P&C Interview: Oskar Schuster
by Amanda Nordqvist.
Since his debut in 2011, Oskar Schuster has released three albums as well as several EP’s and singles, and is an ideal example of the benefits of crowdfunding. Oskar’s music has been rightly compared to that of Yann Tiersen, and with his vintage, fairy-tale sound, he creates tracks that can take any listener back to their childhood dreams.
His latest album, Tristesse Télescopique, was released in September 2015 after a successful crowdfunding campaign, and contained not only his phenomenal, melancholic music, but also artwork in the shape of analogue photographs, that would fade progressively when exposed to light: a perfect analogy for the theme his album seems to follow, that also shows Oskar’s dedication to the arts and his fans – something we are very impressed and inspired by here at Piano & Coffee.
So, let’s start from the beginning - how were you introduced to the arts?
I was always surrounded by art in a way; art was very important to my parents, especially to my mother. She painted and she loved classical music and classical literature, so there were many, many books in our house and I remember the sound of classical music from the radio and my mother singing little melodies and playing the guitar. We also had an old piano standing in our living room. It was a wedding present that my father gave to my mother. So I started very early, maybe at the age of four or five years, to play around on the piano and when I got into elementary school at the age of six, I also started to take piano lessons.
I always loved to create things of my own, too. At first it was more the usual creative things children do, together with friends, but when I got my first computer, a Commodore 64, it was the first time I really got passionate about creating things on my own, like I do now. I think I was maybe nine years old. And for the coming few years, I would spend lots of time in front of the computer, programming little games and also some little music tunes. When I was 14, I was introduced to composing music in a more serious way by a friend. I stopped with programming games and focused on music from that time on.
Has your artistic style remained the same since you first started, or has it changed significantly?
It has changed very much. When I started, I experimented a lot and composed music in just about any style using many different instruments and mainly the computer. It was only when I was 25 that I started to focus on creating my very own style and started to use the piano as main instrument for my compositions.
When and why did you decide to pursue art as a career?
A friend of mine managed to convince me to form a band with him and try to pursue art as a career. I was 24 and having doubts about my studies anyway at that time. So I dropped out of university and moved to Berlin. The plan with the band didn’t work out, but I stayed in Berlin and continued to create music on my own.
What is your biggest inspiration when creating art?
It’s something I struggle to express with words. I can’t really explain it, but I have the urge to create something, some kind of magic. I don’t have any concrete inspiration, I just want to create things, melodies, images, stories, that touch me personally (and hopefully also other people) in a very deep way. It’s a strange thing. I don’t consciously “create” those melodies, I improvise a lot on the piano and sometimes, very rarely, I randomly play a few notes and suddenly I know how to continue, I have a melody in my head but I don’t know where it came from, and I always know if such a melody is meaningful or just a random combination of sounds. But I can’t explain why it’s meaningful.
You incorporate a lot of unique, (musically) non-traditional sounds into your work. Do you usually build the piece around the particular sound you want to use, or the other way around?
I compose all of my music on the piano first. Then I record it and then I build those other sounds around it. For me, the most important things are the melody and harmony, the composition itself. Then come the other sounds and the sound of the recording. It is very important to me, too, and I work a lot on getting it to sound right and incorporating sounds and other instruments like music boxes to create an atmosphere that fits the melodies and harmonies and takes them to a higher level. I compare it with a painting: for me the composition itself, the melody and harmony, are like the outlines of a painting, the outlines of a face or a scene, waiting to be filled with colour. But the form of the face or the “story” of the scene is the basement and without it, the painting would be just a random formation of colours without any meaning.
Do you ever struggle with balancing the classical foundation with the modern, more experimental parts of your work?
I don’t think there is much “classical foundation” in my music. I have released a few piano solo pieces of course that are a bit more “classical”, and it’s true that I sometimes struggle with them. That is also the reason why most of my music is not piano solo. My music usually wouldn’t work without all the other sounds I add because my approach is very different from classical music. I don’t develop my melodies like classical composers did. I just repeat them in loops without changing a single note - of course intentionally. It’s more like pop music with verses and choruses. The development happens in the other kind of sounds that I add on top of the piano.
Where did you get the idea for the glorious Damascus music video? Can you describe the process of making it?
I’m kind of an analogue photography nerd, so the idea of making a stop-motion video using self-developed negatives came quite naturally to me. I shot it using an old SLR camera from GDR times. All movements by the girl in the video were executed very slowly and I shot with around 2 frames per second which was the fastest I could do (my thumb began to hurt quite badly because of winding the film so quickly and taking so many hundreds of pictures in such a short amount of time). All in all, I shot 40 rolls of film which makes around 1400 photos in whole. I developed those in my bathroom using home-brewed Caffenol developer made from coffee and washing soda. It took a whole day without any breaks to just develop all those films. Scanning the negatives and editing them together took another few weeks. But it was fun!
You also make it a point to include other types of art in your work, an impressive feat all by itself, and something we cherish and explore a lot here at P&C. You seem to do most of it on your own, but if you had the chance to collaborate with any artist, of any kind, dead or alive – who would it be?
I’d love to collaborate with Zach Condon from Beirut. I love his voice and our musical approach is quite similar in some ways. Other than that, I’d love to collaborate on some artwork with Jonsi and Alex (from Sigur Rós). I not only admire Jonsi’s music but also very much the artwork they create together. It has been a great inspiration for me when creating my own artwork.
What is your experience with crowdfunding? What made you decide to try it out? Has it been more or less difficult than you’d imagined?
I didn’t really know about crowdfunding until I got asked a question about it in an interview back in 2011 or 2012. It made me think about it and I decided to try it. It worked very well, so I did it again with my latest album and I most likely will soon start a new project for my upcoming album. It was actually easier than I expected. I kind of expected it not to work at all because back in 2012 I didn’t have many fans and followers.
You created a beautifully composed promotional video to help with your crowdfunding. Where did the idea for that video come from?
You mean the one for my latest album, with the photo album, right? For that album, I wanted to explore the emotions connected with nostalgia and momentariness, so I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work with old, faded photographs somehow, for the artwork and also for that crowdfunding video. I got the idea of making a video that zooms into that photo album and makes some of the photos come alive, showing the things my supporters can get when they pledge for my crowdfunding campaign.
Lastly, is there anything you’d like to tell me about any coming project/s?
I’m in the process of starting the recording and mixing of my next album right now! I hope to release it in autumn of this year.
Check out all of Oskar’s work on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, SoundCloud, and his official website.
