Interview between ALKU and FELIX KUBIN
By Barcelona (2002)
ALKU * as this is for a text about electronic experimental music in the nineties, could you please picture how you percieve the music and events from those days?
FELIX KUBIN The nineties are the decade of matrix screen music. As an equivalent to the development of speed and effort in capitalist societies, tracks have been composed like agenda schedules.
The idea of a "song" with it's own special history or "character", a world in it's own, has dissappeared. The logical structure of a music piece has been on focus and made transparent to the audience, especially in techno music, by muting and demuting sounds and beats.
Melodies disappeared. The process of how to create a track - the "interface" as Oval put it - became more important than ONE final track in ONE final mix. The "genius" phenomenon is disappearing. There are many gods and many possibilities. Compositions are multiplied by 1000 remixes. In a certain sense the nineties are a mixture of a mathematical approach to music and the musician being a Medusa with many remix arms.
In experimental music noise isn't seen as something shocking or evil any more, like it was in the pathetic beginnings of Industrial Music. Experimental musicians are often working like fascinated scientists. They became totally unpolitical, I think. Like most scientists are. That's a big disadvantage.
Producers and DJs and curators are the heroes of the Nineties. They are more important than the creators/artists themselves. This decade is the decade of Remix.
Productions became neater, even if the element of distortion has been used a lot. Also distortion is used in a neat way. There is hardly any rhythmical music with unexact timing any more.
Techno was the soundtrack for capitalism: working at high speed, male sex and drugs.
The physical and charismatic appearance of experimental musicians changed. They look boring. Where's punk? Most electronic musicians are looking like walking studios with dirty windows.
At the same time something unbelievable has happened: Never before has noise and tape-/electroacoustic music been accepted and understood that much by an audience. It's integrated even in commercial pop music. Certain aesthetical ideas of the futurists have come true 80 years after the Futurist Manifest.
* from your personal point of view which are the most important things from that specific period? from artists to labels or whatever...
The independance of productions, due to cheap equipment. The industry created some strange kind of socialism: Many people could buy their own studio. They are technically much more independent than in the 80ies. Mentally they are more "dependent", though.
Good artists: all my friends (hehe). Those who stay unimpressed by things going on out there. Those who try to invent something instead of quoting styles that others invented. Those who don't give up, however difficult the circumstances are. No matter whether they are involved in socalled experimental music (which is often not experimental at all - you often know before what to expect from it) or pop music.
For me, one very consequent example of the 90ies is Asmus Tietchens.
* which things from that period you think will be a real strong influence for the future?
Obvious things: Euro-money, techno / drum and bass / HipHop / easy listening, mute/demute structure as described above, the schizophrenia of results represented by remixes. Independence in production (technical independence).
Not so obvious: emancipation of noises and abstract sounds.
*which are the most relevant things going on on the last five years, worth to mention.
Economical, political and rhythmical globalisation; social life taking place only outside of private rooms; multiple love relationships; depression as a new Volkskrankheit; human desire aiming at esoteric paradise; nobody's being aware of the fact that the apocalypse is much closer than in the 80ies; people not giving enough space to let you step out of the subway; a growing interest in politics but no courage to tell the truth or bear it; escapism becoming the last medicine; radio programmes getting better again; a general loss of charismatic excentrics and individuals; melodies being abolished in the nineties - but they might come back when the new era of alchemy arises
*it is very clear that the advances in technology during the last five years have been crucial for the improvement of both video and audio experimentation. Would you agree? How do you perceive that?
New aesthetics have always been connected to new developments in technology which have mostly been derived from experiments of NASA and military research. Telephone, Computer, Internet and the Vocoder are some results of military research. Thus, all creators of electronic music are part of the army.
*Then: What’s the next step in realtime-video and audio technology evolution?
Difficult to answer as I am living in the 19th century. I think tools are just tools. Some of my favourite records have been shot on 4-track. It's always good to have your own factory, though.
*it is pretty common nowadays to find musicians that seem to be more into the capabilities of their new patches than into their musical results. what about that? electronic and computer music have always been about finding new ways/tools to generate and treat sounds, but isn't that dangereous in some way?
Yes. I can hear pretty fast that people like Terre Thaemlitz, Brezel Goering or Ryoji Ikeda know and care as much about music as about technology. You can do ONE thing based on a more technical knowledge but if you want to explore a variety of possibilities you need to give technology some contempt and gain knowledge about music.
*i think another typically nineties peculiarity is the crossover between "academy" and a far more popular approach to experimental music. like twenty years ago, only the academy (i.e. soundlabs at europe and usa universities, IRCAM, and so on) had access to the tools to actually produce this kind of music, while now, many "normal" people can use extremely powerful tools (computer systems), which gives the music a totally different touch >think of people like farmersmanual, atom heart, super_collider (the band), etc. something like max mathews, stephen pope, john chowning and curtis roads meet drum'n'bass, electro, manga, etc. what do you think of that? and what do you think of the electroacustic/minimalistic scene, taking themselves so seriously? is art or music a serious thing? in fact your music and your colleagues are quite humorous, aren't they?
As mentioned above, I like this kind of democratisation concerning the technical equipment.
About humour:
I have a weakness for people who are seriously into something.
It's typical for Germans to be like that and has to do with their sense of romance: to be willing to die for what you love. Very pathetic.
Humour is not about jokes, it's a Weltanschauung. It means to be able to communicate with others in a cultural language that can be totally independent from nations. Humour itself forms a nation. I take humour very serious.
"Seriousness /and Humouresse /live together in perfect carelessness /side by side on my Laptop keyboard /oh Lord it's violent tenderness"
*also linked to that issue: this crossover between pop culture and classical computer music, electroacoustics, etc, sometimes ends in a more ironical, humorous or "not so serious" approach to experimental electronica (again, think of fm, atom heart and super_collider). but even nowadays, experimental electronic music is still quite "serious". i guess you'll agree that an atom heart cd makes it "easier" for a clubber to get into experimental stuff than a record by günter (and that is not despective neither!). please comment that.
Long question, short answer: I agree.
*also for the last five years we have seen a huge raise of experimental musicians diving deep into extreme minimalism. why is that? do you believe that there are still things to be said in that genre/style? is strict formalism politically correct in these days?
There should be no politically correctness in art. I think, the sense of art is to make a report of the "general contemporary subconscious" and to provide others with a sensitive 3-dimensional form of philosophy. Sometimes it's only the singular obsession of one artist, sometimes it's like a metaphor for what a huge range of people are feeling.
The minimalism, formalism and "dryness" of recent music is an answer to the information overload. It's about focussing and concentrating. Also about architecture of sound.
It can be great if music works like a laser. But often there's not enough "soul" for me in minimalistic music. It's just musicians being lazy and stretching one idea to the extent of 20 minutes. Horribly boring!
If music is only based on formalism it will become decorative after a short while, just like Muzak. Background sounds for yuppie apartments and hip restaurants.
A good example of great minimalism: Pan Sonic. Best electronic live band as well.
*what about the relationship between this kind of music and politics? it's not hard to find artists/collectives/labels quite focused on socio-political aspects (terre thaemlitz, ultra-red, rtmark, eusocial, etoy...). why? from the dada days, that sort of link between art and socials has been a common thing. but a isn't a paradox that people is tryin to change things or spread political ideas from such kinds of hard-to-understand-for-the-masses art?
The words minimalism/focussing can lead to a misunderstanding. EVERY art should be about concentration on something. Some artists concentrate on singular events (minimalism), some on maximum volume and violence (Japanese Noise art), some on confusion and misleading (myself) etc.
In the end the question is: how good and surprising is the language of the artist, how well is it understood by others. Usually, a "new" form of art means a new language to learn for the audience. How can the artist seduce them to learn his/her language?
Difficult approaches to complex subjects are very important if we don't want to live in Disneyland for the rest of our life. Maybe it's clever to learn from pop music and TV how to grap the interest of many people. Generally, the best thing is to be able to explain complex things in an easy language. That's how poems work.
*some of the stuff linked to you adn hamburg shares this kabaret-pop behaviour, a nice option in these days of computer science, modern urban dub and radical minimalism. which would be yr main influences. and what about your goals?
I hate kabaret.
I like unpredictable things.
In Hamburg there's a special kind of humour about others and oneself.
We are trying to follow something that I would label "Froehliche Wissenschaft" (happy science). All the mystic is still there. Listen to Reznicek's "Allergie und Gegenwelt" on the Split-LP with Klangkrieg in 1995 - quite haunting. Also, listen to the last Klangkrieg release "Radionik" - very scientific and sometimes claustrophobic music derived from gas, fridge, heating sounds.
*is there something like a scene between this kind of artists? i know you are friends with aavikko and all these guys...
Aavikko made one of the best dance albums of the nineties. They know something about rock'n'roll, although two of them don't drink vodka. But the drug thing has become less important in the music scene, just as the groupie thing. It's interesting that Tomi, the genius drummer from Aavikko, is also interested in noise and more abstract stuff.
I know musicians from quite different scenes. What connects them with each other is their enthusiasm about different styles of music and personal charisma. Also, they are not very materialistic. I like people doing senseless things with passion.
*there's a also link with some cologne artists labels. we are obviously talking about a-musik and sonig. comment that.
Georg is a great person. He is always the last one to leave a party. He is sometimes slow but in his heart he is the TIGER! We often have - indepentently from each other - similar opinions about music.
With the Sonig guys I don't have so much contact.
*and what can you tell us about yr more experimental side. btw, sandra and aeron told us once that there was an scene in hamburg who was so reflexive and talkative in their concerts. an attitude quite close to the academy, i think.
Oh.
Well, Hamburg is an "intellectual" city. Knowledge is used to confuse others, mostly in a humourous way. The Hoerbar where Aeron and Sandra played (I haven't been at their concert back then) is a special place with a special audience. They used to wear black clothes for a long time. In my eyes they are Dark-Star hippies, Ex-existentiaists. Stoned but nice. And very critical. I think that's a mark of the experimental scene: 10 people, 10 opinions.
Concerning my more experimental side:
I need this abstract kind of music a lot because it's made much more slower. I started with it and I will die with it.
*in experimental music there has been always a tendency to use errors and chance as a part of the composition method but nowadays it looks as if it was more than a tendency, but a trend. do you know what i mean? can you comment that? The Skot aesthetics is also pretty connected to that error thingee. Plis comment.
Life would be poor without accidents. We all need them to produce music. It's like we have a great plan to do something, a great concept that we are devolopping over weeks, but when we start to work on the materialization of it we find out by chance that another solution would work much better. Chance itself is not able to create something, it needs the "filter" of someone using it or allowing it to influence the planned concept.
Every ertist knows about this, it's nothing new - how ridiculous that some people have made a hip philosophy out of it! For me chance was always the starting point, a basic tool.
I'd be interested if those who celebrate "errors" would be cool enough to accept them in real life: like choosing the wrong train in a foreign city, ending up in a dodgy area and not starting to whine...
* why do you think it has become such a popular thing? in the end, it's nothing new... from yr point of view what would be the nineties contribution to such an old thing as bringing mistakes to music and visuals?
It has become popular maybe because there was this thinking of perfection in the 80ies when people invented the perfect CD and the perfect production. But every form of perfection turns out to be disgusting. So, there was this big relief that even digital media are full of errors. To celebrate that relief (=god is not a CD player) they pointed at - surprise! - errors. Thanks, Oval!
*some people is starting to think it is overexplored. what would you say to that?
see above.
*altough it's an old thing, the glitchy and clics and cut procedure is a really relevant tendency of the nineties. from yr point of view is there an explanation (social, technical, political) why it had to happen then?
Fine clicks were not possible to be reproduced on a medium other than CD. It's music that is made for this special medium. There's other music that fits better to other media. This is not a question of good or bad.
The (r)evolution of technology is an evolution of improvement in measuring. That means: an improvement of precision. I have talked about that a lot in connection to our Klangkrieg release "das Fieber der menschlichen Stimme". I think that this clickcut music is just a logical equivalent to this development, like early tape music was much more precise than orchestra music and a drum computer has changed our perception of timing in comparison to a real drummer. No drummer can beat his set like 25 years ago. He has to be super-precise to sound "right".
*is there any other relevant trend, sound, procedure you'd say is a typical nineties thing?
No, let's go for the next millenium.
The cultural revolution is near.
Let's become atom bombs ourselves!