Name: Formika
Members: Rhys Edwards, Robert Tebby
Interviewee: Rhys Edwards
Nationality: British
Current release: Formika's They All Said No, Or No Reply is out via Maternal Voice.
Recommendations:
Koyaanisqatsi (for the marriage of picture and music)
Aphex Twin / Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (I can only dream of what this sounded like in 92. It certainly sounds like from another world - but for something so formed, also so childlike.)

If you enjoyed this Formika interview and would like to know more about the duo and their music, visit their Instagram as well as the website of Rhys Edwards's other band Ulrika Spacek and Robert Tebby's Instagram account.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I was about 13 years old, around the time of discovering Radiohead, Björk, Mew etc with friends, and just remember a door kinda opening in my head around that time.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

Depending in what state you are in, listening to music can be a very physical experience. Like riding a rollercoaster, build and release, some musical moments can literally make your stomach drop and the fact that it can easily give you chills and make the hairs stand on end proves it to be a powerful artform.

You can only hope that the music you make can have the same effect on others as the music made by others can do to you

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I guess after many years of listening to lots of different types of music, genre kinda becomes redundant and you develop your own taste in what you think is good and what isn’t. This in itself is the foundation step to finding your own musical voice. This can take many years, with a lot of failed attempts to get across what you are trying to say.

Luckily it feels that this becomes easier with time, and you always have the option to retry ideas that maybe didn’t work out previously. Those little breakthroughs in self expression are really the feeling that keeps you going as a musician.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

Haha I think thats hard for anyone to define. I think a lot of your earlier years are a period of imitation. The results are usually not necessarily the most original but I think it is wrong to call it disingenuine - perhaps more formative.

The time that your ’older’ attempts start not sounding too bad is probably the moment where you realise you have grown into yourself as a musician or as a person.

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

Self reflection and isolation.

In the face of it I'm not a particularly introverted person but making stuff is where I really find a way to ‘be’ with myself. For good and for bad.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I'm not sure these are juxtaposed, but definitely think I am someone who looks back to put it together in a forward facing direction. Kinda in the same form as collage art.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

I guess for a long time that was the guitar. But then, as soon as me and friends started recording our own music, the computer kind of became the instrument that shadows over all the others. I could never just work with a computer though it has to be tool to make acoustic and analogue instruments more designed.

With Formika, it’s synths and drumachines, whilst in other projects it’s piano and real drums for me at the moment.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Most days I edit podcasts for a living. So sat behind a laptop working with logic, I'm glad that the distance to opening up my musical work is not far away so can dip in and out when needed.

Days when I go to the studio just to do music can freak me out anyway. I feel like creativity just needs to be captured when it comes rather than forced.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

It was really fun working on the Formika album as it was the first fully electronic album I’ve worked on.

Me and Tebby would send stems back and forth via telegram and it just felt really unforced. There was a kind of childish naviety to the record that is very dark in tone.

I think that carefreeness of a debut project is something to be cherished and is unfortunately often hard to find again.

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?

Truely love both. And when you are doing too much of one, it's time to go back to the other.

Music is always a conversation in itself anyway.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

Not for me to say really. But if it related to the world more it would probably have more listeners haha.

But it's both a confrontation of myself and an escape to me. I hope it can be for others as well.

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?

Not to be too pseudo spiritual but there is definitely something more going on with it that’s hard to articulate. So often what you are talking about in your music is something foreboding rather than a reaction to stuff that happens.

It’s almost like your subconscious is further ahead than you and it's processing stuff that is about to happen that your direct consciousness hasn’t figured out yet.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

Haha, hmmm. I Would love to know more about this. But maybe on the other hand it may remove some of the magic that it has over me

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?

There’s definitely something mundane about making albums. There’s a lot of chores to do to get it the way you want.

Managing cpu and storage is actually something I spend far too much time working on. That’s meaningful in itself as you are taking care of something important to you.

But those moments when a lot happens whilst creating is truely the highest form.

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?

I guess it’s this link with the physical sensations.

All artforms can move me but nothing like music.