Part 2

Have there been technologies which have profoundly influenced, changed or questioned the way you make music?

The computer with the DAW. As I said earlier my plan was to play in a band, but I ended up just making music by myself sitting in front of a computer and it kinda shaped my whole life since now …

Already as a little kid, I was drawn to all aspects of electronic/electric music but I've never quite been able to put a finger on why this is. What's your own relationship to electronic sounds, rhythms, productions like – what, if any, are fundamental differences with “acoustic“ music and tools?

I think synthesisers and very unrealistic sonic textures are just so exciting because they have no materiality.

It’s escapism, it’s a dream, it’s fantasy, it’s the unknown and I think that is why it is so fascinating to some of us!

Late producer SOPHIE said: “You have the possibility with electronic music to generate any texture, and any sound. So why would any musician want to limit themselves?” What's your take on that and the relevance of limitations in your set-up and process?

I totally agree, I think it kinda works well with what I was saying earlier about people trying to stick to an aesthetic from a previous area and location and trying to reproduce the sound from it.

But to be more precise and dive a bit deeper, I think the way of thinking of Sophie and my own are also the results of being born and growing up in the neoliberal Western societies where traditions, folklores never really existed for us and we are being fed and overstimulated by a constant search for new things, innovations.

And I think that’s quite a big question to think about, there’s also a big ambiguity about that: was Sophie looking for constant new sound just by an internalised habit of trying to stand out and being an innovator in a capitalist society? Or was it also a reaction to a society that didn’t fit her and could be something else, better, more curious, more open-minded, vulnerable and loving?

I think the ambiguity was what made her work so genuine and powerful, and very modestly I would say that my record also has this layer and questioning attached to it.

From the earliest sketches to the finished piece, what does your current production workflow/process look like?

I’d say it’s 10% of fun and 90% of suffering aha.

Maybe it’s not as radical but yea an idea can come very quickly and then it takes a lot of time to refine it, making choices. I'm trying not to rush into making choices so there’s still a place for the right idea.

Also what is happening is that maybe for a track I find a sound that I really like or vocal texture that works well, and I will then save it and use it for the other songs, so slowly the album has this coherence through a common sound palette even though there’s many genre and ideas in the records. That’s something I really like to do in a record.

Rhythm, sound design, melody/harmony, something else – when do the different elements of a piece come into play for you?

I always started with chords or melodies for sure. Rhythm and sound design are very entangled in the second part. Vocals are definitely the very last layer.

In relation to sound, one often reads words like “material”, “sculpting”, and “design”. How does your own way of working with sound look like? Do you find using presets lazy?

I do use presets for sure, but I'm just trying to make them my own. I always tweak them a bit.

But also as mentioned earlier there’s also all this very free sound design process, which is serendipity being sculpted I guess.

And then there’s the last part which is very narrative. At some point I was looking for specific sounds that make sense for the vague storytelling/world building I'm doing: weather reports, coordinate transmissions, electromagnetic sounds, field recording of cars, birds etc.

What, to you, are the respective benefits of solo work and collaborations and do you often feel lonely in the studio? Can machines act as collaborators to you?

Yea I really felt lonely in that process. Before diving into the album I spent a lot of time working for other people. And it was so much easier, just trying to make sense of someone else's visions and being in constant discussion and trying to find a common ground which was pleasing for me and for them.

Right now I'm really trying to go back into collaborating, working for someone's visions, collective works. I'm working on the music for a short movie right now, exciting!

But I don’t really have this romanticism to machines unfortunately, if I'm alone in the studio, I'm alone aha, except when I chat on my phone with friends!

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. What are your hopes, fears, expectations and possible concrete plans in this regard?

I think AI in the way it is driven right now is just another acceleration of liberalism. Many “creative” works will be replaced … but also because maybe these jobs weren’t that creative actually. They were just algorithms embedded in human bodies for corporate purposes.

True art, the joy of creation will always exist. It’s just very very sad that liberal politics just don’t respect that. It will be harder and harder to be able to live from your art except if there’s a radical change in the economic system.

Besides that I'm sure, and it’s already the case, a lot of fun and interesting stuff is gonna come out of machine learning and stuff like that. In the vst Synplant 2 they incorporated this AI tool that let you feed the synth an audio sample and then try to mimick it. It makes a lot of fun accidents which are good for creativity!

If you could make a wish for the future directly to a product developer at a Hard- or Software company – what are developments in tools/instruments you would like to see and hear?

I don't really have an idea about this right now …

I’m getting more and more into hardware these days, if they could be wire free and very light that’d be awesome aha.