Name: Evgeny Gorbunov aka Inturist
Nationality: Russian
Occupation: Producer, composer, sound and media artist
Current release: Inturist's Off-Season is out via Incompetence.
Recommendations: Please listen to the band Jueno Muzak; And also to Robert Ashley's El/Aficionado

[Read our Robert Ashley interview]

If you enjoyed this Inturist interview and would like to keep up to date with his music, visit him on Instagram.



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?

It depends on what I'm doing. Modern anxiety doesn't leave you time to just listen to something, you are always expected to be in action in order not to lose time and profit. For example I'm writing this text and digitizing my jam from the cassette.

But! Although I always perceive sound as a physical sensation, I see music itself similar to very abstract literature with plot and monologues / dialogues.

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?

The perception of music is such a complex thing. So you cannot completely escape from reality. Everyday life permeates any form of escapism, and makes it just as embedded in the discourse as for example a political statement.

We are connected to reality like a wire to a socket. So there will be a social and political discourse running through even in the most abstract work.

I am convinced that art does not have to be a tool of agitation and propaganda or a statement. For me making music is distancing and expanding focus, and sometimes a way to create a completely distorted picture of the world, complemented by even greater absurdity.

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

When I was 5 I imagined that I'm conducting a huge orchestra. I turned on some classical music and waved with my hands to imagine groups of instruments, because I saw a lot of this kind of stuff on TV in the late 80s and somehow remembered what instruments were placed where.

From then on I learned music only through experience, I'm not really a theory guy.

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?

When you have a fresh perception, of course the music just knocks you off your feet, creates and destroys worlds in your head. The only problem here is that anything can affect you, especially if it is somehow combined with the sensations of puberty. And it can be really stupid stuff.

Lots of people forget to change and develop their musical preferences as they get older, but I believe that growing up as a listener is just as important as growing up as a human being.

Music has meant everything for me since age 12-13 but I carry with me through my life a very few items from that period - some prog rock and weird Russian new wave.

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

My main tool is my mind, I try not to depend on equipment. I have my favorite Telecaster but I don't need to have it on tour.

Sometimes I ask organizers to lend me a guitar (because in general all the guitars are the same). Sometimes I just play without guitar to feel free from the "guitarist" label.

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?

Honestly I don't know. I don't need any impulse because I'm feeling really bad when I don't make music or don't play some improv gigs for a couple of weeks. It's like a form of alcoholism.

I think everything affects me and music absorbs all the information from outside. Music making is literally a chemical process, it always depends on how the brain works in different situations. It reacts to temperature, smells, news, people around etc.

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?

My music is my personality but in some grotesque way, in my music I'm a cartoon or movie character, but it's still me, my essence.

And otherwise when I go to the grocery store or stand in the line to get or apply some documents or when I sit in the tram, this everyday routine also feels like music, some deep ambient stuff. The key idea is that everything in our life is improvisation, even when you write notes on a paper and plan some parts …

And mind you, some composition is improvisation, too, because you're still not programmed and make something from scratch.

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

I don't mind misunderstandings because they're the foundation for society. When people pretend they fully understand each other they make the most boring things and turn their lives into an unbearable routine that produces only frustration and aggression.

We should stop lying to ourselves and admit that we don't understand each other even if we use the same language. What about music — it's a real challenge to confuse as many listeners as you can.

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 word Play reveals all its meanings in music, and none of them should be forgotten. Music is alive and abstract. It's almost a force of nature and when you think that you've found and understood everything, think again.

But when you passively discover the possibilities of your equipment, turning knobs randomly there is a danger that your device will start to play you. To not to dissolve in your equipment you should also start some research, turn on your consciousness, find non-musical inspiration, non-genre ideas and try to get rid of some sounds your music doesn't really need.

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”?

Everything is music if you decide so.

I really love one record of melting iceberg, it's 100 times more interesting than lots of electronic albums.

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 see a lot of content about generative music and the symbiosis between artists and AI. But for me, it still doesn't work, because it's much faster or easier for me to generate any music from scratch using my hands and a MIDI keyboard for example. I don't need an algorithm that can't think musically.

Music contains a lot of non-calculated values and it will take years or even decades to teach AI to feel music. Maybe there should be some research in collaboration with neuroscientists.

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 guess not. I hope not! Hahaha

Music chooses what to reflect, you can't program this process.

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 spent the last 8 month in Tel Aviv and there's no silence at all. Now I'm in a quiet area of Berlin and it's a great pleasure to hear nothing haha.

But I love everyday sounds, it's like tape noise, you can't skip it, you should always be prepared for a sound invasion in your life. Sometimes it's really unpleasant when you hear music outside your apartment, it's like a smell, you can do nothing but close your nose or just live with it.

I always say YES to silence and to spontaneous life sounds and NO to music I didn't plan to listen to.

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?

Hm ... You can't distort or totally change reality or create a new one with a cup of coffee. Or it could be a damn unbelievable and incredible cup of coffee you can't even imagine.

In my world music is not for cheering people up or making them sad or something so simple. It gives you an experience you can not describe exactly. You don't understand what you feel, sometimes you even can't understand yourself, sometimes you only can understand that you don't know who you are.

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

I really want melodies back. Guys, if you really want to make catchy pop music, and I know lots of you do, forget about technologies, AI and trends, and top 40, and genres etc., close yourself in a room with some instrument and write a good melody, long and beautiful and changing and ornate, and audiences will be so grateful.

I understand that the sonoric part is the most important now and I play with these rules myself. But it's not the only way. We should combine sonoric music with "music" music - the one you can write down as a score on a sheet of paper.

Maybe it's a step back in terms of technical progress. But it's 10 steps forward for new, much more important and great ideas.