Name: Move 78
Members: Doron Segal (synths), Nir Sabag (drums), Hal Strewe (bass), Meravi Goldman (French horn), Aver (sampler/production)
Interviewee: Aver
Nationality: German  
Current release: Move 78's new album Grains is out November 3rd 2023 via Village Live.
Recommendations: Muva of Earth - "Free Soul" (song); Leonora Carrington - The Hearing Trumpet (book)

If you enjoyed this Move 78 interview and would like to keep up to date with the band and their music, visit them on Instagram, Facebook, twitter.  



What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

My first real step in music was when my best friend showed me how to slice up samples in Cubase (production software), aged 17. In particular drum breaks, and how to arrange the separated pieces into new compositions.

This was the beginning of my understanding of the process of beat making, but in my eyes simply doing something creative is separate from becoming an artist. To become an artist I think takes a combination of discipline, experience and experimentation.

There is the famed Picasso quote “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up” which I think holds some truth. By the time most people have passed through an educational institution they are so concerned with deadlines, meeting expectations and potentially making money that they forget the basic joy in being creative.

If someone has managed to free themselves of those pressures and can both create like a child and display the discipline of an adult (gained over the period of maturation) then they begin to produce art that is vibrant and interesting and original in someway. I know many professional musicians who refer to themselves as “artists” whose work is dull, lifeless and profitable. Inversely, I know many hobbyists who never refer to themselves as artists whose work is weird, thought provoking and makes zero cash.

Art is not about a price tag or view count or polished final product, it is about expressing yourself and reflecting the society you live in in a way that only you could do.

Making music, in the beginning, is often playful and about discovery. How do you retain a sense of playfulness as things become more professionalised and how do you still draw surprises from equipment, instruments, approaches and formats you may be very familiar with?

Make mistakes on purpose! Happy accidents is how all the best ideas come to be.

Being open to suggestion and allowing time for experimentation are key. Great things are made because of deadlines, but the people meeting those deadlines in spectacular fashion have likely practiced and played for years before the time pressure is applied.

I think we live in a world now where there is so much choice and so many options of instrument / equipment that people are in fact bored of the things on offer, and in turn don’t utilise those things their full potential. They aren’t really getting to know the equipment or bending its form to their will. I personally use a very limited set-up, as the limitation forces you to be creative and to think of new ways generate sounds.

Hip-hop is one of the greatest examples of this: the originators took what was meant to be a passive piece of audio equipment - the turntable - and turned it into an instrument. This process reshaped modern music in a way. I think these kinds of discovery / reinvention are happening quite frequently yet we are often slow to realise.

Referring back to the first question about being an artist, I think if you have managed to unlearn the restrictions and pressures of being a professional, then playfulness and surprises will sit at the heart of your process.

What would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music?

I guess I am attempting to make sense of the noise of the hyper world which I live in and relay it in a way that others might relate to but cannot articulate. I can’t do this by simply talking or drawing or playing one instrument. For me, the use of collage and the layering of many things allows me to replicate the feeling of sensory overload. It’s not necessarily a negative sensation for me, but one that means many things overlap and pollute/pollinate one another often creating new combinations and forms.

In our sound I have been slowly building up the textures of both improvised music and automated samples to create a digitised groove, but I have also been using non-musical sounds and effects to add a real world feeling.

I want people to be unsure of what is making the sound - both on stage and on record - as this is often something I find intriguing in real life. It creates a sense of mystery and confusion in a time soaked in explainer videos and behind the scenes footage, a time where nothing is private.

I like the idea of welding things together that weren’t originally designed to sit side by side. I live next to a very busy road and the sounds of the tram, ambulances and school children all permeate my brain whilst I am producing music. So I then include these sounds in the mixes as to indicate an emotion I was feeling at the time.



The opening track of our debut album features the ambulance sound (along with other glitches and malfunctions), as it is named after someone I knew who killed themselves. For me the ambulance is a very blatant signifier of pain and the glitches represented the way in which I felt about the news which I found out via a text: detached, distant and out of sync.

How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life?

I take influence from an unaccountable amount of sources, as does the rest of the band, so by working together we create this joint “lived life” in some way.

The music is not just a reflection of one life. Some members of the band are perfectionist, sure-headed and precise, others are laidback, transient and fluid. I sit between all these highly trained musicians not being able to play a single note of written music, whilst knowing how to realise ideas and convert them into things that people can enjoy, think and dance to in a way the others can’t.

It is a shared process. I hate the idea of making music in total isolation and in fact I also dislike the idea of making music with people who aren’t my dear friends. I want there to be in jokes and oddities and bits that don’t sit right, as that is how life is for me. Funny, weird and off-kilter.

A fine example of this would be “Schnitzel Whisperer” from our second album Automated Improvisation.



It is named after Doron (the keyboard player in the band) as he is such a fan of schnitzel that he can tell where a good schnitzel restaurant is the moment he enters a certain area. It’s like a magic trick, I swear! But also, the tune features all these studio outtakes that I loved, where people were chatting in between takes or laughing at how badly a recording had gone, mixed with samples from the film AlphaGo (which is where you can find out the origin of the band name, if you’re interested).



The purpose of which was kinda meant to leave the listener wondering what the hell it was they were listening to, whilst also hopefully enjoying it.