Name: Kurt Uenala aka Null + Void

Nationality: Swiss
Occupation: Producer, songwriter, engineer
Current release: Kurt Uenala teams up with Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode for ”G.O.D.”, the first single from his Manuscript EP, out December 16th via hfn.
Gear Recommendations: The most important piece of gear in your studio space is the room itself. Take time to absorb and reduce some unwanted frequencies and reflections and put a big fluffy couch in the back of the room. The other very important piece are your speakers. I love the KSdigital C88 monitors, they changed the way I listen and make music as they are so true and fast in response time. You can program very intricate patterns and they still come out defined and clean and sit in the exact spot of where you placed them in the stereo field.

If you enjoyed this interview with Kurt Uenala and would like to find out more about his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, and Facebook.  

To keep reading, check out our earlier Null + Void interview on an even wider range of topics.



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?  

Memories are often the inspiration or even the drive to create. A moment from the past that I cherish or that impacted me.

I might be playing a chord on a synthesizer or noodling around with a plugin or Maschine. But often that reminds me of a moment from the past which I then try to really capture and distill to its essence.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?  

My process is not as planned out. The seed is what is important. It can be a sequence of chords, a musical phrase or an arpeggio and even just one chord. But when that seed hits a spot inside me, then I continue to flesh it out.

I never plan on writing a certain kind of song or musical piece. I react to what that “seed” needs and where it leads me. A super subby low bass line will probably not call for a superlow 808 kick drum pattern.

With experience, you will reach for things that worked. At the same time, one hopes to keep it fresh and stay curious to experiment.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?  

Maschine by Native instruments is my tool to capture and flesh out the initial “seed”. The way the UI is set up and the immediacy of the tactile knobs and buttons are perfect for fleshing out ideas in an intuitive and fast way. Cutting up a sequence of chords and spreading them over pads can be done with around 3 button presses and a knob turn. From there it is so easy to create accompanying instruments as Maschine has many helpful performance features built in such as arpeggiators and such.

Once I have a rough outline of the piece with verses and choruses etc, I output each instrument to a track in Ableton and automate movements within each instrument.

The final stage is to lock in the structure, choose where to place each element in the soundfield, set levels and eq, patch in the Roland Chorus Echo and a Spring Reverb and then finally render the audio in Ableton live.

Would you say that Machine has profoundly changed or even questioned the way you make music?   

Yes, it is definitely a piece of hardware that changed the way I work. I used to labor for days over the structure of a song (verse chorus intro outro etc) and create complicated percussion fills and variations that evolve throughout a piece.

With Maschine (and also Ableton in Session view) it is so easy to jump between sections and hear transitions and improvise a structure. For my live sets, I use Maschine+ and I don't finalize the structures so that I can improvise and rework a song in the moment.

Most would regard recording tools like microphones and mixing desks as different in kind from instruments like keyboards, guitars, drums and samplers. Where do you stand on this?  

For me, they are a different tool. They are “recording devices” and not instruments. An instrument such as a guitar is a tool that enables a performer to try to express a feeling using pitches that interact with eachother and the room they are placed in. They create harmonies, chords and ideally will help create a meaningful composition.

Recording devices capture those composition and can shape the timbre, the color of a sound. So to me, they are a bit less important as I think a good musical piece can sound like crap - that is completely ok with me. Of course it’s possibly more impactful if it it’s shaped in a certain way but ultimately, if the idea and composition is good, the mic choice or mixing desk are not going to change that.

Of course there are exceptions. Like when you use feedback loops to create sounds, then the mic and or the desk will have a huge impact, of course.

What tools/instruments do you feel could have a deeper impact on creativity but need to still be invented or developed?  

AI voice cloning and also generative note sequencing interest me greatly and I have great hopes  for AI helping us find new and meaningful ways to create. So far it still needs a lot of human interaction to create something that touches me but we will get there eventually.

But I definitely feel that if used as background music, AI generated music can work fine.
 
Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?  

I have a constant scent in my studio. Luckily I have regained my sense of smell after having lost it for 8 months due to Covid. This made me appreciate smells more than ever so I have a simple oil diffuser that evaporates the smell of a Scandinavian sea shore.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?  

I am definitely a follower in this process. Whatever the initial idea is, the path will unfold before me.

Sometimes there are technical choices that might influence where the idea goes, such as what instrument you are standing in front of or if something is broken in the studio that you would normally choose. But in the end, it often is chance or intuition for me.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?  

Often the magical moments of discovery happened at night, when the world was asleep. This used to be my modus operandi.

But since I had a child, I have to try to be able to recreate these moments during the day. I am still struggling with it but getting better I hope. It helps that I now live in a country that has 4 hours of sunlight in Winter so it is always night time anway!

How would you describe the relationship between technology and creativity for your work? Using a recent piece as an example, how do you work with your production tools to achieve specific artistic results?   

As an example, the recent piece “cracks are showing”on my mini LP manuscript was created in its raw form on the Oberheim OB-8 synthesizer. That particular instrument, and the patch that I created, had such a large and wide sound due to its big, wobbly, analog oscillators. They can be panned in the stereo field and that combination created the perfect space to hold the words written by Dave Gahan.

Once I recorded the basic chord changes into Maschine, I sequenced a really fast, stuttery random note sequence that I fed into an EMS synthi which has a very organic and human quality to its sound and the loveliest small spring reverb. The synth just lends itself to playing with the tuning of the oscillators as they have a very precise control due to a clever mechanical 10 turn knob.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?  

This is a constant struggle. It never ends, everytime I hear the piece, I discover a little detail that could be tweaked or eliminated or expanded upon.

I am someone who needs deadlines. Otherwise I'll drown in details.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?  

This is essential to me. Especially in the current climate of no budget for a mixing engineer or sometimes even mastering. The only thing that can save me then is to be able to step away, let it sit for at least 1 night - but even better for a few days - and then relisten and make corrections. This is what “fresh ears” of an outside engineer would be doing.

But if you don’t have the money for hiring outside people, you have to just take time and let your ears rest and get curious again.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?  

I get very involved as I don’t have the budget to have someone else mix my pieces. The person I would want to hire, John O’Mahony, is above my budget range so I stick to DIY. It just takes a lot longer and you lose the chance of possibly getting something you did not think of or are not able to do. But that is just the new reality for musical artists in my league.

On the other hand, I have been doing it for quite some time and have learned a lot so the results are getting better. My mastering is done by using a combination of software solutions by TC Electronic such as finalizer and also, Izotope Ozone and sometimes, if needed the absolute must have, RX.
 
After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

As you say, it really is not so easy. Especially if I take a little time off and am working more on the technical side of things helping someone make a record or teaching, which I really love doing (I teach privately online and at the university of the arts in Iceland).

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?   

Making a good cup of coffee, as you have mentioned, serves a very different function to me. It can of course hold memories and the smell might take you places. But creating a piece of music is more like writing down words in a journal or daydreaming. It aims to capture a feeling, a moment in time that you want to keep.  

That doesn’t mean that everyday tasks are less important. But you can make a piece of music that holds the feeling of you standing on a street corner in NYC, chatting with a friend, holding a steaming hot cup of Bodega coffee while the sun is coming up between the skyscrapers.

You can’t fully capture that moment by brewing a good cup of coffee, even though that is an important skill.