Could you take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work? Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?
I have a full-time job in the music tech industry, specifically sound content development. Since my job is intricately linked to my main interests, I need to make extra effort to maintain a healthy work/life balance. I used to be a little stricter with setting boundaries between work and life, but the two aspects started blending in to one another since the start of the pandemic and due to working remotely for the past nine months. One thing I like about my job is that I get to test new software, which pushes me to learn new things.
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece or album that's particularly dear to you, please? Where did the ideas come from, how were they transformed in your mind, what did you start with and how do you refine these beginnings into the finished work of art?
It is complete chaos really, there is different approach to every tune. Sometimes I will have the melodies locked in and I will layer them on top of each other to create the highlight part of the song, then I will build the song around that part. I would not recommend this technique though; it is like eating the icing of the cake first and leaving the rest for later. With the new stuff I am working on now, I am trying to contain myself and actually start with the intro, then sequentially progress to the end of the track. It feels a little more methodical.
There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?
I have developed some pretty bad ADHD and a strong tendency to procrastinate, especially when I am producing a track. I have the option to keep distractions to a minimum, but my mind wanders off and seeks them addictively. I think some of the drugs I took in the past did something to my brain and my ability to focus. I’ve worked with people who are very methodical and can stay focused for hours on end and I always admired them for that but I also have come to accept that my brain is not wired this way and I need to find other methods to achieve my goals. Sometimes I will set a timer and not allow myself to watch crap on YouTube or check my social media until I hear the sound of the alarm. That way I force myself to sit down and do nothing but music work for an hour or so.
How is playing live and writing music in the studio connected? What do you achieve and draw from each experience personally? How do you see the relationship between improvisation and composition in this regard?
The first few hours of developing a new music idea brings me almost the same excitement I get from playing a live show. Sometimes, when I am in the studio and things start to gel nicely, I’ll jump of my chair and do a little celebratory dance. I do not really improvise on stage; my sets are usually a selection of released and unreleased material that I don’t change too much from their album versions. You could say I’m a bit old school in that regard, I know there will be people in the audience that know my work and expect to hear certain songs and I want to give them that.
How do you see the relationship between the 'sound' aspects of music and the 'composition' aspects? How do you work with sound and timbre to meet certain production ideas and in which way can certain sounds already take on compositional qualities?
They go hand in hand, I think. I will have a nice music theme going but I’ll abandon it eventually just because I can’t get the sound right. I need to produce and compose at the same time otherwise things fall apart very quickly. I don’t consider myself a sound designer, I mean there is texture and grit in my productions but that’s mainly due to the sound sources and noisy layers I use, I try to prioritise reproducing the feeling I have in mind rather than focusing too much on the technical aspects of sound. I love tracks that take a certain sound that was not originally intended to be musical and make it an integral part of the song’s theme. Take Portishead’s SOS cover for instance, that sonar style sound sets the mood from the very beginning and throughout the whole track and gives the whole song an enormously powerful character and direction.
Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work? What happens to sound at its outermost borders?
Hearing is a superior sense, you always hear the sounds around you, even in your sleep. One thing that fascinates me about music is that it is invisible and yet it can convey and trigger so many different feelings. It can make you cry or feel scared. It can give you strength and motivate you when you’re faced with a difficult challenge.
Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?
I always saw art as a way to express things I can’t or don’t want to express with words. It was drawing when I was a kid which was later replaced with playing the guitar and eventually with making electronic music. There’s something very liberating about showing a part of your soul without having to speak or show your face, for people to hear what you have to say. Art and politics? I think any form of art, whether intentionally political or not, is influenced by the status quo of the time during which it was written. I don’t intentionally try to convey a political message with my music, but I do experience social and political shifts as an individual living in a city, which in turn influences the type of music I make.
It is remarkable, in a way, that we have arrived in the 21st century with the basic concept of music still intact. Do you have a vision of music, an idea of what music could be beyond its current form?
The basic concept is the same, I think there has been a fundamental shift in the way people consume music due to the arrival of streaming services. This is the era of playlists, Spotify, and 10-second Instagram stories. We call art “content”. We give a track five seconds to decide whether to stick it on our favourites list or skip to the next one. Living off music is nearly impossible if you only release records. As a result of all this, perhaps we’ll see a change in how music is packaged as a product. I can imagine a future where an album will be a complete and seamless audio-visual experience and not only a listening experience. I don’t know how exactly but I’m sure it will be possible with the right technology.
