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Part 2

With more and more musicians creating than ever and more and more of these creations being released, what does this mean for you as an artist in terms of originality? What are some of the areas where you currently see the greatest potential for originality and who are some of the artists and communities that you find inspiring in this regard? 

The last few years has seen a bigger impact from female artists and producers working with electronic music and they're starting to getting recognised on the same basis as men. This is probably one of the biggest changes that can open up new possibilities, not only making the scene more inclusive but also allowing it to grow into new directions.

For example what http://femalepressure.tumblr.com is doing at the moment is super important.

How strictly do you separate improvising and composing?

I don’t.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and composition and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them? 

It’s really easy to get lost up your own arse when making music with today's tools and it comes out as flashy but uninteresting sound design. I try to prevent over-working stuff. I separate composing and mixing and that makes it easier to progress; otherwise you just end up filtering a kick or tuning a hi-hat for a few days.

What's your perspective on the relationship between music  and other forms of art – painting, video art and cinema, for example – and for you and your work, how does music relate to other senses than hearing alone? 

It doesn't need to be other areas of art to inspire me. I find a walk down the street or cooking a great meal with my family probably inspires me the most at the moment. I really enjoy living a normal life with my kids during the week and occasionally blasting silly amounts of bass at people at 4 am on the weekends.

What's your view on the role and function of music as well as the (e.g. political/social/creative) tasks of artists today - and how do you try to meet these goals in your work?

I try, not only in my work but also in my everyday life, to be as inclusive and open to new ideas and people as possible. The techno and electronic music world in general can be very tight knit and excluding on an artistic level. That makes it very stale and unimaginative at times.

If we're talking about techno it hasn’t really progressed that much in the last 20-25 years. That’s pretty interesting for a music scene that used to pride itself on being the music of the future! 

Listening is also an active, rather than just a passive process. How do you see the role of the listener in the musical communication process?

These days the boundaries between artist and audience is very thin thanks to social media etc. When I was growing up, the only way for me to interact with an artist was to go to shows. But now someone can contact me on Twitter or Soundcloud and we can start a dialogue that can be as rewarding and inspiring for me as it is for them. 

Reaching audiences usually involves reaching out to the press and possibly working with a PR company. What's your perspective on the promo system? In which way do music journalism and PR companies  change the way music is perceived by the public?

I see it this way: if you build a boat and place it in the middle of the Atlantic ocean it’s gonna be very difficult for anybody to see and appreciate the work you have done unless you tell them where to look.

What I have learnt through my years in the music business is that good PR is probably the single most important factor in releasing music, for better or worse. And when I say good PR I think that there’s a lot of bad PR campaigns out there. It's a very fine balance between getting your music heard and over-saturating social media etc.

Anyway, I would probably not have been answering these questions without the PR company working my current release by contacting you.

Do you have a musical vision that you haven't been able to realise for technical or financial reasons – or an idea of what music itself could be beyond its current form?

I would very much like to work on a more physical level in the future, being able to ”play” with structures or whole rooms and letting that then interact with computers and synthesizers on an equal basis. I'm very interested in interaction between things that are considered closed and separate from each other.

I also hope that the future will bring more gender and ethnic diversity to the electronic music world. Getting more people in with different influences and backgrounds would really help things progress to the next level, rather than a bunch of white males (like me) in a closed community, repeating the same music over and over again and patting each other on the back for getting a kick drum to sound like a 20 year old Basic Channel record. I strive to help new people access the world I work in and hope to be able to realise this on a grander scale with a bigger financial prospect.

 


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