Chaos Cotrol Digizine

THE LATEST | ALL INTERVIEWS | NEWS BLOG | ABOUT CHAOS CONTROL | CONTACT

  1. Visions Of Excess

    November 7, 2002 by admin

    Visions Of Excess is a new collaboration between Paul Browse (ex-Clock Dva, System 01, Effective Force, 030) and Nirto Karsten Fischer (sound artist/Forced Media Production). The two had known each other for years but felt that the time was right to join forces on a new project. Their first release, “Sensitive Disruption,” (Minus Habens) is an outstanding collection of experimental electronic tracks that showcases very creative use of audio processing. Through email, the duo answered some questions for us.

    How did the two of you come to start working together as Visions Of Excess?

    OE (PB):Karsten and I have know each other for very many years. Some time ago we decided it was the right moment to combine our strengths into one coherent complex. Visions Of Excess is the result of that decision. Sensitive Disruption is the first synthesis of our combined knowledge.

    When you started the project, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to accomplish, or was it more a matter of wanting to collaborate and see what kind of sound emerged?

    VOE (NKF): Usually we have quite clear ideas about the tracks but this is based on experiments, sound developments, text fragments that came before. It’s like a work in a laboratory where the tracks aggregate finally to a finished ‘product’.

    How do you tend to work together (do you have defined roles within the band, in terms of who tends focus on specific parts, etc?)

    VOE (NKF): Because we are no band there are no specific roles. We are two artists who share visions and have a strong affinity to the work of each other. Of course temporarily there are foci in certain working situations. And there are personal strengths coming from different work backgrounds. Paul’s work within Clock DVA, T.A.G.C., System 01 etc. are well known, and I (NKF) have two backgrounds, first a plain commercial background and on the other hand a strong experimental approach that was heard in choreographies, computer animations and to a lesser extend in film scores.

    What type of studio set-up do you use? Are there any pieces of equipment that you think are particularly important for the music you do?

    VOE (NKF): The studio (www.forcedmedia.com) is grown on the concept of an open system that allows free experimentation combined with high end production. There was the necessity to have an all digital set-up because of many processing chains that are used. Equipment that is particular important to us are room simulators, resynthesis and all sorts of synthesis, especially virtual acoustic synthesizers. They were used a lot and this has even mislead a reviewer in thinking our ‘Sensitive Disruption’ album is mainly based on sample archive material. A Symbolic Sound Kyma system was also often used for important key sounds. Sampling is for us mainly a production tool and I refer to them often as ‘buckets’ for sound results.

    Are there any particular things that the current musical technology allows you to do now, that wasn’t available earlier in your careers?

    VOE (NKF): Sure, realtime resynthesis comes to mind and also these high quality room simulations that not anymore sound like chorused cheap algorithms or simply like a noisy tail of mush. In the last 1 1/2 year native processing achieved an ergonomic and sonical quality that motivates us to include it more and more. But we are aware of the ‘Synclavier-syndrome’ and therefore spread the native processing to many networked computers. This is one of the transformations undergoing in the FORCED MEDIA facility.

    Do you perform live as Visions Of Excess? If so, how would you compare the sound to your recordings? Is challenging adapting the music for live performance? What type of controllers do you use?

    VOE (PB): Until now we have not performed live.

    If an interesting and challenging proposal arises we will adapt our music accordingly. Please note …this does not mean that at some point in the future you can expect to hear VOE performing guitar renditions of their tracks with Robert Anton Wilson on backing vocals. Well …not unless as a final act we can throw a burning laptop into the audience whilst shouting “goodnight …we love you!”.

    You use the voice of Robert Anton Wilson – how did that come about?

    VOE (PB): Robert Anton Wilson was invited to the studio for a private interview.

    The intention was to create a relaxed atmosphere whereby anecdotes concerning the human condition could be exchanged. Everything was recorded. The material which we decided to use was that in which his opinions coincided with our own and where the sonic quality of his voice was complementary to the music.

    What’s your approach to incorporating vocals? For example, do you sample them and treat them as just another sound as your build songs? Base songs around them? Add them after most of the elements are in place?

    VOE (NKF): Of course vocals are used based on meaning but also because of the sound. The meaning and the sound should be coming together and fitting into the atmosphere of the track. Usually there is a lot of processing done to vocals/voices, sometimes to a degree where a lot of listeners probably don’t recognize them as coming from a human voice. Resynthis is very important here.

    Why the name Visions Of Excess?

    VOE (NKF): There is a connection (link?) in our thinking to George Bataille, not in the sense he being our house philosopher, but in exceeding the mediocre dumbness of humanism to suppress human beings by holding back the possibilities of developments and spreading an agony of non-development. The same goes for technical development now which is held back more and more to have it controlled by the timing needed to make profit.

    What do you think the ideal environment is for listening to Visions Of Excess?

    VOE (PB): The external environment is unimportant. The effectiveness of our work is dependent on the attitude of the listener. Consequently …it is not music for the hard of understanding.

    What’s in the immediate future for Visions Of Excess?

    VOE (PB): We are finalizing our next release which will contain VOE compositions written for Fred Kelemen’s production of “Fahrenheit 451″.

    Category: Feature InterviewsComments Off

  2. Utah Saints

    by admin

    Utahs Saints rose to fame very quickly about a decade ago with “Something Good,” a track driven by Kate Bush vocal samples. But while the duo of Tim Garbutt and Jez Willis continued to write, remix, and DJ, they went through the latter half of the 90′s without releasing any new Utah Saints albums. They’ve finally re-surfaced with “Two,” a disc that features contributions from Iggy Popp, Chrissie Hynde and Michael Stipe. A couple of months ago, we sent Utahs Saints some new interview questions, and recently got the responses (emailed from Dusseldorf airport!)

    Last time I interviewed you (during the Shamen tour) you said ‘instead of developing for a couple of years and then getting the corporate push, we’re developing in public.’ Looking back, how did that affect the development of your career? For example, were there negative aspects to having a big major-label single so early? What do you think you might not have been able to accomplish if things hadn’t happened so quickly?

    That’s a good point. Because we started (by accident more than by design) with a big hit record in the UK, with no corporate push at all, everyone on the business side assumed we knew what we were doing. We knew that we didn’t. We were similar to most people- we thought what we were doing was good, but we were never sure if people would like it. When as a band we suddenly had a lot of attention, we were insecure enough to ask people’s opinions, and naive enough to listen and take them on board!. This had a dramatic effect when we started the later abandoned second album in 1994. Basically, we made a lot of the “cliched because they’re true” mistakes that bands make, and booked into an expensive big studio, and listened to everyones opinions.

    Above a certain sonic quality, music is all about opinions, all of which are equally valid, but if you are trying to make things and take on board too many inputs, you end up with a compromised product. This applies not just to music, but pretty much most things -if a baker listens to everyone when he is making a cake, he’s either going to end up with a very bland cake, or a complete mess.

    This album was made by the two of us, in a spare bedroom in Leeds, with very little external input into the ideas for tracks, which we’ve dicovered suits us best.

    Are there any major ways that advances in musical technology over the past decade or so have affected your approach to music?

    Samplers have bigger memories, so the pallet of sounds for each track is bigger.

    Have you had a chance to try out programs like REACTOR and REASON, and if so, how do you feel about them?

    We just got Reason, and we are starting to get into it – it definitely brings new possibilities for manipulating samples, which looks like it’s going to be very useful.

    Is it a challenge keeping up with the latest gear, figuring out what will be usefull to you without spending too much time reading instruction manuals?

    As a rule, we try not to read manuals, apart from for basic things like setting midi channels or tuning, preferring the approach of keep pushing buttons and see what happens, and then try and remember how we did it if it sounds good!

    Fans seem to really want to hear “Wired World.” I know London Records owns it and therefore you couldn’t put it out if you wanted to. But is it true that you’re not happy with it? If so, is it because of the label’s trying to influence the direction, the simple fact that you’re evolved since making it, or what?

    “Wired World”, as the title suggests (this was 94/95, before the internet really took of) was of a time.

    If the record had come out quickly we would have stood by it, however, there were lot’s of meetings, and when we were recording the album we were told that there were eight potential singles, After it was delivered no one at the label could decide on the first single, at which point we went straight back in and did the track “Star”. After this had been out on promo for six months, we felt that the album was all wrong to then come out, so we negotiated out of our record deal.

    All through the recording we were trying to get a thick sonic on tracks, a kind of wall of sound. The label were keen to get us away from that, and we ended up somewhere in the middle-maybe a “fence of sound” or something (!)

    Basically, all the reasons in your question were contributing factors, and to be frank, we lost sight for a while of what Utah Saints sound is.

    As usually happens in Utah Saints universe, completely out of the blue.We weren’t even aware that Michael Stipe knew who we were.

    Around the beginning of 1999, a friend called up and told us to check the latest edition of The Face, as Michael Stipe had mentioned us in an interview, saying how much he liked our first album.He though it was the best for driving to,and that he and Courtney Love used to dance to the track “Soulution”.

    We thought that it was really nice of him, and an honour ,as he has heard a lot of music.

    A similar thing then happened in a few more interviews, and then at the end of 1999 Mojo magazine did a year end poll of people like Van Morrison and Thom Yorke, and Michael Stipe’s favourite albumof 1999 was our album from 1993.

    This was again a surprise for us, and gave us a real lift.

    Whenever you make something, be it some writing, a sculpture, or a record, you inevitably go through periods when you are wondering if it is any good. This is a part of the process to make sure that you are doing the best possible job you can. Michael Stipe’s comments did our confidence some good, at a time when we needed it, so we wrote him a letter to say thanks, and we also took a chance to ask if he might consider giving us some vocals to work with.

    He said yes.

    We were all (including Michael Stipe ) aware that an “electronic REM” type of track might shift peoples focus away from the rest of the album, so we suggested that it might be interesting to do it over the telephone.

    We spoke for about an hour about anything at all, recorded the whole thing, and then chopped it up into small pieces to use on four short interludes on the album.

    Do you ever get tired of people asking where the name “Utah Saints” came from, or do you feel it’s good that people are thinking/wondering about it?

    It’s always a good thing when people think of Utah Saints!

    How long have you had your own website? How has it worked out for you?

    The website has been up for a couple of years now, and it works well for us. We can upload to various parts of it, although we don’t fully control it, and we didn’t program it, although we did have input on how it looked.

    One of us was supposed to learn HTML a few years ago, although neither of us has yet, and it’s probably not so important now that there are such good design packages about.

    There’s quite a gap in time between even the unreleased “Wired World” and “Two” – what was the timeframe of making the new CD? Was the material written during the course of all those years, or did you make the CD from start to finish in a shorter (more recent) time span?

    All the tracks were finished just before UK release, in fact the album was mastered at 2pm in London, and the last mix was finished in Leeds at 10am the same day.

    The bulk of the tracks were done in the eighteen month period March 1999 to september 2000. Two of the tracks -”Massive” and “Three Simple Words” were continuations of ideas first worked on “Wired World”.

    We kept coming back to all the tracks, right up to release, just tweaking them as we learnt new things about sounds and manipulating them.

    During the making of this album, we really learnt a lot, and each track has been built up using many layers of sound. Buried deep in each track is the basis for another two or three tracks, by taking the later layers off in a different direction. I hope that this doesn’t sound pretentious (!) -it’s just the way we make tracks.

    Category: Feature InterviewsTags: , | Comments Off

  3. Orbital

    by admin

    The following interview with Orbital was conducted in 2002, when the duo was in NY for the premiere of the film ‘xXx’ (which they appeared in.) At that time, they were promoting ‘Work: 1989-2002,’ a 14 song career-spanning collection.

    You’re quoted as saying “our best work comes from trying to copy other people and getting it wrong.” – can you elaborate on that?

    Paul: “It’s just an observation. People early on would go, ‘oh, you’ve got such an original sound, how did you create your own sound?’ And my answer has always been, ‘well by copying other people and getting it wrong. It’s the simple way of saying ‘oh, my influences are…’. The easy times of writing music are when you can go in and say ‘oh, I want to do something that sounds like that,’ you never run out of ideas. You keep trying to push this thing into that shape, and eventually it takes on a form of its own or becomes something else and then you start following that idea. Either you sit there and say ‘it doesn’t sound like that, but I like it’ or half way through you think ‘actually, that’s quite a bit different, I think I’ll follow that. You don’t always go in there trying to imitate something else, but it definitely happens sometime.”

    What are you feelings on the evolution of electronic dance music over years since starting Orbital?

    Paul: “It sort of always hangs around, like reggae does. It’s an established are form, whether it’s currently the trendiest thing or not. Over the last sort of decade or so, we’ve seen it come and go. For me, it’s always been at the forefront, because obviously, that’s what we do. If it disappears from media favor, we don’t really notice it. It must have come and gone a few times during our time.”

    Phil: “It think the way it’s evolved and the way it’s changed has been the subcategories – jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, break beat, big beat, new school, etc. It’s just really quite interesting to me. And now you’re getting a whole new generation of people making this music who were like 10 when it first started.”

    Paul: “There’s a new generation of people who are being influenced by the stuff that influenced us, so it’s now coming around full cycle. We were influenced by people like Depeche Mode and Cabaret Voltaire, Severed Heads, Kraftwerk, Soft Cell. And now young people are being influenced by those people again. They’ve gone beyond the things that first influenced them, to the influences the people that they like. Which is interesting to see.”

    Did you think you’d still be doing this, over a decade later?

    Paul: “Yeah, well we hoped, I should say. I didn’t imagine I’d give it up and go do something else.”

    How do you keep things interesting for yourselves?

    Paul: “You’ve always go fresh influences. From a technical standpoint, you’ve always got new equipment and new ideas in sound synthesis. That adds a new flavor. You normally want to do something different, you might have an idea or you might not but you try to steer away from what you previously did.”

    Phil: “And new music comes. It becomes inspiring, so that keeps it fresh, hearing other peoples music. When you find yourself not really liking much, it can be disheartening and a bit scary sometimes.”

    Has the evolution of musical technology had much of an impact on the way you work?

    Paul: “Live-wise, no. I still haven’t found anything that comes close to using an MMT8, which is so ancient that it annoys me. I wish I didn’t have to use it, because they do crash as much as an Apple Mac. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a laptop on stage. I know lots of people use them, but I find that you just don’t get the depth of sound that I want. Of course we use samplers, but even an Emu sampler has a richness that you don’t get out of a like a Pro-tools audio card or something like that. If you’ve got a 909 or a 303, I like to have that actual object there. The sound of those coming out of a PC system unadulterated and pure is such a great sound. And I wouldn’t really want to fit them into a hard drive. So live, no, I haven’t found anything better than my hardware sequencer. Even the more modern ones are too fussy and don’t work in the simple way that I want them to.

    But in the studio, things are always changing and developing. Like all the soft synths, things like Absynth, if that were a hardware synthesizer it would be so expensive. When people make big hardware synthesizers, they’re out of the reach of a lot of people. Like that Waldorf Wave, what was that, it was like 6000 pounds or something like that? Now you’ve things like Absynth and Reaktor or less that 500 pounds. They’re mindbogglingly complex and fun, which I think is great. I certainly don’t mind losing a true analog sound for something as complicated and fun.”

    Does using those software synths pose a problem when adapting the music for live performance?

    Paul: “We haven’t had a problem with that, because we’ve only just started getting into them and most of the songs we play live don’t us those sort of sounds. But I’m not too bothered about recreating, and don’t want to make it exactly how it is in the studio. It’s quite fun to throw in new sounds. So we’re not too concerned about that, really.”

    Was it obvious what tracks to include on the new collection?

    Phil: “No, we ended up with sort of 2 CDs worth of music, really. It was just a case of honing it down.”

    Paul: “It’s also the short single versions, which is interesting in itself. Because we normally record different versions of tracks rather than just edit them down from the album. A 7-inch version, as it would have been called once upon a time. Putting those together on an album is quite nice, because then it forms an album that never was.”

    Phil: “It’s good for fans, especially in the US, because a lot of the singles didn’t come out there.”

    How did your appearance in ‘xXx’ come about?

    Paul: “We were in the right place at the right time, really. We were finishing out tour in LA and were doing the rounds talking to different music supervisors at studios. We just happened to be in someone’s office chatting to them and they said ‘you know what, I’ve got this guy, a director, he’s got film where he’s looking for a very European sounding band for a scene. Who’d look good and sound European, for a rave in Prague, maybe you’re the guys?’ His assistants came to the gig, and sort of went to him and said ‘yep, these are the people for your film.’ And that was it really, we just went from there. It was a great laugh to do it. There was an amazing length of music used, about 4 minutes. Normally, when you get in a film you get 20 seconds if you’re lucky and then someone’s talking over it. But in this, even when people are talking over it, it’s really clear.”

    Phil: “We made the track for that particular scene, as well. That turned out well in our opinion.”

    Phil: “We made the track for that particular scene, as well. That turned out well in our opinion.”

    Paul: “Rob Cohen really choreographed the scene well around that track. Because another thing that normally happens in films is that people chop the music to hell to fit their cues. Which is, you know, what you’d expect them to do. But this time, they really blossomed it out and made it work.”

    Do you have plans to do more film work in the future?

    Paul: “Yeah, we’re starting to do the score for a British film called ‘Octane.’ It’s sort of a thriller, and I think it’s going to end up quite surreal. A sort of surreal, psychological thriller; David Lynch-esqey.”

    Phil: “It’s good, a young director, who used to be in Meat Beat Manifesto, the dancer. He went into film. There’s a lot of young people working on it.”

    Any plans to tour America again?

    Paul: “First we’re doing the film score, and we wouldn’t do another tour until we have another album. And we’re trying to pursue the film score business, so it depends how that goes. We’re talking to other people about stuff already, so who knows.”

    Phil: “We’re not with London Records anymore, which is great to be honest.”

    Paul: “Now we’re free men. It’s nice know that when we do an album, we don’t HAVE to give it to those people. If we do an album, we could release it ourselves.”

    Phil: “We can work with people who want to work with us and we want to work with them. It just feels very fresh to us, really nice. Especially with the film stuff.”

    Had you found the label trying to control the way your music sounds at all?

    Paul: “Not really, but what happens is that in a way they can do that. Only because if you want to please your label, then they can control you by being disappointed at the appropriate moments. Like ‘it’s good but it needs another dimension’ or ‘there’s not really an obvious single’ or ‘why don’t you get a singer for that.’ You say ‘no, that’s what you’ve got’ and they’ll literally say ‘well we’re not going to spend any money promoting it then.’ And that’s how they can influence you if you’re bothered by it. What happens in England is that if Radio One doesn’t playlist it they get really disappointed and all the steam goes out.”

    Phil: “Based on one radio station.”

    Paul: “But that’s what they’re like, and that’s what you know they’re like. And you just have to live with it. If we do it ourselves, then we won’t be fussy about that sort of thing.”

    Category: Feature InterviewsTags: , | Comments Off

  4. Orbital

    by admin

    A large number of new electronic dance acts emerged out of the techno/rave explosion of the early 90′s, but few have proven to have the staying power as Orbital. With each new release, they’ve managed to give their music a unique edge without straying to far from what listeners come to expect. Now fans old and new can trace the duos evolution with ‘Work: 1989-2002,’ a new 14 song collection. The brothers Hartnoll can also currently be seen and heard in the movie xXx. The following is an interview conducted with Orbital while they were in NY for the premiere of that film.

    You’re quoted as saying “our best work comes from trying to copy other people and getting it wrong.” � can you elaborate on that?

    Paul: “It’s just an observation. People early on would go, ‘oh, you’ve got such an original sound, how did you create your own sound?’ And my answer has always been, ‘well by copying other people and getting it wrong. It’s the simple way of saying ‘oh, my influences are…’. The easy times of writing music are when you can go in and say ‘oh, I want to do something that sounds like that,’ you never run out of ideas. You keep trying to push this thing into that shape, and eventually it takes on a form of its own or becomes something else and then you start following that idea. Either you sit there and say ‘it doesn’t sound like that, but I like it’ or half way through you think ‘actually, that’s quite a bit different, I think I’ll follow that. You don’t always go in there trying to imitate something else, but it definitely happens sometime.”

    What are you feelings on the evolution of electronic dance music over years since starting Orbital?

    Paul: “It sort of always hangs around, like reggae does. It’s an established are form, whether it’s currently the trendiest thing or not. Over the last sort of decade or so, we’ve seen it come and go. For me, it’s always been at the forefront, because obviously, that’s what we do. If it disappears from media favor, we don’t really notice it. It must have come and gone a few times during our time.”

    Phil: “It think the way it’s evolved and the way it’s changed has been the subcategories – jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, break beat, big beat, new school, etc. It’s just really quite interesting to me. And now you’re getting a whole new generation of people making this music who were like 10 when it first started.”

    Paul: “There’s a new generation of people who are being influenced by the stuff that influenced us, so it’s now coming around full cycle. We were influenced by people like Depeche Mode and Cabaret Voltaire, Severed Heads, Kraftwerk, Soft Cell. And now young people are being influenced by those people again. They’ve gone beyond the things that first influenced them, to the influences the people that they like. Which is interesting to see.”

    Did you think you’d still be doing this, over a decade later?

    Paul: “Yeah, well we hoped, I should say. I didn’t imagine I’d give it up and go do something else.”

    How do you keep things interesting for yourselves?

    Paul: “You’ve always go fresh influences. From a technical standpoint, you’ve always got new equipment and new ideas in sound synthesis. That adds a new flavor. You normally want to do something different, you might have an idea or you might not but you try to steer away from what you previously did.”

    Phil: “And new music comes. It becomes inspiring, so that keeps it fresh, hearing other peoples music. When you find yourself not really liking much, it can be disheartening and a bit scary sometimes.”

    Has the evolution of musical technology had much of an impact on the way you work?

    Has the evolution of musical technology had much of an impact on the way you work?

    Paul: “Live-wise, no. I still haven’t found anything that comes close to using an MMT8, which is so ancient that it annoys me. I wish I didn’t have to use it, because they do crash as much as an Apple Mac. I wouldn’t feel comfortable with a laptop on stage. I know lots of people use them, but I find that you just don’t get the depth of sound that I want. Of course we use samplers, but even an Emu sampler has a richness that you don’t get out of a like a Pro-tools audio card or something like that. If you’ve got a 909 or a 303, I like to have that actual object there. The sound of those coming out of a PC system unadulterated and pure is such a great sound. And I wouldn’t really want to fit them into a hard drive. So live, no, I haven’t found anything better than my hardware sequencer. Even the more modern ones are too fussy and don’t work in the simple way that I want them to.

    But in the studio, things are always changing and developing. Like all the soft synths, things like Absynth, if that were a hardware synthesizer it would be so expensive. When people make big hardware synthesizers, they’re out of the reach of a lot of people. Like that Waldorf Wave, what was that, it was like 6000 pounds or something like that? Now you’ve things like Absynth and Reaktor or less that 500 pounds. They’re mindbogglingly complex and fun, which I think is great. I certainly don’t mind losing a true analog sound for something as complicated and fun.”

    Does using those software synths pose a problem when adapting the music for live performance?

    Paul: “We haven’t had a problem with that, because we’ve only just started getting into them and most of the songs we play live don’t us those sort of sounds. But I’m not too bothered about recreating, and don’t want to make it exactly how it is in the studio. It’s quite fun to throw in new sounds. So we’re not too concerned about that, really.”

    Was it obvious what tracks to include on the new collection?

    Phil: “No, we ended up with sort of 2 CDs worth of music, really. It was just a case of honing it down.”

    Paul: “It’s also the short single versions, which is interesting in itself. Because we normally record different versions of tracks rather than just edit them down from the album. A 7-inch version, as it would have been called once upon a time. Putting those together on an album is quite nice, because then it forms an album that never was.”

    Phil: “It’s good for fans, especially in the US, because a lot of the singles didn’t come out there.”

    How did your appearance in ‘xXx’ come about?

    Paul: “We were in the right place at the right time, really. We were finishing out tour in LA and were doing the rounds talking to different music supervisors at studios. We just happened to be in someone’s office chatting to them and they said ‘you know what, I’ve got this guy, a director, he’s got film where he’s looking for a very European sounding band for a scene. Who’d look good and sound European, for a rave in Prague, maybe you’re the guys?’ His assistants came to the gig, and sort of went to him and said ‘yep, these are the people for your film.’ And that was it really, we just went from there. It was a great laugh to do it. There was an amazing length of music used, about 4 minutes. Normally, when you get in a film you get 20 seconds if you’re lucky and then someone’s talking over it. But in this, even when people are talking over it, it’s really clear.”

    Phil: “We made the track for that particular scene, as well. That turned out well in our opinion.”

    Category: Feature InterviewsTags: , | Comments Off

  5. Ladytron

    by admin

    Influences of early synth pop and electro are highly apparent in the music of Ladytron, but they are far from being a retro band. On their debut full length cd, “604,” they successfully drew from the past to create a highly unique, futuristic sound. Their sonic palette often sounds like it could have been used to create an early 80′s synth pop hit, but things would probably be much different today if bands from that era were able to create such infectious, sophisticated pop music as Ladytron.

    Ladytron is comprised of Mira Aroyo (Vocals/Keyboards) , Helena Marnie (Vocals/Keyboards), Daniel Hunt ( Keyboards/Rhythm Box) and Reuben Wu (Keyboards/Rhythm Box). They recently released a new cd, “Light & Magic.”

    The following is an email interview with Hunt

    How has Ladytron evolved from the initial formation to what we hear on “604″?

    We’re more of a band, back then we hardly knew eachother, it was all an experiment, we didn’t know how things would progress. Now we have our setup better organized, our studio better equipped, for example we part-recorded ‘Movie’ in a cheap studio in the same building as our label Invicta HI-FI. We wouldn’t have to do that now, it’s really liberating, to remove the time constraints of a studio and the opinions of the engineer from the process, to have indefinate time and space to record.

    Where does the title 604 come from?

    It’s the area code for British Columbia…… we’re glad we’ve attached this strange importance to that number, it crops up everywhere now; We noticed when we stayed in Hamburg on your in Germany (in a hotel called “Commodore”-pure coincidence), that the number to phone reception from your room was ’604′. Moments afterwards the building had caught fire and we were lucky to escape with our lives. I’m not joking.

    What bands would you say most inspired you to make music, and who do you think had the biggest influence on Ladytron’s sound?

    Personally I can’t remember, I suppose when I was a kid I was into Duran Duran and stuff like that, I got introduced to American electro like Mantronix, Newcleus, and Jonzun Crew through my older brother when I was about 10 years old. That was a massive influence, and I still listen to that stuff today, it has far greater mystique for me than english groups from that period.

    Liverpool groups had some influence, Teardrop Explodes, Frankie goes to Hollywood….later on in school I was into Jean Michel Jarre when the other kids were in their soft-metal phases….but I don’t think any of these things made me WANT to make music, I think I just did anyway. I can’t speak for the others obviously.

    What are your favorite pieces of electronic musical equipment, and which do you think has the greatest effect on your sound and/or approach to composing music?

    I love my Roland SH09, it’s all over the record. Mira loves her Korg MS20, Reuben loves his Korg MS10, But we record on a PowerMac, which has to be the most important item of kit actually. Steve Jobs gets a thank you on our album.

    How would you compare the reaction you get from audiences in the various countries you’ve performed?

    National stereotypes sometimes come out. I’d say Sweden was the most insane response so far, followed by Germany, the French are either ecstatic or very quiet, and the Spanish are narcofiends. We have enjoyed everywhere we’ve played so far, maybe because we never bother playing in England very much.

    Do any members of the band have formal musical training?

    Reuben and Helen have some classical training which has been completely disregarded in relation to this group. Their parents should be very proud after all that expensive tuition they paid for.

    What’s you approach to live performance? Do you have some backing sequences fixed, or are you able to play (or at least manipulate) everything live?

    We play everything live but obviously we use drum machines and some bass sequences occasionally, things that are physically impossible to play, it would be pointless us trying to use a drummer and a bassplayer live just to fit into peoples preconceptions of what a band should be. We like the fact that our live setup is so different.

    Do you think at all about live performance when you are writing/recording songs?

    Not at all. I sometimes think “this would be good to play live” maybe, but I wouldn’t want to limit our recordings by worrying about how to perform a song, live shows are momentary, records last forever.

    How quickly do you tend to write/record? What does the ratio tend to be in terms of time spent composing, crafting sounds, and doing vocals?

    Writing/recording/rehearsing is a single process for us, but personally, my songs knock about in my head for as long as possible before they’re committed to tape in any way, as soon as you play a keyboard line, I feel like it has been defined, so I try and let the whole song develop in my head over weeks or months before I start building it up. It can happen very quickly, “the way that I found you”-Helen had sung that song once, before we got the take that’s on the record, the song itself only emerged a week before we mixed the album.

    Do you ever find that the electronic musical equipment gives you TOO MUCH control over things, to the point that you’re not sure if a song is done?

    You just need to keep stepping back and listening, I rarely tinker with something needlessly, I like our directness, I don’t want to lose that simplicity on a track just because it’s lived with us in our studio for a few months. It can ruin great tunes, you need to discipline yourself, It’s the flipside of what I said earlier, sometimes you need to just turn off and go home.

    You seem to be in a unique position because there’s a heavy early 80′s synth pop influence, yet at the same time you have a sound very much your own. What do you think the pros and cons are of people making the association?

    Pros: a reference point. Cons: having to justify your existance every step of the way, I think it will not be an issue by the time we release our next album. We also get associated with groups we don’t really feel any affinity with.

    Our final word is always that we have some influences and instruments from that period, which we use to generate our version of right now.

    How do you feel about the recent returns of such early 80′s electronic pop bands as Soft Cell and Book Of Love?

    I suppose it’s a little elevated over the cabaret circuit, I’d love to see Soft Cell live, but it’s just the past, I hate seeing my idols looking torn down, onstage, caked in foundation…..

    What’s in the immediate future for Ladytron?

    European festivals, US Tour, PlayGirl single, recording next album, laptops on the beach.

    Category: Feature InterviewsTags: , | Comments Off

  6. Halou

    by admin

    “Wiser,” the second album from San Francisco’s Halou, is an outstanding work of organic sounding electronic-based music. Building upon the sound of their 1999 debut, “We Only Love You,” the group has become much more focused musically. There’s increased use of live instruments this time around, and the music is expertly crafted to leave breathing room for the powerful vocals. Joining the husband and wife team of Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom on “Wiser” is new member Count. The following is an email interview with Ryan.

    Had the members of Halou been in any bands previously?

    RYAN: We have actually all been in bands before Halou, both together and separately. Rebecca and I have been working together for almost 10 years! We met Count in late 1995 in San Francisco. He joined the band that Rebecca and I had just formed, Anymore, and it’s more or less been the three of us ever since.

    How did your sound evolve from when you started to what was heard on “We Only Love You”?

    RYAN: Speaking for myself, It’s come almost full circle. When I first started, I was just fooling around with a couple synthesizers and effects. My first band was totally electronic. It was when I became the drummer of an acquaintance’s band that I eventually met Rebecca. That band was guitar-based, but very influenced by British things happening at the time like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins. I remember liking it at the time, but looking back, I really wish I had spent those years becoming a better songwriter. Rebecca and I left that band and directly formed Anymore with Count. Anymore was also guitar-based, but gradually became more electronic as we went on. It was after we recorded our first CD that I realized how unhappy I was with that setup. “We Only Love You” was recorded very quickly after we did the Anymore CD as an instantly gratifying experience for Rebecca and I. While Count did not play on it, he was constantly around while we were working on it and he did also engineer the album and do a lot of the vocal production.

    In terms of the process that went into making it, how would you compare “Wiser” to that album?

    RYAN: “We Only Love You” was made not knowing if anyone was ever going to hear it, really. While I certainly don’t hate that album, I deliberately cut corners making it. The album is based around breakbeats and big, warm chords. It doesn’t have the detail that “Wiser” has. I don’t think that is really a bad thing, I just prefer the direction that we’ve gone with the new album. Our writing/recording process always begins with me creating a song. From there, Rebecca comes in and adds her vocal melodies and lyrics. At that point, the song may change a bit to accommodate her parts. We’re all pretty honest with ourselves about the vocals being the most important element in our songs so we really try to frame them inside everything else that might be going on. After that, Count and I get together in his studio and strip the song back down around her vocal idea, and then build it back up into whatever we want it to sound like. The original versions can be either very close, or quite different, to the final, released versions of the songs.

    Do you have any favorite pieces of electronic musical equipment? Are there any particular pieces of gear that you consider key to Halou’s sound and/or approach to music?

    RYAN: I haven’t really been that reverent or loyal to any pieces of gear, really. I haven’t ever had enough money to be that discriminating, truthfully! I am currently really enjoying Reaktor by Native-Instruments. Something inspiring about building up your own synthesizers. We’re also pretty keen on ProTools as a means to record and arrange the songs. ProTools mainly affects the vocal production and some of the finer details in the songs.

    What’s your approach to integrating live instruments with the electronics? For example, do you have the parts composed/sequenced electronically first and then replace tracks with live parts? Or are parts written on (and specifically) for the various instruments?

    RYAN: I write pretty much all of the parts and they are sequenced as part of the original demos of the songs. From there, we decide what the instrumentation should be. A lot of times, it comes down to whether or not we have a convincing sample of a particular instrument. We don’t yet have the resources to hire too many outside musicians to play on our recordings. “Him To Me To You” from “Wiser” was actually written around the bassline. However, what sounds a bit like a double bass part, was written on a Nord Lead 2. On that particular track, we like the way the Nord bass sounded a lot and decided to keep it in instead of having someone play it live. However, when we perform live, we are joined by a string section, including double bass.

    How did Count come to join the band?

    RYAN: Since he was in our band prior to Halou, and he engineered/co-produced the first Halou record, he was a natural addition. We were all really into the idea of incorporating a live drummer into our live shows and he agreed to that. Mainly, though, it is his talent in the studio that he contributes the most.

    How did you come to sign to Nettwerk?

    Ryan: We sent them some of the demos that we were working on for “Wiser”. It was several months before we heard anything from them, though. From the time they began to show interest, it took about a year for us to sign. I think we would have been quite happy to release the album ourselves, so we weren’t real eager to hurry up and sign the “big record contract”. We’re all really happy with the label and their background. They’ve got a demonstrated talent for working with bands like us and they’ve made their name by doing just that.

    What type of set-up/instrumentation do you use when you play live?

    RYAN: We are going on tour in about a week, actually, and for this round of dates our line-up will be:

    Rebecca: Vocals
    Ryan: Keyboards/Guitar
    Count: Drums/Loops

    Elizabeth Roberts: Cello
    Greg Kehret: Double Bass

    Who would you say your influences are?

    RYAN: Musically, I think we try to not be influenced by other artists. I know that we aren’t 100% unique and we obviously can be categorized, but we don’t make an effort to be like anyone else or fit into some style. When in the studio, I think we get a feeling for the direction that the individual songs seem to want to go and we just follow that. “Political” on “Wiser” for example just sounded best as a minimal sort of cocktail lounge song so that’s what it became…

    Track #9 (“Feeling Like This Is To Fall Awake”) sounds like it has an old Casio keyboard on it – does it?

    RYAN: No, but close. It does have a Yamaha SY77, which I hated! That song was the only time I’ve ever used that synth to any great effect. The most distinctive sounds on that song are all samples. A lot of the sounds were routed into stompboxes which were then routed back into themselves and then twiddled.

    Are there any plans to re-issue ‘We Only Love You’?

    RYAN: Not yet… What are your plans for near future?

    RYAN: We go on tour next week, and then when we get back we’ll go back into the studio to record the new songs we’ve got for our next album.

    Category: Feature InterviewsComments Off