Name: Martijn Ravesloot aka Melawati
Nationality: Belgian
Occupation: Producer
Current Release: Melawati's debut album Artimia is out October 14th 2022 via Ellum Audio. 
Gear Recommendations: The MFB dominion is an amazing synth, paraphonic, but with a lot of routing options and a very wide sound palette. It’s a beast, and built like a tank. It leans more to the aggressive side of analog synths, with three oscillators that can work together or clash pretty dramatically.
Also, the LYRA-8 is pretty extreme, but will always get you some weird, brute noise. I especially like the delay, as it can produce some interesting side effects. You probably won’t use this machine too often, but when you do … Oh boy …

If you enjoyed this interview with Melawati, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud for more music and information.  

What was your first studio like?

My dad was a session pianist in the nineties, playing on all kinds of pop and rock records in Belgium, and he built a home studio when I was a kid. So I kind of grew up in and around the studio.

At first, I was just intrigued by it all, then moved to play all the instruments (mainly drums). But when I was about 13, he taught me how to operate the desk and set me up with a DAW so I could record my stuff. I remember it being thrilling to build tracks with the different instruments lying around. Layering things, chopping it all up and just composing music while recording.

I’ve never stopped since.

How and for what reasons has your set-up evolved over the years and what are currently some of the most important pieces of gear for you?

I make a lot of music with my modular set-up. There are a lot of unnecessarily heated debates over the sense or nonsense of modular, but I like it a lot.

I build noises, textures and patches based on a vague idea of what the sound should be, but with the turn of a knob or the repatching of a single cable, it all falls apart or reforms into a new idea. There’s a nice balance between control and going with the flow.

I reserve days or nights to just to experiment and not to worry about which track I want to work on or what needs to be done. With absolute freedom and a bit of chaos, a lot of weird stuff comes out, and I just record everything. At a later stage, I chop up the jams, build sample instruments, loops or use them as starting points for new tracks.

Some see instruments and equipment as far less important than actual creativity, others feel they go hand in hand. What's your take on that?

I do think creativity is inherently fueled by what’s possible. So if there are new instruments or gear that open up a fresh world of possibilities, it’s going to push creativity and breed new ideas. Even when it’s not apparent at the time, gear can really be more than just a tool.

There are a lot of examples, like the TB-303, 8 bit chips or the whole concept of overdrive. They gave birth to acid, chiptune and rock, but actually were just very specific limitations of circuitry. I’m not sure you can invent a sound, and even if you can, you can’t conjure it up out of thin air, so creativity is sort of bound to instruments and gear, and it will be forever a playground to find out how they work together.

[Read our feature on the Roland TB-303]

That being said, it does not have to be any specific gear. Whether it’s all top of the line gold wired hi-end gear or shabby Toys’R’us crap, it’s really up to what flavour you’re interested in.

A studio can be as minimal as a laptop with headphones and as expansive as a multi-room recording facility. Which studio situation do you personally prefer – and why?

I still look at my studio like a laboratory, and do treat it as such. I constantly move stuff around, connect stuff in weird ways, run everything through a VHS machine, or record some strange instrument I found at a yard sale. So the set-up is very flexible and changes constantly.

I do try to make all the wires and scattered hardware extra cozy by having some nice visual touches. I used to have a projector to project images and video on my wall, and build a vibe like that, but at the moment it’s a lot of art, and a lot of mood lighting.

I don’t need a lot of input in the studio as far as other music, books or other references, but visually, I like for it to make sense.

From traditional keyboards to microtonal ones, from re-configured instruments (like drums or guitars) to customised devices, what are your preferred controllers and interfaces? What role does the tactile element play in your production process?

It’s all about control really. Too much, and you might as well program it in and leave the room, too little and there’s nothing really you can do.

I like knobs, and sliders. They give you a nice sense of control, but it’s really working on feeling, more than giving the exact value needed, as most knobs are not precise enough anyway. For my live sets, I built a controller out of some voltage generators, with a ribbon element and a bunch of knobs. They all work together, and send an array of voltages to my modular, who produces the actual sound.

Because the knobs influence each other, there’s not really an analytical way of knowing which knob does what exactly, but by playing it  a lot you build up muscle memory, and start to understand how to play it. Going from random melodies to something playable is a very nice feeling, and it gives me the exact amount of control I want. Not too much, not too little.

In the light of picking your tools, how would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I am sometimes baffled by the rigidness in people protecting or safeguarding a genre of music from any outside influence or innovation. I find I hear the phrase “that’s not real (fill in genre)” much too often. Especially because the very music they protect so dearly was born out of doing new shit, and not following the rules of the day anyway. Especially in electronic music this seems to be the case, and I’m not sure why.

I have no real feel for traditions, so I am probably constantly disrespecting them. All music will eventually have a place in the great timeline of recorded music, and surely the labels will follow, but personally, I don’t really care about that before the track is released.

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, making my tracks is an absolute blur of playing instruments, mixing them, bouncing parts, reamping samples, chopping them up, putting them in sample instruments, and playing them again. So I really can’t distinguish between the playing of instruments, the recording of them and the mixing. Audio flows freely through all gear I own, and there’s really no different phases of making my tracks.

With the modular setup especially, I will route different stems to different inputs, build some kind of patch using those sounds, and let them influence each other. So is that playing synths or mixing, I have no idea.

Of course at the end there’s more focus on making everything sound the best it can possibly sound for the given track, but even then, I try to keep an open mind to what is still possible. Sometimes I run the pre master as a whole through some instruments and record variations, and breakdowns.

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?

I will start playing around in the studio, and at one point I’ll hit something that’s melodically intriguing. It’s when I hear a melody worth hearing that I start calling something a track. With “Slow Pulse” it started with a nice sequence over a simple drum machine.

I programmed some variations on the sequence, and recorded multiple runs of it, trying different sounds and settings. I will then take that audio, run it through my modular, start patching and taking massive detours, and record all kinds of percussive sounds, sweeps, random glitches etc … The main sequence is pretty unrecognizable in these runs, but since that’s what it’s coming from, it’s staying in the same sonic family, and it makes the sounds just fit a bit better with the track.

I will then cut up these very long audio takes, put them in a sample instrument, and start building some textures with it. Once I get a feel for the vibe, I try to find or make a visual that goes with it. I put this up on a screen for the rest of the session, as a mascot, and to stay in the same headspace, even when doing really technical things, like patching. If the vibe is good, I’ll start making more interesting beats, and building the structure a bit more.

I then edit all the different variations of the main sequence to tell the story of the track, and at this point it’s usually time to find that melody or hook or sound that will bring it all together. Very often I don’t find it, and the track goes in the trash, or if it’s lucky, in some very icecold storage. But if I do find it, I rejoice and bring it home.

In “Slow Pulse”, it was the noisy synth solo that’s at the heart of the track. I just love it.

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

I am getting more and more into instrument building, and am dreaming of designing my own synth. A better way to start, though, is building my own sequencer, which I have done in eurorack form.

[Read our Smomid interview about building instruments]
[Read our Lia Mice interview about building instruments]

I am very much in love with all different kinds of sequencers, because they boil down to a very simple idea. You make a logical set of rules, and the machine will give back a melody following said rules. It’s pretty standard stuff when it’s just 8 steps, with one note per step, but it gets interesting really fast when you combine different sequencers, with different clock divisions, or when you let the speed of the sequencer be sequenced itself, by another sequencer. Multiple sequences working on the same sound works great too, as does working with conditional steps or other logic.

Modular synths are great for this kind of experimentation, you just need some clocks, some sequencers and some mixers, and you can do a lot. It’s definitely been an inspiration to use these in building sounds, arps and melodies.

To some, the advent of AI and 'intelligent' composing tools offers potential for machines to contribute to the creative process. Do you feel as though technology can develop a form of creativity itself? Is there possibly a sense of co-authorship between yourself and your tools?

I'm not really keeping track of any advances in AI, as it's not really of much interest to me. The line between artist and machine starts to fade away long before that, when you start thinking about using presets, existing loops, sampling etc …

Since music is just organized sound, it's the act of organizing it that makes someone a composer. It’s all just human communication, so if there’s nothing a human is communicating, it won’t really be the same, I’d say.

For stuff like atmospheric music for games or music under voice overs I could see it happen, but I think it’ll be a while before there are any real AI hits. It’d be interesting, though.

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

I’m pretty curious what the listening experience will be like in the future. As home systems got better, and streaming took off, it meant that mixes didn’t have to be catered towards a loud radio, but could be very precise and detailed in their sound, since most people would be listening to it on pretty decent headphones or audio systems.

Surround never really happened in music, apart from some projects, but maybe there will be more binaural tracks? I’d be very down to have more binaural instruments, or to mix some tracks following that concept. I always enjoy it, and it could really add an extra dimension.