A curiosity for me would be how the process of writing vocals, singing and producing for you merges in the studio. Where do you get the inspiration for the lyrics you write?
Well, writing lyrics is completely different from creating techno music, I can tell you that. It does not come naturally to me, but just being stubborn, I can sit for two hours trying to write four lines. It’s so time-consuming, crazy! As I mentioned before, Phoebe Bridges is extremely good at writing lyrics. Together with Elliot Smith, they’re just two of my heroes in this kind of music. They’re not trying to be abstract and they write about specific things – they write about something positive and negative and go back and forth with it. I like that approach to lyrics because life is just a series of good things and bad things happening. I also like melodramatic things. It makes me feel good listening to them. So I was trying to create a feeling rather than trying to say something specific. Music is really about feeling for me. I’m not aiming to be political. I want to be more timeless than not. I like melodramatic things, even though my life is not all melodrama, it’s just everyday life trying to get the kids to school.
Some themes are coming back again and again in your works. Sleep, Dream and – as you said just now- a sense of melodrama.
Definitely. I guess it’s something that I come back to. You put kick drums in every song and I put these words, something like that (laughs). It’s just part of my toolkit I guess!
This is something many people can relate to – part of the human experience. It’s an anchor that hooks people to this music.
If it’s successful, it should be relatable. However, creating relatable lyrics can be difficult because you don’t want to be too specific or too abstract. Someone once said that really specific things are relatable, like looking at yourself in the mirror. So, I’m not sure how to do it, but I enjoy creating things and I wanted to create things that I don’t know how to do. That’s the way everybody learns. Doing things that are out of my comfort zone, that’s what drives me.
Was there anything in the process of creating that album or any earlier works where you tried something and it didn’t work as well as expected? Did you learn from those challenges during the process?
Yes, I changed things a lot! I change things constantly and I never look back. I know from experience that I always override what I’ve done before and don’t think about what has been done before, maybe just keep it in my memory. If something doesn’t work, I just delete it, change it or try to make it work. If I have an idea, that might be good, but if it doesn’t work, I work on it more. In some parts of The Serpent, when Saint Sinner recorded her vocals, we just cut some parts out and then said, no, it doesn’t work. It’s a completely natural process to review and decide what to keep and what not. You create something, then you wait, listen again and say, okay, this doesn’t work, but this works or something. You can’t say this is all bad, and just throw it all away. You have to analyze what it is that doesn’t work and change exactly that and nothing else.
If I understand correctly, does that mean you never have a fragment of a track that doesn’t work at this moment in time, and you set it aside to revisit later for a future album? Some artists find old tracks on their drive and realize they could work now or be a foundation for something new.
Not for me. I have this one folder that I created with 20 ideas for this album and kept 11, I discarded half of it. I’ll continue with this part of my collection, and I doubt I will access the old files because they’re so uninteresting. Usually, I have an idea in my head about what I’m trying to do. You can’t really hear it in the old files (laughs) because I have maybe some ideas of, okay, I’m going to add maybe some rain sounds in this and I’m going to add some saxophone and vocals, but I don’t do it right away. I just keep it back in my head. I have to build the foundation really well and make the rhythm work. It’s like if you’re building a house, make the walls sturdy and then you can decorate it with some nice sounds and vocals. That’s the way I work – I just work on one idea and I try to finish it in three years or something.
You mentioned remixes earlier and I was wondering as to what extent your process differs when you remix, as you start with a foundation of someone else?
In the rare event that I remix someone else’s music I usually try to recreate the melodies and chords with my own sounds. It can take a bit of time, but recently I have started using software to help me analyze the stems and convert them into midi. But once I have that all set up, I can work on the remix like it’s my own track, manipulate the sounds easily and have more control over the mix. Depending on the track, I will include some sounds from the original, maybe one or two! But it doesn’t take as long to remix as creating a new track from scratch because I don’t have to compose the music, except maybe add a few elements where needed. When remixing I try to use what I’ve learned from experimenting with my own music.
How is your studio set up? Is that close to home?
Actually, I have a room at my mom’s place. I get to use one of her rooms rent-free. This is really nice. And I created so many albums there. My first Yagya album, “Rhythm of Snow” was produced in that exact room. When I started making music, I was living there, of course. And then later, I got this room I filled with bass traps and very nice speakers. I really like speakers. Speakers feel like they’re my instrument. That’s what inspires me regarding hardware. Maybe I’m a little bit eccentric because I don’t use hardware or anything. I just use my laptop, but I admire people that use hardware to create minimalistic textures. On the other hand, my studio is filled with bass traps and has two sets of speakers and my laptop.
How do you engage with the wider electronic community? Are there any other artists you are in touch with and you exchange ideas?
I’m a bit of an introvert and my schedule is packed. I have a day job and two kids and I try to exercise a little. I don’t go clubbing or anything like that. So in recent years, I don’t often go out and meet people, but I enjoy talking with my old friends online, discussing audio mixing techniques or exchanging valuable feedback for our work-in-progress music. Also great to meet new people on discord and discover their music, for example. I discovered some very interesting artists there and have a chat with them sometimes. So I meet people online, mostly (laughs).
What was one of the artists you discovered and you say, wow, this touches me?
Yeah, I really like Loscil’s and Lawrence English’s “Colours of Air” and also previous work by Loscil. It’s so minimalistic and yet so elegant! Then I’ve also been listening to “NOT TiGHT” by DOMi & JD Beck. It’s completely different, fast jazz by young kids. I really admire them. It’s the complete opposite of minimalism, though.
It’s a question we ask the artists because many musicians fall off the radar. Nowadays, everything is algorithms and social media. There’s so much talent that is maybe not so visible to the outside and you are only able to find out via communities and sharing.
Absolutely. I don’t agree with the algorithms. They’re usually genre operated or concentrate on genres. I like quality music and it’s not about the categories. Some things, you can’t describe them, but it’s a certain feeling, something that touches me. Music that deeply touches my soul or heart. That’s not possible for algorithms to find out. It can only show you what type of music it is or if it’s popular. Music is not about that for me, it is about human emotions and human connection and trying to make sense of the world or your inner world. Spotify is probably the leader of this algorithm revolution if you can call it like that and I am not sure about it. Of course, if you listen to music for a long time with an algorithm, you’re bound to find something really nice. But yeah, there is just something wrong there for me. I’m, of course, a bit old school. I like long albums and I don’t listen to playlists. When growing up, we bought CDs and listened to the CDs again and again. I’m probably just affected by my upbringing in that sense. Not saying it’s wrong to listen to playlists. It just doesn’t work for me.
I wonder to what extent an artist can free themselves from the music industry’s development. When producing something, is it possible to completely detach yourself from concerns like whether the album will be successful or how it will perform? It’s a common topic for many artists and living in an algorithm-driven environment can be burdensome. How do you deal with these thoughts?
I have a day job. That’s how I deal with it. I don’t think about these things and I don’t want to worry about whether it’ll make money or not. I just really want to create something very nice. I’m not financially dependent on my music, but it is my passion and I spend a lot of time on music. During Covid, I lost my job as a software developer. I was working at a startup and they just had to lay people off because there was no one using the product for a while. I was so glad, that I lost my job because then I had an excuse to just work on music. And that’s the artist in me that is just: all right, now I work on music. Financially it didn’t work in the long run. Then I took a new job and I started working at 60% and working on my album for two days a week. I’m always really glad when I get the chance to work on music. There are things I just don’t like, I don’t like how Spotify works or how little they pay the artists. That’s why I don’t want to play by their rules and rather want to make long albums that flow together. The tracks flow together and I don’t want to make music that is more likely to be selected by playlists. I want to make music that I like, not the algorithms. Related to that, I think also creating music for myself is better than trying to guess what other people might like because you never really know exactly what others are thinking or feeling. In the end, I always hope others will like it, of course.
We talked earlier about when music touches the heart. What’s the musical science behind it? What are the elements that make people deeply connect to this music in such an emotional way? The magic ingredient that makes people’s hearts connect to it.
Oh, that’s a really difficult question. Not really sure. I would say that music needs to have a sort of micro tension. It can’t all be completely in harmony in the way of the rhythm, notes, texture and all that. It needs to have a nice tension inside. That’s one of the things that make music interesting. if there are some opposing elements. It’s a difficult question, but a very interesting one. But I think that some tension in the music is important because that sort of reflects the human condition existing in the world – there’s always some conflict within yourself or with other people or with the system or even with the weather.
Thank you. There are artists in that, to mention Traumprinz here as an example. He is one of the artists where listeners say, oh, that is an individual that can translate that melancholy, the metaphorical “search for home” very well into music. The same has been said about Yagya as well. I was wondering if it is a certain pad, arrangement or certain pace? Most likely a little bit of magic plays a role, too.
Yeah, it’s hard to say in words. I always imagine if it sort of clicks in my heart, but it doesn’t translate to words exactly. If you could translate it into words though, you could probably create a recipe or algorithm to create these things. And then it probably wouldn’t be very interesting because it would be just overflowing with these things and people would start creating something else.
