JIVE: Who are your main musical influences, electronic and otherwise?
Mira: My main musical influences really aren't electronic. I say this all the time and I think people think I'm dull, but my favorite band of all time is My Bloody Valentine. They've been a big influence on me not necessarily in a sonic sense, I don't try to imitate their sound, but I think of what they made me feel when I first heard [MBV's classic album] "Loveless". Just the sheer brilliance of that album, to me, has been an inspiration in how it makes you feel, as opposed to trying to recreate something. I never saw any point in that. I don't think it's about trying to copy your masters; it's about what it makes you feel. I aspire to that.
Chantal Passamonte, known to the IDM community as WARP Records' Mira Calix, creates starkly personal, nearly-ambient soundscapes that have draw her critical praise from even Radiohead. While on tour with Plaid at the Echo Lounge in Atlanta, Russ had the chance to ask her a few questions.
JIVE: I was reading in your online bio on a fan site that you used to work for Gucci? How did that come about? It would seem to me that apparently you have to have some sort of interest in fashion in order to get a job with Gucci.
Mira: It's a long story, but basically I had just moved to London. I needed a job and I didn't have any work, and I happened to know somebody who knew somebody who was somehow involved with interviews and things and I got it like the week I arrived. It's just one of those things, you know? I got lucky, but it wasn't anything particularly amazing.
JIVE: What started your interest in DJing, and then what caused you to move into producing? Which of the two do you spend more time on?
Mira: I spend more time producing. I've been DJing about 9 years, I think, 9 or ten years, and I got into it by accident. I used to work in a club, booking this sort of chill-out room, and there was a night when there was a collective of all-girl DJs who asked me 'can you DJ?', and I was like 'yeah, sure'. I mean, I had loads of records, but basically I had about two weeks to figure out one end of the mixer to the other. So I played and had such a great time, I played all my favorite records and people really liked it and so I kept getting more and more work. I never really set out to do it. I started producing on a borrowed drum machine, an old 606 and 202, and again just started going, and finally got some equipment. I got my first drum machine and that's all I had for quite a long time. I thought they were amazing. I kept at it. It was really about having fun. I was never thinking 'oh, I'm going to release this'. It was something I did for myself, really.
JIVE: Of all the things you've produced, what track of yours would you say is your favorite, if you had to pick one?
Mira: I can pick one today, but I change my mind everyday.
JIVE: What is it today?
Mira: Today, it's actually an unreleased track, but if I had to pick one it would be "What Are You Afraid Of?".
JIVE: That track scares the crap out of me, I just want you to know. I was listening to that in my car and it was all bouncy and happy and then suddenly it sounds like you're being tied up and mutilated in hell.
Mira: [laughs] As long as there's a reaction, yeah?
JIVE: So how did you end up opening for Radiohead?
Mira: [laughs] I don't know. I mean, it was the normal thing. I got a call from their agent, and they just asked me to play. I like them, and I got to see them every night. And it was fun, and something completely different. You're playing to massive amounts of people and they're there to see Radiohead, so to be honest you could probably just go 'boo-boo-be-doo' and they wouldn't give a shit, but it was fun.
JIVE: So this was the last tour, the one right before [2000 Radiohead release] Kid A?
Mira: It was the tour leading up to that. Apparently they didn't do it here, but in Europe they had massive tents built, they took 10,000 people in this big, big, very unusual tent.
JIVE: You've worked with Andrea Parker, who happens to be one of my favorite DJs despite the fact that no one in America seems to know who the hell she is. I've seen that she remixed "Skin With Me". How did that happen?
Mira: Andrea and I have been friends since my first DJ gig, that first night. I went on first and she was playing quite late, and we met and just hit it off. She'd probably be my best friend; we've been close for a very long time. I really love her music, and we just get on really well as people, and she did the mix for me as a favor, really. And I like the mix a lot.
JIVE: Who are your main musical influences, electronic and otherwise?
Mira: My main musical influences really aren't electronic. I say this all the time and I think people think I'm dull, but my favorite band of all time is My Bloody Valentine. They've been a big influence on me not necessarily in a sonic sense, I don't try to imitate their sound, but I think of what they made me feel when I first heard [MBV's classic album] "Loveless". Just the sheer brilliance of that album, to me, has been an inspiration in how it makes you feel, as opposed to trying to recreate something. I never saw any point in that. I don't think it's about trying to copy your masters; it's about what it makes you feel. I aspire to that.
JIVE: Who have you not done a collaboration with that you haven't, if you could have anyone? Other than My Bloody Valentine.
Mira: I wouldn't like to collaborate with My Bloody Valentine, I'd be too in awe of them. Sometimes it's best to leave your heroes on a pedestal. I'd really like to work with Andrea, we've been trying to set it up for so long but we end up chatting. That's the bum deal of being friends, you end up all 'oh, we need to get some work done'. There's a lot of people I'd like to work with, but rather than picking out of a bag I think it should be who you have a rapport with, who you get along with well in the studio.
JIVE: What one record never leaves your bag when you're DJing?
Mira: Aphex Twin's remix of Saint Etienne.
JIVE: I've never heard that tonight, so if you drop it tonight there'll be a kid in the front row going crazy.
Mira: (laughs) Alright.
JIVE: What should the listening public expect from your next album?
Mira: That's actually a hard question. I don't know what they should expect, really. More of me. I mean, sonically it's familiar territory.
JIVE: So it's not like you made "Kind of Blue".
Mira: (laughs) Yeah, like I got into country. No, I think it's the same but different. That's really the key, because it's about exploring yourself and exploring what you're into.
Interview by Russ Marshalek
Pending the new release "Melotonine" (release date coming soon), i decided to offer you a part of my best recent works in a free EP, "Cupboard Replacement", downloadable in all numeric formats with special graphic art works by Flint on Music AutOmatiK's Website :
We can stay in contact on facebook now... Thanks for your support !
The 13th international festival for computer based art CYNETART is going to provide a collective atmospheric picture for the reflection on digital culture from 26 November until 06 December 2009 at the festival theatre Hellerau. This will be done by a variety of event formats, such as Automatic Clubbing, a presentation of the output of the European Tele-Plateaus project and the first VIPA-Congress.
Video- and performance-installations as well as a meditative computer game will be shown within Automatic Clubbing from 26 until 28 November. This will be embedded in electronic music by Monolake, eLBee BAD & friends, Jacob Korn or Paul St. Hilaire with Scion.
Adviruz is the artist psedonym of Istanbul’s Pinar Gurcan, whose growing passion for sound is translated through her music. Since an early age, she has been listening and mimicking opera singers, writing melodies, songs and poems in which she spoke her mind and reflected her soul. All of which are evident on "Nightly Sounds", an 8 track album which is the equivilent of having a glimpse into a diary, learning of love lost, gained, a snapshot of the human condition from which we can all draw experience... All of these things are developed musically into minimalistic glitch, noise, idm, experimental music and microsounds, its influences reminiscent of work by artists like Tujiko Noriko, Mira Calix, Plaid and Björk.
Adviruz and Section 27 present "Nightly Sounds", an intricately woven and rewarding musical tapestry. Available now for free download.
Thesis is the second release of Impulsive art, yet the first compilation album. -Deeply dedicated to the experimental – electronic scene brings you a brilliant and unique collection of sound-works by some of the best artists of the scene
Thesis features sound compositions by Andrey Kiritchenko , Mad EP, Keef Baker, Larvae, Spyweirdos, Moogulator, Atmogat, Tapage, Mobthrow, IP Neva, Abstractive Noise and Nole Plastique
To celebrate our first 27 releases on Section 27 Netlabel, we proudly present to you "Sectioned", a compilation of 27 tracks, amounting to 2 hours across two discs of twisted electronic beats, discordant melodies, haunting passages, broken ambience, bending senses of time and space, microscopic glitches, pounding bass frequencies, sounds between sounds, the human voice and the audible sensation of music dissolving in acid. This is the sound of your mind's eye. This is the sound of the Sectioned... Strap yourself in and enjoy the experience.
Also features a 75 minute bonus disc "Sectioned : Nonimxs", including 9 remixes of selected Section 27 artists by Nonima and 2 original tracks created by Silent Snow and Nina Kardec using existing Nonima tracks.
We are very excited about playing at such an awesome jazz club. We have some great sets lined up for you, so don't miss it. Friday and Saturday November 20th and 21st, 5:00-8:30p at Andy's Jazz Club in Chicago
Aaron Koppel -Guitar, Matt Nelson; (Lupe Fiasco, Matthew Santos) -Keyboard, Graham Czach; (Chicago Afrobeat Project) -bass, Robert Tucker (Matthew Santos) -drums
Dedicated to all the women, men, gays, lesbians or heteros, to all who have different politic opinions who are persecuted all over the world by laws, dictature, religions and corrupted states. From north to south, from west to east...
Almost Tomorrow is the third full length collaboration album from Section 27 Netlabel founders Tam Ferrans and Andrew Paterson, under their Nonima & theAudiologist guise. This time around the sound is more melodic, and has a definite feeling of a complete and more mature sound than heard on the previous LP's "Dystopian Battle Hymns" and "Ceremony After Amputation". If you are familiar with their individual projects you may even be in for a slight surprise, as the tracks are not as beat driven like before, but are more atmospheric and sound, well... "bigger". In its 75 minutes, Almost Tomorrow takes you on a trip from the digital rain-soaked cavernous scraping in "Thoughtograph", the ethereal beat jittering of "The Colour of Rain", intercepted transmissions from unknown places in "Com-Intercept", "Ganzfeld"s huge yet strangely insect-like beats until everything you knew comes crashing around you in "Almost Tomorrow". Burning pianos, glitched out soundscapes and intricately programmed beatplay, this may well be their best work to date. Consider it the soundtrack to a rainy overcast day, but with just that glimmer of sunshine peeking from the clouds. "Almost Tomorrow" wears its heart on its sleeve.
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