Part 1

Name: Nerk & Kirn
Members: Benjamin Weiss aka Nerk, Peter Kirn aka Kirn
Nationality: German (Benjamin), American (Peter)
Occupation: Producer, DJ, technologist, journalist (Peter), Producer, DJ (Benjamin)
Current release: Nerk / Kirn's XY Moods EP is out via Establishment.
Recommendations:
Peter: I’m really proud of MeeBlip, our own hardware, and what we’ve done, with engineer James Grahame. We’ve used that a lot over the years with Benjamin; I appreciate his support, too. I hope by the time this is out, we do have MeeBlip stuff shipping again – we’ve been hit hard by the chip shortage, but we have been working away.
Lately, I’ve also been deeply enjoying the Ukrainian-made Dnipro modular line, especially the Dots module for Euclidean rhythms.

Benjamin: Meeblip of course! Currently I really like the Polyend Play for its sequencer capabilities and the ridiculously large Perkons from Erica Synths because I love the raw sound and the feel and size of the UI elements (unlike Peters', my hands are quite big, so I appreciate the real estate on this machine …).
Another nice tool built by colleagues of mine is Ableton Note, a great sketch app and of course RNBO, which I'm quite excited about.Ok, that´s 4 now, I better stop then.

If you enjoyed this interview with Nerk & Kirn and would like to know more about the duo, visit them on Facebook and Soundcloud. Or read our previous Peter Kirn interview for his thoughts on an even wider range of topics.



What was your first studio like?

Peter: I guess I already had my first “studio” as a kid. My parents were nice enough to outfit me with a Roland JX-1 controller and an SC-55 SoundCanvas, plus Cakewalk 4 on DOS. I immediately wanted to mess with the SoundCanvas’ sounds, though, and warp them and make them more abstract, which was limited on that hardware. But I loved the ability to create digitally.
 
Benjamin: Very chaotic, although I just had an Atari ST, a Roland S/50 and the first generation Novation Basstation as well as a Doepfer MS 404, both of which I still sometimes use today. It was also a literal bedroom studio in that I stuffed it all right around my bed.
 
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?
 
Peter: For me, all the breakthroughs were about finding ways of getting interactive and working live.

In 1994 in high school I was at a summer program at Oberlin for two weeks and dragged a desktop Mac onstage with a Yamaha player piano rigged together with Mark Coniglio’s Interactor. I was an early adopter of Ableton Live and set all the warp settings wrong so I could make abstract soundscapes for modern dance. I think there was a long period of being confused about loops and dance-based music.

Now I’m partly out of the box again with my first modular setup – but not entirely, I still love the computer. I just wanted to mix up my way of working a bit. I think honestly the best moments have come when I didn’t use tools properly and had the time to devote to DIY. So I’m back to that again. I’ve got Pure Data patches running on the modular, sort of meta-modular patching.

Benjamin: In the beginning it was all about (as for many people in the 90s I guess) acquiring the classics: I bought a 909, an 808, had a 303 for a while and so on.

[Read our feature on the Roland 303]

When I started as a music technology journalist, the selection became broader, so I got to explore loads of different instruments, not only from the big companies, but also from the smaller companies coming up in the 90s. When I got to know Andreas Schneider from Schneidersbüro (he was initially doing distribution only for Jomox) he would pass everything he added to his distribution roster to me for reviewing it for De:Bug or Keyboards, which opened up my eyes for the more obscure and interesting things in that area.

He generously let me keep stuff for a bit longer than needed for the review and so I got to know a lot of gear from that realm that was considerably smaller and more exclusive at the time (exclusive mainly because the creators couldn´t afford to build more than a handful devices) as well as the more mainstream hardware and software from others.

My setup in the studio changed frequently ever since then, because you don't get too attached to things if they enter and leave your studio on a regular basis. I also got into designing instruments, so I used stuff that I worked on, starting with the Toktok edition of the X-Base 09, Modstep for iOS and eventually Maschine and Push (which I didn´t work on). Using the stuff you worked on is as rewarding as it can bring you back down to earth, so it´s always a great learning experience.

For playing live I´ve returned to a DAWless setup two years ago with Maschine+ as the center piece and a changing selection of synths (with a Meeblip in the mix every now and then) as well as a Teil3.

I'm currently looking into making my own Master FX using the just released RNBO from Cycling74, which I can highly recommend.

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?

Peter: I think if they weren’t interlinked, I would have had near-zero income for the past years, since my income streams are mostly talking to people about the connection.
 
Benjamin: While I believe this is true to some extent. Instruments can inspire you to do things differently and explore, which usually helps me enjoy the process more.

Apart from the obvious boredom that can be caused by sitting in front of a computer yet again to make music (we all do that enough I guess), making music to me is also a haptical experience. I also believe that there is something in using all your senses and your hands in 3D space that changes your perception and the way you make music.

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?
 
Peter: I like small things. I tend to focus on one or two devices at a time – sometimes just on a single knob. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still up for a residency.

Benjamin: Sometimes I just need one very small and limited device, sometimes I want access to lots of different stuff to choose from. Which is why I finally hooked up my current studio so that I don’t have to replug anything, but can get going right away.

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?
 
Peter: I’m honestly still searching for a controller I really like. Probably the voice remains the most versatile.

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”?

Benjamin: I have a hard time with anyone calling their own music style "music of the future”: It gets stale real quick and is just never true. We all build on the tradition of humankind making sounds to enjoy themselves.
 
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?

Benjamin: To me pretty much anything can be an instrument.

But I definitely consider mics and mixing desks instruments. Anything that can produce sound can be an instrument.

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?

Peter: I’ve had a lot of fun making techno and industrial music and relating to the scene around me. But lately I’ve also been doing some work that pushes me out of any particular habits.

So for some tracks on the Klangbox release for Feral Note, I worked a lot inside VCV Rack creating different rhythmic structures that had this kind of perpetual motion quality to them. I did that again working in SuperCollider with Risset rhythms, a sort of perpetual accelerando, and warping around that (with some hacked code) for an all sub-bass project hosted by Eufonia in Berlin and Leipzig.

I remember with Benjamin a slightly broken SH-101 we imported was a source of a ton of material for one of the tracks. It’s now repaired, so I’m glad we captured some of the broken sounds before it got fixed. It happens even more when it’s two of us, because we’re each warping and breaking one another’s work. I know we sent tracks back and forth in this way.

I also had a recent experience with a partly-damaged Polivoks that was in our studio for a while – it sounded like it was sighing, or crying. That’s in a number of tracks, including all over a release I just did for Trapez.

Within a digital working environment, it is possible to compile huge archives of ideas for later use. Tell me a bit about your strategies of building such an archive and how you put these ideas and sketches to use.

Benjamin: To be honest, I don’t really maintain a large archive of ideas or files anymore, because I rarely go over lots of variations of the same thing. A few years ago I was browsing through my DVD archive just to find out that there were tracks in there that had more than 50 versions of which I liked none - interestingly the first versions always sounded the freshest.

Ever since then I made it a rule to decide on the same day (usually after 1 or 2 hours) if I want to go on with an idea, and if I don’t, I delete everything related. If I decide to keep on working on it, I have to have a rough mix by the end of the day. I also usually make sure to only keep one mix if it’s better than the one before.