Name: Skander Jaïbi

Nationality: Tunisian-Dutch
Occupation: Composer, producer, sound artist
Current release: Skander Jaïbi is one of the artists contributing to the new V/A - Place: Tunisia compilation curated by Azu Tiwaline and Shinigami San and slated for release on Air Texture March 23rd 2023.
Recommendations: Everything Must Go, a book by James Ladyman on the philosophy of physics/science, and Black Sunday by 404.zero, whether it is the audiovisual installation or the album.

If you enjoyed this interview with Skander Jaïbi and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Instagram or head over to the website of the Uncloud festival, which he co-runs.



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?

Engaging with music has been part of my life for a very long time. Starting with a classical piano training when I was a young child, through playing drums and bass guitar later on. In my teenage years I also messed around with some electronic music production, but this period was fairly brief at first.

Among my very early influences were Pink Floyd, Anouar Brahem and some ‘strange’ noisy ambient records that I do not know the name of anymore. These were my first musical discoveries during my early teens. I started getting interested (again) in electronic around my early twenties. Among my influences, then, are artists such as Jon Hopkins, Biosphere, Autechre, Loscil and many more.

[Read our Loscil interview]

Most importantly: I love sound. Sound as music, but also around me in daily life. I love to listen, to explore, to pay attention, to discover and rediscover details. Making a piece and diving fully into it, sometimes by taking either an experimental performative approach, at other times by approaching it in a more clinical perfectionist way, has been, over and over, among the greatest experiences I have had in life.

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?

It really depends. Sometimes I sink in, sometimes I jump around, sometimes I grieve. I often imagine worlds, whether physical or more conceptual.

I have been delving into the realms of audiovisual art and installations for a few years now. Since then, I have developed a much more crossover approach to sound. I have been ‘seeing’ entities more and more, a tandem between what the eye sees and what the ear hears.

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

My development as artist has not been linear at all. I have been on a path intertwining technical and conceptual explorations. Making sense of the variety within my own identity, my different backgrounds, different influences musically etc.

Most challenge has been finding … time. Biggest breakthrough has been (achieved through) moving away from the computer and working much more with field recordings and hardware instruments.

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.

There is so much that goes it my sense of identity that it is very difficult to put it down in text briefly. I feel that my preferences as a listener, or as an artist, boil down to making sense of all these elements. Not that it feels like an incoherent mix, to the contrary!

Being from mixed ethnical / cultural backgrounds, Tunisian and Dutch, has always had a big influence on me as a person, listener and artist. I am extremely passionate about Tunisian (traditional) music, especially when it comes to (abstract) rhythm structures and tonality. After moving to the Netherlands, I was exposed much more to the more experimental and technical sides of sound and art, which had its impact too.

Working as a lecturer and researcher in a scientific field, after finishing my MSc in the philosophy of physics, has a lot of conceptual and technical influence on my approach to art and sound. And then we have the world we live, capitalism, industrialism, etc etc ... the list is long.

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

In recent years, limitations started playing a big role in my approach to sound and art. After spending several years ‘in the box’, where tools and options are virually unlimited, I started preferring fixed, limited, setups, with a playable element, that allow me to make something in the moment. I even did not press ‘record’ for several years. Somehow this gave me some more freedom to wander, instead of trying to achieve something preconceived.

Nowadays, I believe, I have found a good balance between these elements such that I can play / perform in the moment, but still record / edit afterwards.

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 think I disagree with the question. Everything is embedded in a tradition and can be futuristic too. I guess I am aiming for both. (laughs)

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?

My field recorder, most importantly. And since a few years modular synthesizers. Designing an instrument, for a specific purpose, and then discovering all the other surprising possibilities, is an amazing ongoing journey.

Processing recordings has been always an integral part of any finished piece I made. Of each recording a whole world can be made, by slowing things down, scattering them, transforming them into a drone or into just snippets.

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

Throughout the years, I have become an earlier and earlier bird.

I usually get up around 6:30, have a shower while my coffee is getting ready, and I often work on my festival, Uncloud, during the early morning hours. After this, I go to the University to teach, do research, have meetings and prepare my lectures. I very often have dinner with the amazing people I share an amazing house with in Amsterdam, and then go to my studio to work on music, sound, but often also continue curating / preparing our festival.

To be honest, every day is different, depending on the week, upcoming projects, etc. But this should give a little impression.

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

The album I choose for this is an album by my very dear friend Near Stoic. His album, Notebook (Thoughts & Short Stories), is one of my favourites albums ever.



And not because he is such a dear friend. I love the pace of the album, the atmospheres, the variation in ‘moods’ and pieces, while keeping a very high fidelity in consistency, instruments, elements.

My creative process encompasses these elements or aims at these types of results. Selected instruments, variations, atmospheres, field recordings, conceptually infused and inspired. Very often, my creative process starts either from an idea of strong impulse / influence, and sometimes it is the outcome of a moment of exploration where an ‘ah!’ moment can happen.

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?

I love both. I have collaborated a lot in my life, and will keep doing so. It is amazing to play together, to react to each other, discuss, challenge each other, laugh, and find these sweet spots where everything goes by itself. I also work a lot on my own, because exploration can be different when alone.

The combination is most powerful. Sometimes it feels like creating music by myself is like doing my ‘homework’.

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

Art, very often, is a reaction to the world it is embedded in. Even abstract electronic music works that way. In in of itself, it can be a statement, and many artists have achieved this in the past. One of the most notable examples of the latter, to me, is the work by Raime.

Music and society ... so much to write here. Most importantly, I think that music has an incredible potential to bring people together, to form communities and provide a space for the less represented in the world.

I do not generally appreciate the ‘universal language’ type of discourse, but this definitely could apply to music and there are countless examples of how music (making) has done this since antiquity.

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?

Well ... the piece that I submitted for the Place: Tunisia compilation by Air Texture was written a few days after the sudden death of one of my best friends, in late 2019. I consider it a personal homage to her, and to all those who left us to early, like the title says.

And to be frank, and without any exaggeration: she was one of the most special and inspiring human being I ever knew, and has been of an enormous influence on me as a person and artist, and I am definitely not the one only one. I am very confident that she has left an everlasting impression and influence on anyone that she has met.

This piece is very personal and important to me. It is different from most music and sound that I create. In a way, it just came out like that, in a few hours time.

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

As a philosopher of science, a musician, a science educator, etc, I have also been fascinated by the link between the two. There is a lots of physics and mathematics embedded in sound (art), regardless of how apparent or present this is. Personally, a lot of my conceptual influences comes from the intertwinement of these.

On another note: historically, these two fields were part of the same field. The division between music and science is quite recent if one takes into account the long cultural history of humanity. They have always been in tandem in research, communication about science and technological developments. It should stay this way.

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?

To me, writing or performing is not different from, say, cooking. Cook a meal, with given ingredients, pace the cooking process properly, use the right spices: compose a meal.

As written earlier, sound does not limit itself to music or what ends up being a performance. Similarly, the processes involved in creating sound and music are infused throughout my life. It's about the bigger picture, also when it comes to this.

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 believe this has, at first, little to do with the physics, in and of themselves, of sound, but much more with how our perception and association works. I believe it is a great mixture of cultural and sensorial evolution.

Eventually, one could establish links between what we consider ‘harsh’ sounds and a more chaotic / less consistent soundwave. It is fascinating, to say the least.