was anyone envisioning where the fall of the berlin’s wall, and the collapse of the eastern bloc, would lead us in the long term ?
08_2020
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The piece was created online on january 10th 2021.
Here is an interview from Angel Lebailly:
Dive us through your work as an electronic music artist: when did you start? What was the catalyst? Any inspiration or encounter that drives you there?
My first and deepest waves come from techno music and performances considered as Gesamtkunstwerk (“total art”) a little bit further than Wagner’s sense. I am more after an ideal unification via all art forms and not only theatre forms. Each element coming from various media is just considered as another compositional dimension of a larger object. You can thence easily guess the cliché generation, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds I am coming from. As a teenager, I was living in the suburbs of Paris, started listening to Jean Yves Leloup Barbichon and Eric Pajot‘s Radio Mentale on RadioFG. This embryonal past is pretty intimate and would remain irrelevant if I did not want to expose by this the consistency, craving of my sincerity and engagement towards music. It has become a dedication in which authenticity stands beside all the side spectacle, social, and political aspects of art. Except for pieces based on social aspects themselves, I find it easier to appreciate, and compose, music without having to deal with context and social impacts. I do not consider music without social interaction as purely technical. I sometimes say it only as a provocation or simplification. I however believe music can eventually be made authentic by non-humans, machines. That is what artificial creativity is all about.
Music is undeniably sometimes used as a tool for power and recognition. It often stands as an existential reason or a pretext. I often see pieces not genuine for themselves existing through a non-musical theme; a story-telling as a useful societal subject. I am not against anecdotes but we have to be careful that art does not have to become useful.
Gesamtkunstwerk, as I would humbly like to conceive it, generalizes music enough to a wide range of possibilities involving sociality such as sharing, hearing, listening, playing, attending, dancing, watching, analyzing, hating, etc. There are indeed more points of view, dimensions, and concentration lines than imagination can handle. Sound certainly affords the latter thanks to its invisible immersive and nonetheless tangible essences. Because of that, there are boundless ways to actively listen, produce and perform music. I had to start exploring and discovering by myself and had several catalytic effects.
Most of them were influential art pieces such as La Légende d’Eer from Iannis Xenakis (a milestone), Einstein on the Beach from Philip Glass, all the work from Autechre, Kontakte from Karlheinz Stockhausen, Granular Synthesis’ videos and many many, too many others moving me both corporeally, in my instant mind and passion.
I also had other kinds of influences mostly coming from science, hard science-fiction, and epistemology. I got “gravity assists” like Jupiter’s atmospheric patterns, extra-solar planets, DNA nucleotide chains permutations, loop quantum gravity theory, etc. In other words, everything and everyone organizing, disorganizing, twisting minds and spirits; as if it was a narration of the exploration of some thought. There is then a strong link with scientific experimental method. Thank you Aristotle…
The main significance of the kind of piece presented here is the exploration and discoveries within a fictional world provided by both musicians and listeners. Concrete concepts like realities, representations, and psychology then become primary fields to use, explore, or transform.
I call it fictional, also in a neurological way, because the only constraint we ultimately have is imagination or sometimes a machine’s random seed. Important debates in the history of science concern René Descartes’ rationalism with inductivism or empiricism. A “hypothetic-deductivism” came to the fore in the early 19th century and could well be an early stem for artistic abstraction and mind work on pattern correlations. Intelligence deduces causality from correlations. In arts, it is magic to see the brain creating such real or imagined causality from any information. Thought experiments are one of my interests; they are a possible way to conceive what I am offering people to explore.
A true old story: as a child, I was in a double-decker bus in the suburbs of London (St Albans) when the person taking care of me lent me his Walkman. The difference between what I was seeing and what I was hearing was astonishing; simply a shock to discover how one could recreate a cognitive artificial space as much as an artificial time with music.
What would you say about your style of music and work?
I believe this should be framed by others than myself. If there is a need for that. Social matters and political artistic positions have been one of the hidden engines and motivations for my work. Music, the one existing from social existence, has been a way of emancipation for me. Pure electronic music is regrettably hardly understood and recognized in the field of contemporary music in France. It is a little better in Germany and the UK. It is a completely different judgmental basis in Japan. Pierre Boulez founded Ircam which was a truly unique chance for musical advances (at the cost of others?). But true interest and hierarchy within the institute are so classical-oriented that there is a lack of knowledge and culture in electronic music, sometimes conveniently categorizing it as “popular music”. The latter is mostly seen as a technical addition to the service of instruments. Society’s influence did indeed change that matter since the 1970s then but there is still an enormous work to do for open-mindedness and imagination. I also believe there would be no question if there were more allowance, thus less hegemony, for all musical cultures in our contemporary political system. We have to make that happen ourselves and not just expect.
In some cases, these questions of social recognition, of the need for interest from the ones who took power, can be recognized as a necessity for having the contingency to work properly. They are purely relative to the self, to individualism. Does that lead to a form of neo-liberalism ? Would value then be given to some sort of self-made?
Can you give us background information on your encounter with VOOV aka Christian Graupner and his label Humatic?
Christian Graupner kindly welcomed me at a dinner party at his place. I was brought by another friend and he did not know me. I really enjoyed the encounter and became more surprised after seeing VOOV’s work. I have broad respect for his experience, and his craft work. He is indeed someone who built himself and is always open to exploring new musical experiences and tools; from “popular” music to experimental, to installations, to video, while keeping stylistic consistency. I often discover new secret good pieces, remixes, and ideas he did release or not. I can tell you that the amount and variety of his work is simply enormous and not visible enough.
Transformed analog elements he uses can sometimes give similar results to my work. He rather uses a more intuitive and surrealist way so he is much more efficient and surprising.
The original soundtrack of DeutschFieber (1992) was composed VOOV. How does this musical piece resonate with you today?
It absolutely resonates in several ways. First, the subject itself appeals to me and is one of the reasons I visited Berlin many times before eventually moving there.
I do not play much in Berlin. DeutschFieber is proof to myself I was in some way still concomitant with the city; with “Deutschland” in the name of the piece… Then I wish the piece would be brought back nowadays when people think completely differently from the 1990’s. It happens to be an interesting cultural confrontation and opens up to where our society has gone from then. Finally adding a more ~present~ aesthetics to DeutschFieber brings an extra dimension of comparison; a kind of retro-futurism I am generally very appealed to.
I would not dare to generalize on Germany but I have the feeling that the country changed a lot over the past decades. It is nonetheless quite astonishing to see how major events can resonate after so long. That historical aspect surely does not explain everything but it is undoubtedly a factor. It is interesting to consider cultural aspects that drive history that itself forges the evolution of culture.
What made you interested in working on such a project ?
Besides other kinds of pieces, I have been working on staged theater, music-theater, and opera for quite a while. I for now have the impression I did everything I could explore in that direction and need a “new” environment to explore; conditions allowing more space for exploring relations between music and the rest while staying in that theatrical direction. There is nothing better to get back to radiophonic pieces for that concern. I however want to point out I still want to work in other fields and make pure abstract music; that is primary in my work and allows a necessary confrontation between the various fields I am working in.
I currently have a large piece ready for touring after the Covid-19: Bacchantes. That piece takes the path of a hörspiel but with an experimental way of active listening/reading through micro-rhythms and a specific spatialization over a 63-speaker dome. Because of that, DeutschFieber completely joins this idea by merging text, narration, and music. This is one of the many aspects of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk described earlier. DeutschFieber is not a hörspiel but rather a music-theatre piece.
Now, about the new version you made: you mentioned using binaural technology from the 1990s which is challenging: rebuilding the scene requires another artistic direction as the mixes are altered, requiring to change the EQs and more. Can you tell us about the challenges in making this new version?
Binaural recording goes back to 1881 with the Théâtrophone used at Opera Garnier in Paris. The technique indeed improved in the 1990s when personal computers could easily do convolutions in real time. That technology is nowadays the same but its resolution nevertheless has drastically improved. This then fits well with the time DeutschFieber has been created. The latter was earlier intended to be played onto a system close to the ones found in movie theaters (5.1 encoding etc). One could then deduct Christian Graupner’s intention was to create a set where the piece happens rather than simply using the space where the piece is being played. I then thought it would be interesting to create a more virtual version for headphones. I like headphones because they can provide intimate listening.
However, binaural techniques use filters measured from our ears. Each of us has different ones so that can be a problem. Also, as sounds are filtered again, equalization has to be thought of another way and remixed accordingly. Some background elements come back to the foreground for instance. These two main problems were opportunities to update the piece from another perspective and time period.
What about the bonus track of DeutschFieber 3D Holophonic? Can you tell us more about it?
I was lately mostly focused on two speech-based pieces and an opera: Bacchantes, the large piece described earlier, a permanent installation in London for the MotH museum called Mollspeak, and interpreting Francesconi‘s Quartett at the Berliner Staatsoper. It is time for me to dig more.
Holosonic is a joke. We can use it but we should find a way to do so in that context. Holophonic is a term used for diffusion systems (WFS etc) where sound sources are virtual and rendered “from the air” rather than “from speakers”.
What was your favorite part remastering the DeutschFieber album? Why?
I thought in a general way. DeutschFieber’s libretto is very interesting and somehow reminds me of Zimmerman’s Requiem für einen jungen Dichter with voices and a rather pessimistic atmosphere; very European, historic and “east side”. One can realize how rich Christian Graupner’s work is after scratching its surface. He has so many pieces with various styles etc. I always believe he understood a long time ago how things would work in the near future; not from a futuristic point of view but rather a functioning one. DeutschFieber shows this aspect both from the piece globally and esthetically.
How do you conceptualize electronic music compositions in your today’s work: for instance, synesthesia is part of your production process. How can you express yourself through synesthesia that blends contemporary music and media?
Soon, I am planning to compose a purely synthetic oratorio about the 1997 chess match between Kasparov’s and IBM’s Deep Blue. The idea does not consist of storytelling but rather the logic of the actual game. That would set the listening concentration into an unusual linear reading.
I am composing purely generative music that does not always have a beginning and ending. That may explain why I am interested in the way one actively listens to a piece time-wise and space-wise. Most pieces also have an infinite number of versions and some are even self-reproducible (in Von Neumann‘s sense). Timeline thus has sometimes no meaning for me. That brings interesting questions about form and its possible necessity.
The time skeleton of a piece is elementary for me. The architectural aspect of pieces is primary and eventually brings us more into rhythms rather than timbre and other dimensions. The outcome of such a conceptual approach is then minimalistic and structuralist. I sometimes use architectural design tools allowing me to generate structures that eventually become music, visuals, 3d printed scores, or anything else. That is probably a classic: I start from an infinitesimal scale from which would eventually emerge the form of a piece. The complexity of a piece then rises from unitary simple rules that are iterated zillions of times: maximalism at a large scale emerged from a minimalistic nanoscopic scale (below the sample scale).
This implies a super interesting relationship between notions of pulsation, groove, and randomness. Adding text, visual, or specific spatialization is just another layer: synesthesia locates itself here in a very conceptual way.
Tell us about your views on digital platforms such as Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, and Apple Music as your ‘bonus track’ will be released on these platforms.
Digital platforms are complicated for me because they force me to exist in a different way than I would naturally do, to get quantified, and to get into a competition I am not always willing to be part of. Arts is one of the few fields where one cannot be compared and these neo-liberal tools do force us. Very interesting subject though.
First, it took me a lot of time to accept myself as an artist because of myself and my relationship with the institution. In other words, I come from timidness, and being what I am now, authenticating a piece as one was the result of an effort. Then as explained before, my pieces have difficulties fitting into the stereo format, with a fixed timeline, without context, etc. Archiving and valorizing them was not my primary personality. I also had the chance not to be required to release albums.
I admit that this was a big mistake from me… Despite their consumerist aspect, these tools are indeed also an amazing opening door for variety. They should be an opportunity to share my work and force me to release them as frozen objects.
I often think of how many people are like me or even worse; doing interesting music that is never released simply because it is not their thing or the field they work in. I know a lot of such people.
Maybe it is beautiful, in a romantic way, to think someone would discover the amount and value of work after the death of the artist; deprived of its historical context for instance.
What is the future of music for you?
This is a passionate question I often think about and that is a creative stimulus for me. As an artist and a researcher, I am interested in novelty and exploration rather than the use of cultural backgrounds. In a sense, does that mean I am looking for non-human music where music would not be a cultural activity? I believe this value is very 1970s and has long been auxiliary even though I am obviously inspired by science fiction.
Just for the fun of it, I would say that the future of music is kitsch (which I love taming with), non-abstract, concrete, and directly socially useful.
Only from a purely technical aspect of it today, that music would plunge into a huge post-modernist mix between J/KPop, Snap and Hip Hop; not into the pure electronic and computer music from the 1960s or 1980s. Even less into classical contemporary that is long dead. I believe the future of music is done by a machine or a whole team; not one lone producer. We need to understand we are a hundred years away from Berlioz. Then comes the question of to what extent it would be creative and constructive collaboration.
But there will always be surprising music geeks in their kitchen with headphones. I believe these are the ones who will make revolutions. I have been waiting for it for a while. In the meantime, I am trying to research, experiment, and naively make the music of my future; a piece of music from the past future since it already exists.
I wish I would be able to listen to Boards of Canada through my headphones watching space and speed in airplanes.
sven väth and loveparade in 1992