| THE WIRE Interview |
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original script about early recordings, the ideas behind Nonplace, Leisure Zones and natural aesthetics, by Chris Sharp 2000
1. It's ten years since your recordings were first released commercially - but I noticed from the sleeve of "Leisure Zones" that you had been making recordings at Kassel as early as 1988. Can you tell me about your "gestation period" - the period leading up to when you started making records ? What were you listening to ? What were you studying ? What was shaping your ideas about how you might want to make music ? My tape recordings date from 1979. I´ve been recording since then, speaking with Warhol :“The aquisition of my tape recorder really finished whatever emotional life i might have had, but i was glad to see it go. Nothing was ever a problem again, because a problem just meant a good tape“. (...) I have to say that, in Kassel, where i originally come from, i haven´t had great opportunities to pick up on landmark records due to a average provincial coverage and lack of weirdo-community. Thus, i didn´t come across all the records which were regarded as the shit of their times. I was entering record stores predominantly attracted by cover images. In the early eighties i seriously didn´t realize that the time i spent in rehearsal rooms, music studios or with headphones on, exceeded my natural health resources. I fortunately began accepting this promising passion before finishing diploma and decided to finalize my art-studies with an audio-CD instead. The cartoons/comics i use for the nonplace promotion now were drawn during my studies,too. (lots more in the envelope i sent to you : performances,tape releases, etc.) I owe heaps to the vivid class i was studying with,recall our professor Harry Kramer´s notorious „Infantile Escapism“ project title, stuck to the blackboards regularly when the all the university programs begun. Harry Kramer, a chain smoker, died in the nineties, but not before releasing presspictures of himself, exceeding 70 years, in pyjama sitting in a chair attached to an oxygene-supply-apparatus while casually consuming a Roth-Haendle cigarette . You wouldn´t expect anything else from a person who managed to create an artist´s cementry ( the „Nekropole“ in Kassel ) to provide the appropriate platform for those artists whose excentric, aesthetic concerns go beyond their lifetime. 2. Would you mind describing your working methods ? The equipment and the processes you use ? I'm particularly interested in the way that you manage to make what I presume is predominantly studio-constructed music sound live, as if it's been recorded in real time. One may state: what kind of nonsense ?, using electronic tools to achieve something naturalistic. But music is artificial in its reproduced form as soon as acoustic instruments are engaged for a sound recording. And the more so, the more appurtaneces intercept the vibratory source ( Larynx and vocal chords, or the sounding box and strings of a guitar ) and the vibratory receptors ( membrane in the human ear ) to paradoxically satisfy the desire for authenticity and natural playback. The consequence of this desire is the accumulation of technological materials with the intension of making the sound of the instrument identical with its copy ( sampling machines/high-end equipment). The copy is even more genuine than its predecessor. Our ethic anticipates the murder of the original after reproduction is consummated. The degree of technical free play in the recording techniques of music studios permits the engineer and composer an abundance of quality enhancements ( dynamics/virtuosity through speeding up tempo/rhythmic precision through cut and paste ) which do not necessarily correspond to the ability of the musician, but rather to the performance of electrical instruments (harmonizer/auto-tune/multitracking,etc.). In the event of such a trick´s application, the end product as a sound recording is no longer distinguishable from the assiduity of the solist. To sound naturally reproduced, the use of electronic instruments whose sounds are from the start perceived only through the vibration of a loudspeaker membrane, is unavoidable. The technology is its most proximate field. Acoustic sounding bodies experience a resurrection through the electric current, while the electronic music is itself here conceived. Sound recordings contaminated with the pathos of lifelikeness are counterfeits....potential fakes. I´m surprised that it seems crucial for many whether tracks on *con ritmo*,*just landed* were played or programmed, funny that concerns about the fictional aspect of reproduced music occur when sequencers are incooperated, like on *con ritmo* or *just landed* ,although these recordings rather may help discern the fictional aspect of reality itself. This is what the albums can render. Listeners seem to be scared by hyperreality, a concept were the fiction-reality is no longer distinguishable from the reality. I believe, the machine concept is in our heads. Whenever i had played an acoustic drum kit, i got told i sounded like a robot. Electronic tools, sequencers, rhythm-boxes are the meagre realisation of a human concept, ...never vivid enough?, no wonder, because the tools are deaf. You may have noticed that all the pieces on *con ritmo* are held in the same tempo. The reason why is, in an early phase of this production i made up the "mix your own (it does itself)"- method. I prepared a variety of rough sequences which were totally compatible with each other in tempo and tuning; Equipped with 5 Minidisc Players it enabled me to continously beatmix 10 separate mono tracks. The composition that resulted, entirely depended on how the different rhythms fit together. Those fairly unarranged tracks functioned as the background sound-source for „Con Ritmo“. 3. I like the elements that you weave around your music - the imaginary contexts that they bring into being, the uncertainty that they conjure up in the mind of the listener - the compere on "Con Ritmo" evoking some kind of ultra-lounge and raising the suspicion that this might actually be a live recording, for example, or the liberal use of mysteriously semi-real contributing musicians (the Nu-Dub Players, for example)... Can you explain the motivation behind these strategies ? I cultivate an *improbability-generator*: it oozes up superfluous textures, the sound of a creaking hihat pedal for instance and the swing of a drumstick missing the shell. It´s not properly working yet, though. 4. Tell me a bit about the Nonplace Urban Field. I'm interested in what the phrase means to you, and what relation this concept has to the music that you make... Perhaps you could also suggest and why it's gone from being the name that you record under to the label you record for ? Since samplers have emerged, considering *electronic music* doesn´t make sense to me anymore. A sample is not an imitation as much as it is a simulation, accessible without any "the medium is the message"- qualities. It saves a pieces of the world for aesthetic purposes only, as special FX. Samples in high resolution ( in sound, video, playstation, disneyland ) may blur the difference between natural/artificial, acoustic/electronic but the crucial point is that the sampler extracts what we asked "it" for only. The result can`t be more than the answer to whatever question we have posed before. Today`s urban sprawls have established the *containers* which also gave birth to what i call *nonplaces*, an invisible by-product : space not yet defined, grey area. Containers operate like sampling machines. Programming contents season by season, derived from an accurate assumption/estimation of an upcoming majority´s interest, generating monthly flavours, creations directed by the - speaking with Slavoj Zizek -:*solipsistic speculative dance of capital, which pursues its goal of profitability in blessed indifference with regard to how its movement will affect social reality*. I don`t praise the noise in between redundant codes and digits but i´m aware of the contemptous effort to exclude noise when establishing significance. 5. It seems as though the "Leisure Zones" project fitted into that "social critique" area, although in an oblique way. How did that recording come about ? What was the idea behind it ? How did you get in touch with Touch / Ash ? That release seems to share formal concerns with somebody lilke Hafler Trio or John Cage (asking questions like "What is ambient music ?" "Why not listen to our environments ?" "Where does music end and sound begin ?") Is that true ? What are your thoughts on these subjects ? I basically wanted to record something that i could fall asleep by. I´ve put countless mixings to test until i ended up with the final version. In order for the music to mingle with the natural disquiet of the atmosphere and the noise of the exterior world, it is absolutely neccessary that the volume is accordingly resulated. Only then, some kind of hypnotic atmosphere builts up and at its best, puts one to sleep, although not quite similar to the effects of a seashore or waterfall. I´ve tried to record neutral outdoor atmos for later use in soundtracks and it appeared to be impossible to record a coherent atmo in these regions. Hence the question: do we Europeans know acoustic leisure zones at all ? Areas lacking industrial disturbance and civilisatory humming ? From this point of view i thought it was more practical to let the given ambience play its part and wondered whether i can create a new, a bearable, semi-musical atmopsphere with little help of an audio-installment which was almost as uncomposed but as rich as its subdued and omnipresent model. a truly esoteric record. only once i´ve managed to fawn in awe while exposed to a harsh chainsaw-sound cutting woods and screaming kids in another backyard. This was when i came home tired after a hotel portier night shift. I thought : great ! i´m cured, captured bits of Cages´ philosophy. Unfortunately this didn´t last very long. 6. You seem to delight in playing around with high-risk music - after all, genres like digi-dub ("Just Landed") and latin/jazz/fusion ("Con Ritmo") have produced more than their fair share of bad records ! What draws you to these areas ? Are you just determined to prove to people what can be done with a little imagination ? What arguments do we really have to judge upon *bad* records ? I´m trying to get values together, drawn from a physical disposition: my ears didn´t developed to receive highly redundant codes such as commands or loops, but to manouvre myself safely through the darkness. Therefor i can´t shut them down. What are the sounds that stimulate this ability ? Non-repetitive, fractal patterns, unlimited in its depths, such as the ocean, a waterfall, rain, bubbling mud, wind through leaves, opposite to ground humming, traffic and lawn mower, etc.; The trick is to generate similar patterns within a common musical language. Common in so far as it has a start/endpoint. otherwise it wouldn´t become a commodity, wouldn´t be recognisable as a musical piece; see John Cage´s silence. Isn´t Cage known for his theoretic work/lecturing much more than he is for his music ? What a dilemma. |