One forty-minute phone conversation later and we still don’t know the real name of shadowy electronica producer, Holy Other. We caught him on the way to see Pete Swanson in London recently, which got us talking.
Swanson is a great example of how the whole noise/techno thing has been throwing up a lot of interesting stuff in the last year or two.
Yeah, there’s a lot of room where you can take dance music really or club music or whatever kind of bastardizations of it you want. I really like where all these weirdos are taking it. I like music made by people who have had absolutely no exposure to British club music, just like strange guys in basements in America making really full-on, what sounds like informed German techno out of completely modular gear. It’s done in such a weird and noisy way that it’s just completely fresh, more in a performative way rather than an achingly labourious, point-and-click, copy and paste Pro Tools session.
Have you found it difficult to adapt your laptop-based home setup for live performance?
Yeah, I mean it has been a massive challenge. I’m totally frightened of the stage as well so I had to get over that to begin with, which I still haven’t totally gotten over. It depends on what kind of show it is, you might see some visible shaking but it’s usually controlled! It was a challenge to begin with because I really, really, really didn’t want a computer in the workflow for the live set. I’m moving closer to that now but I’m kind of fresh to this whole situation so I’m just taking steps towards where I want to take it, which is a more fluid live show rather than a rigid, effect-moderating, Mac set. Don’t even have a Mac…
Neither do I, don’t worry about it. Has your approach changed in terms of what you want for the audience and how you’d like them to experience the show?
Yeah, it has. Initially I wanted to take a very pure approach, I guess pure to the actual songs. I think I have actual song structures and definable songs so I wanted to play those songs and for the audience to know and engage with those songs rather than give them something they’d never heard before. As time has moved on I’ve become a little more obsessed with creating a kind of duality of sets. Like one set that I’d like to do is a dance-orientated set but one I could twist and then on the other side would be challenging edits of the material but not dance-orientated. I think like a dual approach to this is what I want in different scenarios because I keep on getting booked in club spaces and having the worst time playing after proper full-on club music. People at 4am don’t necessarily want to hear really slow music after hearing really enjoyable house music!
The Amon Tobin tour you did must’ve been an extreme example. How was that?
It was pretty daunting! I mean, I love the guy, we all got on really well, the crew and everything. It was a brilliant tour but it was stressful at the start and there were points which were not very enjoyable. Certain audiences just didn’t respond in any way and when there’s an audience of that size with such little response, to be one person on stage before a huge AV show, it’s a little bit daunting. Some shows went brilliantly, a couple of shows not so, but it was a brilliant experience.
Your music tends to leave a lot for the listener to fill in themselves which allows journalists a chance to go a wee bit over the top with their descriptive efforts. Have you noticed that?
It does, I have noticed some of that! I find it kind of enjoyable to be told some of these things about my music that didn’t necessarily intend in anyway. But, you know, anyone is open to their own interpretation be that entirely missing the point or completely over-elaborating the point. It’s all part of the game really isn’t it? If people have a personal approach to the music, it’s a good thing I think, so I don’t really want to be the dictating author who tells people what it’s supposed to mean. I mean, it is super personal music to me but I want it to be super personal to other people without it needing to have “this is an album about me and my experiences” as a preamble.
http://youtu.be/Dx6Ot0PXsNY
