v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Interview with Lina Meruane

 

From Ñ digital, an interview with Chilean writer Lina Meruane:

¿Existe alguna coincidencia -que no sea de superficie- entre el título de la novela y el dicho “tener la sangre en el ojo”?
No hay coincidencia; como casi todo en un libro, el título es deliberado. Buscaba uno que cumpliera con dos premisas: uno, la literalidad y otro figurado. El titulo del trabajo anterior, que luego deseché, reunía ambas cualidades: “Mal de Ojos”. Sólo que ahí lo figurado era la idea de la maldición, y por eso tuvo que partir, mientras que aquí lo figurado es la idea de la rabia, del deseo de venganza, que pienso, define bien lo que hay en el fondo de mi protagonista. Esta mujer que oscila entre la ceguera permanente y la recuperación de la vista es un personaje movilizado por la ira, por el deseo iracundo de superar la crisis, y esa energía la lleva a valerse de todo el que se le ponga por delante. Esta mujer está dispuesta a todo, menos a ser la víctima de su cuerpo.

Contabas que respecto de Las infantas, esta novela es muy distinta de aquellos cuentos. ¿Podrías explicarme qué cosas cambiaron durante todos estos años, además de la cronología?
Han pasado catorce años desde que se publicó por primera vez “Las Infantas”, que es mi primer libro, y lo que sucede es que ya no me reconozco del todo en él. Lo digo porque cuando Eterna Cadencia me ofreció volver a publicarlo, lo releí, y lo leí con algo de asombro, no porque el libro sea asombroso sino porque no sabía de qué cabeza habían salido todos esos episodios. Pero también es cierto que una no es nunca la persona que escribe. Una está parada en un lugar y lo que sucede en los libros es otra cosa. Una está y no está en sus libros. Y además de esto, considero que cada uno de los libros que siguieron fueron escritos desde cabezas distintas, desde estrategias diferentes, como si cada uno se hubiera escrito movilizado más por la necesidad del texto que por ideas predeterminadas. Para ser justa con ese primer libro, lo que vi en la relectura es que había trazado, a su manera, en el estilo de entonces, que era más seco o más frío o más contenido, el recorrido de mis preocupaciones. La ceguera y su relación con la ira ya está en ese libro.

¿Cuánto hay de autobiográfico en “Sangre en el ojo”? ¿Tiene lo autobiográfico, sea éste el caso o no, importancia en el verosímil de cualquier narración?
Lo autobiográfico en un texto es una trampa. Trampa para el lector cuyo acto de entrega al relato lo lleva a convencerse de que todo lo que se le cuenta es verdadero. Trampa también para el autor, que a veces desconfía de su imaginación y del poder simbólico de la palabra, o delega el poder de su texto en el hecho verídico que lo sustenta, si ese es el caso. Te digo esto porque es lo que descubrí escribiendo esta novela. Yo, que siempre he estado más cómoda en la ficción, porque la ficción ofrece libertades que la memoria parece no permitirnos, me pregunté qué hacer, es decir, cómo narrar un episodio dramático que mi pasado me ofrecía. En un momento pensé que escribiría una memoria (tenía en mente “Esa visible oscuridad” de William Styron, y “A Bell Jar” de Sylvia Plath) pero abstenerme de la ficción me impedía hurgar en lo que estaba detrás del evento, y que de pronto era mucho más importante. En ese momento abandoné la mímesis y me permití ir hacia el otro lugar de la novela. Y aunque el texto trabaja con el recurso del detalle minucioso, a ratos milimétrico, sin duda ésta es una trampa que se le tiende al lector para llevarlo hacia una situación imposible que le obligue a preguntarse  si es posible que todo lo demás, todo lo que leyó, pueda ser cierto.

Es muy notable la puntuación, el fraseo del texto. Los cortes suelen angustiar. Quiero decir: son los cortes en las frases los que producen un efecto de angustia más que la situación, de por sí angustiante. ¿Cómo trabajaste la escritura de la novela; cuánto tiempo te llevó escribirla; y corregirla?
La idea de fractura, es cierto, recorre todo el texto. Se fracturan las oraciones en momentos álgidos en lo que no se puede pensar lo que sigue. Se fractura también esta suerte de monólogo que es también la novela. En el tiempo de escritura, también hubo una interrupción, porque escribí el primer pedazo definitivo (después de varios intentos fallidos) mientras preparaba otra escritura, la de mi tesis doctoral; pero como no podía mantener dos escrituras tan intensas, y como se cumplía el plazo de la tesis, la novela quedó en suspenso. Entre ese primer momento y la publicación pasaron varios años, pero afortunadamente este año también se publicará el otro libro, el ensayo académico “Viajes virales” (Fondo de Cultura Económica), y si tengo suerte, también aparecerán un par de textos más cortos y rezagados.   

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Interview with Alejandro Zambra

From The Millions, back in 2011;

The Millions: Now that you’ve received a fair amount of attention for your books, do you worry more during the act of writing about how it will be received?  Or does the recognition validate you, give you a sense of freedom?

Alejandro Zambra: At the moment of writing, I feel completely free.  I really don’t think you can write anything genuine when you are under any kind of pressure. What’s more, publishing a book isn’t like giving birth to it; when you publish a book you feel what a father must feel when his son leaves home: you wish him well, you delight in or suffer with his successes and failures, but you can’t do anything more for him.  And your daily work is more interesting: the next book, the child you are starting to rear.

TM: Recognizing that any list like Granta’s will be subjective, is there anyone you feel strongly should have been included, but wasn’t?

AZ: Such lists are always arbitrary, and I suppose there are a lot of authors who were worth including in Granta’s, and in the end were not.  The truth is it’s an uncomfortable subject for me, because I really don’t believe in lists or rankings.  In any case I’d like to highlight the work that younger people have been doing, such as the Chilean Diego Zúñiga or the Mexican Valeria Luiselli (the author of Papeles falsos, one of the best books I’ve read recently).

TM: Not many authors have their books published more or less simultaneously in Spanish and in English, but both La vida privada and Bonsai were.  I’m curious about how the experience is different in Chile and the U.S. How does your status as a native or foreigner affect how people read you, do you think?  Do you feel more pressure to be “representative” in some way when you are outside of Chile?

AZ: I think both novels are very Chilean, so I’m sometimes surprised that they can be read in other languages.  To me, it’s a beautiful thing that readers so distant and different can connect with a book of mine.  It’s like sending out thousands of letters, and little by little receiving replies you never expected.  I guess some readers in the U.S. or in France want to confirm some prior idea they had about Chile or about Latin America.  But books aren’t made to confirm ideas; they’re made to refute them, to question them, to put other images out there where we thought everything had already been said.

TM: Tell us a little about Formas de volver a casa—is it much of a departure from your first two books?

AZ: It’s a book about memory, about parents, about Chile.  It’s about the 80s, about the years when we children were secondary characters in the literature of our parents.  It’s about the dictatorship, as well, I guess.  And about literature, intimacy, the construction of intimacy.  I don’t know if it’s very different from my previous books; the truth is I feel like it’s close to The Private Lives of Trees.  In fact it starts from there, from some of the intuitions or images of the past that were in that book.  Maybe the main difference is that it’s in large part narrated in the first person.  It also includes a writer’s diary, a kind of center or heart in which the fiction breaks, and the only thing left is the writer’s voice searching for its origins.  It’s my most personal book, without a doubt, although the others were that as well.

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Interview with Carlos Reygadas

From NYT Blog, an interview with filmaker Reygadas speaking about his cryptic and visually daring Post Tenebras Lux:

Q. Cannes has been good to you and important for your career. But based on the reactions last night, do you wonder if this is really the best environment for an adventurous filmmaker?

A. Not in the short term, but it is in the long run, as long as there’s exposure and as long as some people like the film. People asked me today how can you have the [nerve] to do something like that, and I said, I know that if I like it, there will be some other people who like it. In the time of the Greeks, Seneca said, the better a piece of art, the more rejection it will receive in its moment — that’s a social law. I don’t know why people are so worried, like some of my distributors. I tell them don’t worry, who cares? This is positive; you should be honored.

Q. Did you expect such hostile reactions? “Post Tenebras Lux” actually seems much gentler than some of your earlier films.

A. Yeah, totally. Friends in Mexico who saw it didn’t think it would be so divisive. You know, people here are tired, they’re paid to judge, and they think they have to judge before they feel.

The other day someone asked me whose films I’m looking forward to. And I said I care about Loznitsa [in competition with “In the Fog”], Seidl [“Paradise: Love”] and Omirbayev [whose film “Student” is in the Un Certain Regard section]. One thing that annoys me: why is a man like Omirbayev not in competition? It’s not good for cinema. I understand there have to be films with stars. But how many films are there in competition this year about cinema, by people trying to make cinema? Kiarostami, Seidl, Carax, probably four or five or six.

Q. To get back to “Post Tenebras Lux” let’s talk a bit about the film’s distinctive look. It’s shot in the boxy 1:33 aspect radio and, in many scenes, with a lens that creates a halo-like effect, with a sharp focus at the center of the image and a blurred circle on the edges.

A. Why did I want that look? Because aesthetics are in the end are a reinterpretation of the world.

Q. Why did you use this effect only for exterior scenes?

A. It was intuitive. I feel that somehow we experience the senses more outdoors. The outside world is where impressionism started. I was also thinking of glass that was made before the 1950s, where they pretended to make it perfect but the machines weren’t. It’s a little bit curved and creates little reflections, so you look through a window and you actually feel the glass — things look different — and there’s a reinterpretation of reality.

The landscape where I was shooting is very particular. I did “Silent Light” in CinemaScope because those were very flat, huge landscapes, and here it’s surrounded by very steep mountains. I also wanted the sense of everything being totally centered in a square format — it’s like things are more respected if they’re composed that way.

Q. This seems in many ways a deeply personal film: your children are in it; it was edited by your wife, Natalia López; and it was shot mostly in a location you know well.

A. It’s the village where I live, about 80 kilometers south of Mexico City in the state of Morelos. It’s a very personal film in the source, in where it comes from,, and the place and many of the things that happen are dear and close to me. But the values of the people in the film are not mine. I don’t share the way they see life or treat people or relate to each other.

The film was built up during a period of couple of years when I was building my house in the countryside, where the weather is rough, with the sun, the dust, the cold. At the same time I was walking a lot in the mountains with my children and my dogs, which you also see in the film, and I just wanted to share that. Some scenes — like in the sauna where the wife has sex with other people — are there because it’s also about desire. The film is about fantasy, but probably that scene is reality, who knows? I wanted to show that these people, while frustrated to a certain extent, are also capable of sometimes trespassing certain limits, which makes them a little more special than people who don’t.

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Post Tenebras Lux (Official UK Trailer from Independent Cinema Office on Vimeo.

John Luther Adams Interview

From Sequenza 21, an interview with the composer John Luther Adams:

How did you end up in Alaska? What influence does it have on your work?

I was a suburban refugee. I grew up in relatively homogenous suburbs from the deep South to the outskirts of New York City, and I went to music school in southern California. All that moving around left me with a deep, inarticulate hunger to find the place where I belonged. I first came North in 1975. The moment I arrived, I knew this was Home.

In the mid-70s, I worked for the Alaska Coalition, lobbying in Congress and doing roadshows around the country for passage of the Alaska Lands Act - the most sweeping land preservation law in history. This was how I met my wife, Cynthia. For several years, we worked together at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center. And our wedding ceremony actually took place in the Arctic National Refuge.

My passion for this place has had a profound influence on my life and my work.

Your work it totally original but it has echos of other "northern" composers - Rautavaara, Vasks, Kanchelli. Is this coincidence or is there something in the cold northern light that reveals itself as music?

In Alaska, everything we do is measured against the overwhelming presence of the place. And the landscapes of the North are a constant touchstone for me.

Over the years, my music has evolved from tone painting "about" place into more self-contained musical landscapes. Works like The Far Country of Sleep (1988), Dream In White On White (1991) and Earth and the Great Weather (1993) are "about" place. But I hope that works like Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1995), Strange and Sacred Noise (1997) and other more recent works in some sense are places.

Like the landscapes of the North, my music embraces extremes - from dense clouds of sustained tones, to explosive fields of percussive sound. I want the music to be rigorously formal and ravishingly sensual at the same time. I want it to immerse the listener in suspended time and a sense of endless space. I want music to be a wilderness. And I want to get hopeless lost in it.

What were your earliest musical influences? Whose work has influenced you most and why?

Like many composers of my generation, I grew up playing rock 'n roll. As a kid, I took piano lessons, sang in choirs, and played trumpet in school bands and orchestras. But it was playing drums and singing in a series of garage bands that really got me excited about music.

As time went on, my band mates and I got tired of just rehashing other people's songs and started writing a few of our own. The deeper we got into songwriting, the more adventurous and ecumenical our listening became.

On the back of his early records, Zappa used to print a defiant little epigram: "The present-day composer refuses to die!" - Edgard Varese

My buddies and I would read that, scratch our heads and wonder: "Hmmm. Just who is this VaREEsee guy?"

Then one day in the local record shop (this must have been about 1967), one of us discovered one of the first Varese discs (a mono LP). We quickly wore out the grooves.

From Zappa to Varese, it didn't take long for us to discover Cage, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Partch, Oliveros, Reich, Nancarrow, and a whole new world of music.

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Riddle Pictures

Interview with painter Neo Rauch:

Your works have been called riddle pictures. But riddles have a solution, and there are no solutions in your pictures.

Solutions don’t come into it. My pictures supposedly have a vital quality, like an animal, a living thing. There is no need to understand, only to feel that this creature is, to the greatest possible degree, at peace with itself. It is not always possible to realise, but that’s how I imagine a functioning picture. As soon as I have the feeling that the thing has blood circulating through it, a nervous system, a skeleton, then questions as to the message become completely marginal.

Several of the figures in your work come from German history, which has led some people say that you paint in a socialist realist style.

That is other people’s problem, not mine, especially over here. I have never attempted to “de-Germanise” my work. Besides, people mostly have only a ro gh idea of what socialist realism is. I’m not trying to dodge the issue, but I think that they reach this conclusion because they know that I come from East Germany. They might reach the same conclusion by looking at the work of Raymond Pettibon and Michaël Borremans.

This misunderstanding is surely a result of the age-old opposition between abstraction and representation, which you have satirised, for example, in Unerträglicher Naturalismus [Intolerable Naturalism], 1998, and Abstraktion, 2005. Why are people in Germany so ready to associate this conflict with you?

I am repeatedly told that I have a problem with abstraction. This is nonsense, I only have a problem with bad pictures.

Do you see yourself as a kind of landscape painter, even though landscape often appears as an altogether artificial construct?

I still need someone to pose as a farmer. No tree can measure up to the attraction I feel towards the figure.

That sounds like a declaration of love for your fellow humans, despite the doom-laden scenarios you depict…

By 1945 the exploitation of images and emotions before and during the second world war led to a rejection of figurative representation in favour of a clear decision for abstraction. Today this division no longer necessarily demands our attention. I always like to compare my work to a game of chess—fundamentally it is all about placing figures and features, something that has consequences. The one determines the other. Everything takes place on the surface: colouration, composition, figuration must in themselves be plausible. A certain legibility must be guaranteed, otherwise it’s nonsense.

Will the recent events in Japan and Libya influence your work?

These things have been present in my works for some time. I began this work [in his studio] before Fukushima, and who would deny that it resonates with a certain disquieting radiation? My exhibition in Warsaw (until 15 May) opened on the day the earthquake struck; my 50th exhibition was clouded by the Icelandic volcano; and the picture Uhrenvergleich [Synchronising Watches], 2001, which shows smoke billowing from a skyscraper, was painted in the same year but before the attack on the World Trade Center. It’s hard to resist crowing about my prophetic abilities.

How long have you been with Gerd Harry Lybke and Eigen+Art?

Since 1982. My first exhibition at the gallery was in 1993. That was my first significant solo show and I was 33. Today students go mad if they haven’t had their first solo show by the age of 23.

How did you experience the political upheavals of 1989/90? Did you feel as if you had been thrown in with the sharks of the western art scene?

It was more the case that I didn’t actually do anything at all, since no one was particularly interested in painting. At that point painting was once again being written off as dead. I don’t know whether it’s always the same idiots who decide this, but every ten years there is a cockerel that climbs onto the dung heap. At the time I said to myself, fine, now I can lead the life of a loner, a painter dwelling on the forest edge, I can become a “best-kept secret”. The irony is that something quite different emerged out of it.

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El Txef A interview

Interview with ElTxef A, House producer from the Basque country:

While many producers these days come from cultural hotspots, like London, NYC, or Berlin, your home is in a relatively remote part of Spain, the Basque Country. What was it like to grow up there, and how does your town influence your music? Until a year ago I spent all my life in Gernika , a small town made famous by the Picasso painting [which bears the same name]. Now I've moved to Bilbao - it's bigger, but as you have said it can't compare to pioneering cities like New York, Berlin, or London. However, I think being here helps keep my work and creative process pure. Life is very peaceful in the Basque country and I think that is reflected in the feelings of my work.

Your breakthrough EP, She Kissed Me First, came out on Hypercolour a little over 2 years ago. But it's clear from the quality of that record that you had been producing for some time before. When did you start producing dance music, and what was your inspiration to start? I started producing my first dance beats seven years ago I think. I have always been closely linked to the music through my brother and parents. I started by playing piano and drums, and then I started researching sampling. Even today I’m continuously learning new things, about everything.

I think now I'm closer than ever to sharing with people what I truly want to, and showing what I am.

How did you meet the guys at Hypercolour? Did the debut with a well known label have an impact on your music or your life? I recorded " She Kissed Me First " in 2009. I don’t know how but the song ended up in the hands of Jamie from Hypercolour and he sent me an email saying that he was very interested in releasing that track. It was a really fucking great piece of news for me. I have always loved that label and it really was a big chance for me to show the world my work.

In comparison to many electronic artists today, you've chosen to release slowly. Following your debut, you put out one EP on Wazi Wazi a year later, and then a full length album on your own label Fiakun, this year. Why have you chosen this pace? I always try to create something special from the deepest site of my heart. The same when I do remixes - I try to choose very precisely what I throw out there.

I try to show what I am at that point in my life, through music.

Tell us about Fiakun and the concept behind it, and your album, "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room". Firstly...what does Fiakun mean? Fiakun was born of six lifelong friends - we’ve known each other since we were 3 or 4 years old. We just wanted a platform to work together and help our projects and ideas move forward. I decided to release my first long play on our label because I think that makes the album more special, knowing that it’s not making a huge “splash.”

Fiakun has a lot of meanings , could be a pretty girl , could be a nice beer , could be a cool party….

When you are stuck on a song, or having writers block, where do you go for inspiration in making music? I go to Gernika , where my family is based, and just have a walk around the beach, have a special evening.

Now a technical question for the producers out there - what is your workflow like in the studio? Do you have any favorite hardware or software? I’m not a freak when it comes to synthesizers. I’m happy with a drum machine, a piano and a mic.

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Komatssu Interview & Music

From clubbingspain.com an Interview with Hector Sandoval regarding his Komatssu project:

Te has tomado con calma la producción de este disco...
Muchos de los temas que aparecen en el álbum son antiguos, algunos de ellos tienen más de dos años. Cuando empecé el proyecto comencé a grabar muchos cortes. De hecho tenía alrededor de cuarenta o cincuenta temas.

¡Son muchos!
¡Es que yo hago mucha música! Con Komatssu tengo un procedimiento diferente, no es igual que cuando hago techno, que el proceso es más mecánico. Cuando a Valentín y a mi nos llega un encargo o afrontamos la producción de un nueva referencia, trabajamos rápido y de forma sincronizada. Con Komatssu, cuando me siento delante del ordenador o cuando enciendo los sintes, simplemente me dejo llevar. Dejo que las canciones surjan e intento hacerlas crecer, les doy el cuerpo para que puedan sonar en un club, aunque no haga material de pista.

¿Eres más mental o emocional cuando trabajas en tus temas?
Creo que soy una persona muy pasional. A veces intento ser mental y me sale todo lo contrario. Lo que me gusta es dejarme llevar. A veces me sale algo para Komatssu, a veces para Exium, y a veces algo que no encaja en ninguno de mis proyectos. Pero siempre acabo los temas. Aunque sepa que no vaya a hacer nada con ellos, los acabo...

Eso es muy raro.
Puedo tener más de trescientas canciones en el ordenador... A veces recupero proyectos y me sirven para comenzar nuevas ideas. Me guío mucho por las sensaciones. Puedo escuchar un tema bien veinte veces, pero como lo escuche sólo una vez mal y no me guste, ya lo descarto. Tengo que tener los tracks redondos para que les dé salida. Pero a veces es algo que se escapa de tu control... Las canciones están ahí, tienen vida propia, has de moldearlas, y ellas escogen su propio camino. Por eso me gusta terminarlas.

Dices que este álbum es una retrospectiva de todo lo que te ha gustado durante los últimos veinte años. Personalmente encuentro que hay muchos guiños (intencionados o no) a grandes artistas de la IDM. Un tema te recuerda a Clark, otro a Autechre y Plaid, luego aparecen formas a lo Raster-Noton...
Sí, son influencias... Escucho mucha música, soy el típico que se empapa de todas las novedades pero que también le gusta descubrir música antigua continuamente. Cuando escuchas Komatssu puedes pensar: 'Se nota que a este tío le gusta a Aphex Twin y le gusta Warp; ahora este corte suena un poco a Raster Noton, en este tema hay una suciedad que recuerda a Ben Frost...'. Yo lo que intento es expresarme y, claro, las influencias siempre salen a la superficie de manera inconsciente y condicionan tu trabajo. Pero no es porque quiera copiar, simplemente hago la música que me gusta escuchar. De creadores natos, gente que ha sacado cosas de la nada, hay muy pocos: Krafterk, Juan Atkins...

Pero ellos crearon sobre un territorio virgen. Ahora estamos expuestos a mucha información...
¡O Stockhausen! Que lo escuchas y dices, ¿y este tío de dónde coño sacó esto? El 99% de los músicos no somos genios. Clark, por ejemplo, es cojonudo, es buenísimo; pero realmente no ha inventado nada. Aphex Twin sí que es un puto genio. O los Autechre de los 90... hicieron cosas extraordinarias. Pusieron un discurso muy innovador encima de la mesa. Ahora lo vemos todo muy cotidiano, pero lo cierto es que sus obras forman parte de la cultura popular de ahí en adelante, y eso es lo grande de estos creadores. El factor tiempo es importante para valorar las cosas con serenidad y criterio. El tiempo es clave.

¿Qué utilizas para producir los temas de Komatssu?
Uso mucho software, aunque empiezo muchas canciones con sonidos que grabo por ahí. Siempre llevo conmigo un reproductor mp3 que graba sonidos y lo uso mucho cuando voy de viaje. Suelo utilizar atmósferas y sonidos y construyo cosas encimas. Para este disco he utilizado también bastante un Access Virus, pero no soy de los que tiene mucho equipo. La tecnología es importante, pero creo más en el talento, no vas a ser mejor por tener más equipo. El tío que tiene talento te hace música con una cafetera.

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The Logic of Repetition

Vallejo Nocturno 2013-Niftee

From Interview:

Jacques Derrida: I am not an “Ornette Coleman expert,” but if I translate what you are doing into a domain that I know better, that of written language, the unique event that is produced only one time is nevertheless repeated in its very structure. Thus there is a repetition, in the work, that is intrinsic to the initial creation—that which compromises or complicates the concept of improvisation. Repetition is already in improvisation: thus when people want to trap you between improvisation and the pre-written, they are wrong.

Ornette Coleman: Repetition is as natural as the fact that the earth rotates.

Derrida/Ornette Interview 1997

Interview of Ornette Coleman by Jacques Derrida in 1997:

Jacques Derrida: This year in New York you are presenting a program entitled Civilization — what relationship does it have with music?

Ornette Coleman: I’m trying to express a concept according to which you can translate one thing into another. I think that sound has a much more democratic relationship to information, because you don’t need the alphabet to understand music. This year, in New York, I’m setting up a project with the New York Philharmonic and my first quartet—without Don Cherry—plus other groups. I’m trying to find the concept according to which sound is renewed every time it’s expressed.

JD: But are you acting as a composer or as a musician?

OC: As a composer, people often say to me, “Are you going to play the pieces that you’ve already played, or new pieces?”

JD: You never answer those questions, do you?

OC: If you’re playing music that you’ve already recorded, most musicians think that you’re hiring them to keep that music alive. And most musicians don’t have as much enthusiasm when they have to play the same things every time. So I prefer to write music that they’ve never played before.

JD: You want to surprise them.

OC: Yes, I want to stimulate them instead of asking them simply to accompany me in front of the public. But I find that it’s very difficult to do, because the jazz musician is probably the only person for whom the composer is not a very interesting individual, in the sense that he prefers to destroy what the composer writes or says.

JD: When you say that sound is more “democratic,” what do you make of that as a composer? You write music in a coded form all the same.

OC: In 1972 I wrote a symphony called Skies of America and that was a tragic event for me, because I didn’t have such a good relationship with the music scene [milieu de la musique]: like when I was doing free jazz, most people thought that I just picked up my saxophone and played whatever was going through my head, without following any rule, but that wasn’t true.

JD: You constantly protest against that accusation.

OC: Yes. People on the outside think that it’s a form of extraordinary freedom, but I think that it’s a limitation. So it’s taken twenty years, but today I’m going to have a piece played by New York’s symphony orchestra and its conductor. The other day, as I was meeting with certain members of the Philharmonic, they told me, “You know, the person in charge of scores needs to see that.” I was upset—it’s like you wrote me a letter and someone had to read it to confirm that there was nothing in it that could irritate me. It was to be sure that the Philharmonic wouldn’t be disturbed. Then they said, “The only thing we want to know is if there is a dot in that place, a word in another”; it had nothing to do with music or sound, just with symbols. In fact, the music that I’ve been writing for thirty years and that I call harmolodic is like we’re manufacturing [fabriquions] our own words, with a precise idea of what we want these words to mean to people.

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Erdbeerschnitzel Interview

From Little White Ear Buds an interview with Erdbeerschnitzel:

Whereabouts did you grow up and what was your first contact with music that left a lasting impression on you?

I grew up in rural Western Germany in a village called Mittelfischbach. The first proper electronic music track I remember listening to is “Love Song” by Mark ‘Oh. I heard it in the school bus and it was so different to the pop music you would get on the radio. The techno/rave scene got pretty big in the 90′s even in the countryside; we are talking about 500 people going to a rave in the town hall of a village with only 500 inhabitants. I always was fascinated by the sounds of this music since it was so different to the pop stuff on the radio and wanted to do that as well. Those raves vanished quickly by the turn of the century, and for me the Internet came in as the source to discover new music and to share my first productions. There wasn’t really a local scene beyond those raves, I only knew one person from school who was producing music as well so we exchanged ideas and tracks (and artist names). I was pretty much on my own in terms of production knowledge and equipment, so it was a slow process. When mp3s emerged, you had mp3.com with a strong community to get feedback from, to check if anyone liked your music at all. Over the years I joined different message boards to get more knowledge of music production. I could join the odd discussion now by saying that it is way too easy nowadays to create tracks that sound perfect due to stock samples and cheap high end equipment, but I’ll only say that it was a good thing for me not to know that there is something like monitoring speakers out there 10 years into making music.

So what were your reference points in making music? Were you making things for a club, conceptual pieces, or something else entirely?

I always try to have a song structure in my music. I actually took me an awful long time to have arrangements which are longer than four minutes.

Do you also have other creative outlets or things you are equally as passionate about as music?

I’m always interested in “the arts,” be it photography, films, architecture or books. But my main focus is on making music.

Do you have a day job and does it tie in to or influence your music making in any way?

I’m about to finish my studies to become a teacher for German high schools, so the free time you get during the studies really helped me to bring my music to a new level after working in IT for three years with basically a “come home, eat, sleep, work” routine. I work in web design besides the studies to pay for the bills.

Have you always been making house and techno?

Not really, after the first contact with rave and trance back then I was deeply influenced by the big beat guys like Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Propellerheads and made music in that fashion. It went on to nu skool breaks, electro (proper electro like old Anthony Rother stuff) and drum & bass, but house and techno always were there between all those experiments.

The music of Erdbeerschnitzel that we know now, how long have you been making music in this style?

In 2009 my sound got housier, before that I was all into the more quirky side of minimal techno. One of my flatmates actually got me onto the deeper house tracks. I especially liked the edit stuff of the Revenge and Mark E, so I just tried to go slower but contain my sound in a way, to make tracks sound like those edits but still have an original production in the back end. I don’t listen to a lot of new releases but I couldn’t ignore that everything got slower and housier, so it was a natural progression in a way.

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