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housefloor.de: |
your discography includes everything from nearly silent ambient to the most destructive of techno. how do you define your sound? |
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let’s go outside: |
i try not to define my sound. developing one style or focusing on a genre gets monotonous. i'm always trying something new. while i generally present my dance material to the public, it only makes up a fraction of my production library. there are a lot of ambient, experimental, glitch and even acoustic pieces in there with a wide range of moods to them, but i generally keep those to myself. it's hard to sum it up collectively. it's a lot of textured, strange stuff that truly comes from the core of my being. |
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housefloor.de: |
how does this wide range of genres you like influence your dj-set?
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let’s go outside: |
i don't really like the concept of genres. if a track sounds good, it doesn't matter what anyone calls it. when i shop for music, i browse everything and buy what sounds right to me.
when djing, i aim to intuitively move through my favorite records and smoothly as possible at a sensible tempo for dancing, or whatever the mood of the event or recorded project. the end result might put minimal, house, techno, dubstep, electro and whatever other genre of records together in the same set, but to me, it's just quality electronic music assembled into a greater thing. |
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housefloor.de: |
how do you get new ideas for productions? what inspires you? |
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let’s go outside: |
my music is really just an auditory amalgamation of what's going on in my life. sights, sounds, experiences, thoughts, dreams, etc all tend to pile up in my head. when it gets to be too much, i sit down and turn it into music. it's simply what i have to do to maintain what level of sanity i can. |
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housefloor.de: |
you regularly work together with other artists such as señor frio, edit-select, [sik] or scott sunn as well as for the projects drift signal and the claw! . how do you choose the people you work with in the studio and how can we picture you working together? |
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let’s go outside: |
i've met many of my close friends through music, some of whom happen to be very talented producers. experimentation and camaraderie drives most of the collaboration projects. they're generally just for fun, but the aim is to shop it all to labels.
the process itself varies quite a bit and is sometimes the focus of the project. i try to nail down a list of rules and deadlines in advance just to make it interesting. with drift signal, the unknown wanderer and i each made massive libraries of sounds and loops and created tracks using, for the most part, only the other's sounds.
with [sik] and scott sunn, i had them hand me loops from their incomplete or un-sequenced tracks and finished them, adding my own sounds and doing the arrangement. scott sunn and i are starting a new collab which will showcase his talent at a wide variety of acoustic instruments with me handling the electronic end. i'll also be working with two friends from bradford, uk on some music, having established a process that results in the three of us contributing almost exactly one third of the work into each piece.
the claw! is an interesting project with area where i provided a few sounds and he made a track out of them. he then handed his finished track back to me, which i cut up and made into a new track. and so on, with each next piece being constructed from the prior.
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housefloor.de: |
the project name “let’s go outside“ refers to your love for outdoor activities. what is it exactly you like doing outside? do you ever take your equipment outside to make music? |
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let’s go outside: |
i try to spend as much time involved in a variety of parachuting activities as i can, but i also enjoy the simple quiet and solitude of being surrounded by nature when camping, hiking, biking, etc.
i do, in fact, incorporate the sounds i hear outside quite a bit. i used to do a lot of field recording. for years, i walked around with a microphone strapped to my wrist, a minidisc recorder in my pocket, and several blank minidiscs. i would record my entire day and copy the most interesting bits over to my computer. i still have yet to work through using the years of recordings i've acquired. |
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housefloor.de: |
you live in portland, oregon. please give us an insight, what is characteristic of the electronic music scene in portland and the north-west usa? |
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let’s go outside: |
it's changed quite a bit since i've lived here. when i first moved here in 2001, and for many years after, there was a thriving community of artists. on almost any given night there was at least one or a few events showcasing some real forward-thinking, amazing music. and almost everyone in the audience was an artist of some sort themselves. i helped put on a night called “laptop lounge” that in its first year showcased some fifty local live acts that managed to impress every time. it was evidence of the pool of talent we've got here.
in the past year or two, the scene here has changed. a lot of these great artists seem to have disappeared and the shows went with them. the hipsters have filled in for them, bringing generally non-emotive, ironic, and very non-forward-thinking music with them. it's gotten so bad that i'll no longer book myself in portland.
thankfully we've got seattle just to the north. there is a lot of top notch talent both locally and imported at shows with good sound systems and crowds. the decibel festival, which i'll be playing at this year, is highly attended and yields an ambitious international lineup of audio and visual artists across several venues with amazing sound. in my opinion, it's the pride of the northwest usa's electronic music scene. |
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housefloor.de: |
what can we expect from you in the near future and which are your aims for your career? |
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let’s go outside: |
i aimed to focus on collaborations and remixes for 2008 and i've really stuck with it. there's been a lot of remix work and more than half a dozen collab projects. i've been working like to mad to find release outlets for it all.
for some time, i've been planning to start my own label, slant records. it's basically an outlet for some of the more abstract electronic dance music produced by myself and my friends. apropos to decibel festival, i'm partnering with necodo.com to launch a digital sampler of what's to come. i'm not anticipating a cascade of sales, but i'll be happy just to make this music publicly available.
my first album, ”a picnic with the hunters”, was something of a collection of pieces from my production library. over the past few months, i've been dreaming up the next album – something i want to make as a cohesive work from start to finish. once i've wrapped up my collaboration work for the year, i'll be locking myself away for a few weeks to construct it.
beyond that i would love to take a break from making music and get back in front of audiences, showcasing the many dozens of new pieces from this year via live sets.
i'd also like to establish myself as a dj more in the upcoming year. i've been playing for about eighteen years and have a massive ever-growing collection of tracks i very rarely get to showcase in front of an audience. i've recently switched back to turntables from laptop-only sets and it's sparked my passion for djing all over again.
i feel an impending move to europe for awhile. it's really where i need to be if i want to perform regularly. for the moment, i'm content living in the beautiful, forested northwest usa and focusing on producing new music. |
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