casioheart

Here is the third interview I did recently. Valerio Cosi is a Twenty-Something and lives in Italy. He studied saxophone and already released many CD-R albums that combine electronic and experimental sounds with Jazz. He worked together with acts like My Cat is an Alien, Uton and The North Sea.
2008 saw the release of some really good releases by Valerio which is why I contacted him to find out a bit more about him.

When I heard “Heavy Electronic Pacific Rock” it was one these moments when I thought that there are still new sounds that have not been explored, styles that have not been combined yet but work well together. A track like “Proud (to be Kraut)/A buring OM:reprise” sums it up best: some NEU!-ish rhythm acts as heartbeat while layers of Saxophone fade into the mix just to create a highly energetic drone. Suddenly the drums sound as they come directly from an Alice Coltrane record… and so on. Some weeks later I got hold of his collaboration effort with Fabio Orsi “We could for hours” (A silent place) which is more droney and flows along with lots of subtle changes.

Here is the interview:

?: What are you working on at the moment?
I’m actually working on a double-CD with Fabio Orsi which will probably see the light of day in late next year…It’s going to be an interesting third chapter into the trilogy that we have started back in 2006 with “We Could For Hours” (relased a year later on the italian label A Silent Place).

?: Can you describe your usual working process (if there is one)?
I use to record myself for 15 times or even more, I usually start composing my tracks around some sax lines which then develop in something more structural which usually includes drums (my actual second instrument) and various recorded samples, percussions, synthesizer and anything else which should fit well into my sound projects!

?: Where do songtitles come from, what are sources of inspiration?
I’ve always had a cinematic way of tracklisting, editing and thinking about tracks. I’m absolutely in love with Krautrock music, free-jazz and psychedelic rock from the Seventies. These dimensions are an obvious inspiration for my track titles. Sometimes I’ve been tempted with giving some too-much-Neuesque titles for some of my tracks (see “Harmonia Raag” from my recent CD “Collected Works”)!

?: What was your first musical instrument?
Undoubtly, drums. I started playing drums when I was 9. After some years, I decided to breathe into my old alto, stimulated by a lot of curiosity for jazz-music and so on…

?: Do you use any music software and if so, which?
My way of recording is pretty simple. I use DAT sources which I record in my bedroom space and then I re-edit/assembly/master them through Pro-Tools: it is totally important for me because it’s the only way of working properly on every little sound and the whole software makes me feel like an ordered person.

?: How crucial is software for your music?
Very much. It is like a religion sometimes.

?: What is your favourite hardware?
An Universal Audio compressor called 2-LA-2! Excellent quality…

?: How important is the haptic stuff to you when you create music (midicontrollers/knobs?) ?
I do not have any midi work with my music. I use to play a Korg Trinity which sometimes helps me to create some synthesized drum patterns which I love to modify and blur in a totally personal way. If talking about knobs, I’ve to say that I’m very balanced with them and with equalizations as well right now (something that I didn’t catch in my early stuff). I’m still learning a lot about having a balanced sound for my recordings through the years, thanks also to dear friends and musicians (they always helped me and sustained me a lot)!

?: Do you have a favourite VST-plugin?
R-Bass from Waves is magical!

?: What do you do on stage if you play live?
I usually prefer to have a “fire music” night more than an electronic one. So I use to play crude saxophone… I’m starting to develop an electronic solo set for a future live training.

?: Do you have a dayjob or can you pay your bills with your musical involvements?
I actually pay my bills with the musical involvement. I’ve started Dreamsheep and I’m very busy in these days with promoting my label. Fingers crossed for the future!

?: What are your favourite records at the moment?
Talking about my consolidated preferences coming from the past: everything from Neil Young & Crazy Horse, tons of 70’s prog-rock and Krautrock (Popol Vuh, Neu!, R. Wyatt, LA Dusseldorf, M. Rother), punk-rock (Afflicted Man, Black Flag, Minutemen, Husker Du and Germs) and free-jazz (J. oltrane, M. Graves, D. Cherry, E. Dolphy, M. Davis) and lots of japanese psychedelia from the past 15 years (I’m a big fan of K. Haino).
I listened to that Osborne’s record on Holy Mountain (Zomes)…fantastic one. I’m also in love with lots of great rock bands like Endless Boogie (their recent “Focus Level” is one of the most exciting stuff I’ve heard in these recent years), Aural Fit (a new amazing discovery from PSF) and Afternoon Brother.

Thank you, Valerio!

I still believe in Christmas Trees.

Sufjan Stevens? NO! Low? NO!! Wham!? NOOOO!!!

Telstar Ponies!

All this Christmas Terror will be over soon. Hurray!

Boduf Songs “How Shadows Chase the Balance” is the third release on Kranky from Mat Sweet.
Maybe this sounds a bit pathetic but for me his music works as “doomfolk”. The bleak pictures he describes in his lyrics are perfectly accompanied by skeletal folk songs. Not folk in a traditional sense but folky in the sense that this is stripped down and works with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and some drones. On “How Shadows Chase the Balance” Boduf Songs refined his way of crafting hypnotic songs and sometimes sounds as a full band without ruining the essence of his little tales. Mat sings: “Don’t forget to come undone”… his webpage has the title, “doomed, in the classical sense”… Here are his answers…

?: Do you have any side projects?

I have a bunch of other things that I work on with people; it’d be disrespectful to those good fellows if I called these things Boduf Songs side projects. We like to keep busy busy. I play drums in a death/doom ensemble called (currently) Beekeeper, and also in the improvised dronal attack squadrons Navy Fag and CGI Haircut. Some other stuff also.

?: What are you working on at the moment?
Some ideas for the next Boduf Songs LP, along with the aforementioned collaborative schemes. Writing…

?: Can you describe your usual working process (if there is one)?
For Boduf Songs there isn’t really a usual process… ideas come in different shapes and guises, sometimes we sit down to work on things and force out fresh ideas, much like a man concentrating hard on growing a beard. Accordingly, this approach can often yield nothing but empty hours, but all is learning. Other times a dream will cough up an interesting nugget which we then pursue and work on and hammer into something less interesting.

?: Where do song titles come from, what are sources of inspiration?
Again, all over the place… many from the dreaming, many from the overheard conversations of demented children and dada poets on the autobus.

?: What was your first musical instrument?
Electric guitar with gain up way high, playing Black Sabbath and Soundgarden riffs on one string.

?: Do you use any music software and if so, which?
I use Adobe Audition, Reaper, Reason, Rebirth, and a selection of deeply esoteric wares that were donated to me exclusively.

?: How crucial is software for your music?
If I didn’t have software I think I’d still be making music, but no doubt it would sound very different. I started out with an analogue 4 track, but computers make things a lot easier and afford a more varied pallet and sometimes suck all the life out of your soul and leave you crumpled and flattened, an empty husk staring blankly at an ugly screen.

?: What is your favourite hardware?
Dictaphone.

?: What is your favourite plug-in if there is one?
Yamaha Final Master.

?: How important is the haptic stuff to you when you create music (midicontrollers/knobs?) or is it all about a songwriter/guitar & vocals approach for you?
That kind of stuff isn’t hugely important to me. I have a little 4 channel mixer, the settings on it usually stay the same, it’s basically a cheap pre-amp for computer recording. I have the worlds crappest midi keyboard also, its tiny and has 2 octaves and no pressure sensitivity. It has good stickers.

?: What do you do on stage if you play live?
I usually play the electric guitar straight into an amp.

?: Do you have a day job or can you pay your bills with your musical involvements?
I work in a university library, I am a loooong way from paying all my bills, even with a monthly wage. Music involvements just about cover cigarette costs.

?: What are your favourite records at the moment?
Why? - AlopeciaMaskull - s/t
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Altered States
The Fun Years - Baby, It’s Cold Inside
Jingle Cats - Meowy Christmas

Thanks!
René

I think this blog has slept long enough and it should not be about posting Youtube links only.
I recently asked some artists to share some information about their working process which is a rather nerdy approach to doing this question-answer thing. I did this once before with Chris Herbert. This time I contacted some artists whose records are my favourites of 2008… Boduf Songs, Valerio Cosi and to start with:

The Fun Years.

The Fun Years “Baby, it’s cold inside” is number 1 on Boomkat’s favourite records of 2008. Hopefully it will now sell like the new Fennesz record or more. It should. You should get their record, too, if you don’t own it yet.

For me it is the record that I would place next to Belong’s “October Language”. Dense, atmospheric and hypnotic. Kitsch-free ambience. The baritone guitar of Ben Recht and Isaac Spark’s vinyl loops melt together to create some of the most addictive sounds I heard this year.

Ben and Isaac answered my geeky questions below:

?: Is the fun years your first and only project?
We both work on other projects, but TFY is our top priority.
Some examples: Ben works on a metal project called Assault Lick and Isaac plays water sound effects in a new age band called Deep Xylophone.

?: What are you working on at the moment?
Ben is working on perfecting his hamburger grilling skills, and Isaac is working on complaining about America’s automobile industry.  Isaac complains a lot.

?: Can you describe your usual working process ?
1) Get a stack of records from wherever
2) Isaac listens to the records, complains that there’s “nothing good on these records”, makes a few notes and marks his favorite spots of each record
3) We improv for hours and then render all of our recordings so we can review them
4) Eventually, we decide to go back and put a record together from our massive stack of recordings.
5) >From quantity comes quality.

?: Where do songtitles come from, what are sources of inspiration?
Ben often talks in his sleep, so back when we started out, Isaac bought a Marantz PMD660 Professional Solid State Recorder and a prescription for sleeping pills (from a questionable “doctor”).  He gave both items to Ben’s wife and convinced her that she should secretly drug him and capture his genius thoughts while he’s out cold.  It worked well for quite a while.  Eventually, he caught on and we had to come up with other ways.  Now, we get most of our titles from a talking pigeon named Rooster and this kid that hangs out by Isaac’s junkyard.

?: What was your first musical instrument?
We both got shitty casio keyboards when we were little kids, but never did anything interesting with them.  It took a while for us to “find our sound.”

?: Do you use any music software and if so, which?
The Fun Years exclusively endorses Ableton Live.  Now if only they would endorse us back.

?: How crucial is software for your music?
How crucial are Rice Krispies to Rice Krispie Treats?

?: What is your favourite hardware?
Baritone guitar, turntable.

?: what is your favourite plug-in?
Nothing really has ever topped the S-Bleepo coded by our friends Brian and Noah.  It runs step sequencers of oscillators and nonlinear combination effects (”combyops”) at relatively prime periods mixing the sounds in bizarre ways.  We’re not really sure what that damned thing is supposed to do other than make ear-splitting noise, but there is nothing else like it.

?: How important is the haptic stuff to you when you create music (midicontrollers/knobs?)
Playing the guitar and fucking with records are both wholly tactile processes.  But we don’t use anything special to manipulate what the computer is doing. Most of the time, Ben just uses the mouse.

?: What do you on stage if you play live?
We hide in a refrigerator box, “play our set” via mp3 player and engage in a 40-45 minute-long session of Battleship.  That’s not serious.  But unfortiuately we fear that’s what our live show must feel like out in the audience.  We just try to play loud (it doesn’t always work) and in weird spots to keep it interesting.

?: Do you have a dayjob or can you pay your bills with your musical involvements?
If you know how we can pay our bills making ambient music, please let us know.  We’ve been trying to figure that out since 2003.

?: What are your favourite records at the moment?
Roger Troutman - The Many Facets of Roger
Assault Lick - Hi, I’m On Fire
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
Dethklok - Dethalbum
Charlene - Charlene
Clark - Turning Dragon
Geoff Mullen - Thrtysxtrllnmsfstns

We are always,
The Fun Years

Thanks, René

Robert Hampson posted a nice link to an interview with him at the Quietus on his Myspace Blog which is about the Loop Album Re-Issues, Main, the problem with the legendary “Isolationism” compilation and his forthcoming solo album on Touch.

I am a big fan of Loop and I think that the re-issues will be in my “best of 2008″ list for sure. Repetition is bliss.

Now, I would love to see some Main Re-Issues also…

Just some videos I stumbled upon recently while wasting too much time on the internet while I should be doing music…

my lowville : the fun years from Barge Recordings on Vimeo.

The Fun Years “Baby, it’s cold inside” album is one of my favs at the moment…

Boduf Songs, video from upcoming album on Kranky Records, one of the records I am really looking forward to…
(maybe this is “doom” folk, sounds a bit like a dark version of Sufjan Stevens without all the plinky plonky stuff and lalalas…

“Hail Satan”, funny comedy “documentary” I found on Youtube while I was looking for Xasthur Videos…