it’s good, it’s good, regardless of genre or artist. Then of course there’s always and forever Neurosis. I someone said I could only listen to one band for the rest of my life I would have to go with Neurosis. There’s just so much to their music that connects with me, I can’t even begin to try and explain. You also are a recording engineer for other artists. Any interesting projects with you at the desk you'd like to share? Right now I’m actually recording and producing an EP for a country/Americana band that a friend of mine has. We’ve been talking for a long time about it and a few weeks ago we started tracking the songs. What made really want to do it was that they were very open to new influences and basically gave me total freedom to do whatever I wanted. So my idea is to push the boundaries a bit, while still sort of being true to the genre. I also love musical clichés so I want to pursue a few of those as well. Kind of if a track has a slight Springsteen vibe (like one of these tracks has) then I want to take that all the way with big guitars, handclaps, big fat organs and the whole nine yards. In music you should never be afraid to use clichés. Sure, if you over use it, it just becomes generic, but if you throw in a cliché at just the right moment in a song it can really elevate it to a whole new level. What’s else is on the musical horizon for Dag Rosenqvist? We’ve just finished the upcoming From the Mouth of the Sun album (the project I have with American multi instrumentalist Aaron Martin). Masters are done and the album, entitled “Into the Well” will be out on Desire Path Recordings this fall if everything goes according to plan. I’m also working on a score for a dance performance at the Gothenburg Opera set to premiere in May. Other than that I’m working with Edinburg sound artist Matthew Collings on a full length album which is sort of a continuation of the “Wonderland” EP we released on Hibernate Recordings in 2012. We’ve also started working on a new album with de la Mancha, the project I have with one of my oldest friends. Right now we’ve started recording demos and we’re almost done with one track so things are moving along vey well. Generally we take like three years to make an album but for this one we wanted to be a bit more efficient. Well, maybe not efficient per se, but the plan is to have it done around summer. This album will probably differ from the previous ones as it’s now just him and I playing around with drum machines, analogue gear, loads of synthesizers and piano. We’re also trying to get an album with The Silence Set (which is one of my studio colleague Johan G. Winther and I) out there but it’s also a tough one as it’s not so easily placed, being a mix of folk-rock, noise and drone. But it has the most beautiful track featuring Heather Woods Broderick and Nils Frahm on it so that alone would justify a release the way I see it. Over the last couple of months I’ve also started working on a new solo album. So far it has come together really quickly, but then again, I’ve worked obsessively on it whenever I’ve had the time to do so. It revolves around some musical themes that I’m exploring in different ways and at this point I think I’m pretty much half way there, but ask me in a week... Once again it’s a concept album and I think all the key aspects are there so now it’s just matter of taking it home. There are also a few other things (a cassette release, possibly another dance score and a few other collaborations) in pipeline that are a bit prematurely to talk about at the moment.

Fall info fire is out May 20th preorders available @ n5mailorder

[n5md]

Vittoria Fleet

Hello Allan and Giada, how are you?

Hi Mike, we are very well thank you and hope you are well too!

Since you are a bit of a newer project, there are not a lot of details about the two of you out and about yet. Let me start simply by asking: What does Vittoria Fleet mean to you?

Vittoria Fleet is a project we started together in an attempt to combine various interests we had into one cohesive form. Both of us come from fairly different backgrounds with varying interests and influences. We wanted to create a voice or sound for these differences, and the result is Vittoria Fleet.  I (Allan) come from more of an Electronic Music background, being particularly influenced by film.  Giada comes from a Jazz, Experimental music and performance background.  However, neither of us listen to any "real" electronic music, if you get what I mean.  We don't really even feel that we make electronic music, it just so happens that we use computers to make it.   So no "real" electronic music on rotation? What might the two of you be listening to at the moment?

(Allan) Recently, Steve Reich Songs for 18 Musicians, Efterklang Pirimida, Fleet Foxes, Moondog, the most recent electronic album I liked was James Holden's The Inheritors, in fact its amazing!  

(Giada) I have recently been listening to Stepping Stones by Twit One, Billie Holiday and Her Orchestra and Louis Armstrong.  How did the two of you meet?

Good old Gumtree! A mutual meeting of two musicians with a desire for creation.   Interesting. For those that may not be familiar Gumtree is a UK equivalent to Craigslist. So I'm curious...Which one of you placed the ad?

I (Allan) did, however it was funny as I advertised that I was interested in finding someone Scandinavian, Giada preceded to write back explaining that she was not Scandinavian, but really interested in the project, well it worked out.    So what might the creative process be for making a Vittoria Fleet track?

Oh! Where to begin! We are generally working on five or six songs at the same time, and the process is always different. We can honestly say that all eleven tracks on the Acht LP have a different creative process. However, the one common factor is that we almost always work alone. Passing the tracks between our studios, giving constant feedback to one another. We have literally written hundreds of songs, although only a few take the balance of both of us, and these are the songs that are truly Vittoria Fleet. We constantly strive for a balance in our music, we would never finish or release a song if we were both not happy with it.   Do you feel working alone in this way allows for less distraction? I've heard of many duos/bands that do this. Is it easier to see an idea to it's fruition working that way? 

Not really, it was not intentionally to avoid distraction, more that over time we realized we had more ideas separately.   You recently (semi-recently) moved to Berlin from London. What prompted the move?

MONEY! It's sad to say but it's the truth. Living in London, working full time and having the time to make music was almost impossible. Living in Berlin means that we can have more time and in particular time to make music. We both like Berlin, but more for the quality of life that we now have. You have to jump through many hoops at the beginning and work hard to make it work for you, but it in the end it can be rewarding.   Giada, the Kissing Cousins EP garnered some positive reviews, almost all of which compared your vocal style to Bjork. While I really don't hear it all that much. Is she an influence? How do you feel about being compared to such an icon?

I must say that when I first read the reviews and the general comparison of my vocal style to Bjork I was quite pleased. I think she is absolutely incredible and I would be lying if I said that I'm not influenced by her. However I'm glad to hear that you don't hear the similarity, as in the process of composition I always try to develop my own personal style. I think that it's also an easy comparison when there are not many women in experimental electronic music, but if this means being compared to such an icon, I'm still happy with it! Upon first hearing your voice I thought more of Lou Rhodes (Lamb) or even Rebecca Coseboom (Halou/Unkle). You do however have a style all your own. Whom-else besides Bjork might you consider an influence? Thanks, it's always nice to hear that I have a style of my own. I would say that one of my biggest influences is Meredith Monk, she has a  unique way of playing with her voice whilst combining dance performance that  is truly incredible. Demetrio Stratos is also another big influence. He was continuously exploring his vocal abilities and pushing the boundaries of the common melodies. I generally like to explore the field of world music too, sometimes getting lost listening to beautiful chants of the Asian/Arabic countries. What do the two of you do when your not making music?  

We are both extremely passionate about food, both cooking and enjoying. Cooking is very similar to making music, understanding textures, flavours, quantity, it takes years to learn. It's also a point where we both switch off, after a long day of making music, we usually spend about three or four hours in the kitchen cooking and eating etc. Giada is also interested in video making/documentary and film, as well as painting. I guess making music alone does not feed our appetite for creation!  :) So what might the current favorite Vittoria Fleet meal that you make? 

Pancakes! Too difficult to answer!  :)

_

The Acht LP is out April 29th (n5MD)

Vittoria Fleet @ Bandcamp | Facebook | Soundcloud

[n5md]

Elise Mélinand

photo by: Bertrand Sallé 

Hi Elise. Thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule to answer a few questions. Your debut album Gray Hoodie seems to have a theme. Can you tell us more about this magical gray hoodie?

Hi Mike. Thanks for having me. Gray Hoodie indeed has a theme. The funny thing is that I knew how I wanted to call my record before I even had written the songs. I fell in love with the word when I heard it for the first time. I thought it would be easier for me to write songs which would be related to each other. That way, one learns a bit more about the  Gray Hoodie story through the songs. It is like a book: the songs are like different chapters of the same story...

You self released an EP (Le Voyage) in 2012. That EP to my summation is more of an indie folk work while Gray Hoodie utilizes more of an assertive electronic palette. Why the change in style and mood?

I think the music I make kinda follows my lifestyle. I wrote my debut EP 'Le voyage' right after I left a folk band I used to play with. We were using lots of acoustic instruments so having guitars on my own recordings felt like the right thing to do back then. I chose to perform with a nylon-strings-guitar to get a sound close to the harp's and I still perform with it today. Gray Hoodie utilizes more of an assertive electronic palette because I fell in love with Berlin & met amazing electronic composers who inspired me a lot there. It was a complete new world to me..suddenly everything I had in mind was being so easy to record by using the right softwares etc..it made the composition-process much easier. I don't think the mood changes that much, it is still kinda ambient, dreamy music except I'm using more electronic sounds. Well, maybe I grew up in between? I would say Gray Hoodie is the hangers-on of Le voyage.

You've been a part of Christina Vantzou's The Little Prism Ensemble for some time now. How did you come into contact with Vantzou?

Through a friend of mine who told me she was looking for a cello player to perform with on her tour in Germany. I was supposed to perform with her only once but we became good friends and I'm now playing keyboard for her. I also got the chance to sing on her new record N°2 which will be released by Kranky in February.

The artwork for Grey Hoodie really ties in with your music quite well. Can you tell us a little more about the cover's artist?

I knew I wanted to work with Bertrand as soon as I got to see his work. I think we both are inspired by the same things so working together went quite fast. Bertrand got some key words and he came up with this beautiful artwork. The shape on the cover has a real meaning to me but I like to keep it private. It's much more beautiful to let people interprete it the way they want.

Are there plans for some shows in support of Gray Hoodie? If so what can we expect from a Elise Mélinand show?

Yes, I am working on that at the moment. I will hopefully get to tour when Gray Hoodie gets released. I have the chance to work with a great team of people from the Journey Studio. Together we are working on videos and visuals that are going to be projected on stage while I am performing with my live band. I love to play with string & wind players. I grew up in a family where everyone's an actor/actress so I really care about my live performance. It has to be a real show with people coming in, guests...like in a theater play.

What's next for Elise Mélinand?

Besides the tour, I am going to collaborate with Ocoeur again and produce a friend's record. I am also interested in directing my first short-movie.

Gray Hoodie is out now - CD | LP

Elise Mélinand @ Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr   

[n5md]

Mark Harris

Hi Mark. I'd like to start by asking you about your artwork. There is a cohesive nature to all of your releases. With your latest release The Angry Child the theme seems a bit more contrasting than your previous. Are the subjects manipulated photos or drawn? I'm interested to know more about the "connected beakers" and how it may tie in with the music on The Angry Child.

I've always liked the idea of having a consistent style to my releases. The artwork used on the sleeves are from a series of 3D renders I developed from some of my drawings which I've been using as a basis for some paintings I've been working on . Their based on old alchemic illustrations (which is a subject which has always fascinated me). With the work I was trying to get a sense of the artwork being intangible and "just out of reach" to the viewer - also I like the sense of something hidden and emerging from darkness...

In terms of relating to the music, the artwork has a sense of melancholy which is a definite element of my work and I often try to have a sense of individual musical element moving within the stereo field which gradually emerge and reside (like elements emerging from the dark). Also maybe the Alchemy metaphor is relevant as I often use heavily reprocessed samples, so there's the sense of transformation of one thing into the other.

In the past you've posted on your Facebook page about custom Reaktor ensembles. Do you mainly write in Reaktor or do you write a piece then use Reaktor to reprocess it into something different? I'm sure i'm not the only one that is curious about how a Mark Harris song begins and your compositional work-flow.

A pivotal process I use in my work is a minimalist compositional technique called "Phasing" which was discovered by the American minimalist composer Steve Reich in the 1960's. This is where two or more musical phrases of unequal length are repeated as loops. So if you had a loop running at four seconds and the next at five seconds the loops will come back into sequence every sixth repetition. Now where it gets interesting is, if the second loop is a time length with is not easily divisible such as 5.763331 (for example) the two loops will then never—for all intense and purposes—repeat exactly. Now imagine if you had multiple loops all of unequal length, you then get a gradually changing musical environment, which you can in no real sense predict what's going to happen. So with that Phasing becomes generative...

Central to my working process a few year ago I created a Reaktor patch I called the Delay Matrix which uses six independent delays which will run from 0 to about 2 minutes, and as they can all run independently, I can generate this Phasing generative effect from any input I feed into it. I can also output any of the six delays into any of the free delays so I can essentially overdub myself live, and once one set of loops are running I can then improvise over the top ad infinitum and record the output live to any of the delays. I've also added some additional features which allow me to automatically pan individual loops around the stereo field in real time so the process is generative and constantly chaining. I'm never 100% sure how things will develop as I'm improvising

As an input I use a fairly simple sampler with additional EQ effects / filtering effects / 3D panning effects that I can edit in real time which are loaded with samples I've processed before hand. I also use a software synth I created which uses multiple sinewave generators as the sound source which can also control all aspects of the sound processing and I can also use feedback of the output to the original sinewave generator as a control voltage...Which makes for a very unpredictable synth!! But I can automate very gradual changes to the sound as I'm improvising. I 'm also a big big fan of the PRISUM modal synth made by Native Instruments, I've made a few minor hacks but I love its natural organic sound, I'm constantly surprised what it can do...

That said I'm verging on the luddite in regards to digital technology sometime. When faced with a creative problem its often a little too easy to rush to the internet and download the latest software app as a creative fix. As opposed to sitting down and really understanding your instrument and thinking about composition in a deep and meaningful sense. For instance... The violin has remained unchanged for hundreds of years, and has a very limited range of tones, but people are still creating stunning, new and innovative work with them. I often feel digital music is a case of "everything is possible, but nothing is worth doing" sometimes.

As a rule I tend to work by a process of improvisation working with massive amounts of source material and I gradually hone down on the samples and patches I want to use—which is usually only about four or five basic sounds or patches per piece—then gradually over the course of multiple improvisations the piece gradually emerges... It's a very organic process. It's rare I have a fixed idea or plan for a piece, usually it come down to a mood, feeling or sense of place I want to convey. Sometimes I'll even combine two improvisations together from two separate projects. It's surprising how two very different improvisations will link together in unexpected and intriguing ways.

Bobby Bird of Higher Intelligence Agency has mastered all of your albums. How did you come into contact with him?

Bobby's been around the new music scene in Birmingham for years but I've only really got to know him when I got involved with Modulate a few year back. We've worked closely on a number of Modulate projects and have also played live together in the Modulate live incarnation. Bob's mastering work on my releases is really top notch and adds a whole new level to the sound, its very rare I'll ask him to tweak anything he does. He totally nails it first time!!. As part of his mastering process he runs the work though some vintage value equipment and a classic Frankenstein stereo enhancer unit which really opens up the sound. So the whole process goes from digital to analogue and back again so it gives the sound a real old-school analogue warmth which I couldn't get any other way. Bob's endlessly inventive and creative and his enthusiasm for anything creative is totally infectious. Its been a real pleasure working with him over the years.

So within the Modulate collective what roles/tasks might you play in an event?

Well the thing about the Modulate collective is it comes together in different formats depending on what we choose to work on. If its a sound installation Bobby would do the programming and sound design and I and/or Mark Bunegar might contribute some audio files to the project. A live gig might just feature Bobby and Mark B on audio and I might do some coding for a AV app which Scylla Magda would take away use in her arsenal of tool to create the live visuals. Whereas, Joseph Potts and Syclla might just work together on a visual installation and not use any of the audio team at all... In the full live incarnation it usually settles down to myself, Mark, and Bobby on audio but Bob also deals with live mixing and processing of the audio. He also looks after sending signals from the audio output from Mark and I to the two "Visualists" Joseph and Syclla so they can sync up animations. They both project on multiple screens and use a combination of Quartz, Max/MSP, Modul8, Jitter, and Processing to generate the visuals. I've programmed the odd application they use, but they invariably use it in really unexpected and innovative ways that I would not have expected. I'm constantly surprised by what they do! We've recently been joined by Jim Warrier who's programmed light show and visuals for some major electronica acts and venues. So I'm looking forward to see how thing develop in the future...

I think your music tends to be a bit visual (for lack of a better term). I understand that you are a graphic designer by trade. Do you think this aides you in creating music that tends to evoke subconscious landscapes?

Well I originally trained as painter, and I ended up working in graphic design by a extremely round-about route, so generally, I would say deep down I work like a painter. I think my fine art background has definite effect on how I visualise and think about music. I think traditionally trained musicians tend to view music as a narrative, whereby a piece starts "here", travels though certain events and come to a conclusion which tells some kind of "story" in the process. However I tend to see music as something you "look" at—like you would a painting—or are immersed in like a landscape. I'm very keen on very gradual progressions so you can chose to focus your attention across the composition and get a real appreciation of subtle nuances of timbre and tone.

Which is why it was such a revelation when I discovered the American Minimalist composers like, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, La Mont Young, and (Early) Philip Glass when I was younger. It was music which you could really get lost in and demanded focused attention from the listener. I'm also very influenced by systems, processes and more generative approaches to music making. It was a scene which was very influential to people like Brain Eno, who naturally remains a major influence (On Land and Discrete Music were a total revelation, game changing moment when I first heard them).

You recently remixed Grecian post-rock artist Absent Without Leave. While you now have 4 albums completed that remix was one of the first you've done. Are remixes not something you really gravitate to?

I made it a rule when George approached me to do a AWL remix that I would not listen to the original track, so I only listened to the elements separately and used elements that garbed my attention and used them as source material for my usual working process. I only heard the original track after I heard the final remix album. Although very different from the original I though it caught something of the "essence" of what George is doing with AWL.

I did complete a remix for the Japanese artist Tomoya Matsuura (AKA Tmymtur) last year, which was a very different project as he gave each of the artists involved a flattened mixed down of a drone based track. I spent a lot of time EQing out individual frequency bands processing them and then recombining them together to do my remix.

I do enjoy remixing other peoples work and it is something I'd like to do more of in the future. The only problem is I tend to work very slowly, so I've turned down some remix work as I thought the deadline was a tad tight. I'd much rather spend the time and get it right, I think it would be disrespectful to the artists' work otherwise.

The Angry Child is out Feb 18th. Preorder@n5Mailorder.

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