d'Iberville
Julien Berthier
Enculturation, Vol. 2, No. 2, Spring 1999
Back to Artists
Table of Contents
|
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Let's start with a question about genre. At mp3.com the tracks for "Next Idea" are listed under "minimalist experimental." Can you comment on how you envision your music, especially in terms of the thresholds it crosses or the boudaries it stretches. In other words, what makes your music "experimental." My first idea was to make something very minimalist, but actually, some of the songs are richer. A listener of my music said it was kind of "blip-hop." It's a good definition since "Blip" is the first noise made by a computer. Another was speaking of "dark-breakbeat": maybe this kind of music is defined by the listener more than by the composer. It's more landscapes in which people can have their own experiences. It's experimental because there's no precise rules at the beginnig. It's true that after some times, I start to find rules, but then it's good to forget them and start something different. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. When I listen to your music, I hear a variety of musical styles including ambient, techno, drum & bass, electronica, etc. Can you comment on what genres or artists have influenced your music. Autechre, mouse on mars, aphex twin, riou, scorn, lfo, pan sonic . . . to name a few. I try not to copy or sample them but to study what concept lies at the bottom of their music. I like also contemporary musicians, like John Cage, John Adams, Pierre Henry, Steve Reich. I think that the music of today is very connected with this kind of music of the sixties. 2.1. You state that "the music of today is very connected with this kind of music of the sixties." Can you discuss this further, and explain why you think these links to the sixties are being made today? I think that people like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, John Cage, Pierre Henry were really into concepts that are now really popular: repetition, sample, use of sound of our living environment. . . . In the sixties, Steve Reich created pieces with loops, just as if he used a sampler, but it was made with rudimentary analog equipment and certainly took hours to make! Those people tried also to incorporate concrete sounds, sounds of our living environment, and played with them as if they were musical sounds. In the 90s, with computers & samplers, it's really easy to perform those kinds of manipulations, because the technology makes it possible. So maybe that's why the link is made today. . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. What originally led you into music? Your biography on mp3.com indicates that you were formally a "rock musician." What initiated your switch to what you do now? I made a lot of different styles of music before: classical, rock, noise. In my first band, we were four, then three in the second, my third was a bass and drum duo, and then now I work alone with my computer: maybe there is a logic here. And there is a logic because I was always interested more in the sound than in the technique. There are two approachs to playing guitar: doing nice chord progressions, or to play just one note and see the different manner of playing it. In my last band, I played bass, and it was like a wall of low frequencies; it was like playing with a very material sound; very near to techno music actually. So It was the time for me to work on my own. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. What do you see as some of the relations between music and technology given that your music is computer-based? When you're working on your music with a computer, you stay a spectator of your music. I mean, playing with a band, you are very into the music: it's loud, there is a lot of energy around you, a lot of exchanges between the members: it's what construct the songs. Here, you are very far from that. You are hearing exactly what other people are hearing. It's also harder to have an opinion on what I'm doing, because my Mac doesn't have an opinion. You have to deal with a music that comes from your computer, a music that is not exactly yours, and you have to make it yours! Working alone on your computer gives you an incredible freedom, so it's scarry! Then you have to put some limits to be able to continue. I don't have a lot of hardware and software, I work with simple programs, and even with that, there are so many possibilities. 4.1. In commenting on how you use computers to help you compose, you state the music is not exactly yours, and that "you have to make it yours." Can you describe how you go about doing this? It's because of this distance between you and the 'thing' that produces sound: you're just connected to it with your mouse. You're the conductor of an electronic orchestra. You're not making the music, you're giving directions, you're making choices . . . is it to be a musician or a programmer??? 4.2. Could you comment further on what you see as the relationships between technology and music? Maybe there is the notion of 'game' created by the musicians, and the artists in general; a game whose purpose is to 'drive' the technology in a different way. Technology is not made for fun, but then people began to play with technology, and they succeded in making creations with technology. It's the same in visual art, music, architecture; everything is connected by the use of technology. It gives something that is a revelation of the world in which we are living, and a 'tranfiguration' of technology. A 'transfiguration' of technology because it's possible to get an emotional result using a machine that is known to be emotionless; a revelation of the world because the sounds used in the music are a good description of our sound environment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Can you describe your compositional processes. How do you develop your beats and melodies? In an interview, Pan Sonic said that they create songs by turning dials until they hear something interesting. How do you create your songs? How do you go about assembling/constructing your musical pieces? Also, do you use samples, and if you do use samples, what sources do you use? You are speaking of compositional process. It's true: with that kind of music, it's more process than result. What is important is how you will be able to catch the mistakes generated by the computer, and assemble them together to form something interesting. It's important: in the process of composition, most of the work is made by the computer itself. All you have to do is to choose between multiple solutions to continue your work; which sofware you are going to use to change the sound, which part of the sound you are going to keep or throw away. About the samples, if I use a sample found on a cd, I will try to change it to give a new signification, a new way of hearing it. I do not use samples to make "citations" of other bands. I use them to make visible something that is contained inside. But most of the time, I use samples that I found by accident. Actually, most of the time, it starts with a sound that could make a good loop, or two noises that sound good together, or maybe an accident generated by the computer--a crash that damaged a music file, a random noise, a residue just after a nice sound. I like to push the computer in a direction that will make it produce strange things, as if it was begining to feel pain because of an overload of information. 5.1. One of the myths about computers is that they don't make mistakes, but you state that part of your compositional process is to catch and assemble computer-generated mistakes. What is a computer mistake in this sense, and how would we recognize one? Do you think that this kind of approach humanizes technology? Do you think that the emphasis on chance, randomness, and accident is related to the perfection that we associate with technology? The Y2K bug is a good exemple!!! In every technology, there are some weaknesses that can be the starting point of wanderings, of ramblings that lead to a creation process. Actually, the compositional process takes place somewhere between the mistakes of the musician and the mistakes generated by the computer. It's a question of balance, of tension . . . Working on a techno track is like working on a sculpture: and there are two different ways--by addition or by substraction. - By addition is to put material/sound together to get something that is better than the two separated sounds. It's very visual and by the way, you can find such a process in the conceptual process of sculpture. There's an idea of "hidden order" that you have to discover. I majored in architecture studies, so maybe I am influenced by that way of thinking. Another of my occupations is to walk in the streets seeking and taking pictures of strange urban things, like public works or assembling of materials. It's interesting to see how those things are by definition "nothing," "garbage," but once you focus on it, you discover a kind of order, a dialogue between the things. And you can do just exactly the same with sounds. - But substraction, you start with a complex, rich sound, a "magma," and then you remove part of it to make it clear, "visible." Your tool can be for exemple a frequency filter: it's possible to completly change a sound just with this, to reinforce some part of it, to make another disappear, and sometimes to discover a hidden rhythm that lies behind the sound and was unhearable before. It's not a coincidence that it's named "filter": you filter the sound to get a kind of gold embedded in it! Then there is the concept of the song that you have to define: it's not verse and chorus anymore like in rock music. You can, for example, decide to go from one point to another. It's a history you have to relate without words. It's like a scenario that drives the track. It's interesting to see that concept is coming back into popular music. 5.2. You state that your music is a "history you have to relate without words." In what sense is this a history? Do you think it is important that we relate technology to history? Can you explain more fully how this concept of a history, or a scenario driving the music, is coming back to popular music? Actually, I made a mistake. I wanted to say "a story you have to relate without words." I think it's coming back to popular music because of the absence of lyrics: it's not a song anymore, it's the description of an ambience in which the spectator can project its own perceptions and emotions. But it also works as an "history you have to relate without words," because music has always been connected to society and we have to create artefacts of our civilization. Yesterday, I recorded the sound of an escalator: it gave me a complete techno track; it makes me understand how our 'sound environment' is rich and maybe we just have to make some zooms, take some 'pictures' of our sound environment and it will be enough to reveal our society . . . Some keywords: limits of the technology, addition, substraction, transformation, deterioration, revelation, chance, zoom (focus) . . .
|