I write for different venues, mostly for magazines, blogs and papers related to social work, enviromental issues and society. In english my writings can mostly be found in connection to Wusik sound magazine. An outlet dedicated to music technology aimed at new and old music producers alike.
Seeing that the last issue was just
published, I'll post an interview that I did with much talented
Joshua Penman here. Joshua is a composer tied to the extremely fascinating psychedelic act
Akara. He's also created some of the most evocative and original music I've heard in the last few years.
Hope you enjoy the read, also: don't forget to check Akara's music out, you can listen to it near the end of the article.
Tell me a bit about your background and
what drew you into music to begin with?
I went to school for a long time for
music, I have a doctorate in classical composition. I wrote music for
lots of different groups - orchestras, chamber ensembles, wind
ensembles - and had these pieces performed a lot. I started playing
piano when I was five, and performed in a bunch of different kinds of
musical groups including several classical choirs, an industrial
band, and a Balinese gamelan. I also studied Indian classical singing
pretty in Varanasi... I come from a musical family - my mother was a
cellist, so being in music (though not necessarily doing it
professionally) was very much a part of my mileu growing up.
What made you want to work with digital
and form Akara?
Listening to lots of dance music and
psychedelic ambient music and realizing that I couldn't get that
sound unless I brought in synthesizers and production.
I can definitely hear an amalgam of
many influences on the album Extradimensional Ethnography, how would
you describe it in your own words?
Psychedelic ambient, West coast bass
music, classical minimalism, Maurice Ravel, Indian classical music,
Balinese gamelan, medieval polyphony, Claude Vivier, old-school
jungle...
You have a lot of other
collaborating musicians as well. Among others the very talented Femke
Weidema, how did you go about recording all these musicians?
Femke and Noam, the Indian mandolin
player, I recorded at my home studio. The string quartet, flute, and
horn, I recorded at a wonderful LA studio called Entourage. The harp,
I recorded in my friend Jason's studio. A Neumann U87 was often
involved. There was a wonderful Sony stereo pair and I think AKG
stereo pair in the string quartet recording, as well.
What kind of production set-up do you
use?
Cubase, Omnsiphere, NI Komplete, Waves,
Altiverb, a few PSP, Sonalksis, and SoundToys plugins, Stutter Edit,
the DestroyFX plugins, a Moog Voyager, and an Eventide DSP7000. 75%
are of my synths are Omnisphere, the rest some mixture of FM8, the
Moog, and assorted sample libraries.
I know you program your own patches in
Native Instruments Reaktor, how do you find working in a modular
studio?
I actually use Reaktor very little.
It's of course extremely powerful but I find it generally uninspiring
to work with compared to Omnisphere, which I love. I don't find the
sounds that it ships with terribly useful (there must be some kind of
alternate IDM universe in which those kinds of patches have some
musical application but that universe does not intersect mine), and
it's often a lot of work to do simple things. So I tend just to use
Reaktor to solve very particular production problems (I've used it to
generate MIDI to send to Omnisphere, for example).
However, what modular systems like
Reaktor excel at are doing things that no one has thought of
before... My main use of Reaktor is the massive patch I created to
run the Akara Lightship, our onstage lightshow. The patch generates
OSC data based on MIDI sequences, which gets converted to DMX and
sent out to the lights.
You went from classically trained into
the digital, do you think people starting in a DAW milieu would
benefit from going in the opposite direction – to look into
starting to play classical instruments and incorporate it into their
productions?
It's probably too late at that point to
learn to play them. Classical instruments are really hard - you need
to start them when you're young. But I think that many producers
could study some more music theory and find something really useful
in it. And also, they could think about starting to work classical
instruments into their productions... It's a deep study unto itself
to write effectively and creatively for instruments, but learning how
to use notation, make parts, etc., is totally doable and incredibly
rewarding. That said, there's a lot of electronic music (probably the
majority!) that works perfectly well without any more music theory or
instruments...
What kinds of obstacles and
opportunities do you see for people making a transition into either
one direction?
Well, classical music is really hard,
as I said, so that's a huge obstacle in the one direction. And even
if you don't try to play one of the instruments, there's an
incredible amount of technical stuff that has to go in to just
working with them properly, and knowing how to communicate with the
players, how the instruments want to sing.
In the other direction, I think
that most people in the classical tradition simply aren't exposed to
what is really great about digital music. Also, there is a deep
transition that needs to go on from thinking about music as notes to
thinking about it as sound. Classical composers write melodies to be
interpreted but in the electronic realm, we can't just sit back and
give a few notes to a synthesizer and expect it to sound as good. We
need to get on the knobs, modulate it, cut it up, etc. Also there is
a legacy of absolutely awful experimental electronic music associated
with "classical composition" and that stuff needs to be
conceptually pitched into the wastebasket if a composer is going to
do anything musically worthwhile.
What are your thoughts on the
future and where do you plan on taking Akara next?
Well, I've been working very hard on
our onstage light installation, the Akara Lightship. We've got a lot
of shows this summer, and I think the show is going to blow people's
minds. We've also got two incredible music videos that we're
shooting, and I'm plugging away on the second album. It's all
happening, and I'm just looking forward to doing this more, for more
people, in bigger venues, etc... Down the road I hope to have a big
integrated touring show with dance, bigger sets, etc. But the
Lightship is a great step in that direction and I'm just unbelievably
excited to start taking it out...
As a last question, what kind of
feelings would you like a listener to take with themselves
experiencing your music?
I'd like the listener to be taken on a
mystical journey, to hear songs that they have never heard before but
sound achingly familiar, to lose themselves and let themselves be
transported into a magical other world...
Quote:
"... kaleidoscopic passageways for
the truth-seeking multi-dimension-traveling soul. The music
hypnotizes your mind and overloads your senses with luminous dreams
and psychedelic visions." headphonecommute.com
