Editor’s Note: all answers furnished by Mirza Ramic

You took a long hiatus and some of us feared you weren’t coming back. What made you decide to return to recording at this time?
In 2012 we went through many life changes. Both of us started Master’s programs (in non-music related fields), which made it difficult to focus on music. We decided to step back from Arms and Sleepers and focus on our academic life full-time. However, we soon realized that A/A/S is an important part of who we are, and that we should work harder to not give up music. Though our “hiatus” lasted for only a couple of months, it was a very critical period as it helped us understand a bit deeper the personal importance of A/A/S.

Your group’s warm ambient tones are unlike anything I’ve heard before. How do you conceive of your compositions, and how are arrangements usually fleshed out in the studio?
Many songs begin with inspiration that comes from watching an exceptional, touching film. Visual art tends to have a strong impact on us, and usually translates into music-writing. In the studio, which is a small home studio that’s really more just a bedroom, things will usually get started with a beat, but this really depends on what type of music we are working on. Sometimes new compositions will start on the acoustic guitar, even though we don’t have much guitar on our songs, other times on a Rhodes. We also have a Yamaha CP70 which is a good place to start with initial, rough ideas. But often it’s the beat that dominates, which is done in Reason, and then parts are added to that. It really does vary a lot, and depends on what kind of mood we are in personally. Dark rainy days tend to result in more experimenting with pianos and acoustic instruments, while sunnier days are more about music software. But it’s different every time. Our arsenal also includes glockenspiels, toy pianos, analog synths, omnichords, melodicas, accordions, and other fun little instruments like that.

What most influences your creative process?
This is constantly changing because we are constantly changing as people. Films have always been very inspiring for us, especially independent cinema and in particular works of Pedro Almodovar. Recently, we’ve been quite influenced by the TV show Miami Vice (who can escape Don Johnson’s sexy voice?). But other things have a strong impact on us as well, from museums to art exhibitions to literature to people to random personal experiences. As is probably true for many people, those special, inspiring moments tend to be utterly unpredictable and can come from pretty much anywhere.

What equipment do you most value for recording?
Logic, Reason, and Apogee Duet.

Tell us about the conception of your new album. How is it going, and are there any stylistic similarities to your past work?
Our forthcoming full-length album will be quite different from our previous releases. As already mentioned, the new material has very much been inspired by the TV show Miami Vice, as well as the beats of J Dilla. It’s a new direction for us, and we’re thrilled about that. Playing the same kind of music always gets boring for us – so, our output is continually changing, evolving, and moving forward. This is especially true with the upcoming release – hopefully the new tunes will resonate with our listeners. The first single, ‘Hurry Slowly’, was just released and is streaming via our SoundCloud page.

Can fans look forward to a tour behind this release?
We’ll be touring throughout 2014 in support of new music. We (well, only me as I was touring solo) just completed a European tour this month. There are several shows scheduled for April as well, with an appearance at Dunk! Festival in Belgium and a couple of performances with the band Ef. We’ll also be playing as part of the Off Plus Camera Independent Film Festival in Krakow, Poland in early May, and a full Eastern European tour in June including an appearance at Electric Castle Festival in Romania (with Thievery Corporation, Bonobo, and others). Full tour dates can be found here.

armsandsleepers.com

Interview by Elizabeth Klisiewicz for Headphone Commute

The fourth edition of Unsound Festival in New York, presented by Fundacja Tone and the Polish Cultural Institute New York, rolled in on the last day of March, the streets of the city still covered in snow, the pavement frozen with perpetual layer of water. The official opening night featuring EVOL and Oren Amabrchi with Sinfonietta Cracovia Quintet & Friends was still a few days away, while the synesthetic installation of sounds, scents and visual elements, titled Ephemera, already opened its doors for the first installment, featuring the work of Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) set to an olfactory composition. The “smell” of rumbling bass was strong, loud and acute, like the sharp angled waves of its saw-tooth aural accompaniment. The vibrations and their perfumes spilled onto the street, and an older couple walking through dusky New York alley couldn’t help but peak inside. The other two installations, rotating on a daily basis, featured the scents set to the sounds of Ben Frost (for noise) and Tim Hecker (for drone).

Oren Ambarchi Presents Knots With Sinfonietta Cracovia Quintet

On the second day of the festival, I managed to squeeze in and grab the last seat at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center for a live performance of Pietnastka and a premiere of Lixiviation: Suzanne Ciani & NeoTantrik. The show was free with a limited capacity for seating (a few years ago I missed Morton Subotnick and Atom TM at the same venue), but that “last seat” ended up being to the side of the stage, and I felt like I was part of the showcase, peeking into the crate of obscure vinyl from one of the co-founders of Finders Keepers Records. Pietnastka opened the show with a set of psychedelic synth grooves, rolling arpeggios and a rocking drum rhythm, the drummer’s visible jaw-lines clenching in time with the beat. This was an interesting demonstration of Poland’s growing music scene, borrowing elements from ethnic melodies, krautrock and psych.

Suzanne Ciani, Sean Canty and Andy Votel of NeoTantrik

Suzanne Ciani is one of American electronic music pioneers out of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. Sitting behind the Buchla modular synthesizer, Ciani was joined by Sean Canty (of Demdike Stare) on the laptop and Andy Shallcross (aka Andy Votel) on the turntable. Analog sweeps, abstract bleeps and just as bizarre projected visuals, created a gray atmosphere of esoteric environment, which was chilled even further by the wide-opened door (to please the gathering crowd outside). The frigid April air spilled into the atrium and immediately picked up the mid frequencies of howling ghostly voices, sending chills down the isles, wires and strings. Soon darkness set in with the drones dropping into the lower register and semi-sinister beats courtesy of Canty’s vast library. Like an abstruse variation of Lifeforms, the sound mutated into complex organisms of generated waves, triggered glimpses of pre-recorded media, and plucked metal fed through a complex chain of DSP effects.

Miles Whittaker of Demdike Stare

Of course I couldn’t miss the long-awaited showcase by Demdike Stare with Michael England and Sinfonietta Cracovia performing their commissioned work, titled Concealed, a highly visual experience by England matched with a sonic accompaniment by the duo and the string quartet. The event took place at Brooklyn’s First Unitarian Church on a rainy Friday night. There are some things that I do only once every few years: run frantically around the city only to arrive at an event hours before the start, walk in the freezing rain while eating a steaming cheeseburger between the shows, sit on a wooden creaking pew in a church to listen to music… and at the end it’s all worth it! If you’re an avid follower, and familiar with the sound of Demdike Stare, then suffice it to say that the group delivered. Backed by an equally mystic cinematic atmosphere, the church seemed to melt at its sides, transporting me into the worlds of occult. arcane and supernatural. The sounds of Demdike Stare often leave no words to follow, and the experience remains the highlight of the year.

Phil Niblock

The opening acts for The Long Tone showcase included Stara Rzeka, a Polish composer of “magical brutalism”, blending elements of looped guitar riffs that slowly swelled from their dark ambient counterparts, to drony noise, and finally full on black metal. The sweep of genres in the hands of Jakub Ziołek demonstrated incredible versatility and control of his guitar – a performance which I’m glad I was able to catch. This followed with what seemed like an hour-long single-tone frequency drone from the mind of Phil Niblock, a New York based composer, filmmaker, and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music. Niblock’s early recordings go back to the 80s, with most recent albums released on Touch (see the latest, Touch Five double CD). Time stood still, as this master of minimalism (who is now over 80 years of age) transformed multi-timbres into their individual harmonics, blending organic matter and its synthetic counterpart into one continuous (long) tone.

Andy Mellwig and Thomas Köner of Porter Ricks

On Saturday I was able to catch a few free talks, one of them featuring Thomas Köner discussing sources of his inspiration for current and earlier works (including as member of Porter Ricks) while listening to snippets of familiar pieces, sipping espresso and awkwardly laughing with the audience (when he failed to recognize one of his own earlier works). Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend some of the late night events, featuring performances by Deepchord, Porter Ricks, and Miles – I think it has something to do with the late night shows having close proximity to home, when by midnight I begin to question my commitment to an all-night fete at the cost of a beautiful Sunday morning. There’ll always be another time. With that, I’d like to thank Mat Schulz for bringing the festival to New York once again (one day I promise to catch its full programming in Krakow). Big thanks to Gamall of Backspin Promotions for organizing my press pass for all the events – looking forward to many more in the future!

unsound.pl

Words by HC
Photography by Bart Babinski of bartbabinski.com

Among his many monikers, Robin Rimbaud is most known for his work as Scanner with releases dating back to the early 90s, and a vast discography on labels such as Ash International, Sub Rosa, and his very own imprint, Bette. What started as a focused fascination with radio waves, mobile phone signals, and police scanners, has evolved into a full-blown production and artistry of enormous proportions, the inner workings of which we are honored to share with you today.

Lets start at the very beginning. Can you tell us how you got involved in composing, and what was your very first piece of gear?
I used to play with a cheap 1970s plastic hand-held tape recorder we had at home when I was about 8-10 years, recording tv shows, family and playing in the garden with my Action Man soldiers. I still have the original tapes where I recorded Spiderman with me aged 9 reading all the credits as they rolled up on the cartoon on TV in around 1973! Then I had piano lessons aged about 10-11 but sadly my mum couldn’t afford the lessons as they were too expensive (50 pence a lesson) and we had to sell the upright piano we had at home shortly afterwards. Fortunately not before my music teacher at Secondary School played us the work of John Cage and aged 11 I hurried home to record my brother and I hammering away inside the piano, as our own very unformed experiments in sound!

Aged 14-15 my English teacher at school gave me his reel-to-reel Teac tape recorder and suddenly my creative world changed. Whereas the tape was a linear device and allowed me to play one sound AFTER another, collaging them together with the pause button, now I could ADD one sound on top of another, although the heads on the machine were out of alignment so nothing could ever be recorded in sync so much of my early tape experiments exhibited extremely odd time signatures or simply abandoned the idea of tempo and explored more textural ideas.

So in a sense the interests were always there and it was the access to such tools that enabled the creative process. I still own all these tapes in my archive back to around 1975. I absolutely knew what I wanted to do when ‘grown up’ when I was aged 16 years old and feel very fortunate that this actually worked out fine :-D

How many different studio iterations have you gone through, and what does your final setup look like right now?
My first semi-professional recordings were made in my bedroom, like many musicians, then my first dedicated studio space took over part of my home office for ten years, but for the last fifteen years my studio has remained in the same location, but the equipment has constantly changed and developed. There’s no sense of a ‘final’ studio as I’m constantly rethinking the creative process as it should be. At present I’m working with different interface designers to explore non-linear, non screen, physical tools in the studio, ways of making work whilst standing and moving. Indeed I’ve been working at MIT in Cambridge USA over the last five months exchanging ideas of performance, streams of creativity and how the body relationship to sound is essential.

Tell us about your favorite piece of hardware.
I suppose this is a question that will be constantly rethought. At present my favourite hardware is my new modular system which I’ve been building over the last couple of months, to the point where it’s offering a new direction for my creative process. I blame musical friends like Benge and the film I Dream of Wires for sending me in this direction!

I’ve always been keen on using tools that disable habits, so that I don’t repeat myself. There’s something very encouraging about the network of creatives using and building such tools too as there’s a genuine sense of community and support. I’ve always remained an enthusiastic listener and creator of work so it’s a real joy to connect with a fresh world of creative minds and nimble fingers.

And what about the software that you use for production?
I use sequencing and arrangement tools in the shape of Ableton Live and Logic Pro X and plenty of software plug ins. Most frequently I use the Arturia V Collection suite of soft synths with Mini V, Modular V, CS-80V, ARP2600 V, Prophet V & Prophet VS, Jupiter 8-V, Oberheim SEM V, Wurlitzer V and Spark Vintage, Native Instruments Komplete with Kontakt, Reaktor and so on, then many of the iZotope plugins like Iris and Breaktweaker.

Is there a particular piece of gear that you’re just dying to get your hands on and do you think one day you’ll have it?
There’s already a lustful list of modular stuff that is intriguing me, especially items from Make Noise, Mutable Instruments and Intellijel Designs, but nothing beyond my budget. Tools are invaluable but I must lead the process, and don’t them to steer me too far from the creative process. I thankfully don’t have a list of impossibly expensive dream tools!

What does your live setup look like, and what do you bring with you when you travel for an extensive tour?
Firstly I don’t tour. I last toured as an artist over 14 years ago and have been retreating from live performance increasingly over the last couple of years, battling with personal questions of the value of electronic live performance and so on, a discussion much too deep to explore in this forum. Having said that I continue to play singular shows at certain events and festivals and travel with a very modest system. I will use my Mac Pro Laptop, a keyboard controller, Alesis and Eventide effects, a small mixer, a Pulsar controller and MIDI interface and whatever other tools lend themselves to the success of the show. At present I’m working on a project in France where I additionally play guitar so then travel with my Line 6 Variax guitar and additional pedals.

What is the most important environmental aspect of your current workspace and what would be a particular element that you would improve on?
I had a desk to work at that was built so I don’t sit down all day working in the studio. It’s at a height when I can happily stand beside it and work which is better for posture and energy levels. It’s a very precise and tidy space and those that know me recognise my organisational skills and efficiency so the studio needs to mirror these qualities so I have everything to hand there and easily accessible. There are additional shelves built on each side of the desk and on the adjacent walls that carry manuals, other gear, items relating to projects I’ve worked on (like Punkt telephones and alarm clocks, Phillips Wake-Up Lights and so on). The acoustics could be improved on but at present I’m in the process of negotiating building an underground bunker studio in my basement in an amazing 1000 square foot (100 square metres) industrial space so will await the outcome of that until I work on the acoustics better.

What can you tell us about your overall process of composition? How are the ideas born, where do they mature, and when do they finally see the light?
I’m extremely disciplined negotiating time and deadlines. I have never missed a deadline in my twenty year professional career. I wake early and work all day until 18.00 at the very latest, then close the door to the studio. I won’t work in the evenings, nor at the weekend. It’s important to value your private space and I know that my wife appreciates my commitment to her too ;-)

I will work on emails early in the day, then visit the studio before lunchtime and work the rest of the day after that. Even lunch takes place around the same time each day. Yes, I’m so un rock ’n roll :-D and yes, I DO go to bed early too. I recognise that it’s essential that you take care of yourself if you want to continue being content and creating work that inspires others too.

Composition is a fairly natural process. I’m frequently intimidated working on commissioned work but once I begin and add the first few notes to a work, be it a film score or a ballet soundtrack, then the process usually develops very instinctually. I have a massive archive of recordings though, certainly over 600 hours of unreleased material, much of which I have little recollection of in fact, and it’s only on rare occasions when I casually listen through to some old material do I realise the true value in holding on this all. As for this work seeing the light of day, perhaps not during my lifetime!

After the piece is complete, how do you audition the results? What are you reactions to hearing your music in a different context, setting, or a sound system?
A skill I’ve learned over the years is often to listen back the next day, then again from another room, to hear music through the walls of another space can be very telling about a mix. Listen on headphones, on different systems to gauge how it all works best.

I was working in Italy a couple of years ago and heard the DJ mixing some marvellous music and approached him regarding one of the tracks which I was finding especially appealing. On answering he held up the record sleeve only for me to recognise my own name. How incredibly embarrassing yet amusing since the context was so utterly outside of how I’m accustomed to ever hearing my work played. I just tried to act cool and walked away nonchalantly, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t have recognised me!! ;-)

Do you ever procrastinate? If so, what do you usually find yourself doing during those times?
I actually see no issues with procrastinating in any way. It’s very easy to consider this a negative thing but often taking a break can be invaluable, offering up a new space to think, to rethink a process. For all of us it’s impossibly easy to distract ourselves with online activities, to answer an email, but life is about balance. I’m fortunate to be able to have an expansive library of music and books so can happily take a break to listen or read something inspirational or distracting, to take me away from the moment. Stopping work by 18.00 is also significant as it maintains a balance with my wife, my other friends, with dinner and attendance of concerts and cinema too, which are frequent ways of engaging with work yet from a distance.

scannerdot.com

As this new column continues to evolve, I intend on improving some of its aspects. For example, as of this installment, none of the images have been resized, and you can click on the photos for a larger view of the equipment. I plan on revising the previously published entries to include original photos as well. Drop me a line if you have any other suggestions! ~HC

Akari is the new album from the Tokyo based duo of Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date, known as Illuha, on the 12k label. While this is the third Illuha record, it is the first in which the duo worked in studio recording and mixing together (Shizuku (2011) was recorded in the US and completed separately by the artists and Interstices (2013) captured the duo creating their music together live during a Japanese tour). Akari is the Japanese word for light and it proves to be an apt title as there is a bright, organic luminescence that imbues each piece.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry is quoted as saying, “a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. This premise can also be applied to music, especially the ambient genre, and Akari might just be the perfect embodiment of it. Every track strikes an ideal balance between sparseness and elegance with nothing lacking and not a single sound proving inessential. This gives the album an internal harmony and fluidity that proves more and more satisfying each time it is heard.

“The beautiful st-robo studio in Tokyo put a collection of amazing equipment at their fingertips, from vintage mics and outboard gear to a vast collection of instruments, both acoustic and electronic. Their writing sessions were numerous and long with details meticulously obsessed over for nearly a year. The result is the most bewildering music Illuha have created to date. An album swimming with the most delicately tactile sounds and instrumentation that draws the listener in with hushed, motionless attention.”

The opening track, ‘Diagrams Of The Physical Interpretation Of Resonance’ feels like a long and delightful awakening from slumber with the bell tones of guitar harmonics, plucked strings, and delicate piano weaving a gauzy web of sound among sizzling and crackling electronics. ‘Vertical Staves Of Line Drawings And Pointillism’ is a slightly more tense affair with mildly unsettling flat notes ringing out over somber and heavy bass drones. This tension is beautifully released by the next two tracks which together comprise over 20 minutes of truly sublime listening. In ‘The Relationship Of Gravity To The Persistence Of Sound’, sparse natural sounds create a mood of serenity as a tide of lush analog synthesizers washes in slowly with ever-increasing power. This is followed by the shimmering ‘Structures Based On The Plasticity Of Sphere Surface Tension’ which utilizes the sounds of water and delicate instrumentation to create a sense of tranquility.

Finally, Akari closes with ‘Requiem For Relative Hyperbolas Of Amplified And Decaying Waveforms’ in which minimal and hushed tones dissolve into a swirling pool of distortion, thus ending the album with a powerful flourish. Patiently constructed and exquisitely rendered, Akari is one of the most captivating and beautiful releases you are likely to hear this or any other year. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The album is available both on CD and as a digital download along with a 6 postcard set of paintings by Corey Fuller’s son, Samuel Estlin Fuller who also did the lovely cover art. See the link below for the various package options and prices.

illuha.com | 12k.com

Words by Brian Housman of Stationary Travels

So Saimon Saimonse is a little bit obsessed with bvdub – but who isn’t it? Brock Van Wey is more than a prolific artist, with more than a handful of albums per year under many monikers – he is a shaman weaving sonic landscapes that are just as beautiful as they are hypnotizing. It’s easy to drown in the trance-inducing waves of sound, light-churning beats, bass, and the trailing melodies that seem to go on forever, only to be ached for after they stop. And so, it’s easy to agree with Saimonse’s selection for this 90-minute podcast, which I am broadcasting from my hotel in London. In fact, on the way back from my quick weekend getaway in Prague, I boarded the plane, put on this lovely mix, closed my eyes, and when it was over, I was back in London. A fine trip in the company of a favorite artist! But as usual, don’t listen to my words – listen to the music and experience for yourself!

Be sure to also read In the studio with Brock Van Wey

And if you want more, we have yet another saimonse mix, titled time of brock van wey

soundcloud.com/saimonse

[ STREAM ] | [ DOWNLOAD ] | [ PODCAST ] | [ iTUNES ]

Christian Fennesz’s first new material in some years is a welcome return. I’ve been a fan of most of his music I’ve heard, whether it was the sublime underwater tech pulse of Hotel Paral.lel (Mego, 1997), the outright noise of portions of plus forty seven degrees 56’ 37” minus sixteen degrees 51’ 08” (Touch, 1999), or the gloomy ambience of Black Sea (Touch, 2008). The logical comparison for Bécs is his crossover hit Endless Summer, released on Mego in 2001 [ed. in fact, the press release states that Bécs is the "conceptual follow up to that landmark of abstract pop"]. It was the album that seemed to have the broadest appeal, with its sunny disposition and breezy guitar arrangements that were far more musical and melodic than most of the haze that preceded in his other releases.

Bécs [pronounced 'baeetch' and is Hungarian for 'Vienna'] opens positively sparkling with “Static Kings,” a sure sign that this album is quite estranged from the dark waters of Black Sea. It’s not to say it’s all easy listening; “The Liar” opens with a crusty, jagged edge and proceeds into a blistering sprawl, alternatingly melodic and gritty. In gorgeous contrast is the full-blown glory of “Liminality,” a vastly expanded version of the track “Liminal” from his Seven Stars EP released on Touch a few years ago. It’s a worthy inclusion and is downright stunning for its full 10 minutes.

Fennesz was smart to let it trail off for a good extra minute of quiet before resuming with “Pallas Athene,” feeling like a welcome respite after the splendor of that sprawl. It’s a handsome contrast, too; its arrangement is all pads and organs, without a guitar in the mix. In contrast to the shimmering sunlight of the first few tracks, “Pallas Athene” is like a drift high up in the clouds, gaseous and hazy. In a similar vein, “Bécs” begins with an overdriven piano, rough with brittle distortion and a harsh spike about it, blooming into something that sounds like Vangelis put through the wringer, turning more into a prickly cloud of sound than a clear piano piece.

“Eschewing the more drone orientated works of Black Sea, Bécs returns to the more florid pop mechanisms as deployed on Endless Summer. [...] Bécs is not just an album or a series of songs, it’s a world to inhabit, a landscape ripe with sounds, songs and that esteemed Fennesz signature. A singular work by a singular artist.”

Perhaps the most interesting sound design on the release is on “Sav,” a fascinating melange of chimes, drones, feedback, noise, and atmosphere, feeling like somewhat of a convergence of many of the various sounds and ideas he’s explored over the years. “Paroles” is a sweet epilogue wherein Fennesz’s acoustic guitar resonates clearly and melodically, enhanced by some airy, phased pads and effects, but otherwise a decidedly unaffected outro until his effects take on a life of their own in the final stretch. It’s an interesting contrast, hearing both Fennesz and Ben Frost’s new albums for the first time, so close together. Each one explores heavy distortion and noise, but to very different ends tonally. While Frost dives headlong into the abyss, with Bécs Fennesz looks upward to the sky, reveling in the rich variation of light and shadow, sun and clouds, clarity and haze.

fennesz.com | editionsmego.com

Words by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion

Uwe Zahn has been recording under his Arovane moniker since the early days of City Centre Offices. In fact, Occer / Silicad was the first label pressing back in 1999. I was particularly swept away by the Arovane sound with his 2004 album, Lilies, in which Zahn has said “Good Bye Forever” to his fans on the very last track. For almost a decade Zahn has been quiet, and one indeed thought that he completely left the scene. But I suppose a real musician can’t ever stop composing, and in 2013 Arovane returned with Ve Palor on n5MD. Today we step into Zahn’s beautiful studio and geek out on his gear, in hopes to peak even deeper into the inner workings of his mind.

Lets start at the very beginning. Can you tell us how you got involved in composing, and what was your very first piece of gear?
I built my own instruments (zupfinstrumente) back in the early eighties and used cheap microphones and two cassette recorders to record my first sounds and compositions. I placed the microphones in different rooms of a basement to capture the acoustic characteristics. I took my cassette recorder and made field recordings and to record found objects and kitchen equipment. sounds inspired me to compose music. I remember a day back in 1974. I was sitting in the kitchen, listening to the radio playing Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. I was totally fascinated by the car sound with ‘the Doppler Effect’. My parents bought me a Casio keyboard with bad sounding presets. I started some kind of circuit bending to edit the presets and to make it sound more interesting. My very first synthesizer was the Korg MS20 that I bought in 1984 with a cheap analogue delay. I composed tracks with ‘pingpong’ recording method, from one recorder to the other. I’ve manipulated the tapes speed, cut and spliced them and played tapes backwards. I was fascinated by minimal music and early electronic music at that time.

How many different studio iterations have you gone through, and what does your final setup look like right now?
It has taken a long time and numerous iterations to built up my studio. Everything changed in 1988 when I bought my first digital synth, an Ensoniq ESQ1. I’ve tested a Yamaha DX7 at the local electronic shop and I was blown away by the sonic possibilities. The ESQ was cheaper and it has a straight forward sequencer which I used the next years for composing my music. I moved to Hannover in 1988, bought a Hohner HS 1e, equivalent to the Casio FZ 10m sampler and a Casio VZ 8m iPD synthesizer. I moved to Munich in 1989 and joined SAM, Six and More. The concept was to improvise electronic music, live on stage. I remember a concert at the Kunstverladehalle in Frankfurt with 30 (!) musicians. In 1991 I moved to Berlin and my equipment grew with a Tascam m2600 24 channel, analogue mixing desk, a Waldorf Microwave and a four track recorder from Tascam. I was experimenting with breakbeats and shifting patterns at that time. The next step was a sampler from EMU, the e6400 and a Logic sequencer software from Emagic, running on a Performa Mac. I tried to write and record music with a computer but I was frustrated by a lot of Midi and timing issues. I decided to buy a hardware sequencer, the Yamaha QY700, a workhorse in my studio to date. the QY700 is running in parallel to Ableton Live9, controlling and sequencing an EMU e4 XT Ultra, a Waldorf Q and Microwave XT, an Access Virus Indigo2 and Virus TI, a Kawai K5000s, a Nord Modular G2 and Nord Rack2. I’ve bought the first Korg Wavedrum in 1994 and the Clavia Nord Modular in 1998 to expand the sonic possibilities in my studio. Later in the 2000′s I received the first version of Ableton’s Live from Christian Kleine to run on my Apple Powerbook Pismo.

In 2003 I’ve ordered a Kyma Capybara system from Symbolic Sound for my studio. I’ve created a bunch of spectrum waves for Axel Hartmann’s Hartmann Neuron Synthesizer. I added a Motorfader box, a CM Automation to control the parameters in the Kyma software and some more outboard equipment like the TC Electronic FireworX effect processor and Alesis’ Wedge, a pair of Genelec 1031a and started to experiment with software from Ableton and Native Instruments. I sold the Kyma system to buy a motorbike, a KTM LC4 Supermoto.

Today, basically, I’m running a hardware and software studio in parallel. Ableton’s Live9 Suite as the DAW in combination with a Native Instruments Komplete Audio 6 Audiointerface and the QY700 as a hardware sequencer. Live9 is hosting a bunch of software from Flux, GRM, Native Instruments, Madrona Labs, Izotope, FabFilter, Akai, Audio Spillage, Little Endian, SoundGuru; Steinberg, U-He, Sugar Bytes, you name it. I’m using Ableton’s Push Controller, Native Instrument’s Maschine, AkaI’s MPC Renaissance and Studio for creating beats and musical structures. All the software is running on an Apple iMac and Macbook pro, Core i7, retina display.

Tell us about your favorite piece of hardware.
Hard to say. The hot, red Clavia Nord Modular G2 is my fave’ in the studio. It is a versatile piece of hardware. Very cool, because you can patch everything with the software, unplug the USB and go with the keyboard, the endless dials and displays on the hardware without the computer. Great concept. And it sounds amazing. I love the clean, punchy, analytical sound of that machine. It is a kind of a weapon in sound design in my opinion. I like to program patches where you can feed in audio, mangled by modules controlled with sequencers are synched to the midi clock or built up FM patches for percussion patterns tweaked with the endless dials of the hardware. I’ve built tons of patches over the time.

And what about the software that you use for production?
Do you mean, my fave software? Hummm, hard to say as well. I like to create sounds and music with all kinds of synthesis methods like, granular synthesis, FM, additive synthesis, resynthesis at example. I like to play with Native Instruments Absynth’s Granular OSC’s and Robert Henkes Granulator II, inspiring. It is quite interesting to use samples from field recordings in that software. It is like using a microscope, looking into the tonal, molecular structure of sounds and build something new out of those molecules. I like Little Endians Spectrumworx very much. It is a kind of a modular toolbox for spectral editing. You can add modules to pitch, filter, bend, delay, mangle the sound in a very special way. I love to use delays, FabFilter’s Timeless2 is a great piece of software as like U-He’s MFM2. Absolutely great would be a software version of the Technos Acxel Resynthesizer (http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2007/06/26/technos-acxel-resynthesizer/) I’ve been in contact Pierre Guilmette asking him for a new version of this fantastic instrument but I’m afraid that it will never happen, unfortunately.

Is there a particular piece of gear that you’re just dying to get your hands on and do you think one day you’ll have it?
Oh well, yes. I’m planning to buy a Kyma system again, It is just a question of time.. The Pacarana it is now called. I would die to put my hands on the Acxel2 Resynthesizer.

What does your live setup look like, and what do you bring with you when you travel for an extensive tour?
I like to use a minimal setup that fits in one case, when I’m playing live. Apple’s Macbook pro running Live9 and Ableton’s Push is a very good team. Maybe a small Faderbox in addition to that.

What is the most important environmental aspect of your current workspace and what would be a particular element that you would improve on?
It is all about ergonomics. It is very important for me. I’ve placed all my equipment to have direct access to knobs and faders. I’ve placed the iMac and the mixing desk under ergonomic aspects. The studio is arranged in an octagon shape. The three sections, mixing desk, the racks and the keys are illuminated separately. For the future I will place some special acoustic elements in the room to improve the acoustic.

What can you tell us about your overall process of composition? How are the ideas born, where do they mature, and when do they finally see the light?
Most of the times I start with improvised melodic structures, record into the Yamaha YQ700 or Live9. After I recorded the melodic structures, I build up the bass, percussion parts and the beat. Sometimes I have a very clear idea of a track or a whole album, like for ‘Tides’ and ‘Lilies’. The ‘Tides’ sound was inspired by field recordings I’ve made in France and the idea to use harpsichord sounds. Christian Kleine played his guitar to improvise to some early track ideas and the album was nearly done. I like to play with sounds. Sounds from field recordings I’ve made or synthesized sounds or a combination of both. It is a great inspiration to me. A single sound can be an inspiration for building up a whole track. A lot of tracks or sketches I’ve recorded over time are stored away on DAT’s. I play new tracks to my friends and ask them for their opinion but the most of the time I know which tracks will be released and which are not. I remember two tracks – ‘Amoe/Cane’ I recorded under my moniker ‘Nedjev’ right after I bought the QY700. I played it to Michael Zorn (he was starting his label Engelszorn together with Mark Engelhard). I was not planing to release it but Micha convinced me to. A lot of tracks I’ve made in the past are ‘stuck’ as drafts and are later used as source material for sound design or new tracks.

After the piece is complete, how do you audition the results? What are you reactions to hearing your music in a different context, setting, or a sound system?
I remember a a remix I’ did for Din and FatCat Records, the No.8 AMX. I’d gotten some basic, arrhythmical sound material for doing a rework and it was quite hard to start with. Right after I finished the remix I was so happy and I listened over and over to the track. Usually I listen to a new track a few days after recording in my studio to get an acoustic distance to the music and the mix. The last time I played my music live, like in Dresden at the Transmediale, Cynetart 2013 was very impressive, because of the high end PA in the ‘Große Festhalle’. A pure pleasure to hear that ‘big’ sound in full frequency range, very clear and precise.

Do you ever procrastinate? If so, what do you usually find yourself doing during those times?
Oh well, I do procrastinate sometimes, especially with ‘office work’, when I have to categorize hundreds of sounds for example. I found a very good piece of software, the ‘Audiofinder’ from Iced Audio, to help me. Usually I try to avoid procrastination and concentrate on my project/work. I switch off all devices like the Cellphone or my iPad and the Internet connection on my computers. It is a kind of isolation to concentrate on my work. I love to read, to garden, to cycle, to meet friends or to motorcycle after I finished a project.

For more check out this Interview with Arovane, his Headphone Commute Mix and our review of Ve Palor.

arovane.net

Orcas, the duo of Benoît Pioulard and Rafael Anton Irisarri, return with a new release on Morr Music called Yearling in which they seamlessly blend hazy, dream pop song structures with post-minimalist ambient abstractions into a single intoxicating aural confection. For the new album, Pioulard and Irisarri team up with Martyn Heyne (of Efterklang) on guitar and piano, and Michael Lerner (Telekinesis) on drums to build bold and colorful new structures around the gauzy framework defined by their eponymous debut.

That careful incubation of musical ideas and the creative spark of intercontinental collaboration pay off in spades, resulting in a beautiful record that should resonate equally with indie pop and ambient music fans. Yearling is a generous offering, too. There is nearly 60 minutes of music here, about a third of which I would estimate, is dedicated to ambient soundscapes which either stand alone like the opening track, ‘Petrichor’, or serve as gentle glide paths into the more structured songs, as in the case of ‘Selah’.

“Whereas many songs on ORCAS’ first album were built from guitar improvisations and impromptu vocal sessions, most of “Yearling” was constructed from short pieces Pioulard wrote and developed while staying in Germany during the summer of 2012. Working together at Heyne’s Lichte Studio in Berlin and Irisarri’s own Black Knoll Studio back in Seattle, they brought the album into full form over the course of the following year.”

And those songs… ‘Inifinite Stillness’ with its blissed-out guitars, the balladic ‘Half Light,’ with its soaring chorus, and ‘An Absolute,’ with its throwback style organ, are all melodic gems delicately poised between languorous introspection and urgent pop sensibility. The songcraft is exceptional, the performances polished and assured, and the vocals exquisite.

‘Capillaries’, which also features Sylvain Chauveau and Lucinda Chua as collaborators, and ‘Filament’ with it’s thunderous marching cadence, are more cinematic and experimental in nature, but equally compelling. Yearling then closes out with ‘Tell’ a fully realized ambient drone that serves as a perfect epilogue and which would also not sound out of place on one of Irisarri’s solo works. In fact, I have come to enjoy queuing up his outstanding release The Unintentional Sea (Room40, 2013) to play immediately afterwards.

As the next giant step in the evolution of Orcas’ “variations on songform and ambient craft”, Yearling is a sophisticated and spellbinding record that delivers a complete and beautiful listening experience. Vinyl and CD copies of the album are distributed through ANOST (both come with instant download). And don’t forget to check out the self-titled debut out on Morr Music as well!

For more, read In the studio with Rafael Anton Irisarri, plus our Interview with Orcas and of course Headphone Commute review of Orcas.

weareorcas.tumblr.com | morrmusic.com

Words by Brian Housman of Stationary Travels

Swiss pianist Colin Vallon is new to me, but his collaborations with Patrice Moret (double-bass) and Julian Sartorius (drums) are stunning. Le Vent is Vallon’s latest album with a trio, following up Rruga (ECM, 2011), Telepathy (ECM, 2011) and Matanë Malit (ECM, 2012), which also include Moret. Vallon has a particular style to his playing, his piano seeming in constant motion, insistent and driving the music forward or, sometimes, in circles to great effect. Opening track “Juuichi” is a real standout. Its convoluted meter continually changes and evolves over its six minutes, making it the most beguiling of the album for me, and a clear personal favorite.

“Like the wind celebrated in the title track, the Colin Vallon Trio has a subtle, insinuating power. From a still and silent place its music may breathe gently, or steadily build pressure until attaining an eruptive forcefulness. This sense of poetic compression and quiet relentlessness was evident on the ECM debut Rruga, but with leader Vallon now writing almost all of the program and new drummer Julian Sartorius detailing its floating rhythms, the Swiss trio has entered a brave new space where touch and inflection are more important than soloistic gesture.”

Elsewhere the interaction between Vallon and his players is more patient and tempered, such as the elegant stroll of “Cendre.” Listening to the varied and stark pieces of Le Vent, one can hear Vallon, Moret, and Sartorius all intuiting where Vallon’s improvised lead will take them. The contrast between improvisation and recurring themes is subtle, with pseudo-refrains or motifs revealing themselves only faintly over time in each piece. The music roots in jazz make it unpredictable and fresh with each subsequent piece, but rarely does it feel couched too staunchly in that musical world; Vallon is unafraid to occasionally be sweet or even sentimental in his playing, so a piece like “Goodbye” resonates with an almost cloyingly human touch amidst some of the other more complex and daunting pieces.

Likewise, “Le Quai” is languid and patient, letting the spaces between notes guide the way as much as the notes themselves. “Pixels,” on the other hand, captures the plain geometry of its namesake with a rousing arrangement that shifts forms continually, ping ponging between time signatures before short-circuiting. The last stretch of Le Vent is a bit more sedate, with the highlight being “Rouge.” It starts with a stark, prepared piano, but it evolves into something quite graceful and elegant once Vallon’s players join in.  “Styx” floats by like a dream, conjuring up visions of dark waters, while “Corialis” is a curious epilogue, embodying the distorted motion its title denotes with an assortment of high piano tones, chimes, and cymbals. It’s a solid release from start to finish, showing off the talents of its players and somehow both fitting into the landscape of contemporary jazz without any of the cliches the genre might bring to mind. The balance of improvisation and solid musical ideas makes Le Vent satisfyingly unpredictable but not scattered.

colinvallon.com | ecmrecords.com

Words by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion

Nate Connelly A Dream About Being Lost Blind Colour Nate Connelly’s debut is a rather smart and sophisticated collection of tracks and songs that skirt the line between leftfield R&B and something more abstract, taking slight cues from Burial and his ilk. It has in common with those ghostly records the sense of disembodied and manipulated vocals and phrases, but it’s balanced out by a distinctly more human vibe on maybe half of these cuts. “Some Faith” is a perfect opener, starting unassumingly enough with some light rhythm and understated bass tempered by some surface noise. The sampled vocals that circle overhead fit the tone of Connelly’s intro quite well. At times Connelly’s combination of wistful songwriting and beatmaking recalls the earnest laptop torch songs of Halls, but the timbre is distinctly different. But there’s some more soul in here, a different kind of groove and sensibility; one only need to hear “Tired Waiting” to get it immediately. Ruby Pemberton’s vocal is sly and seductive, complementing Connelly’s production really sweetly. That there are more complete songs present in the tracklist makes the album flow very differently than it would if they were all just cut-ups. That doesn’t mean that his more sample-laden beatmaking excursions aren’t any less worthwhile; “Would I Be Where I Belong,” “Similar to a Simulated Simulation,” and “I Form a Club” skip and stutter like Mount Kimbie at their finest, but with a gloomy haze that skews it toward a slightly warmer sound. That sense of fragility translates into something even more delicate with Amy Robina’s vocals on “A Dream About Being Lost,” a sort of laptop folk dirge, really evocative stuff. That the two closing tracks are so purely electronic by contrast is a smart move, giving the closing of the album a little more of an edge. It’s an accomplished and dreamy album of tracks that straddle the line between beats and songs, drawing inspiration from different sides of the spectrum and pushing them together in interesting ways.		Ocoeur Memento n5MD Franck Zaragoza’s newest EP as Ocoeur (phonetically from “Au cœur” = “to the heart”) shows off his production skills in spades with three completely gorgeous new originals paired with two handsome remixes. Ocoeur’s sound is rich and dynamic, mixing pure electronic sounds with more electro-acoustic sound design and lush, cinematic arrangements. The closest comparison I might draw is some of Jon Hopkins’ most luscious tracks and arrangements, but Zaragoza’s hand is more delicate, less coarse. That much is immediately noticeable in “Fusion,” the gorgeous opening track. It bristles with quiet tension as tremolo drones hold steady under its otherwise tragically beautiful piano and strings. An added layer of manipulated textural noise adds another thin layer of tautness to a strong first showing. The second track, “Memento,” begins with a layer of bubbly noise before it shifts shape into a squirmy, textural pattern of rhythm. This then serves as the backdrop for another beautiful arrangement of delicate sounds, feeling like a lush re-interpretation of all of that crunchy beat-laden IDM circa 1999-2000. Zaragoza’s talent for manipulating what appears to be organic concrete sounds into beats and other patterns is noteworthy, providing a detailed and technical layer of complexity where I often find myself wondering what sounds are “real” or fully synthesized. The remixes of “Light,” the original version of which is on his previous n5MD album, Light as a Feather (2013), stand strongly alongside his new originals. Ben Lukas Boysen (of Hecq) contributes a stunning rework that emphasizes piano (prepared or otherwise manipulated) over all else, with a different sense of drama from the original. Recent n5MD signing Elise Melinand also contributes a handsome rework, drawing inspiration from the spaces between and prolonging them into a haze of drones of strings, electronics, and voice.
Echaskech Origin Just Music Echaskech’s sound is lush and large, with a strident pace and full electronic arrangements that would make Apparat proud. Origin works well as a musical narrative in sequence, with crests and valleys in dynamics to match its moody disposition. “Scanners,” “Ash Fallen,” and “Metic” are each big, full of drama, swelling with grace and smoldering with a deep glow. “Paper Scissors,” by contrast, has an almost elegiac quality to it, with warbly melodic leads that recall the light haze of Boards of Canada amidst the crisper rhythm tracks that are more distinctly their own in sound. Some of the tracks have an epic feeling that recalls heavier handed acts like the Glitch Mob, but Echaskech’s sonic palette feels more delicate and harks back more to 2000-era beatmaking. That combination of intricate rhythmic detail and emotive, evocative melodic arrangements feels like a throwback to IDM’s post-Tri Repeatae golden age and a nod toward to emotive genre-mashing that artists like Apparat, Telefon Tel Aviv, and Trentemøller are exploring. There are tinges of that flirtation with post-rock that an act like Tycho has also recently more fully embraced; “Anomie” closes out Origin with a more human touch of guitar over its aspirational arrangement. I find it hard to describe Origin without dropping names and other references, but rest assured that the result is far better and greater than the sum of its parts. From start to finish, it’s excellent. Instead of merely looking back at the grooves of the past, Origin seems to draw inspiration from there just as much as from the present, with an eye on the future.		Dauwd Kindlinn Kompakt Dauwd Al Hilali signs to Kompakt [previously on Ghostly International and Pictures Music] with the release of this new three-tracker, and it’s a good match. Kompakt’s output has been less unanimously to my liking compared to their earlier years, but they still put out some really fantastic dance music. Such is the case with Kindlinn — it combines the punchy dancefloor sounds Dauwd showed off on his debut What’s There a few years ago on Pictures Music, but it tempers that against a decidedly slick, melodic edge that feels distinctly Kompakt to my ears and feet. Gone are the tinges of vocal house and 2-step that peppered “What’s There,” streamlined instead and made into something more sleek, more polished, more Kompakt. “Lydia” sets the stage well with a fluttering melodic lead and a patient stride, but the real highlight is the title cut. “Kindlinn” has a nice contrast of smooth, melancholic disco against some rather distorted, raw leads that give it a little added bite. Its percussive piano chord stabs are the icing on a delicious cake, falling in place in perfect contrast to the shrill lead that swarms overhead. “Rain Raker” rounds it out as a gorgeous comedown, all neo-trance in its patterns but without much of a rhythm section, instead primarily pads, undulating arps, and a cascade of effects. This is by far the best record I’ve heard on Kompakt in ages, harking back to the days when practically every track they released was top-notch to my ears. Fans of relatively recent releases from Coma, Kölsch, or John Tejada on the label will likely fall in love with this one as I have.

All words by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion
Additional editorial by HC

Fluttery Records, established in 2008 by Taner Torun, is self-described as “a home for post-rock, ambient, experimental, electronic, modern classical lovers”. The label says “We call our artist roster ‘United Nations of Fluttery Records’. We are a multicultural record label with artists from different parts of the world. It is a place for creative music and artistic independence.” Pay a visit to Fluttery’s website and you will see those are no idle words. The label boasts a varied catalog of music spanning both genres and geographies, and they have rolled out an impressive array of releases to kick off 2014 in style, four of which are featured here.

Row Boat In Between Mark Wardale’s solo project has been quite prolific in the past year. His full length debut Ett and his Shallow Waters EP have garnered much well-deserved praise for their evocative Scandanvian soundscapes and post rock prowess. Row Boat’s debut on Fluttery, In Between, is a more intimate affair, exploring inner landscapes by emphasizing space as much as sound. Strings and piano predominate, giving the album more of a modern classical leaning. Wardale’s range as a composer and musician is nothing short of impressive. He seems to have an unerring sense of where to place sounds and where to leave space, when to show restraint and when to cut loose. In Between explores themes of intimacy in an abstract manner without words. It balances romanticism and optimism with a sense of melancholy, loneliness, and doubt serving as counterweights. The tension of these dichotomies pervades the album and gives it a powerful immediacy that belies the quietness of the music. Among the highlights are the gorgeously languid ‘Meet Me at the Colosseum’, which proves the perfect opener, the graceful ‘Hollow’ with its delicate rainfall and melancholic interplay of piano and guitar, the elaborate ‘The Dying Art of Romance, with its clockwork percussion driving a dramatic rise and descent, and finally, ‘What It Is To Feel’, with its stunning and fluid piano work. This is a thoughtfully constructed album that generously rewards repeated listening.		Harnes Kretzer Petrichor Composer and musician Harnez Kretzer from Nürnberg, Germany, is a creator of highly nuanced ambient, neo-classical soundscapes and his debut on Fluttery, Petrichor is one of the most refined releases I’ve heard this year. Here rich acoustics, delicate field recordings, and lush electronics are woven into gossamer webs of melody and melancholy. When the piano comes to the fore, such as on ‘Ephmeral’ or ‘Damped’ it is hard not be reminded of Nils Frahm and Kretzer lives up to the comparison with both an exquisite melodic touch and the incorporation of the ambient sound of the hammers and pedals into the music. In ‘Diaphanous’, Kretzer creates a very different atmosphere using electric piano over dusty loops. The title track is a veritable plethora of subtle loops and effects from which the piano boldly emerges and calmly recedes. Electronics take over completely in ‘Desultory’, a gorgeous and deeply layered drone piece. The lovely organ and piano interplay of ‘Onomatopoeia’ makes for a fine closing track which dissolves into an ambient hidden track. With “Petrichor”, Kretzer shows himself to be an artist with an extremely fine ear for sound, melody, and texture and loving attention to detail. This album is strongly recommended for fans of ambient, neo-classical, and lo-fi music. The seamless blend of acoustic and electronic elements works to near perfection and you will likely find something new to enjoy with each listen.
Beneath The Watchful Eyes We Held Our Breath Until Our Hearts Exploded Beneath The Watchful Eyes is a new post rock project from the Blackpool, UK based duo of Simon Morgan and Barry Parkinson who are also members of Goonies Never Say Die. With this debut, they have created moody and ornate soundscapes that balance delicate ambiance, lush electronica, and cinematic post rock crescendos. The opening with ‘Blood and Sand’ showcases all of these attributes, weaving a dystopian web of sound before launching into a guitar-driven crescendo on a wave of glitchy percussion and pulsing bass. ‘Box Cutter’ is one of the most fully realized tracks and hits a sweet spot between electronica and melodic post rock that would do 65daysofstatic proud. The album continues with a varied sequence of tracks that range from the highly atmospheric to the nearly bombastic, but the sound is always elegant and controlled. Arrangements are thoughtful and well-crafted. It is beautiful and uncompromising in its intensity.		Arms of Tripoli Dream in Tongues Dream in Tongues is the second album and first full length effort by Los Angeles based Arms of Tripoli and a fine one it is. The vivid splashes of color on the cover art are very much reflected in the music. The humorous studio banter at the end of some of the tracks indicates that the music is as fun to play as it is to listen to. But make no mistake about it. All that fun and exuberance are not at the expense of serious musicianship. The songs are inventive and well-constructed and delivered with assurance and the kind of musical telepathy between band members that is required to pull off this kind of progressive/math rock blend successfully. Highlights are the opening track ‘Miniature Habitats’ brightened by the deft touch of vibraphone, the swirling guitars and soaring melody of ‘Scraping Skies’, the sheer fun of ‘Escalator Jazz’, and the jaunting closer, ‘Ahs a Vahs a Vae’. This is spirited, melodic instrumental rock that will have you rolling down your windows and cranking up the volume to enjoy again and again.

flutteryrecords.com

All words by Brian Housman of Stationary Travels
Additional editorial by HC

Just when you thought that our last mix by Saimonse was one of the most popular in years, Roel Funcken comes around and raises the bar. We’ve hosted a total of four mixes already by the sibling member of the beloved Funckarma, yet in this three-hour mind-blowing journey Funcken outdoes even himself! It’s more than a carefully multi-layered progression of his favorite ambient and modern classical choices (the challenge of which were previously conquered by many of Headphone Commute presenters), Funcken approaches his selections with a whole new level of production, by dropping effects and DSP processing over familiar pieces that turn them into a whole new trip. Truly sublime!!!

I promise that you will enjoy this, and when you want more, check out the previous installments: Chronik Consoles, Black Haines, RerCury MetroGrade and Foel Runcken’s Waistbend Fall Mix.

funckarma.com

Cover art by faction23

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Variations for the Celesta by Twincities, the project of Long Island, NY sound artist Fletcher McDermott, is a delightfully enigmatic record for an enigmatic label. They each succeed in fully engaging not just the ears of the listener, but the mind and the imagination, as the most satisfying artistic endeavors do. While earlier incarnations of Twincities incorporated multiple musicians and forayed across the genres of ambient, noise, and post rock, Variations for the Celesta is the sole work of McDermott and is a stunning sonic exploration of the seemingly endless possibilities offered by one simple instrument.

McDermott describes the album as

“ten pieces based around small recordings of celesta. these ten short sketches were recorded directly to my phone on my living room floor in December of 2012. since then those recordings have been turned into the finished pieces found on this album. though guitars, voices and pianos do find their way on here, the majority of the sound is still just simple celesta sounds, stretched and modified in different ways.”

Just a few seconds into the opening track, ‘prelude in E major’ the listener realizes just how stretched and modified the sounds are going to be. This is nothing like the instrument that renders the twinkling sounds of ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. Instead there are humming drones and variety of clicks, clangs, scratches, and whirs. Perhaps the most apt analogy, which the cover art for the album subtly intimates, is macro photography where ordinary subjects are rendered into captivating otherworldly objects. It is as if a rabbit hole into a new musical world is being opened.

Some of the pieces in this sonic wonderland are breathtakingly beautiful, such as the second track, ‘evenings wait; the morning’s break’ or, deeper into the album, ‘the weight of the frost on a branch’. Others are slightly more experimental, but still alluring, such as ‘early ferns’ or ‘the sun looks quite ghostly when there’s a mist on the river and everything is quiet’. Some of the tracks reference material objects such as ‘faint whirs of the smallest motor’ or the highly evocative ‘a ships bell (sings)’.

On his social media profile, McDermott describes his goal with Twincities saying “i want to make things that sound like beautiful music being played through a broken radio just a little too far away.” Perhaps no track exemplifies that aesthetic better than ‘and the guitar plays war hymns’. The album then concludes its remarkable journey with a piece simply called ‘(sings)’. As if it were not beguiling enough on its own, Variations for the Celesta fits into the vision of the Eilean Rec. label, founded by Mathias Van Eecloo (a.k.a. Monolyth & Cobalt) on a unique and creative concept:

“The concept of this label is based on the map of an imaginary land, a new continent with 100 points on it, as the framework. Each release is associated to a point on this map. Each music artists choose a number between 1 and 100, and it give a place on the map. Each release will fill an area on the map around one point, giving it colors, relief, details. The music artist creates a new region, a new area in the Eilean map, a new vision. He gives his contribution, an imprint to the island…Each album has the corresponding part of the map with the number inside the CD release, and like a puzzle, by the end of the project, all the inside cards side by side on a wall will show the complete Eilean Records map.”

If Variations for the Celesta is any indication, the Eilean land is going to be a very magical place indeed. The album is available as a digital download from both the Twincities and Eilean Bandcamp sites. Very limited handmade editions have been made and some can still be ordered directly from Fluid Radio.

eilean-records.com | eileanrec.bandcamp.com

Words by Brian Housman of Stationary Travels

Christina Vantzou No. 2 Kranky The follow-up to a successful debut is often referred to as ‘the difficult second album‘ – but not really difficult for Christina Vantzou it seems: No. 2 feels like a natural progression, while at the same time a firm step forward. No. 1 was not her first venture into the world of music: in 2004, she performed as half of the The Dead Texan duo, together with Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid and A Winged Victory for the Sullen. In 2007, she toured with Sparklehorse, before focussing her attention to creating ‘minimal ambient post-classical music‘. Vantzou, who has no formal musical training, created the basic tracks using a MIDI keyboard. The compositions were then arranged for a 15-piece orchestra (the Magik*Magik Orchestra from San Francisco) by Minna Choi. Finally, there were mixed with the help of Adam Wiltzie, whose ‘signature’ links the sound directly to that of the Stars of the Lid. The process of creation perfectly merges the sounds of synthesizers with that of the orchestra, leaving enough room for both. Compared to No.1, the compositions are somewhat less ‘minimal’ and somewhat more ‘modern-classical’ (more like a ‘symphony’) – resembling the works of Jóhann Jóhannsson and Max Richter. In fact, this would make great soundtrack music too (which is no surprise since Christina Vantzou is a video artist herself). Expanding the orchestra from 7 to 15 (adding bassoon and oboe) results in a majestic sound, positioning Christina Vantzou as one of the important composers of this genre.		Black Elk Sketches I – V Koen Music With core members Ian Hawgood, Danny Norbury, Clem Leek, and Tim Martin (aka Maps and Diagrams), Black Elk could be regarded as a post-classical / ambient “Supergroup”. In 2012, their first album Sparks was a beautiful collection of atmospheric tracks in various styles. For their 2013 Japan tour an assortment of Sketches was assembled on five different (CDr) albums, containing outtakes, unfinished tracks, live performances and, of course, sketches! The physical album set was released in an extremely limited edition (50 each), on Hawgood’s own Koen Music, with added vintage kodachrome / ektachrome slides. Although the physical release has already sold out, the digitl versions are still available! The Sketches are not only unreleased material from the original Sparks, they also contain unfinished tracks for the upcoming album Anchor, and sneak previews for the Danny Norbury & Ian Hawgood album. The acoustic sounds of piano cello are a perfect combination with the electronics and other processed sounds. There’s the “classical” and “post-classical” music, there are ambient soundscapes, there are composed themes and improvised sets… Most music is relatively quiet, sometimes interspersed with some controlled noisy distortion. Track times can vary from a few minutes to over 40… There’s enough variation to keep you interested for the full 3 1/2 hours of this five album set. Which only goes to demonstrate that this is a supergroup indeed!
A Winged Victory for the Sullen Atomos VII Kranky This 12″ EP, Atomos VII, is the eagerly awaited follow-up to the 2011 self-titled debut of A Winged Victory For The Sullen (core members Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran, usually performing with different guest artists). There are three tracks on this 25 minute EP album: two versions of “Atomos VII” (the second one being a remix by Ben Frost) and “Minuet for a Cheap Piano Part II”, an outtake from the debut album. The Atomos VII tracks were composed for a dance piece by Random Dance Company‘s choreographer Wayne McGregor (also known as ‘movement director’ from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire!). The two main tracks are “classic” AWFTS material: the first a quiet, stretched, ‘post-classical’ string soundscape, and the second a beautiful piano-arrangement. The 13 minute Ben Frost remix [as Greenhouse Interpretation] strays into a more electronic, but equally immersive sound than usual. The opening track will appear on the full album (to be released very soon), while the other two tracks are available on this vinyl and download release only.		Arms and Sleepers Hurry Slowly self After taking some time off starting in spring 2012, this cinematic, ambient and rather trippy duo of Max Lewis and Mirza Ramic, collectively recording under their Arms and Sleepers project, is back with a two song teaser from their forthcoming album, due out this fall. For both old and new fans, this single is worth a listen with its elegant grooves, sometimes sliding down the Thievery Corporation lane and other times sending you straight into an orbit. I’ve always loved their lush compositions, and this single is no exception. Out of the two songs, I think I like the second one, titled “Unshield”, the most as it evokes so much imagery in my mind. Fans of Tycho and even Boards of Canada will also find the Hurry Slowly haze of sonic imagery very appealing, especially if you appreciate an overlay of trip-hop beats. If you’re new to the band, check out their numerous self-released albums, among them Cinématique (2007), Matador (2009), and Nostalgia For The Absolute (2011). Great work from a supremely talented pair of musicians.

Reviews of No. 2, Sketches I – V, and Atomos VII by Peter van Cooten of Ambient Blog
Review of Hurry Slowly by Elizabeth Klisiewicz
Additional editorial by HC

Scott Morgan is a Vancouver (Canada) based musician, deriving his alias from the “looping oscillator” function in Csound audio programming language. Yet loscil’s music is more than loops. Morgan’s slowly pulsating ambient textures cover the landscapes of frozen mountains and early morning plains in a blanket of sonic euphoria and aural bliss. Since 2001, loscil has been steadily releasing his works on Kranky, with an occasional EP on Gizeh, Ghostly, and a collaboration with bvdub on Glacial Movements. Today we peak into the source of Morgan’s sound in hopes of finding out more…

Lets start at the very beginning. Can you tell us how you got involved in composing, and what was your very first piece of gear?
Like many others, I got started in my teens in garage rock bands. My first instrument was technically a tenor saxophone but the adventure really began with the guitar and drums. My uncle gave me his Fender Super Reverb amp early in the 80’s and I bought a cheap telecaster copy off a friend. My junior high school music teacher used to let us come into the band room at lunch and after school to mess around with the drums and bass guitar and this was really the birth of my interest in making my own music. Here’s to the teachers!

How many different studio iterations have you gone through, and what does your final setup look like right now?
I’ve had the luxury of attending some well-equipped schools and working in some nice film and game studios over the years so my home set-up has always been quite simple. My first “home studio” was a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. I went through several of these in my early years. Once audio-capable computers became accessible and affordable in the 90’s, I bought one with a student loan while in my last year of university. It was a Power PC 7200/75. Ever since, I’ve been pretty much a computer musician. I went through a few outboard samplers and synth modules but essentially gave up on those when I got my first Powerbook in the early 2000’s. Early on I was into Max, Csound, Soundhack, etc. and would assemble things with Pro Tools or Deck. Currently, I have a MacBook Pro and a collection of controllers. I use very little outboard gear.

Tell us about your favorite piece of hardware.
Well, as I just said, I don’t use a whole lot of outboard equipment, but because of this, AD and DA conversion is pretty important. I’ve been through quite a few boxes over the years, MOTU, Presonus, etc. but my current one – the Apogee Quartet, definitely sounds the nicest. I always try to keep my Sony PCM D-50 recorder handy. It’s been a great little portable recorder to have for “point and shoot” style location recording. An I love my Genelec 8020A monitors as well. I worked with these for years as a sound designer so I know their sound well. Of course, the real answer would be “the computer” but that’s kind of boring isn’t it.

And what about the software that you use for production?
For the longest time I was a die-hard Max/MSP user. I really loved the challenge of building my own sequencers, processors, etc. from scratch. Since Max for Live came along, I’ve switched to using Ableton Live for sequencing and ported most of my max patches into Max for Live devices. I still do quite a lot with Max and love the added flexibility of having this as a component of Live. I also use Steinberg’s Nuendo for mixing and editing. After years of working as a sound designer and composer for games, I became very comfortable with Nuendo so I still defer to it for the final stages of assembling tracks. I also love all the Audio Engineering stuff. I learned digital editing on Sound Designer II so when AE released Wave Editor I was quite thrilled to have a simple, decent, destructive editor in my tool box again.

Is there a particular piece of gear that you’re just dying to get your hands on and do you think one day you’ll have it?
I’m currently eyeing the Livid controllers. The Ohm looks interesting as does the Elements custom controllers. I’ve been through many controllers over the years and still haven’t found the ideal candidate. Instrument-wise, I’ve longed to own a Cristal Baschet. Such a beautiful and haunting instrument. Perhaps one day.

What does your live setup look like, and what do you bring with you when you travel for an extensive tour?
It’s always based around the laptop but the peripherals and instruments change. Over the last year, I’ve been working a lot with a table-top slide guitar, feeding stuff into the computer and processing it, then manipulating, grabbing loops, layers, etc. from there. Sometimes I will play with other live instruments and performers – piano, vibraphone, rhodes, guitar. I enjoy mixing that live element into the otherwise computer-centric set up. But when it’s not practical, it’s just me, my laptop and a controller – sometimes with integrated video.

What is the most important environmental aspect of your current workspace and what would be a particular element that you would improve on?
Isolation and quiet are probably the most essential to me. I’ve recently moved into a new room in my house and I’m trying to treat the walls with sound absorption panels to dampen the reflections a bit. I’ve got 5 panels up so far but could probably use a couple more to remove the echo in my rather boxy old room. Of course, I’ve love to have a studio off in the woods somewhere but for now that’s not so practical.

What can you tell us about your overall process of composition? How are the ideas born, where do they mature, and when do they finally see the light?
I was essentially educated as a sound recordist and designer. I think this approach has fundamentally shaped my process with regard to electronic music production. I really enjoy recording sounds and then manipulating them – almost building a library of sounds to work from first before entering into composition mode. Once I have some sounds I like, I begin rhythmically manipulating them and sculpting them into loops and phrases that appeal to me. I can often sit and listen to loops for hours – a weird meditative state of “composing” that I really enjoy. Then the editorial work begins – shaping these layers and loops into a final composition. Sometimes, similar to performing live, I just do this in a very improvisational way. Other times, I tackle it like post production on a film and surgically add or remove stuff until it sounds right.

After the piece is complete, how do you audition the results? What are you reactions to hearing your music in a different context, setting, or a sound system?
When I’m working on new material, I find it really important to take the works in progress out of the studio. I’ll bounce out temporary mixes, transfer them to my phone and go for a walk or ride my bike to a nearby park and sit and listen out of the usual context. This helps change my focus from being in that “editor” state of mind and being a listener. Beyond that, I hate listening to my own music after it’s completed. I enjoy altering a piece when it’s still “alive” but when it’s finished, inaccessible and out of my control, I feel quite uncomfortable hearing it. Hearing my music on bad sound systems can feel like a knife being slowly driven into my back. It’s painful.

Do you ever procrastinate? If so, what do you usually find yourself doing during those times?
I think I have two different procrastination styles. One, you might call productive procrastination, when I distract myself from a pertinent task with another unrelated task. This might mean working on something creatively different from music or it might mean doing the dishes. Either way, something positive comes out of the procrastination. The other, counter-productive form of procrastination occurs when I step away from working to do nothing at all. I think this is laziness really and probably unavoidable considering human nature. Or at least my nature. But perhaps we need these breaks and procrastination is just a method of our subconscious informing us to step away.

For more, check out Headphone Commute’s reviews of Sketches From New Brighton, Coast/ Range/ Arc, and Endless Falls as well as our past Interview with loscil and Conversations with Loscil.

loscil.ca

And we’re back with yet another entry in our new “In the studio with…” column. You guys seems to like these, noh? Today we’re featuring the working environment of Christopher Bissonnette, a Canadian sound artist with numerous releases on Kranky and a gorgeous piece with David Wenngren (of Library Tapes) on Home Normal. Bissonnette is also a founding member of Thinkbox, a media collective exploring sonic and visual art, from which eventually his solo work has spurred. His latest album on Kranky, Essays In Idleness, is a series of composition studies with focus on generative processes, textures, and fragments that modulate through a self-built analog synthesizer. I hope you will enjoy…

Lets start at the very beginning. Can you tell us how you got involved in composing, and what was your very first piece of gear?
My formative years in music began, as with most, in my early teens. I was an avid synth pop fan and I filled my ears with the likes of Depeche Mode, OMD and Pet Shop Boys amongst others. As I grew older, I branched out into more adventurous sounds that included industrial and experimental music. The warehouse scene was at its peak in Detroit at this time and I immersed myself in hardcore techno as well. All of these influences fueled my interest to compose. While in art school I began to experiment with audio as part of the multi-media program I was enrolled in. As my understanding of audio art evolved, I began to concentrate more and more on the sound component of my work. It was an accessible medium at the time and the results were immediate compared to working with video. I purchased my first piece of gear, a Yamaha TG-33, which I still own today. It was a fairly innovative synth for it’s time and it enabled me to produce much of my early experimentation. I quickly added a mixer, a drum machine and a couple of vintage analog keyboards, which were cheaper and readily available at the time.

How many different studio iterations have you gone through, and what does your final setup look like right now?
My studio has changed at least six or seven times over the course of twenty or so years. But in truth it seems to continually evolve through a process of expansion and contraction. I’m currently in a state of expansion as hardware has made a return into my process. My Macbook Pro is still the center of my studio set up, but it’s been getting less attention as of late as I spend more of my time building patches with the modular. In addition to the modular synth I have a handful of external processors and sound generators. Even though hardware has made a welcome return in my setup, it’s still important for me not to collect too many devices and disturb the simplicity of my studio. Too many choices can become paralyzing, for me anyway.

Tell us about your favorite piece of hardware.
My favourite piece of hardware has changed over time. A few years ago I bought a Jomox T-Resonator on an impulse. I had been listening to a lot of noise as well as older post-industrial work from the nineties. The T-Res seemed to satisfy my need for a more aggressive sound and to work with hardware again. I found a way to incorporate the unit in much of my work. It was a purchase that inspired spontaneity and introduced an element of risk I’d not found with my previous process. At present, I’m trying to integrate a new module into my modular system. It’s a random controlled voltage generator called the Turing Machine. I have an affinity for random sequence and note generation and this appeared to differ from a few of the other random modules I currently utilize.

And what about the software that you use for production?
I am a long time Audiomulch and Reaktor user. Those two programs, in addition to a handful of plug-ins, were the main source of production for me for quite a few years. I also use Logic for final composition and mix downs and Ableton Live 9 for performance. Over time I decided I wanted to focus on just a few flexible pieces of software. I’ve always toyed with the idea of getting into Max/MSP but ultimately I’m not really interested in that level of detail it offers. I prefer to have working tools and not spend too much time building from scratch. There are people who far better at it than I anyway and I feel my time is best spent creating sound.

Is there a particular piece of gear that you’re just dying to get your hands on and do you think one day you’ll have it?
There is always something I feel like I want/need but I have to say that Kyma systems really intrigue me. I’ve worked in modular style software for years, so I feel like I could adapt to its way of operating fairly easily. Kyma systems tend to be expensive and there is almost always something I need for the studio or a more accessible piece of gear to attain. It feels like quite a commitment but I won’t rule out investing in one in the future.

What does your live setup look like, and what do you bring with you when you travel for an extensive tour?

I’ve never been on an extensive tour. I play live events from time to time but I’m rather inconsistent. My basic live set up consists of a laptop, controller, a small compact mixer, a few contact mic’d instruments and an external effects unit. I’ve considered constructing a small modular unit for performance but I haven’t reached that point just yet. Live patching feels a little too risky for me right now. So I can appreciate those who do perform with a modular system.

What is the most important environmental aspect of your current workspace and what would be a particular element that you would improve on?
I have always attempted to create a studio space that reflects simplicity. It’s not an easy task. Audio cables, patch cords, MIDI cables and gear can easily create clutter. I try to keep it down to the essentials. I don’t work well in a disorderly environment. Strangely, I would like to have a smaller workspace than I’m currently working in. I feel I could control the acoustics and immerse myself in the work if I was well isolated.

What can you tell us about your overall process of composition? How are the ideas born, where do they mature, and when do they finally see the light?
Many of my compositions are born from open-minded experimentation. I begin with a very loose idea. If I attempt to predict the results, it’s less likely that I will be satisfied with the final product. I tend to build tracks with one or two simple elements and expand on them. I often create a palette of sounds and ideas and then work them into a composition, trying not to dictate specifically how they interact. The element of chance plays an important role in my work. It keeps me engaged by discovering serendipitous moments when combining sounds together.

After the piece is complete, how do you audition the results? What are your reactions to hearing your music in a different context, setting, or a sound system?
It’s always difficult to recognize when a piece is complete. I may go back and reorganize, replace or eliminate elements of a track once I’ve listened to it in a different context. This means taking it in the car, listening on my phone or on a sound system other than in my studio. In studio I’m too in the moment, conscious of all the tactical decisions I’ve made to produce the track. It’s important for me to remove myself from that environment.

Do you ever procrastinate? If so, what do you usually find yourself doing during those times?
I’m not sure I procrastinate as much as I find myself distracted. There are far too many things I take interest in and very little time to visit them all. Balancing family, career and art is a complex endeavor, so it’s important for me to prioritize. If I do procrastinate it’s usually with the final step of a track’s production that involves a detailed mix and finalizing EQ. It’s an essential step but not as gratifying as the emergence of an idea.

For more, check out Headphone Commute review of In Between Words and a 2009 entry of Two and a Half Questions with Christopher Bissonnette. More to come!

christopherbissonnette.ca

It’s been a while since I made a mix for you, guys… so you can say that this has been a long time in the making. In fact, I finished the mix back in February but held on to it for just a bit, to make sure it was absolutely perfect. I’ve put on a lot of thought into the intricate weave of sound that makes up this eerie journey across my favorite dark ambient, noir-fi, minimal and experimental music, all wrapped around a haunting story which I sampled from a 1958 horror b-movie by the same name. Add to that a few obscure vinyl records (including a monaural insert from an issue of 1965 National Geographic on the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill) and you get a crackling, dusty, lo-fi trip. Then, take a look at the artists in the tracklisting, and it should be obvious why I am so proud of this mix. Please enjoy responsibly and support the featured artists!

[ STREAM ] | [ DOWNLOAD ] | [ PODCAST ] | [ iTUNES ]

First of all, Bruno, you just completed a trip to Moscow for a special performance. That must have been amazing. Please, you must tell us what that experience was like!
It was absolutely an amazing experience! The concert was almost sold out, the venue where I played had excellent acoustics and since the sound check I was already totally captivated by the atmosphere. After the performance a lot of people wanted me to sign their tickets or asked me to take a picture together, but what has stunned me overall, is that a large number of them came from St. Petersburg, so far from Moscow! This was absolutely awesome, I consider myself their fan!

So, The Secret of the Sea is out now worldwide. Can you share with us a little about the journey of making the record and how it feels to see it being embraced by listeners around the globe?
It all started in my town, Naples, and from the deep relationship I have with it and particularly with the thing I most love about it, the sea. I love the seafront at night, a few minutes by bike and you are there, the landscape is truly breathtaking. The record has been inspired, as I said, by the deep relationship I have with the sea; it is for me a source of awareness, when I feel confused it suggests to me the way and at the same time I confess to it all of my feelings. Then when I create my compositions I write all of our secrets. Concerning the signature style of the album I had in mind a specific sound to realize that I have found combining a particular reverb and delay with electric guitar, my intent was to give an essential support to the piano. Did you ask me how I feel? What can I say… It’s a dream coming true!

You make some direct literary references on the new album, Fyodor Dostoevsky in ‘Les nuits blanches’ and Alessandro Baricco’s Ocean Sea in ‘Plasson’ to name a couple. What is about a piece of literature that draws you to make a musical connection to it?
Sometimes I think that books don’t have their own soundtrack, it happens every time I read a book while listening to music. Books have the capacity to push my imagination, I can depict everything I read, so I just give a sound to those images that the book inspired to me. Talking about Baricco, for instance, in the imagination of the writer, Plasson is a painter that tries to reproduce the sea and its waves by using the water from the sea, it’s hard not to realize a music for such vibrant story!

I’ve noticed that you are very active on social media, both in promoting your music and connecting with fans and writers. Has that been rewarding and would you say it genuinely helps grow your audience?
Can I be honest? Absolutely yes, I think that the most important thing an artist could do is to talk with the fans and introduce himself to the writers. I really believe that both, fans and writers, had to know not only the artist, but the man and his humanity. To talk with them is, for me and for the artist I represent, is a front of growth.

I recently watched a video you shot playing piano in the London Undergound at 2AM, where you made wordless connections to the passers by. It was delightful. What inspired you to do that?
It’s a funny story, I was simply going to take the train to London airport after my show in the Royal Albert Hall, as you said it was 2 AM and while walking I noticed a piano so I started to play, a friend of mine and also my manager, Alex, took his smartphone and recorded me, so all you see in the video happens by chance and I think his beauty resides exactly in such reason!

Well, congratulations again on your wonderful album. You have had an incredible start to the year. What’s next for Bruno Bavota?
I will play at the wonderful Piano City festival in Milan meanwhile I’m waiting for the next European shows, I hope to bring my music as far as possible.

Be sure to read our review of The Secret Of The Sea

brunobavota.it

Interview by Brian Housman exclusively for Headphone Commute

Ed Handley and Andy Turner are way too good to be taken for granted. I reminded myself of that when their 10th album, Reachy Prints, surfaced three years after their last full-length, Scintilli (Warp, 2011). That album, like this one, exploits their strengths while touching on new ground selectively, often in ways that are subtle enough to creep in unnoticed at first. Whereas Scintilli dabbled in some darker dubstep trends and Fehlmann-esque techno gallop, Reachy Prints finds the duo to be delving deeper into the melodic sensibility that makes them so special. They still manage to touch on current trends, but it’s never without putting their keen sense of melody and harmony first.

Case in point: it would be easy to dismiss the third track, “Nafovanny,” as aiming for chillwave, but they instead take it somewhere much more sublime and elegant. It’s really their knack for rhythm and lush melodies complementing one another that makes it such a success, like most of their catalogue. There are some gorgeous embellishments on opener “OH” and especially closer “Liverpool St” that honor the orchestral arrangements the duo showed off at their 2008 winter performance in Chicago’s Millennium Park. “Liverpool St” is in fact probably my favorite of the bunch, starting with a spry flutter of woodwinds and strings before a rhythm section snaps everything in a jauntier tempo and syncopation. “Hawkmoth” is another gorgeous one when it comes to interesting chord progressions and melodies, with a cadence and style that is distinctly theirs.

“The title, according to the duo, alludes to ‘the creative process, the capturing of ideas, and the devotion required to recreate them’. The work confirms their position at the vanguard of underground electronic music production incorporating the latest synthesis technologies in these compositions, whilst retaining their trademark emotive, yet playful, signature style present over their career.”

If you’re craving more of Plaid, check out T.E.T.H.E.R. – an interactive web app created by Jono Brandel and Plaid, where you can manipulate geometric shapes which gradually evolve with the music. There is also a highly elusive soundtrack for the interactive film experience, titled The Carp and the Seagull, which Warp re-released in 2012, and then an even more obscure score for the Japanese anime Tekkonkinkreet (Aniplex Inc., 2006) which I can’t recommend highly enough! Easily a contender for the best of the year so far.

plaid.co.uk | warp.net

Words by Matthew Mercer of Ear Influxion
Additional editorial by HC

Luke Howard was on of my great 2013 discoveries. This Australian musician appeared on the scene via his self-released debut, titled Sun, Cloud, and immediately captured my heart, and a deserved spot on Headphone Commute’s Best of 2013 list, Music For Watching The Snow Slowly Fall In The Moonlight, along the likes of Eluvium, Lubomyr Melnyk, Nils Frahm, Fabrizio Paterlini, Ludovico Einaudi, and many other gorgeous modern classical works. Today we take a look at this pianist’s studio setup, to discover more about the process and the tools. Enjoy!

Lets start at the very beginning. Can you tell us how you got involved in composing, and what was your very first piece of gear?
I’ve been playing the piano since I was quite young and I started writing music around that time too, although my first composition (whilst unintentionally bitonal) wouldn’t pass much muster now. At school I played in various bands and musicals, then did the jazz course at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. I spent a lot of time obsessed with Bud Powell, Keith Jarrett and Brad Mehldau before deciding my interests lay (mostly) elsewhere. I was quite fortunate that my high school had an electronic music program, which was quite forward thinking for the time. They would lend me their Ensoniq ESQ-1, Roland D-5, Atari 1040ST and four track over the school holidays, so I suppose I had an early introduction there.

How many different studio iterations have you gone through, and what does your final setup look like right now?
It’s gone through a few iterations, but pretty much it has always been based around a Mac running Pro Tools. Pro Tools is not the most intuitive or creative environment but it’s the one I’m most familiar with. If I was starting now I guess I would just use Ableton or maybe Logic because they probably make more sense for composition. Pro Tools’ ubiquity is useful, though, as the last records have been made in several different studios, and session portability saves a bit of time. I have a bunch of Crane Song and Dave Hill gear which I love, some Coles and Schoeps microphones, a couple of hardware reverbs, a Space Echo, and a few other bits and pieces. I tend to subscribe to the “buy cheap, buy twice” school of thought, so I try not to buy anything unless I plan to keep it for a long time. Having said that, I’m mostly in the box and I spend more time at the piano or with Sibelius (music notation software) than in the audio world.

Tell us about your favorite piece of hardware.
Well, aside from my piano, it would probably be the Bricasti M7. My youthful ECM obsession has manifested itself in reverb lust (surely there is a compound German word for that). I’ve been fortunate to work with Jan Erik Kongshaug a few times and I’m always trying to steal his reverb settings! Anyway, the Bricasti is the reverb that doesn’t sound like reverb, it just sounds like a room. Ironically it is sometimes too transparent. It is a magical bit of hardware. I’m also very fond of the old Digidesign ProControl, it feels so much better built than the stuff Avid make now, and they’re quite cheap on the second hand market. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly) it is no longer supported by Pro Tools.

And what about the software that you use for production?
Because most of my music is to be played by humans, I use Sibelius (and paper!) a lot. In the production world, there are many plugins I love: all of the SoundToys stuff (particularly EchoBoy and Decapitator), GRM Tools, Steven Massey’s inexpensive but great Pro Tools plugins, Crane Song Phoenix, and Relab’s LX480 reverb. The latter is by far my favourite plugin reverb and actually the only one I use. I think SoundToys Decapitator was on the master buss of all of “Sun, Cloud”. Michael Norris’ plugins are quite special, as are some of the Universal Audio ones. Having said all of that, I try to restrict myself to a small number of tools (to avoid choice paralysis), and also most of my records are mixed by Hadyn Buxton and usually the first thing he does it clear my settings!

Is there a particular piece of gear that you’re just dying to get your hands on and do you think one day you’ll have it?
Of course I go through periods of wanting this or that but honestly, I suspect I’ve already more than I need – particularly given I’m often travelling anyway. Being at home is comfortable and it’s great to have everything at hand, but when away the laptop more than suffices, which probably says something. I’m not sure I’ve found quite the perfect set of monitors yet: I have these Spiral Groove Studio Ones (not shown), which sound very accurate, but I miss the low end. And a better piano would be nice but, as with the speakers, these investments would first require a bigger room.

What does your live setup look like, and what do you bring with you when you travel for an extensive tour?
I haven’t yet done an “extensive” tour, unless you’re counting the long flight from Australia as the extensive bit! Anyway, it will come as no surprise that I use Ableton Live. I have a Monome to trigger the clips and the smaller Akai controllers for knob twiddling and playing. I am curious about the Livid Code, it looks as if it could replace a bunch of things. Most of the stuff I trigger I just bounce out of the original session (without reverb, so I can adjust to the room), but there are a few more involved chains. Back home my friend Mike Katz handles laptop duties, which is great as I can focus on the piano and engaging with the audience, rather than looking like I am checking my e-mail (which I probably am doing anyway).

What is the most important environmental aspect of your current workspace and what would be a particular element that you would improve on?
The best aspect of my current workspace is that it’s in its own room (actually, my bedroom; I sleep in the living room) and so there is some separation; when I go in there, it’s to make music. Pretty much everything else about it is far from ideal: it’s really difficult to work in during the Australian summer because it gets so hot, and it’s quite unergonomic and cluttered. Unfortunately Melbourne is not Berlin and finding studio spaces that are affordable, roomy and central is quite difficult. One day I would love to create an environment that captures the calm of my favourite studios, Greenhouse (in Reykajvík) and Rainbow (in Oslo). Those places remind me how much on an impact one’s environment has on mood and productivity. My ideal place would be a really big, treated room, with the absolute minimum of gear in it!

What can you tell us about your overall process of composition? How are the ideas born, where do they mature, and when do they finally see the light?
I have a few approaches and I’m always keen to find more so I’m not endlessly rewriting the same piece! A lot of music, say, on “Sun, Cloud” started as piano improvisations that I recorded sketches of and then transcribed and orchestrated. I have this sort of strange faith in improvisation and the subconscious: I will often leave these pieces unedited. “Portrait Gallery” was an improvisation I recorded one night with my Mbox, it wasn’t intended for release. Another approach, which I used for a piece I’m finishing at the moment, is to improvise for say half an hour or an hour, chop and rearrange it, and then transcribe the good bits. I generally do the transcription by ear and not from MIDI as otherwise I spend more time cleaning it up and in transcribing I tend to process the ideas a bit too. Then I will spend a lot of time editing it further in Sibelius, trying to place things without destroying the original idea. Other times, it’s just at the piano with some manuscript; I keep a notebook and also a bunch of crappy phone recordings of unfinished ideas for future mining. I often think of ideas at sound checks when I’m in front of a piano but otherwise distracted, so being able to record into the phone is really useful. A lot of my music is social in the sense that I like to write for my friends, often to get them to collaborate in ways that they otherwise wouldn’t. The electronic textures, I’m just generally mucking around, it is not particularly informed although I am starting to find things I like. In the future I would like to compose more music that hangs on some external narrative, be it a book or a poem or a film, even if this is not disclosed to the listener; I think that would help break some habits.

After the piece is complete, how do you audition the results? What are your reactions to hearing your music in a different context, setting, or a sound system?
It’s always interesting to hear music you’ve worked on in a different context but it doesn’t happen all too often, maybe because I don’t drive! Mostly it’s home or laptop speakers. I don’t really like hearing my music as background music, I’d rather not listen to it that way (although I’m less concerned if others do).

Do you ever procrastinate? If so, what do you usually find yourself doing during those times?
I am a terrible procrastinator, or should I say, I am easily distracted. I don’t have a television but the internet easily takes its place. The problem is always overcoming the inertia of starting a project or a piece, once started usually the momentum carries you most of the way. Often I go to the library to work, being in the company of others helps a bit, as does having a routine. But yes, like most of us self-employed folk with flexible deadlines, it is a constant battle. Please keep asking this question as the answers are always enlightening!

Be sure to check out Headphone Commute’s review of Sun, Cloud

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