Tag: Music

The latest release from the Software Studios imprint is 'Instrumental Tourist', the collaborative LP of Brooklyn-based Oneohtrix Point Never and the Polaris Award-winning Tim Hecker, whose respective experiments have routinely teased at the boundaries of electronic music and the capacity for compositions to grow from decidedly non or anti-formalist beginnings. After being long-time fans of each others solo work, 'Instrumental Tourist' sees Hecker and Lopatin come together to not only explore the capacity for their music to find a common ground in a collaborative project and to push one another in the studio setting, but also to probe at the potential for ambient and drone music to delve deeper into new, unfamiliar sonic realms.

DazedDigital: What inspired you to work on a collaborative album together?

Oneohtrix Point Never:I approached Tim about collaborating with me for a series of 12"s that C. Spencer Yeh and I wanted to release on Software - bringing together electronic music producers working in a more or less improvisatory manner in the studio. The idea was partially inspired by my interest in Teo Macero and his sessions with Miles Davis' varying groups in the late '60s and early '70s. There is a dynamic between open ended jams and the logic of tape editing that I find really stimulating. I thought that Tim and I would be great in terms of both utilizing the studio as an instrument, but I also just had a hunch that we'd compliment each other well; like in a rhythm section, or the ways directors and DPs work together. Contrasting styles and struggles can often lead to fresh work and having admired Tim's solo stuff, I thought it was worth a shot.

Tim Hecker:I was deeply into Daniel's last recordReplicawhen he suggested the project. I thought it made sense on a bunch of levels. Instead of doing a collaboration which brings together the 'inert' digital composer with a 'lively' or 'physical' instrumentalist to spray fresh life on the mouse clicking tedium, I thought some other route was better and this project made sense. Anyways, the point of a collaborative effort shouldn't be visualizing a clear path in advance. I wasn't sure how it would work out, and was interested in how it might take shape - which was part of the pleasure.

DD: Your LPs are stylized regarding around "digital garbage", and the ambiguous evocations of drone and ambient music. How do you feel your respective aesthetics married on the LP?

Oneohtrix Point Never:I think we both do a fair amount of melodic manipulation. There are some procedural things we do with garbage that lead to sounds suggesting classical forms, and upon discovering some of the specifics oh how that works respectively, we were able to work out a shared language.

Tim Hecker:From way too high of a vantage point it could be argued that we occupy similar terrain of music, but I think we both agree there's significant variance in terms of our interests and approaches in composing sound. I honestly wasn't interested in 'marrying' our aesthetics in a kind of linear additive sense, but rather evaporating the self into a project that is more than just you.

DD: Did you begin the project with a particular conceptual direction in mind as a duo?

Oneohtrix Point Never:I'm not sure how it emerged, but we pretty quickly got into this idea that we could paint an extended portrait of a sonic world that is filled with stock musical motifs and sounds in there most vulnerable states. Like the subconscious fears and desires of azither- what might that look like? There was a lot of conversation like that. But what you're hearing are very loose portrayals of that idea. It's more an anchor to stimulate, but then we really do end up just jamming off of each other in a way that isn't conceptually didactic.

Tim Hecker:We didn't cut a path in advance. It sort of took shape very quickly in a non-contrived, almost unconscious level through joking around and talking in the studio. It may not seem apparent from the music but our studio time was filled with laughs and rapid-fire banter that kind of helped to morph the approach as things continued over a couple of days.

DD: Technically, how did you approach the recording process? You're both known to process samples of acoustic instruments and analogue synths in your productions, so how did you work out enough of a variation between the two of you to feel you had technically distinct inputs into the sound of the project?

Tim Hecker:I didn't care for delineating any sort of distinct input. I enjoy dissolving myself into an ether of Daniel's solo lines. For example, mixing or adding reverb to one of Daniel's phrases for me constitutes creative input that is better than being sonically represented in an obvious way. I'm still obsessed with the effect of electronic instruments being re-amplified in real space and capturing those environments. We used a lot of room microphones that gave a greater depth to things.

DD: The album is presented as largely improvisational, with a sort of free-jazz spirit to it. How do you feel you worked towards more structured elements over a prolonged period of time with this ethos in mind?

Oneohtrix Point Never:It's less about free-jazz and more about an open, improvisatory approach and deep listening. You can easily link that to all sorts of 20th century musical practices. There's no need to compromise because there's no hardcore parameters set until we're dealing with edits or having some macro level discussion about which tunes work and which don't. There's formal aspects to both of our styles but I wouldn't say there is a formal aspect to this project. We usually agree on what sounds good, and when we don't its easy - we just ice it and move forward.

Matthew Stone is currently exhibiting his second solo show at the Hole Gallery, New York. Love Focused Like A Laser delves further into his exploration of spirituality, performance and the hope to attain credible conversations about love. In simple terms, his new works captures performers, using laser lights, on film and then engrave the images onto wood, using a computer. Already known for his beautiful photographs, which focus on the movement of the human body, captured by Matthew with intensity and passion, the artist talks to Dazed about how lasers feature in his new project and an upcoming collaboration with DJ MikeQ, as we show the pictures exclusively above.

DazedDigital: How did your exhibition at The Hole Gallery come about?


Matthew Stone: Well, it’s my second solo show at the Hole Gallery. About this time last year, November 2011, was when I did my first show there and I’ve been working with them since then. I’ve been making these new photographs, which are lit with club lasers, and Kathy Grayson (who runs the gallery) saw the photos and said, "Let’s do a show of just these!" Then I explained to them I wanted to try and develop this new technique..

DD: You use lasers, cameras and computers to engrave the images onto wood. What is it about the technique that inspires you?


Matthew Stone: Well basically, the idea for the lasers, came when I was in New York. I was in a nightclub and they had this laser, and I noticed it was doing interesting things when I photographed it. So that’s where it stems from. I then bought lasers and did a whole series of experiments. Played around with them. And because they were lasers, I was thinking about ways to present the images and I came up with the idea of laser cutting. I did tests with laser cutting and I wasn’t getting what I wanted. So the final images are cut with a computer controlled spinning drill head.

DD: So more of an engraving than a cutting?


Matthew Stone:Yes, like engraved paintings. It’s a spinning drill bit that cuts through the top layer of the wood and from certain angles, in the grooves, you can see the grain of the wood. It's hard to see them in a photograph though. You need to stand in front of it.

DD: How do you get the lasers to bounce off your performers?

Matthew Stone:I use long exposure, and I’m in front of the camera, drawing with the lasers, moving around and drawing on parts I want to be brighter. I guess it's like a light drawing. What I like about it is that it’s really physical, and a really different energy from the process of making it. There’s movement from the models and there’s movement from me, so the end result feels like documentation, a sort of performance of gesture. It’s shot in the dark, and there are just these dots everywhere, so there is this increased sense of freedom for the people that I’m photographing. Just because you feel less naked. It’s fun, I put music on, I recently realised how I had created this nightclub in my studio.

DD: Do you have a soundtrack?


Matthew Stone:Different shoots have different soundtracks, I was playing DJ Mike Q, he plays house and DJ’s a lot of balls in New York. I was playing his music, while I was shooting in London. We’re actually working on a project in Miami... it’s coming up at the beginning of next month.

DD: Performance does seem to feature throughout the series, and in a lot of your pieces. Do you see it as integral to your work?


Matthew Stone:In general I feel performance is important to my work, but in a way what I'm specifically interested in, is people and interaction. A friend of mine the other day said, “Yeah, but you love people”. Not as a bad thing, but as a reason.. I don’t know, I do love people, there’s always performative element just because people are involved

DD: Do you explore the performance of certain behaviors and spirituality in your work?


Matthew Stone:I mean, I understand if I think about performance and spirituality then I think about ritual. Ritual being something, an action, which allows us to step out of the everyday routine and become conscious of something else. Perhaps something more important. I think that those things occur in secular society as much as they do in religious society. In terms of the lighting, the works are lit so that when you walk in to the gallery you are met by the works that are dimly lit, in a big black space, so it has an almost church like feeling. The works are laid out in a symmetrical way as well, with three pieces on either side, and a large piece at the end, there is a feeling of entering a chapel like space.

DD: So the gallery space has the feeling of a church and a club all at once?


Matthew Stone:Basically the lights in the gallery space are set up on a timer, and we’ve had it on remote, so that I can switch between the kind of church like lighting, to literally all the lights are out and it's red and green laser dots everywhere. Sort of caressing the room. So that’s how the installation works. I think that nightclubs are in terms of transcendentalism, are spiritually more relevant places than churches.I mean I think that the kind of urges that draw people to dance, are the same things that took people into churches or into religiously conscious ritual.

DD: How do you feel this exhibition builds on your manifesto or links back to it?


Matthew Stone:We had a dinner for the exhibition and I read from it, I read the manifesto – I thought it would make the dinner more of an event - but as I read it, everything just seemed to fit perfectly with the show. The first line was reflected when I realized I was standing there in the dark with moving lights around the audience and me. Then also, as I read the end of manifesto, it was the title of the current show. I mean I don’t think I make artworks specifically to evidence and explain a set of clearly defined ideas, but I feel like it’s natural that the art that I make will be informed by the things that I’m thinking about

DD: All the artworks have a positive strain in them as well.. they come across as quite optimistic.


Matthew Stone:I think that hedonism is something that’s necessary sometimes, and something to celebrate. For me, realistically, when I look at all the things I’ve done, I don’t think it's that we oppose old ideas about performance and spirituality, but that we find new ways to communicate. Ones that are meaningful and sincere. To find ways to talk about aspects of humanity that are more linked. I think that those conversations are the most important.

I think there were a lot of ideas that were posed in the 1960s that seemed to fail, and I think now everybody understands, everybody experiences love, whether it’s the desire to be loved, or to love someone else, or to feel love, or loving someone... everyone experiences it. But for some reason talking about it or posing kindness, always seems weak or nave. I think at the moment, one half of me is taken up by creating propaganda for the idea that kindness can be a strength, and that it's not pathetic. And that it doesn’t mean we have to give up on exciting lives to communicate with people on a level that is respectful.

In a way the 20th century created a strong mythology for the idea of the artist or rebel, which is often based on the idea of rejecting ideas of morality. I think that was an important thing to happen, because it destroyed a lot of hypocrisy, and essentially destroyed a lot of cruelty. Now we’ve got to a point where we have to remind people that kind of violent rebellion was not about creating or validating through violence. It was a passionate attempt to destroy a morally corrupt or rotten society of Post-Victorian attitudes including misogyny, homophobia, and racism.

DD: Can you tell us more about your upcoming project with DJ MikeQ?


Matthew Stone:Well, the collaboration with MikeQ will probably take place onDecember 7th, in Miami. Basically we’re designing a performance. We’ll be presenting some more of the works that are in the show, with his music, but they’ll be music, dance, ballroom, work on the wall and an audience to watch it.

Love Focused Like A Laser will be at the Hole Gallery in New York from November 10 – December 31, 2012