Out soon: State Music (3xLP + booklet)
Preface Around 2015, after a series of layoffs justified by economic reasons, I started to carry out a few artistic projects and make a bit more music again. Since things were already shitty, I told myself I might as well try and take control of my semi-precarious situation. Between 2018 and 2020, I obtained three public grants with the aim of setting up a series of work residencies; the hope was to approach several various pioneering studios in the field of electronic music and improvise on their audio equipment and first-generation analogue modular synthesisers. In the end, I was able to work at EMS – Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, Radio Belgrade and KSYME in Athens in 2019, Willem Twee in Den Bosch in the Netherlands in 2020 and, later, at Columbia University’s Computer Music Center in New York in 2023. A lot of content on this website will be related to State Music. Outside this LP, there’s many other outputs like multichannel concerts, texts, interviews and exhibitions.
Playing iconic instruments was interesting, but I didn’t want to fetishize these machines. Plus, back in 2018, I realised that my music alone wouldn’t be enough to convince cultural institutions to fund this first solo album. I needed to propose something extra, an approach, something along the lines of research, for example. I’ve always found my interest in electroacoustic and concrete music a bit suspicious. Where did this attraction to instruments and sonorities from the pioneer era of the early 1950s come from? Even before seriously getting into the practice of electronic music, I was wary of it. I could feel I was caught up in a romanticised vision of this era, exacerbated by the black and white images of these iconic studios and machines – images which were on record covers from this period, in the books I read, and all over the internet. I told myself there must be a fundamental difference between the emergence of music driven by social demands, spiritual concerns or emancipatory discourses, and this. Intuitively, it seemed to me that the answer might lie in the relationship to the means of production. Who owned the instruments? Who made them? Who could work in these studios at the time, and would I be able to do so today? Anyway, I wanted to widen my perspective and get a better understanding of the history of the sounds I was beginning to create. My questions were numerous: What were the power relations between electronic music studios and radio institutions? What types of governments and political regimes had financed – or not financed – the development of this music? What should we understand about the links between military industries and audio technologies? What was each state’s role in the development of this music? These stories have already been well documented but I’m trying to connect them here in a personal way. Through this text and project, I seek to engage with research, writing and inquiry around these issues, outside of academic circles. Most of my sources here are secondary and there is no clearly defined research method, just a curiosity for those actively critiquing creative electronic institutions. And above all, I’m doing this for myself – to question my own music (not that of others) and to speculate through this critical questioning.
Finally, I want to thank my friend Aladin Borioli – artist, photo grapher, beekeeper and anthropologist. We were classmates between 2005 and 2009, then we kind of lost touch. He went on to study art before leaving Switzerland for Berlin to undertake a master’s in Visual Anthropology at the Freie Universit.t; meanwhile, I was working as a freelance graphic designer and journalist. One day, he contacted me for a collaboration: he needed music, sounds and recordings for one of his projects. I obviously accepted and we went to Morocco, to Inzerki. We interviewed Hassan Souaf, an incredible beekeeper, recorded his hives, edited sound pieces and made a film without images. Aladin’s methods, which oscillated between art and humanities – with a penchant for philosophy, politics and the history of technologies – inspired me. I suddenly felt like doing fieldwork too and I quickly thought of electronic music studios – interviewing the people who work there, consulting archives and improvising on their old analogue synthesisers. All this seemed exciting to me and contributed to launching this hands-on investigation, as a self-taught amateur.
Tracklist
Title: The Missing Computer
11’54”
Studio: EMS – Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm
Instruments: Buchla 100, Buchla 200
Title: People’s Synthesizer
17’51”
Studio: EMS – Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm
Instrument: Serge modular system
Title: I/O – BNC
13’21”
Studio: Willem Twee Studios, Den Bosch
Instruments: Analogue test & measurement equipment
Title: Æffects
17’20”
Studios: Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade, Belgrade KSYME-CMRC – Contemporary Music Research Center, Athens
Instruments EMS Synthi 100
Title: Black boxes, white cubes & open spaces
14’17”
Studio: Computer Music Center, Columbia University, New York City
Instruments Buchla 100, Serge modular system
Title: Infrastructure & Superstructure
11’24”
Studio: Computer Music Center, Columbia University, New York City
Instrument: RCA Mark II