You are from quite a remote area of Russia, and to me the music has quite a ‘distant’ atmosphere, is this a geographical thing do you think? What influence do your surroundings have on your music?

Karelia is not that remote, actually. It takes one night in a train to get to the capitals – Moscow and Saint Petersburg. And it’s just a 4 hour ride to Finland! However, we all feel a bit distant here. To some extent, it’s just Finnish / Karelian mentality – a frozen loneliness vibe. Of course, the surroundings influence our art a lot. It’s always cold, winter begins in early October and the snow melts only in April. Summer is just rainy, with a week or two of sunshine. They say our republic is “the land of forests and lakes”. Two of the biggest lakes in Europe are located near Petrozavodsk and Sortavala. The lonely, lost, rainy moods come from the surroundings, probably. The troubled atmosphere of The North. Wet mossy woods filled with mushrooms, berry swamps… Anya comes from Kazakhstan, she moved here when she was 8. And she’s still getting used to this place. A pretty radical change!

Your music for me brought up images of Buddhist Meditation – is this something that interests you, or is making music your form of meditation?

There are millions of ways to “get somewhere”, to get high, so many levels of deepness, many ideologies and prisms of understanding. We are very far from Buddhist meditation, even through Buddhist imaginary and music may inspire us quite a lot from time to time. But it would be stupid to not notice little shadows of deep understanding / feeling when you’re approaching any personal art, honest and pure self-expression. And especially if you create it yourself. There were moments Ivan cried onstage and there were moments we both were in slumber, it felt that time doesn’t exist. Lots of times we were lost in our sounds. You may call it meditation, concentration or any other word one feels like using. You know it when you feel it. And if you feel something – that’s the best compliment or regard we can aim for.

The final part of the tape adds a sort of mysticism to the UK, which was very powerful for me, as up until then the music for me conjured up images of distant desolate empty Russian frozen landscapes, but then the juxtaposition of this with the UK place names, sort of inverted the whole thing and added a magical air to what might otherwise be mundane (to me as someone from Britain). It gave the whole tape it a sort of twist: was this what you intended by including this?

America and UK are so mystical if you’re a foreigner! You wouldn’t believe! Ivan knows a lot of people who construct their whole personal life according to some images they’ve invented or accepted – images of London or Edinburgh or Manchester! He tried studying English language and culture at university for some time. Pronunciation exercises like this were essential part of his life. And a little bit of private everyday experience always adds to the overall experience of getting to know someone. That was the initial idea of using that fragment. And yes, it gives a pretty weird twist to the whole tape. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.

Anya, I noticed a similar sort of vein (in so far as meanings being not always obvious) in some of your art, with lots of images within images. Are the two mediums for you very interlinked?

Pretty much everything is self-expression: cooking, talking, all the things I do! Music and drawing are just two things I devote much more time and effort. There’s something very important in both music and visual art for me – when I’m at it I feel protected. I feel that no one can influence me without my will. I can share my energy, I can borrow some of others’ but only if I want to. This is my own. My deep personal space.

Is music something therapeutic for you?

Of course!

Maybe a bit of a probing question, but what is it about each other that you find particularly conducive to creativity?

Our relationship works in a harmonic way; we fill each other’s weak places and support and share the strong qualities. We’ve worked our a way of synchronising feelings, aspirations… Not talking about playing music at all. Actually, Love Cult was intended as a punk / noise-rock duo. I guess the outcome is that synchronisation, harmony and common ground we talk about.

How do you create the sounds? Are you pieces carefully planned, or just an expression of a burst of inspiration?

No planning, never. If there’s a spontaneous need to make music we’re doing it. Plug in, form some minimal musical shape, make loops, then sing and play endlessly around it. Sometimes for 10 minutes, sometimes for many hours. We record everything straight to tape, live, one channel. Then we just listen to the tapes and decide if there are moments we’ve reached some unknown, eerie territories. In a live setting that’s exactly the same, except for a moment that we know beforehand two or three sounds that work good together.

What inspires you?

People and their vibes, smells, colours, atmosphere, air, temperature, everything around. Tiny hints of other lives / realities, different places, spaces, moods.

Love Cult is a musikal duo from Karelia performing tiny handcrafted drones, sharp noises, wordless mantras, spacey guitar loops and broken folk songs. Relaxation/concentration music for wanderers, lovers and dropouts. Many things at the same time with no clear message, just a feeling of open space and loving arms. Also described by friends as “swirling blissful dripping psyche dream”, “beautiful, revelatory, mantra-like”, “eternal soundscapes of ancient communication” and “solemn white magic”.

Polish graphic artist Aleksandra Waliszewska, 33, is the owner of a genuinely thrilling style.

Her drawings and paintings show us a studious mix of what seems like a visible influence of punk poster art with more highbrow aesthetics (the religious phantasmagoria of Goya comes to mind), plus heaps of beautifully muted colors and folk scare delivered through teens seduced by decidedly evil-eyed animals and men facing brutal ends.

It also belies diverse transitional states of basic emotion that somehow create the illusion of a more complex, multilayered narrative – even though you’re staring at a single panel. Imagine an obscure frame taken from Bosch’s ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’ as filtered through Raymond Pettibon’s jittery line and you’ll start to have and idea of what she’s up to.

Waliszewska lives and works in Warsaw, where she spent most of her childhood. With over 20 individual shows in the bag, she seems a little taken aback about telling us where all the abyssal gouache-colored snippets in her work come from, but what’s the point to it, really, if we can look at her drawings and feel a more than honest chill?

The eerie atmospheres you create in your work sometimes verge on the disturbing, especially the ones that depict pubescent characters in some sort of libidinous interaction with what I see as decidedly evil-eyed animals. I wonder if some of this stuff comes from folklore / ancient myths you’re familiar with or is this imagery just something more abstract you happen to be attracted to?

The imagery that you could be referring to is partially connected with depictions of codemned men on medieval paintings. However, my versions lose that directly religious aspect of it.

How would you describe your own work?

I think that putting name, or pigeonholing any art can only be harmful to it, so I refrain from doing so.

While at it, why, in your work, does nature seem as if it’s rebelling against itself?

I didn’t look at this way but this might be a valid observation.

What do you think draws people to your stuff?

I can’t really tell as I have no direct insight into what people could think, but I can only deduce it has something to do with fascination with sex and violence.

What / who would you cite as major influences over your work?

I love pre-modern art. It is an endless source of inspiration for me, a true bottomless well of ideas. Looking at some picture throughout the years, I can continue to find new elements in it, discover new qualities that I didn’t notice before. My real favourites would be Hans Memling, Enguerrand Quarton and Nicolas Poussin. I have definitely less interest for modern art.

As an artist, do you wait till inspiration strikes or is your working method more steady and labor-intensive?

Each day, I work about 5 hours. I don’t wait for an inspiration to strike me, when the ideas are not very precise I tend to paint self-portraits. I can paint up to 2 works a day.

There seems to be a big deal of attention put into the ‘mise en scéne’ aspect of what you do. Do you have any links with theater or acting?

I’m not not very interested in theatre, I mostly went there with some school groups and that was obligatory. As for acting, me and my friend were recently involved in amateur SF movie where I play one of the key roles. I have no idea whether this is going to be ever finished

I see a really strong sense of sublimated storytelling in your work, as if some of your drawings catch a ‘frame’, an insightful glimpse out of a longer, more complex narrative. Is that the case? Do you too see it as a bit of larger picture? Are you familiar with the work of Raymond Pettibon at all?

I’m more interested in depicting states of emotion. Narratives tend to arise by themselves, they kind of evolve by their own will. I know several works by Raymond Pettibon. When I was a teenager I made a hand-done copy of his Sonic Youth cover on a friend’s t-shirt.

Could you tell us a little about “Nagana”?

“Nagana” is a part of the series called “Brownocalypse”. This actually originated after I accidentally stepped into a container with rouge anglois paint. I had large amounts of this paint and I really wanted to use it as fast possible. “Nagana” is in a way, an unsuccessful work as I wanted to paint a girl stricken with a fist on her face. It turned out more as she’s being grabbed by her nose. Nevertheless, I like it.

How important a role (if at all) does music play in your work? What music do you listen to or are into at the moment?

As a teenager I was more interested in music than I am now. It is mostly audio books, radio broadcasts and interviews that I’m listening to at the moment. My boyfriend is a musician, so he takes care of the music aspect in our home. Still, I like to play Big Black at full volume every now and then. My boyfriend jokes that I’m undergoing my “rebellion period”.

Diego Gerlach is a Brazilian writer, visual artist and comic creator. Under the moniker Máfia Líquida, he creates (in collaboration with Brazilian designer Felipe Oliveira) the ongoing sci-fi comic series GAHAFAW and some wicked poster art, described simultaneously as ‘Graphic answers to unasked questions’ or ‘Cyanide treacle for the brain’. And all you cats can dig it at: http://flickr.com/diegogerlach

Gemma Williams grew up in Crawley, Sussex, left after school and has since lived in York, Scotland, Sardinia, Brighton, Devon and Brighton again. A ‘keeper of bees’ among other things, you might argue she’s a bit on the cuckoo side of things, and although I can’t offer evidence to the contrary, please note that the reason you’re reading this is that she creates truly beautiful, ethereal folk music. “I sang at school in the choir on and off; I found music at school pretty frustrating as I could never express the sounds from inside accurately – I had clarinet lessons but just about scraped a Grade 2.” She goes by the alias Woodpecker Williams and I’d be lying if I wasn’t to admit that 1) I thought it to be a man’s name at first and 2) it immediately reminded me of Walter Lantz’s immortal, annoying creation the Woody Woodpecker in all its laughing-mad glory.

Woodpecker Wooliams is now releasing the Sleeping Under Dark Suns cassette on My Dance The Skull- two tracks that render the world in dark, magic-infused, bee-influenced (but of course) tones and once are over leave you kinda “O wow that was –”

Photo by Lucy Goodayle.

Right. Are you really a practicing magician?

Haha! A magician! I’m a whizz at card tricks…. No… I imagine you’re referring to the ‘shaman business’ but I’m kind of on a shamanic sabbatical at the moment. I haven’t seen any clients for a while now- any magic in my life is being redirected though music for the time being, mostly.

I asked about it because I’m really into thinking about the relation between the way art is created today and what is usually perceived as magic.

Ahh, I see. I’d say there can definitely be an aspect of ‘conjuring’ in creating good music- making successful sound-magic would be something to aspire to. I’ve been reminded recently of someone I saw play years ago, Damo Suzuki from Can, and he (these days) just rocks up to a venue, meets local musicians there and improvises with them on the night (he sings). I saw him twice in a row in Scotland and it was utterly awesome. He came across as a total magician and with no obvious cues, just orchestrated the band into some kind of musical trance. Awesome.

That’s what I meant and what I felt when I listened to your music. I suppose it’s the idea that art became more a matter of intuition and empiricism than a trade that could be taught and passed through in terms of the ‘Golden Ratio’ or music scales. What does your art aspire to? (Quite a broad question — I guess I wanna hear about what sort of subjects [if any] you have in mind when creating music]).

Hmm… What does my art aspire to? [I hope I've understood your question?] I guess on the one hand, it’s not really trying to aspire to anything, or rather, it presents a challenge for me to try not to try. Things work out best when I can be most relaxed, or most ‘in the moment’. I’ve got some totally inspiring women friends who bake incredibly, sew magnificently, make household-y things out of what might otherwise be considered scraps. So my approach is fuelled by that spirit of making. There are a handful of albums I’ve heard over the years that have kind of gotten in and alchemized me, or really fizzled in deeply and changed my character just a little bit. To be able to express sound in that same potent way would be the greatest success or prize in my mind, but even the practicing and stumbling along the way is like a kind of personal meditation. I don’t want to make it sound like making music for me is some kind of ego-centric process; it’s like the amazing gooey cake that my friend might make. She puts in her time and effort and love and the act of stopping and stirring or measuring is an act of therapy for her, but everyone else gets to share the yum and the joy at the end.

Do you work in any specific way?

I’m all for chance and circumstance weaving their ways in. Vocal parts I do sometimes re-record over and over- but that’s more about giving the sound time to come out or be born fully- like chiseling away at a sculpture. Singing is the thing I love most but it’s the hardest for me. I want to be as honest and unaffected with the singing as possible (trying to be a hollow bone) and that’s not always so easy to do. Instrumental bits I usually slap down in a frenzy and leave them in whatever (ahem) “creative” mess they’re in.

How did the place the recording process took place in affect the general feel of it? Apart from you, who was involved in the process?

I recorded it at my home in Brighton – a tiny little sea-side studio flat in a Georgian terrace. I started making music about a year and a half ago in Devon in a completely atmospheric live-in studio in an 800-year old cottage with incredibly thick stone walls. That place definitely had a lot to do with the sound… I was concerned that recording here may leave everything a bit flat, but I think that for me music is tied more closely to personal process than to place, so the experience of me trying to settle back into a busy city life that felt a bit alien probably got infused more into it than the building itself.

Well, “Sleepers”, the first track , was a solo effort. Inspired, I’m sure, by the honeybee, but just me on the sounds. I think there’s some French radio in there too so better give credit where it’s due. For the second track (“Eurydice’s Lament”) it began with a drone created by the lovely Talvihorros. I came up to London to record with him one day and I fell in love with it, so the track kind of got built up from there…

Did I get it right? When you say “Inspired I’m sure by the honeybee” do you mean kinda like exactly what you said?! Can you tell me a little about it?

Yeah – I could ramble on for reams about the honeybee. I’m totally in love with her. I’m a city-girl now (by circumstance rather than choice!) but I’ve got a hive which I keep in the local park kinda hidden out of the way: The park-keepers were well up for it as it only helps in pollinating their flowers. The life of the bee is amazing- a matriarchal community of makers! Their lives are spent in a series of dedicated tasks to keep the hive as a whole running. They excrete all kinds of wondrous potions and unguents and do the sex-work of the flower kingdom. Magnificent! But seriously- I think it’s the mixture of relentless work tied in with care and effortless making that sets them up as a benchmark of an artist’s standard.

Do you work in any other media apart from music?

I made everything for the album that I released; it was so much fun! I crocheted, inked and embroidered for it. But to be honest, I always get frustrated by feeling like I’ve got butterfingers or I don’t have the skill to exert what I want to. I’m a baby at everything really, so I’ve been focusing mostly on music lately.

Way I see it, folk music tends to be attached to a way of looking at nature in search of clues about what being human means. I also see a strong element of magic involved in the sort of folk music being created in recent times. Agree/disagree?

I wish I knew more about the history of folk music. I’ve got a friend doing a PhD in the history of folk and I’m sure he’d fervently disagree! I know what you mean though and yes, you seem to be able to observe a trend for ‘folk’-based music that’s supported by a lot of other various artworks, often by the musicians themselves, and a lot of symbolism from the natural world. If there’s a proliferation of magic around I may be missing it as I’ve been trying to live the boozy, city-girl life for a little while now and keep my eyes shut!

Would you say you’re part of some sort of community (like-minded people feeding off each other’s creative juices) or do you tend to create in an isolated setting?

Well, I was living with a musician who’s worked as The Diamond Family Archive and King James (amongst other names/ bands) in Devon, where I started, and we shared a very small communal space. I used a lot of his instruments for the recordings there and he had very strong, clear ideas about what made valuable ‘art’, which will have influenced and inspired me, I’m sure. He was part of establishing Woodland Recordings who are now spread loosely between England and Germany. Woodland’s since been run by the other co-creator who plays as The Great Park, and he’s booking a little German tour for me this summer. That label was (and is) a real inspiration so it’s really exciting for me to be getting involved with them in this way.

Since returning to Brighton I’ve discovered a real community of musicians! The Wilkommen Collective is a group of musicians who diverge into various configurations for different bands. The rings of connections kind of radiate out from there, though and I’ve been lucky to meet a network of delightful people – many of whom are becoming real friends – who will call you up to come and sing on something for them, or you can call if you want a bass-part or a drum beat, and who all support gig opportunities for each other. It’s really lovely and I feel very lucky to have that on my doorstep.

Any thoughts on the fact the release will be cassette-only?

Well, I’m pretty excited… I think I love tapes. I’ve started using a dictaphone live. I like they way they age. A few people have mentioned to me that they don’t have tape-players anymore and so will find it a bit frustrating being limited to only this one format, but I kind of understand why DIY labels are starting to do it: Beyond the aesthetic aspect, there’s also the fact that it’d take a lot of effort to burn off a tape and share music, which encourages people to part with a few pounds and spend on burgeoning new labels sweating it out to make things work.

What really appeals to you about the music-making process?

The sex and drugs, groupies and copious amounts of money.

Well, that’s it. Thanks a million.

Diego Gerlach is a Brazilian writer, visual artist and comic creator. Under the moniker Máfia Líquida, he creates (in collaboration with Brazilian designer Felipe Oliveira) the ongoing sci-fi comic series GAHAFAW and some wicked poster art, described simultaneously as ‘Graphic answers to unasked questions’ or ‘Cyanide treacle for the brain’. And all you cats can dig it at: http://flickr.com/diegogerlach

Mark Peter Wright. Your compositions blend instrumentation with found sounds/tape collage and feedback amongst other sources. Where did this experimentation come from, I believe you have a visual arts background?

Tom White. I studied fine art, initially as a painter but soon tired of weeks producing work without satisfaction. Looking for something more instant, I started experimenting with film and video, adding my own soundtracks to short, poetic, lo-fi films. I think the technique of combining sounds with image and vice versa allowed me to sculpt a very introverted style through collage; thankfully they went hand in hand. In the second year of my course I lived in a house quite a way out of town (due to be demolished after we left). I could go off for weeks independently and experiment as much as I desired with video and sound; I don’t think I’ll ever get a chance to work that freely again. Even though it wasn’t a particularly long time ago, I truly believe that was the beginning of what I now do.

MPW. Are there any key artistic influences on your work, I’m thinking of the likes of William Burroughs’ cut up techniques and Alan Licht’s use of tape and instrumentation?

TW. Its interesting you mention both of those artists as they cover two area’s very important to me. Burroughs and many other experimental film makers working in that period are massively influential, not only to my moving image work but also how I approach sound. When I first discovered experimental film I’d never witnessed sound and image cut-up, manipulated and displayed in that way before. Around the same time I became interested in electronic/experimental music too, so it completely opened my mind. I was discovering people like Malcolm Le Grice, Paul Sharits, John Smith and Michael Snow, who of course is commonly associated with both areas.

MPW. What is it about such work and artists that impacted upon your own output?

TW. I was blown away by the fact work could be created from leftovers or with very little budget. For example Hollis Frampton’s film Palindrome is made entirely from binned film ends gathered whilst working at a photo lab. It’s the mistakes and imperfections in my work that I always try to magnify, maintain and repeat. I try to approach my idea’s as best as I can with what’s available to me. Just to briefly talk about Licht, he’s someone I discovered much later that’s made just as important an impact, especially since taking an interest in improvisation. For a multi-disciplinary artist, I think it’s important not to linger in a particular genre, style and so on, he proves it can be done exceptionally well by managing to cover noise, tape collage, improvisation, and elements of sound art practice into one record! (A New York Minute XI, 2003).

MPW. Licht also employs existing ethnographic, field recording samples in his work; do your compositions consist of any samples from pre existing records?

TW. I see what Licht does as re-appropriations or experiments in collage and minimalism, taking existing popular music or field recordings as the source. My work very rarely contains samples from other work, instead pre-existing sounds of my own that have been recorded to cassette during an improvisation for example. The original sound is often rendered unrecognisable and therefore takes on a new life instead of being in limbo or forgotten about. The recordings in some of Licht’s tape loop experiments inadvertently introduced me to the Smithsonian folkway archive. I can’t explain why I have such an emotional connection to these recordings, in particular the folk music studies of 1950’s South America. Maybe it’s due to the lack of direct comparisons that add a mysterious, almost alien edge to them that appeals to me so much. Either way I think they’ve seeped into my subconscious.

MPW. Clearly there is a theme of chance/improvisation to your working process. Your previous release, In Poor Visibility being based on a found visual image.

TW. The Idea of finding that image, at that time seemed to lend itself very well to the process of my work. I found it in a second hand shop in Hastings and instantly liked its atmosphere. Performing without an audience you can improvise almost infinitely and something will materialise unexpectedly, then of course it’s a case of developing that further to create something cohesive. With that image in mind I thought of trying to loosely marry the two for the purpose of the work, without being constrained to themes i.e. snow, or winter in relation to the image – as most of the tracks were conceived in the summer!

MPW. And how does chance and improvisation filter into your experience of performance or recording?

TW. I always need to be surprised by occurrences while working, if I don’t I tend to get frustrated and too concerned with repeating myself. So when it happens it’s almost a revelation, that’s when I decide to take things further, for example ‘On Sundays’ began as two improvisations that I made within the space of half an hour, similar in mood and length. The two separate pieces sounded more complete together; there was no need for any extra sounds to be layered. When I play live I try and expand this improvisation by creating more layers and intensity aiming towards an immersive sound. Playing live you have to expect mistakes, and to be honest it can go either way which brings us back to the notion of chance.

MPW. Your tracks tend to be very concise in terms of duration, is this something your aware of when composing?

TW. I never have a length in mind, I just improvise for as long as I like, usually between 15 and 30 minutes before my computer gives up and then I’ll later edit sections from that latter. The end result could be anything from 30 seconds to 15 minutes.

MPW. Presumably for this new release you had to consider track length due to the format of cassette?

TW. When I was making the two ten minute sides of the cassette It made me think more about format, side A and B as opposed to a collection of tracks that the listener may decide to shuffle around on itunes.

MPW. Did you find it difficult to improvise within specific time constraints?

TW. It was more of an exercise in editing as opposed to improvisation. The original edits were quite free and ended up being well over 10 minutes each, then of course it was a case of going back over the elements trying not to be precious – working visually, particularly with video has taught me how important this is.

MPW. There’s a definite sense of presence in your works, in that you can hear the physical processes at work, the pressing of the play button on a Dictaphone for instance. Is this analogue sense of tangibility important to you?

TW. Yes, not so much in terms of analogue – I’m definitely not a purist for all things analogue. For me there is no escaping the digital world and way of working, to be honest I fully embrace it. I certainly have a sound in mind when I’m working. A visceral physicality is what I look for in art, an element in sound or images that has an emotional presence; this is always a beginning point for my own practice. Using analogue and digital suits me very well, there are characteristics in both I couldn’t work the way I do without both – mostly due to aesthetics of tape and the temperamental nature of dictaphones and casio’s. To be able to format the work digitally obviously wouldn’t be possible without a computer. I enjoy having the option of both. Going to back to this process of pushing buttons on a Dictaphone – feedback is something that features heavily in my work whether its later sampled through casio keyboards or re-recorded. The moment I worked out you can create feedback by pushing record and play near a speaker was a mini epiphany for me! It’s your equipment reacting to the decisions you make, whether you’re ready for it or not.

MPW. So a cassette release on MDTS seems like a natural output for your work.

TW. Aesthetically it would seem cassette is a natural output due to the use of tape formats used in creating the work. I’ve always had an interest from an early age in the mechanics of recording sound to tape, so I guess you could say I’m giving something back to the format!

MPW. The release is titled False Ponds – it’s a very beautiful and elusive title, where did it come from?

TW. I was reading an article of an artist I’m very fond of, Tacita Dean, this term ‘False Ponds’ jumped out at me. It means mirage. It seemed to fit nicely into work I was doing for the MDTS release, almost as homage to her work in sound rather than my interpretation of a mirage sonically. I’ve tried to research this term online since and found next to nothing, I think the elusiveness of a term to describe an illusion appealed to me even more.

MPW. What were the initial influences for the record?

TW. I initially started to explore an interest I’ve had at the back of my mind for a while, how do you translate the feeling of claustrophobia or create a feeling of claustrophobia through sound? Claustrophobia is easy to illustrate visually, as most people will refer to the fear small places. It has interested me for a long time as my father suffers from it, not severely but he’d never go pot holing to say the least. My work is usually described as having a lot of space, mainly by filmmakers intriguingly, so I was keen to experiment with narrowing my sound, and going back to improvisation – to be constrained by rules. As the project took on a different direction its an idea I am continuing to work on, perhaps as an installation.

MPW. Finally, what’s coming up in the future?

TW. At the moment I’m working on two Audio/visual collaborations; a video installation with Filmmaker/Animator Ian Emes called ‘Beautiful Lies’ and sound for a multi-media project called ‘Model Soldiers’ by artist Tania Diniz. As well my own recorded output, I’m also working on a few solo installation projects and residencies that I hope will see the light of day before the end of the year.

Mark Peter Wright is a London based sound artist and British Composer of the Year in Sonic Arts. For further info please visit:
www.mpwright.wordpress.com
http://earroom.wordpress.com

Photos by District Fuhi.

In the realm of classical and experimental contemporary music, it is customary that the name of the composer is transparent and visible. The artifice of creating a persona, furnishing it with an invented name and then presenting the music through this persona is something that has always intrigued me. In your music career so far, your work has appeared under different ‘band-names’. Can you say a few things about the thinking and meaning behind these, and how they represent (or not) different type of music you create?

Well, I prefer not to release my music under my real name, because it just doesn’t feel right for me. I like creating some sort of abstract persona by using these project names or monikers. Also to separate various things that I do/did from each other. I made a few records as “Phon°noir”, vaguely indie elektro, indietronics kind of material, using vocals, broken beats and acoustic guitars. But once I had reached a certain point there I felt I got sort of stuck and needed a clear cut and a new start, not only namewise, but also in terms of sound and attitude. That’s when “Telekaster” was born, the more open, more abstract, more free, more powerful music with less pop-framework. Yet for instance when I do more beat-orientated stuff or remixes, i still like to use the Phon°noir moniker as Telekaster obviously stands for something completely different. So basically using different names is not about hiding or denying some sort of authorship, it’s more about making a certain structure and developement within my own work visible by using very straight forward “categories”.

You have mentioned the Beatles as a band that has been influential in your music-education as a teenager. What other bands did you listen to?

Oh yes, The Beatles were of great importance for me, still are. I was drawn to them by the age of six or seven, my older cousin gave me a tape entitled “20 Golden Hits by The Beatles”, I remember listening to this tape until it literally broke into pieces. beatles songs were the first I learned to play when I picked up the guitar a few years later. Of course there were more and more artists in my growing tape collection, in the 90s loads of guitar music – Nirvana, Radiohead, Oasis, Deus, Madrugada and Leonard Cohen. Some of the most important records of that time, for me, came from Radiohead, Björk, Portishead, Sigur Ros and Massive Attack. I basically listened to a mixture of all this throughout my entire teenager days…

To continue my above question, I wonder what role the Germanic musical tradition played in shaping your music taste and your music, and whether you ever felt you had a special connection (psychic/emotional) to German music.

To be honest, german music was of somewhat marginal interest to me when growing up. as a matter of fact, there wasn’t too much interesting german music around for me back then – I was trying to listen to contemporary german indie stuff but just could never find what i was looking for there. The only german artists whose music had a huge and lasting impact on me was The Notwist and maybe Tarwater. It was way later that I found out about all the great electronic pioneers and what their contribution not only to the german but also to music history in general was. I became a huge Kraftwerk fan, and I especially admire the work of Michael Rother and Harmonia. And some of the Can albums have become favourite records of mine. But to be honest, this is something that has developed over the past 5,6 years, while I was already deeply into making music myself. I can’t claim to work in a certain tradition here, but all these things keep adding up to something in my head and of course they find their way into my music, into telekaster, too. So there might be connections here and there, but I suppose these aren’t directly rooted in a certain german musical heritage. Yet there is something about all the mentioned artists, something that might be typically german, I don’t know, but it’s something that also drives me in writing and playing the Telekaster stuff: this somewhat romantic ambiguity of experimental sounds and techniques, sort of “head-music” on the one side and a serious emotional depth on the other.

What determines the choice of instruments and sounds you use in your music? Can you talk a little more extensively about your use of the guitar?

First of all, my limited abilities of actually playing instruments. I just can’t use a huge variety of instruments, because I just don’t know how to play them. Yet anything that makes interesting sounds can be useful for me, and during recording and piecing things together I often try to use weird sounds here and there, things I might not know how to use properly but which I end up using anyways, like an cheap electric violin or little toy instruments. It’s a bit different with the guitar though. I have been playing it for about 15 years now and I used it in many different contexts. I never had a classical training, and I never became a rock solo virtuoso. But i know how to make it sound good and especially with Telekaster I feel I finally found my very own, very special sound, which I developed over the years. I was looking for something more open, more abstract, something that sounds the way water moves, flowing, endlessly evolving and growing, never exactly the same twice. I try to play not to many notes, I try to keep things simple, leave open spaces here and there. But the way I layer things and the way I run everything I play through various effects and chains of plug-ins makes it come out very unique and very massive. I pieced together some nice patches in audioluch (one of my favourite sound softwares) as well as in ableton live for this purpose. I also go through a few delay pedals and a little pre-amp. Combining the three (and that’s what i do when playing live) creates this highly textured and layered Telekaster sounds. On the recordings I also create loads of backgrounds or bass-layers only by reworking recorded guitar sounds, which i keep manipulating, pitching, editing, resampling etc… so basically what you hear in Telekaster music is made of these 6 strings, in endless variations of course.

Do you think it’s important to follow technological developments in music-making? How is technology used in your music?

As long as it serves some overall artistic vision it is very important, I’d say. I like to search for new plug-ins or read nerdy interviews with people whose work I admire, Four Tet or Christian Fennesz for instance, both of them very forward-thinking people, also on a technological level and in terms of how they use software. I am always happy once I learn something new regarding the endless possibilities of producing music or mixing it. Yet it rarely happens that something new changes the way I work completely. I usually try to find new things that i can insert into my existing set-up. of course technology is with me from the very start, writingwise as well as recording wise. I keep “jamming” with the set-up of guitar/effects/audiomluch/ableton live, and the step from improvisation to recording a good idea is always a very fast one, as everything happens within the same digital environment. Sometimes I’d like to be a little more independent of all these things, but for the moment it looks as though i just can’t go back, Telekaster music is based on the real-time-manipulation and extensive treatment of audio material, so I have to stick with my laptop and all the other tools to make things work somehow.

What music have you listened to in the last two weeks?

Mainly the self-titled album by Aufgang, “Monoliths & Dimensions” by Sunn o)), “One in other” by Chloé, which i just bought, and a “Storm in Heaven” by The Verve.

I have been very privileged to have collaborated with you, which was a joy, inspiring and creatively liberating. Can you say a few things behind your interest in collaborating with other artists?

Generally speaking, collaborations are a great way to expand your own musical horizon. That’s what drives me to keep on working with other people in the first place. another nice thing about them is that you can invite friends who play very different music from your own to contribute something to a new piece, for instance. The feedback created by two people putting ideas into the same piece… that’s what our collaboration was like for me. I asked you to be my guest on a piece that sounded very much like the others on the first record when we started. Once you had recorded loads of new layers and voices and instruments for it, it turned out to sound more like some sort of orchestral remix, something way bigger and more expressive than I could ever have imagined. It went far beyond my musical limitiations, and I learned a lot from it. I guess moments like this are the main reason for my interest in collaborations.

You are very prolific and work for the radio and the theatre. What do radio and theatre projects involve? Do you have something coming up soon?

Yes, I have been working in theatre music as well as in my radioplay project Phonofix (with author Jörg Albrecht) for a few years now. It’s basically what i do for a living. Soundtracking theatre productions is not only a great and challenging way to create new music, but, luckily, also a good way to make some money, at least here in germany. I am part of a performance/theatre collective that I work with regularly, but I also work with contiuosly with one director in particular. It’s an exciting and, as I said, highly challenging task to come up with loads of new music within 5-8 weeks time. I like to spend days on rehearsal stages, connecting myself to a process taking place where the space, the actors and everything else come together. Music can define a lot in this process, too, so it’s a very tricky thing to do, but very rewarding if you see it working out well. Finding the right approach, the right connection to the text, the setting, the director’s ideas etc usually keeps you busy until the very last days before the premiere, so it also never gets boring… coming up is a premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s “Baal”, I did the music for this production at Staatstheater Oldenburg before the theatre summer break, the premiere will be 21 september. And I am currently talking with a director and a choreographer about maybe soundtracking their new production in Berlin later this summer, which I hope will happen. It would be a huge production with quite a few dancers plus actors, so – very exciting again. Let’s see.

Telekaster is Berlin-based musician Matthias Grübel and video-artist Stefan Bünnig. Together they create a universe of abstract narration and associative beauty consisting of Grübel’s shimmering noisy soundscapes and Bünnig’s perfectly crafted yet always universally minimal real-film sequences.

photo (c) christopher grübel