Steve Hoshild and synthesizer renaissance

In the past five years, electronic music has been experiencing a phase of neoclassicism, returning to the roots. The digital revolution was replaced by a strictly opposite fashion: analog synthesizers (the older, the better), raw, unrefined sound and refusal of computers. The very young musicians suddenly began to record music, inspired by the Spaces Electronics and the synthesizer vanguard of half a century ago, and their no less young listeners enthusiastically pulled out not only a vinyl splashus, but also a cassette player with their parental antireol.

To trace the origins of the synthesizer renaissance, we will have to rewind the film about 15 years ago. Electronics of the nineties, considered revolutionary, still directly inherited the seventies and eighties, but the change of millennia nevertheless brought with her a change in the paradigm. The synthesizers were replaced by the main musical instrument of the new era - a computer in which the program emulators of classic “iron” got along with completely new means of synthesis and sound processing. Now the laptop has replaced a whole studio. The change of technologies gave rise to new avant - garde artists like Marcus Poppa and new pop stars, and the electronics patriarchs like Jean-Michel Zharra and Klaus Shulz hurried to jump into the outgoing train, selling their studios and telling in an interview that they are now exclusively used by computers. Electronics of the seventies became a symbol of bad snocus and was densely associated with the despicable concept of “New Age”, and confessed to love for Tangerine Dream was about the same shameful retrograde as listening to Deep Purple or Nazareth .

We were interested in everyone who brought music from the comfort zone.

But, as you know, any action gives rise to opposition. The answer to the generation of fashionable adolescents who stopped buying guitars and settled for FL Studio and Ableton Live , the movement of the Luddites of the Autsiders, adherents of deliberately archaic technologies. It was customary for their underground to do everything that “upstairs” seemed to be just refused. The Luddites bought old synthesizers for a penny, and avoided computers, recording music on the same cheap cassette portastudios. They preferred the game with the help of a mouse with their hands and generally cultivated everything real as opposed to the virtual - a matrix that sucks a soul from a musician. The synthesizer was not only a musical instrument, but almost a living creature with its own voice and character, where every drawback like hissing or floating sound was actually a dignity. Each synthesizer, they said, sounds unique, while all copies of the plugin sound the same. In addition to this, it was customary to concert the underground workers (electronic workers were more and more truly costed by the DJs-sets or did not appear in public at all) and spread their music in vinyl, and more often-cassettes that came out of circulations of 30-50 pieces.

There were many centers of such counter -culture. In Europe, one of these places was the Hague, and Denny Volfers AKA was the key figure of the Renaissance Legowelt . In the United States, the leaders of the underground were the Emeralds group and a single experimenter with Russian roots Daniel Lopatin AKA Oneohtrix Point Never . These two branches promoted different sounds (the Dutch appreciated Disco and Electro, while in America they preferred improvisational avant-garde, spaces and music for television series like “Miami Police”), but in addition to ideology, love for “despicable” Tangerine also united them Dream . At first, underground worked on the principle of a secret society - the small number of fans was compensated by their fidelity and the desire to attend all the concerts and buy all the cassettes of their idols. But the same sect is bad that it does not dream of becoming a world religion. The Luddites really had something to present to the masses in addition to the actual counter -cultural romance. Guys with pieces of iron, who were not shy about going out into the public and making a show, looked largely more winning more than the bespectacles with laptops who looked on the stage as if they had checked mail.

The trend was first picked up by small record companies that re-released the recordings of the electronics of the 60-80s and produced new albums recorded in the aesthetics of pre-computers and also often disguised as reprints. The circle of followers grew along with the circulations of albums, so that the interest of large labels and the binging agencies was a matter of time. Following the wave was seized by manufacturers of musical equipment. Moog and Korg launched new episodes of analog synthesizers, and in parallel independent companies began to release modular systems (impressive type of bulky and difficult to drive cars with rather rich synthesis capabilities) and individual components for them.

Cassettes are sores that we picked up by the past generation.

Little by the worship of retro-electronics has become almost a main development trend. Modular synthesizers fall into the arsenal not only to Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode , but also to groups where you really do not expect to see them, like Young Fathers or The Drums . Pioneers of the synthesizer sound like the avant-garde player Morton Subbotnik and John Carpenter (film director, who finally caught up with the composer glory at the age of 68-his famous thrillers like the “attack on the 13th section” or “escape from New York” Carpenter voiced himself) playing large festivals, and synthesizers are in full swing. Market players like editions Mego , Ninja Tune or Warp . A record of the same Lopatin called " Garden of delete " appears in all possible top lists over the past year.

Last year’s Chet Hoshilda called “What All is Fled” is also quoted in these lists. The ex-clavyer Emeralds began a solo career and signed a contract with the respectable KRANKY . On February 28, Hoshild will present this program in the Moscow Center Mars, and on the eve of this concert, Steve kindly agreed to talk about the American synthesizer underground, creative evolution and aggressive marketing.

-You started in the mid-2000s with raw synthesizer avant-garde, which was a very unusual course for those times: after all, it was a long time before the analogue renaissance, fashion for modular systems and so on. Did you have any guidelines at that moment, what kind of music did you influence you?

- Here it is worth starting about about millennia, when I began to record the music myself, five years before my work with John and Mark ( John Elliott , Mark McGuire - members of the Emeralds group. - Ed. ). Then I was under the strong influence of Aphex Twin , Autechre and Orbital , and in the end this path led me to Detroit music, to Doppleereffekt and Drexciya . I was a very impressionable teenager, and this music echoed with my then condition. The impetus for recording the avant-garde was the moment when I first heard the album “Land of Lurches” by Kevin Drumm , it was the year in 2003-2004. This record was a turning point, an insight, after which you seem to wake up and understand that a new dimension has opened in music. This was the key to everything that happened later, to all the music, what we recorded with Emeralds . We were deeply introduced into the Noise Scenes, so acquaintance with Aaron Dilloway (Aaron Dilloway) and John Olson from Wolf Eyes was already a matter of time. The music of groups such as Burning Star Core , Black Dice and Growing also had a great influence on us at that time. We absorbed music from a variety of sources, from the electronics of the Berlin school to Free Jazz and Noise. We were interested in everyone who brought music from the comfort zone.

- Tell us about the scene that has formed around labels like Wagon , Deception Island and Taped Sounds . Many that we today consider the most important figures in the modern emboss (from Emeralds to Bee Mask and Oneohtrix Point Never ), we still do not know some holistic history of this movement. Why, for example, cassettes became the main carrier for such music?

- Yes, this is really curious. This whole story with cassettes was a kind of sore that we picked up by the past generation. But in these handmade cassettes, where music and design were a direct expression of the author’s imagination, there was something more than nostalgia. Something very personal, direct contact of the author and listener, which people appreciated very much. All this party was concentrated around the Chondritic Sound and Troniks Internet forums, which are no longer there, and the No Fun Fest festival. I remember how Terston Moore ordered one of the Emeralds cassettes; Then it seemed to me complete madness. When your music is bought by those who you admired while still a teenager, this is a sign that you are going the right way. We were lucky to be at the right time in the right place, because although now the cassette scene in America is still flourishing, it is not at all the same as before. Cassettes and CDR have become for prolific artists like us in a great way to publish music with realistic circulations.

- How do you even explain the phenomenon of the American electronic underground? After all, electronics have never been popular in the States (while in England in the mid-90s, the embossed albums were in the charts), but now we see more and more artists and labels from the United States publishing an embosses, drone, spase-electronics, synthesizer minimalism and so on.

- Although we obviously did not invent the wheel, the Emeralds did a lot in order to bring the synthesizers into the first row of this so -called American underground. But there were people like Hive Mind and Pulse Emitter , who did the same a few years before us. Of course, in America, the emphanty was not accepted as well as in England, and such music came out less, but we also have something to remember - Steve Roach has achieved a certain success, Tangerine Dream was sold well here and toured a lot. So popularity must be measured in relative categories. Now in the USA the heyday of the emboss, synthesizer minimalism and so on, has really come, and I am happy to attach a hand to this.

- Over the years, your music evolves from more abstract, almost drone tracks to compositions with a more clear structure and harmony. It seems that you are moving from improvisation towards the composition in the classical sense of the word. Is that so? What causes these changes?

- Yes, you are absolutely right. Experiments and “happy accidents” are an important thing when you master the equipment, examine its capabilities. But now I refused experimental music, because I know what kind of sound I want to get. Sooner or later, do you come to the moment when you ask yourself: where is the experiment and what is its goal? Now I am more interested in the composition, even if it takes more time. Perhaps the main result of this transformation is that, thank God, I no longer see the word “strob” in my records of my records!

The shocking of Lopatin does not carry any evil or selfish intent.

- You and Emeralds have always been a lot of concerts, which is also not quite typical of electricians. Was a living game part of your philosophy?

- We were a kind of American version of Tangerine Dream , constantly signed up and gave concerts. In the first years, there was no difference for us at all between concert improvisation and a record of music that we were going to publish. We focused on the current moment, on "here and now." But gradually we moved towards the compositions, more loaded by details, studio laying of parties, because it revealed to us new opportunities. In general, our philosophy has constantly changed, but we perfectly remember our roots.

-Daniel Lopatin, another native of that same cassette underground, is now signed on Warp , and publishers are promoting his new record as a pop album. How do you even evaluate his take -off?

“Dan is my good friend, I see him from time to time.” I was at his last concert in Brooklyn, and we talked sweetly after. We have already been familiar, it seems, about ten years. I am very glad that he has achieved such success and is in a situation where a contract with a large label, working with a team of managers and the like does not limit his work in any way. And it does not seem to me that Oneohtrix Point Never is promoted as a pop album, quite the opposite. I do not see that many pop musicians with the teams of PRAR were busy creating fake twitter accounts and confusing websites, which either give fans some hints, then confuse them. Lopatin’s shocking does not carry any evil or selfish intent, he really wants to record advanced music and achieve unprecedented heights with it. I really appreciate his ability to go beyond the traditional understanding of good taste and so on.

- For some of your albums, you yourself made the design. Do you have a visual side, graphics, videoart? Do you use a video in live concerts? You often have to hear that electronic music does not make sense without a video at all; Do you agree with this?

- Yes, I believe that the visual side and graphics are of great importance. In the past few years, I have been using a video at concerts that has made LEIGH SILVERBLATT . But I do not think that a video for electronic music is so necessary. It can complement it well if it is made with taste, but it can interfere with perception. I have been interested in the history of the video art for a long time, and this knowledge helps me understand what will happen and what will not work during a live performance.

- Do you follow modern music, buy records? Can you name the top 3 of your favorite new products at the moment?

- To a certain extent, I follow, but I can’t say that it is deep in the topic. I heard a little albums of this year, but there are pleasant moments on the new Nuel album. The same can be said about the new Roly Porter disk. Well, what has been doing Surgeon and Johann Johannsson (Johannnsson) recently, is also very fascinating me.