logo

Part 2

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please. Do you have a fixed schedule? How do music and other aspects of your life feed back into each other - do you separate them or instead try to make them blend seamlessly?

Some of us are parents, some are travelling vagabonds. Our routines are those of audio-visualists, theatre and stage designers, instrument traders, curators and psychedelic entrepreneurs. Seriously, one of us is working on decentralized bioproduction of natural entheogens. “Music” is something we are constantly doing and processing - it's also where and how we function socially, in the jazz of life, so the feedback is fairly hermetic. Shared experiences are dynamic since our rhythm changes from the very high energy exchanges occurring when we are gathered to play live, to sometimes longer periods focused rather on editing and all the online “peripheral” work that we usually do ourselves, spookily collaborating at a distance.

Can you talk about a breakthrough work, event or performance in your career? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

In 2019, we got a chance to temporarily commandeer an enormous space at Studio CityGate in Anderlecht, Brussels. As the largest urban cultural hub in Belgium, they provided a 2500m2 pitch-dark warehouse with astonishing reverberation. This enormous chamber was converted into an “echo temple” in which we conducted a daily ritual of sound studies, culminating with a weekend of very long live performances and 14 days of recorded material (albums forthcoming, indeed!).

The same basic concept of the resonance we can experience in “holy” spaces has survived since Paleolithic caves, ancient pyramids and hypogeums, through churches and chapels of all kinds. In our supposedly desacralized world, abandoned industrial spaces are a head-dive into this primitive dimension of reverberation. Listening deeply and becoming intentionally absorbed in the sound resonating within a powerful space presents a gateway for naturalistic mystical exploration, where one feels the amplification of a non-definitive divine “IT”.

So it was in that vast darkness (pun intended) that we really felt “it” - what we now try to recreate every time we play. It’s something everyone feels, whether playing or listening. To co-vibrate mentally, tonally, rhythmically, emotionally - this interdependent feedback is like water, in which many drops are acting as an entity presenting a much broader movement. Surfing together for days on the sound-waves of a hyper-sensitive warehouse cavern was definitely a landmark experience for all the participants. It’s become a source of nostalgia, where we learned a deeper kind of orchestration. Or rather, where that something revealed itself upon us.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? What supports this ideal state of mind and what are distractions? Are there strategies to enter into this state more easily?

Distractions are many, and some possible “short-cut” strategies may also be more like distractions sometimes. Not that they’re off the table. But really the intuitive force of new places and situations has proven itself the most in our case. So if we’re running late from the tour-van to a concert; setting up differently due to broken stuff or a swap of players; or finding ourselves in a series of week-long stays making music in alpine-farms in the south of France, as we did this summer. We still gather our group from various cities and countries, and we’ve found it best for our inspiration that we rendezvous in states and environments that for none of us were yet home -- so that we can explore, absorb and find ourselves within them together.

Music and sounds can heal, but they can also hurt. Do you personally have experiences with either or both of these? Where do you personally see the biggest need and potential for music as a tool for healing?

Faani: When something wrong happens in our life - when things are happening in a way which is harming us, like loss or physical or psychological pain and trauma - we may feel broken and alone, with nobody there to heal us. That is the right time to think deeply and ask one thing: “Am I really alone?” If we think consciously about it, we will find out that we ourselves are the only person whom we have by our side. So the answer is: “I am not alone and I can heal myself.” We need only to be aware of our abilities as human beings. Once we realize this, we have access to a universal medicine which is capable of healing. That was also my case after years of chronic physical pain. Now I’ve learned how to hear the messages of my body and my soul, to heal myself and other beings.

Our music is an occurrence, something which is collectively happening. It is a living organism and it breathes with us when we play it. To make it happen, we have to merge together as musicians - we should be on the same wavelength, together in the same moment. Thus we end up together in the “here and now”, beyond the problems and pains of our outer worlds. And to be on this wave is in itself very healing. For me, every concert is a journey to my inner world. And when the audience watches us closely and listens deeply, they certainly will be on the same “ship” with us. Many have reported a shamanic tunnel - which I’ve similarly felt myself. I am sure we can extend this bridge to the crowd. Finally, everything is energy and once we vibrate our environment will vibrate on the same frequency with us.

There is a fine line between cultural exchange and appropriation. What are your thoughts on the limits of copying, using cultural signs and symbols and the cultural/social/gender specificity of art?

The “outernational” approach is about transcending borders and blending original sources of meaning and psycho-spiritual power. We are definitely trying to fuse influences. It comes naturally from nearly always playing with new musicians. The sages said every person is an entire world, and discourse is how we save one person at a time. We think of truly Fusion music, hoping maybe to revive that concept. Looking at pioneers such as Don Cherry or Jon Hassell with his Fourth-World practice, which speaks of a perennial “unified primitive/futuristic” wisdom - we rather think of syncretism than appropriation.

Our designer-artist duo Axis Mundi - Ventral is Golden and Dima Rabik - draw inspiration from very rich symbolic universes, interweaving them into collaged tapestries which really feel alive. It's very much akin to what we aspire to achieve in our musical exchanges. With Carpet Album, we envisioned the intimate coming together - where you invite a guest, however strange, to take off their shoes and trip out to the same kind of esoteric tea.


Our sense of hearing shares intriguing connections to other senses. From your experience, what are some of the most inspiring overlaps between different senses - and what do they tell us about the way our senses work?

Sometimes, we get all tingly and synesthesia is experienced consciously. But it’s there all the time, subtly filling the shared space. We have jammed with visuals such as live-drawing and microscopic projections. That really adds a whole layer of experience that we’d love to evolve in our next residencies, exploring interactive A/V elements and all sorts of crazy stuff. We whimsically tend to mythologize our artists as they drink tea, meditate and alchemically transform our recordings into cover designs. When you’re really feeling it, the senses will surely be dancing together - just like the beings to which the senses are attached.

Art can be a purpose in its own right, but it can also directly feed back into everyday life, take on a social and political role and lead to more engagement. Can you describe your approach to art and being an artist?

While our music could be considered eccentric, esoteric or demanding to some ears, we love to think of it as rooted and drawing from far underneath the “Ivory Tower”. We’ve been enjoying various opportunities to present and share with people that aren’t as exposed to these things - visiting country sides, rural villages and unchartered public places. Far up in the Alpes-Maritimes, we played with a 9-year old child on echoey vocoder and with a woman in her 4th quarter of a century on Stylophone.

With live music making, you really gotta let loose and it might get chaotic at times. All of our “search-and-rescue missions” within the soundscapes we’re likely to get lost in are really visible to the audience. So when we do manage to sync and catch the wave, that’s very felt as well -- and it truly feedbacks on stage. There is a sense of communality and commitment to a higher source of inspiration, the sound yet to be played. Sure, the message is in the medium. In this case, it's in the emergent transformation from nearly cacophonic anarchy - to only-human harmony.

What can music express about life and death which other forms of art may not?

Let’s not get into what other forms cannot. But indeed, music is alive. It is most sensually and metaphysically alive: in the collectively embodied sense that you can’t separate movement, perception, creation, expression. And in the atemporality that it creates because it cannot be frozen or fragmented. The causality or meaning of music is itself best expressed in this way. It effectively melts time. We can sustain a continuous experience of music for hours - if we’re focused or high or devoted - constantly anticipating, being surprised, responding and emoting with every nuance. Maybe that’s how it gives us this brief transcendent taste of what’s outside the incarnating cycle.


Previous page:
Part 1  
2 / 2
previous