Who is Benny Blanco
A documentary about songwriter and producer Benny Blanco, the man behind hit songs from Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Taio Cruz, Britney Spears, Mike Posner, Justin Bieber, Sean Kingston and others. Featuring artist Neon Hitch and songwriter Claude Kelly.
A film by Jeremy Gillam.
FWD.dj Presents Droid Behavior: Drumcell Interview
Moe Espinosa aka Drumcell, Droid Behavior Co-Founder and Droid Recordings Founder, discusses his introduction to electronic music and rave culture, his production process in the studio, some of the gear that’s crucial for the Drumcell sound, and the beginning of Droid Recordings.
Interview with Nullsleep
Scion Installation LA presents an exclusive interview with Pixel Pushers artist: Nullsleep
Nullsleep is the alias of Jeremiah Johnson, an electronic musician whose style could best be described as post-cyberpunk. Nullsleep is the cofounder of 8bitpeoples, an artist collective interested in the audio-visual aesthetics of early home computers. nullsleep.com
Stereoklang in an exclusive talk with synth pioneer John Foxx
Anyone with the slightest interest in electronic music has come across the works of John Foxx. John more or less on his own reshaped the electronic landscape with albums like Metamatic and The Garden. Starting off in the 1970’s forming the band Tiger Lily, that later morphed into the legendary act Ultravox. However, John left the band in 1979 to pursue a solo career and over the years, since then, John has been extremely productive – to say the least. John did withdraw from the music scene for a while to pursue other areas, but reappeared in the 90’s via Nation12 and then later on actively started to pursue his music career often in collaboration with others like Louis Gordon, Harold Budd and most recently with Benge (ben Edwards). Currently we are all set for a real treat with the new album called Interplay, featuring John Foxx & the Maths. Without further a due, and introductions, we dive deep into the mind of Mr. John Foxx
The Metamatic album has lots of pop format songs with raw and distorted synths, a sound that still feels fresh. But no-one picked up on that combination until much later, e.g EBM and Futurepop movement in the 90s and even more so by the Skweee movement of the 00s. Not even yourself continued in that direction with those raw synth sounds until your more recent work. – Why didn’t you pursue that direction? Was it going against the time too much?
There were many other things to pursue. For instance, reclaiming some of my own ground from ‘Systems of Romance’ on ‘The Garden’ album. I also wanted to make ‘Cathedral Oceans’ and other kinds of quiet music.
Then there was the preoccupation with Psychedelia, and its link to German electronic music. This wasn’t at all recognized in England at the time. At one point, I was also afraid that perhaps Metamatic was too raw and minimal and cold. This seems odd, because it seems quite warm now – but it certainly didn’t compared to other records being made at the time. A few years later, when I had the perspective to be able to appraise things from a safe distance, I realized there might be something special about Metamatic after all.
You’ve once said that new instruments like the electric guitar, synthesizers and drum machines changes the shape of the music. That you write to accommodate to the machines – Do you perceive that the DAW/laptop studio made the same impact?
Oh yes, every technological introduction changes the music – there are musicians who would not exist in other environments – The form of many new musicians’ work is enabled by intelligent use of new technologies – Autechre for instance, require a portable digital ecology in order to exist in their present form. Theirs is an intelligent, visceral response to new digital environments.
XXX require flexible digital recording technology to review and refine their music. It is clearly not based on any purely acoustic hierarchy of sound.
Just as Frank Sinatra changed both singing and recording by using a microphone and an amplifier – enabling him to sing quietly in front of a big band, so DAWs and laptops have created methods of working and kinds of music that were not possible before.
Diamonds are forever – Interview with Johan Kinde, Lustans Lakejer
Stereoklang got an exclusive interview with the legend in Swedish new wave, glam rock, and synth pop – Mr. Johan Kinde. The frontman behind the cult band Lustans Lakejer (in English it would be something like “the lackeys of lust”). LL has been around since the early 1980’s and their music has always dealt with the passions in life, at least from a male perspective; women, champagne, love, dreams, passion, forbidden fruit, but at the same time with a glimpse in the eye and you can sometime sense that there is a backside to the life of a playboy. Johan and LL has made a long list of classical songs over the years and even had collaborations with some of the members in the UK cult band Japan (Mick Karn and Richard Barbieri). Stereoklang wanted to catch up with Johan now that LL has a new album out and they are ready to hit the road again.
How has the new record been received and are you happy yourself with the result?
“Absolutely!!! The record has been receiving great reviews and has actually climbed to the highest position in the album charts relative to all previous LL albums. Now we are so eager to tour with the new album all across Sweden.”
The album for those of you have not heard it yet, is to us an album that takes LL back to its roots, with the synthesizers more in the front, a more electronic touch, but still flirting with sounds found on more recent works like Åkersberga for example.
“In a sense you can say that we really had this ambition from the start, to write more hip songs that are more immediate and perhaps shorter, kind of more fit to be synthesizer based. We wanted them to be more up-tempo songs with more bass sounds. We even had a version of the album that was even more “synthish” – kind of like LL meets Depeche Mode. The Swedish synth pop act SYSTEM even made a remix of the song “Eld och vatten”, it was almost as if Vince Clarke had been involved.” More over having Jenny Silver singing a duet with Johan almost gives it kind of a “Fade to grey” – kind of feeling.
“As I see it the synthesizers actually won the war over the rockers. Just listen to today´s music scene where synths are more important then ever – Lady Gaga just to name one, even though the traditional “synth music” became more of a niche scene. I think this partly because they just became carbon copies of bands like Depeche Mode – for that reason I found it more interesting when the electro wave came about.”
So what synthesizers can we find on the new album?
“It is a combination of hardware and software synths.” Johan let us know that he is not very much of a synthesizer guy at all, even though he sometimes gets the lust of acquiring some of them. On the new album, however, you will find the KORG Polysix on almost all of the songs (played live in the recording sessions), coupled with some vintage modular synths kindly supplied by P. Levin from System. The fact that Johan plays most of the instruments himself on the album (not being a true keyboard guy), synthesizers and guitars, gives the album a more natural feeling and not too perfect, a live feeling kind of.
The lyrics has always been a central piece in the works of LL, so we asked Johan for the real story behind the lyrics
The life of a romantic – is probably the best description you can give to the works of Johan and LL, but are they true stories or just dreams? “Most of it is actually self-experienced. Often people say that in the early days it was dreams, but now it is self-experienced, but the truth is more that in the early days I did experience the things I was writing in my lyrics, but PERHAPS I dressed it in words that made it sound better than it was ☺.
Interview with Swedish electro pop queen Emmon
Stereoklang got an interview with Emmon, real name is Emma Nylén, who has been very active in the Swedish and Scandinavian electro synthpop scene since several years back. She has been dubbed the title “Electro pop queen of Sweden”. Now the rumors are hot on the net that there is a new album on its way and Stereoklang caught up with her to ask her if this is true and also took the opportunity to talk about music production, DJ-ing and of course synthesizers, hard and soft. To find out more about her go here >>
There are frequent rumors that a new album is on its way, true or not?
That is true, and if all goes as planned, the third album with Emmon will be released on Wonderland Records in Sweden in the spring of 2011. “I am just now completing the final mixes to disk.” First single “Distance” from the album will be released in March. “In parallel we will head off to Berlin to record a video for single number two, which will be released later this spring.”
Will we recognize the sound from the previous album, or will it be pretty much the same?
“It will still probably sound very much Emmon but with some new influences. From the responses I received from people who have heard the new material, says the sound is a little darker and harder in the production. All songs emanates from what I think is exciting and inspiring. And since I’m most active in my music making during the darkest time of year so I think even that will to some extent color the music.”
Your last album was very much a classic synth pop record with all the right basses and melodies. What do you use in your music production process, the work in the studio and who is involved.
“Trying to describe a creative process is extremely difficult. There is no exact formula for creating music, it usually happens just by itself. For me it’s about finding the focus of a mood or feeling that you want to portray and then try to convey this in a good manner.
Previously I have done everything myself during the entire process, from writing songs, record, produce, mix and fix album art.”
This time Emmon has chosen to involve Jimmy Monell (mixed the album for the indie-op act Paris some time back). “He is extremely skilled and have worked a long time as an experienced musician and producer. We work very well together and we have the same taste when it comes to music and influences. He complements me incredibly well in many areas and is very easy to interpret what kind of feeling it is that I want to convey with my music and manage to enhance it further.”
What are your inspirations and how is your relationship to today´s electronic music scene?
“What inspire me the most are movies and pictures. As long as I can remember I have always related my creativity and music to images. A creation of a song probably works in much the same way as when directing the screenplay for a movie sequence. It’s all about feel and timing. Currently I am also very keen on horror movies, which probably also is reflected in some of my recent works. The dream would be to ever get the opportunity to make music for a really good film.
I listen to and find inspiration from many different genres of music but of course my heart beats a little extra hard for electronic music. I often seek music that is somewhat dark, and experimental and like bands and artists such as Crystal Castles, Salem, Simian Mobile Disco, The XX, Pj Harvey, The Cure and The Parallax Corporation etc
My vision for the new album has been to create a kind of epic horror film script of warped and mysterious music events while I at the same time wanted to come closer to the music, which once made me want to start creating electronic music.”
Interview with Necro Facility
Necro Facility recently finished the recordings for their upcoming third studio album “Wintermute”.In this interview Henrik Bäckström and Oscar Holter talks about the new album that is scheduled to be released the next couple of months.
Necro Facility released the debut album “The Black Paintings” back in 2005. Two years later, in March 2007, they released the follow-up “The Room”. Last year they returned in a collaboration together with Covenant and their single “Lightbringer”.
Nice interview with The Dolphin Brothers
Former Japan members Richard Barbieri and Steven Jansen (David Sylvian’s brother) in an interview relating to their venture with The Dolphin Brothers some years back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MG_fBvFTR4
And here is one of my favorites from the album “Catch the Fall”
Chat with Peter Vogel the Fairlight CMI 30A inventor
Interview: Fairlight CMI 30A unveiled by inventor Peter Vogel
At NAMM 2011
Interview with Carl Craig
Yesterday we posted an interview with the UK act Mirrors and they mentioned Carl Craig as a big inspiration to them. So why not add a small interview with the master himself as well
Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig is interviewed as part of Scion A/V series. Craig talks about his influences and how he got into DJing.
DATAMASKIN
