Part 2
Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.
I wake up around 5:30am, then have my delicious mushroom based / cacao coffee substitute drink (*after decades of excessively drinking coffee I finally hit bottom with it, and I feel 1000% better now that I quit). I then go to the gym and do a 40 minute cardio workout, come home, make my amazing superfood vegan smoothie (being 100% vegan is the greatest, on *every* level btw), and shower.
Then I take the train 20 mins to my studio to work on music for others (commercial work / session work / production work, etc) and / or work on my own music...from around 9am to 6pm, every day (with a 30 min lunch break in there, of course!).
Then, take the train back home, have some kind of modest homemade dinner with my lady and wind down / watch a movie / show, and then go to bed around 9:30pm (*as a formerly insane partying person who used to stay up all night regularly, I think it's hilarious that now I am genuinely excited to go to bed at 9pm-ish = middle age rules!!! haha)
Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?
As I mentioned before in almost all cases I don't start off with any plan or vision for a song or piece; it's all "seat of the pants", intuitively following some kind of initial vibe / feeling, either starting with the drums or the guitar and then just building on those elements / starting a sort of "sculptural" process of augmentation and elimination.
Something particularly dear (and powerful) to me was the creation of the song “This Time My Broken Heart Stays Open” on the 2020 NETH album ZOMBIE TECHNO.
Somehow with that song all the elements fell into place intuitively easily, in such a way that I was actually blown away by what seemed to be manifesting; it's one of the (very) few instances where I feel like the work immediately was its own reward … like where I almost didn't care if anybody else ever heard it! It was totally validating to me as an artist and a musician that I semi-easily manifested something, in that much specific emotional and technical detail … at all!
It's one of my favorite things I've ever done and still surprises me that it actually all came through me, as it was totally mysterious. It's my beloved "scream of environmental anguish, super synth-doom power ballad"!! haha ...
Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?
To be completely honest, recently I've realized that I've been gradually evolving in a mode, over the last 15 years, where I primarily create / write / produce music by myself first, and then only bring it to other people later. Meaning, it's actually been many years since I had a regular practice of genuine / "from the beginning" collaboration with other musicians!
Truthfully I'm starting to miss that a little bit, so over the next couple of years I'm going to humbly endeavor to try to start branching back out into the realm of regular "musical group social reality". However I nonetheless still genuinely enjoy the solo / solitary process of creating music, as I have a reasonably (very) elaborate and specific vision of what I like to do, and since I am a multi-instrumentalist, often times it's just easier / way quicker for me just to fully develop / manifest / record everything by myself!
But I don't especially prefer "private" to "collaborative" necessarily / they both have their place and genuine value for me.
How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?
For me, this is a deep / complicated question. The terrifying atomization of the individual in modern society, IE essentially the full-blown commodification of the self, as well as the all the mass-technological means (and control) of the transmission of music, IMO has radically diminished the impact of music as a force for social change, relative to, let's say 40 or 50 years ago. I nonetheless still operate as if it's extremely important for artists to speak their truth, to speak truth to power, and generally fearlessly bear witness to whatever is going on in their lives, communities and cities …
But if I'm being completely honest, sometimes I doubt the IRL efficacy of art and music these days to have any truly subversive political impact, when everything (and everyone!) has become so hyper-commodified. However on a basic philosophical and social level, I still believe it's extremely important for people to express their creativity regardless, to express their truest philosophical and political selves … in any creative medium.
Music obviously has many roles in the modern world; to entertain, enchant, and educate, but also to anesthetize, distract and delude / manipulate. At best I just hope that people enjoy my work, and that it provides them with emotional and aesthetic pleasure, occasionally be intellectually provocative, but ultimately just provide them with temporary pleasure, relief, solace (but NOT hope, relatively, which IMO, in the context of our collapsing civilization can easily end up morphing into delusion / fantasy, and which therefore can be extremely dangerous in certain ways!)
Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?
IMO great art just tunes people into the beauty, grandeur, fragility, and mystery / incomprehensibility of life, of consciousness and of Earthly existence.
As I said earlier, I believe music is spectacular, and by far THE best thing that human beings have ever manifested. Great music brings one back into their body, back into the present, to the full breadth of their emotions, back into communion … back into the bittersweet, heartbreaking, beautiful, painful, miraculous reality of being alive.
I think music, at best, just reminds us of what's important, which IMO is to cherish one's life and to live and love as deeply as possible.
How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?
For me personally, I'm not particularly interested in all the connections between music and science (although obviously they exist in many profound and fascinating ways, etc.).
Truthfully, my entire focus / emphasis has always been more on the side of music as a visceral, emotionally enchanting experience, so I've never really been that concerned with how it all works scientifically / trying to integrate music and science for any reason (*if anything, I'm always trying to get further away from cognition!! haha)
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. 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?
Philosophically speaking I don't see any kind of categorical / significant difference between the creative act of making and performing music, and of doing anything else creative(ly); the basic psychological processes and artistic principles are all the same, and IMO ought to be valued and regarded with as much seriousness / legitimacy generally only ascribed to the "fine" arts / film / music / dance.
However the visceral impact of music (as I have now said a few times) IMO functions with a greater magnitude of impact, almost more than anything other art form (*with the lone, huge exception of film and music together!)
As a medium for expressing human emotion, imagination, narrative, creativity, humor, sadness, anger, joy, playfulness...IMO music is basically still without peer.
Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?
No!!! (I mean, I have ideas about this of course, but I generally don't want to kill the mystery, again, by trying to "get my head around it"!! (*which much more often than not, is not only wildly overly simplistic, likely technically wrong … but actually ruins everything!! haha)
