Name: René van Munster
Occupation: Cellist, composer, producer
Nationality: Dutch  
Current release: René van Munster's Forget EP, mastered by Murat Çolak and mixed by kraak & smaak's Oscar de Jong, is out via Geryon.
Recommendations: I would like to recommend one book and one sculpture that were huge inspirations for my EP.

Carlo Rovelli - The Order of Time
In this book, Rovelli deconstructs our initial ideas about what time is and then builds it up again in such a creative and imaginative way, based on his fascinating research into quantum gravity. It is a work of pure poetry.

Alberto Giacometti  - L’Homme qui marche (1960)
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
This sculpture got my mind racing in different directions. It has incredible movement to it, vivid texture, and it tells me a captivating story in all its abstraction.

[Read our Murat Çolak interview]
[Read our Oscar de Jong interview]

If you enjoyed this René van Munster interview and would like to keep up to date with his work and music, visit him on Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

I have been doing most of my listening on headphones since I got my first pair in elementary school. I enjoy the intimate connection it builds with the music you’re listening to.

When the music hits right, and I think that’s very much a context thing, I get chills, goosebumps, the urge to dance, to smile. I really enjoy listening to music with my eyes open as it can sometimes recontextualize what I’m seeing.

For example, a landscape viewed from the train might turn into a visual representation of the music.

Entering new worlds and escapism through music have always exerted a very strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

I go back and forth with this almost every day. I love innovative music, artists trying to push the boundaries of genre and tradition through their original vision. On the other hand, some music might not do that at all and still make me experience all sorts of meaningful feelings.

I guess in the end I’m drawn to music that is evocative - conjuring up a new sound world or establishing an existing sound world in such a way that it makes you feel the feels.

For my own creative process, I always aim to keep things in balance. If it becomes too emotional, I want to make things more interesting for myself by pushing it into unfamiliar territory, if things become too technical I try to bring it back to where the music can hopefully hit you in the amygdala.

What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience?

I grew up in a musical family where both my parents where flutists and my brother a jazz guitarist. I started out on the violin when I was four and switched to cello when I was nine because I fell in love with the low C string.

I was encouraged, for better or for worse, to practice everyday. I think this provided me with a strong musical basis but it also taught me that music is not something fun and relaxing all the time - most of the time it is hard and deep work, but with a huge payoff if done well.

This is something that’s so hard to wrap your head around as a kid! You can’t really think about the long term when you’re that young. So I remember my parents rewarding me for practicing with TV and snacks for example.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

I was listening to a lot of music on my headphones, going to school and during class.

I wasn’t interested in cello and classical music that much. I kept at it, but at the same time I developed a love for jazz and fusion through my brother, who was just starting out on jazz guitar at the time. He also introduced me to hip-hop, metal and drum and bass. I was consuming a lot of different genres of music.

I flirted with the bass guitar for a bit and also played tenor saxophone for a while. During this period I discovered that the first thing in music that I look out for is interesting harmony, with groovy rhythm being a close second. Later on, texture became much more of a focus for me.

I don’t think a lot has changed, I still listen to lots of different kinds of music. But the love for cello returned as I grew up. I discovered, with the help of my teacher in conservatoire, that the cello could be a basis for all the different musical activities I wanted to do.

How would you describe your own relationship with your instrument, tools or equipment?

The cello has become my musical identity, my voice through which I want to tell stories.

For my productions, I want that voice to live in a forest of electronics - a sound based entirely on my own cello samples. I have had this idea in my head back when I started producing music around age 17. I only started really exploring the possibilities of electronically sequenced cello much later, and it took me about four years to find the right sound. I probably still haven’t found it. I have a very specific vision for it.

With sampling, you can make anything from anything. So I want to stay close to the cello sound, while at the same time making it sound larger than life, like a gigantic cello floating through outer space.

That being said, I’ve had a complicated, love-hate relationship with the cello growing up and during my conservatoire studies. I think I am looking to transform this relationship by incorporating the cello into my electronic music.

Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I get inspired by lots of different art forms. For my EP, I was really inspired by visual arts, especially sculpture. I get really excited trying to analyze a piece of art and finding the musicality in it. A sculpture might have a “rhythm” or a texture that I like to translate into a piece of music. But that goes for a lot of art forms - painting, literature, even culinary arts.

A couple of years back I was really into wine tasting, probably the most bourgeois thing I ever did. I was likening the different characteristics that a wine can have like aroma, body and finish to certain sounds. You take a sip from a great wine and it might unfold like a short composition. I get obsessed with things like that and I get a lot of enjoyment out of exploring those concepts.

Are you acting out parts of your personality in your music which you couldn't or wouldn't in your daily life? If so, which are these? What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I have been putting a lot of my personal feelings into my music lately. Most of the material on my EP was made around a recent experience of loss and the grief surrounding it. It’s not that I didn’t get to express these feelings in daily life. Rather I get to express them differently in my music.

I’m definitely interested in the emotionality of music. I think a big part of electronic music today and the marketing around it is this attitude of being too cool for school - not showing your feelings too much, hiding behind a facade of not taking things too seriously. I have to admit I indulge in that attitude at times as well, but if possible I would love to have a more sincere approach.

If my music can be a catalyst for the head and heart to change direction, even for a short amount of time, why would I want to hide that fact under a veil of nonchalance? I’d like to change that.

If music is a language, what can we communicate with it? How do you deal with misunderstandings?

I think music is a language but not a universal one. It might be more of a collection of languages, each interpreting the world in a slightly different way just as spoken languages do. Every language takes time and effort to learn and understand, some more than others.

All these languages are unique expressions. Even though you might not like some types of music, I feel that they all have the right to co-exist. It’s up to us to create space for that.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness and how do you still draw surprises from tools, approaches and musical forms you may be very familiar with?  

The process of creating music became for me a way to break away from everything I was taught and find my own voice. In my western classical music upbringing and education there was always a lot of emphasis on the best possible execution of whatever you are doing, and having fun or playing around was not so present in that equation.

That’s not to say I never had fun playing music, otherwise I would have given up a long time ago. But a lot of it is grinding until you get it right.

Using the cello, that I know so well, but exploring unfamiliar sonic territory, or having a sequencer play cello samples in a way that couldn’t be played in real life, opens a world of possibilities. Deconstructing everything that the cello is supposed to be and how it is supposed to be played gives me freedom to play around and express myself.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

I don’t think I ever had very profound experiences in this way.

For me it’s more in smaller things - I love it when environmental sounds blend with the music that I’m listening to for example. They don’t have to be nature sounds. The sound of a train leaving the station, church bells, or an electric car - it might add an extra layer to a piece of music on my headphones while taking a walk or traveling somewhere. It’s almost like augmented reality but with sound.

Those sounds can become musical in the context of the music I’m listening to. It inspires me to look for similar effects in my own productions.

There seems to be an increasing trend to capture music in algorithms, and data. But already at the time of Plato, arithmetic, geometry, and music were considered closely connected. How do you see that connection yourself? What aspects of music do you feel can be captured through numbers, and which can not?

I like to think I have an analytical mind but hard sciences were never my strong suit. I read a couple of books by the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli on quantum physics, in which he describes quantum phenomena in such a way that it becomes poetic, even musical. I have to admit I understand maybe 10% of the actual science.

But I love the feeling when science crosses over into philosophy and art. Different disciplines working together to form a description of life. There is beauty in how the world works and maybe both music and science are trying to capture this in their own way.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life? Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?

I think a good piece of music reflects a good society in a way. It’s all about finding a delicate balance between giving and taking, abstract and familiar, tradition and innovation. Different elements have to co-exist somehow.

There are endless ways of going at this but the common denominator seems to be interconnectedness. We cannot live in a good way when we are disconnected from the world around us, just as music cannot be seen out of its context. Connections provide meaning to something.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

I love to surround myself with music all day. It provides a backdrop to my inner voice. But I’m not a fan of loud spaces like big cities. I lived in Tokyo for two years, where in a lot of places you are just pummelled by noise from traffic, people, ads. I can’t handle that so well anymore.

I think it’s very intrusive in a way, for your hearing and your personal space. Imagine if we had the right to silence. For the time being, I have my earplugs and noise-cancelling headphones.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

It’s all about quality in a way. Making coffee might be a mundane task to some, while there are also people (like me) who make a big fuss about it and try to achieve the highest quality.

If I wanted to and had the time, energy and means to do it, I think I could try to achieve the highest quality in everything that I did. It would probably be extremely tiring. And what that would express is an entirely different question. But in the technical sense I don’t think there is a big difference between the “mundane” and the “artistic”. Nothing happens by itself.

Maybe there is quality to be achieved in everything, but the meaning and expression is decided when that thing is released into the world, into a context.

If you could make a wish for the future – what are developments in music you would like to see and hear?

I love it when different worlds meet. When different musical traditions cross-pollinate. I am seeing crossovers from hip-hop or drum & bass into jazz, electronic music into contemporary classical, all feeding into each other. I would love for these boundaries to break open even more, for new, original music to flourish and be curated in a meaningful way to the curious audiences out there.

We need to create and maintain the right platforms for that to happen. It could somehow co-exist alongside the bigger music industry. My wish would be for that interplay between artists, audience and platforms to thrive in the future.