Name: Fluffy Maybes 松软许诺
Members: Jingyun Li, Robin Fisher
Occupation: Improvisers, composers, songwriters, instrumentalists
Current release: The new Fluffy Maybes 松软许诺 EP Rawland is out now.

If you enjoyed this interview with Fluffy Maybes 松软许诺 and would like to know more about their music, visit them on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.



When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?  

Jingyun: My favorite guitarist is Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column, all his guitar work is based on his unique finger picking style improvisation. I found his music when I was 18 and I immediately started improvising on keyboard and guitar.



Robin: For me it happened a bit later because I wasn’t interested in improvised music until I moved to Berlin in 2016. Then I was surrounded by it and now it’s all I think about. I guess I was more of a songwriter before but I got addicted to the flow.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

Jingyun: We are big fans of Torn Hawk, especially his track “Born to Win”. He used looper, Electribe ESX1 and beautiful improvising guitar work to weave dreamy lush sound in this track.



Recently both of us are digging the album called Salvage Imagination by Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa, as well as Open Zone by the duo Goo Age.



[Read our Dustin Wong interview]

Both bands feature highly creative way of using samples, improvisational approach of creating and the energy and playfulness in their music.

Robin: Yes and for me I would also say Sun Araw had a big influence on my style and I think all their stuff is kinda improvised.

Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?
 
Jingyun: I think both me and Robin went through a phase where we were in our old bands and it didn't work out - it's really hard to find someone with an equal role, music taste and creativity.

In 2021 I almost gave up music, until I saw a clip of Robin’s solo project Scar Polish. I was totally blown away by how much you can do (live!) multitasking on sampler, synth, guitar and a table of crazy machines. Through texting, Robin shared with me his workflow about creating music through loop based improvisation.

Compared to the traditional linear way of songwriting (endless layering that is hard to re-create in the live performance), this approach forces you to switch among different roles in a band, which makes solo live performance possible without losing the energy of the track.

It made so much sense to me that I started to do my Improv ‘Jamuary’ in the middle of July.

Robin: Yes, I can relate so much. I had a previous project where I was doing everything in the studio layer by layer and achieving great results. But I could never reproduce it live and ended up getting disillusioned. The live was always the last thing I was thinking about.

Now it’s the opposite, I work with the performance first and in an improvised kind of way I put together the music. Then finally after some gigs I make the studio version. So my process totally flipped.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

Robin: I don’t think of it so much in a historical context, but I think it has a spiritual context. You are always following this feeling and these moments, and they arise and pass. Because we work with loop based music, I try to give myself lots of options to bring sounds in and out and manipulate stuff.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

Jingyun: For me the challenge is that you really need to feel comfortable to jump back and forth between different instruments.

Six months before we met, we’d already done loads of improvisation on the app endlesss. It is a cloud based sampler+looper+mixer that enables you to make music collaboratively as easy as making a call. When we met in person in January 2022, we were finally able to use the gear and the sounds that we are keen on. We tried to enter a theme (for example floating in clouds, busy insects working) before each jam. Finally our 6 hours of recording in 12 days formed the basis of our EP Rawland.

Our next challenge will be to move on from the finished versions of the songs, enabling more space for improvisation in our live performance.

Robin: I agree with Jingyun. Now that we worked so much on the studio recordings of our tracks it’s hard to go back to a “looser” version where we can improvise.

The irony is that our process of writing and recording is all improvisation and then we cut down multitracks of long jam recordings into finished “songs”. So it’s funny that we are mentally stuck sometimes trying to repeat our own improvisations.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?  
 
Jingyun: In the Jamuary challenge I did in 2021, I improvised on my guitar, some pedals, minilogue, Volca Sample and a looper. In our band, I also use looper a lot to build up layers with minilogue and guitar.

Robin: I like to use samplers and effects. Most important quality for me is the ability to find happy accidents in the machines. You start tweaking knobs and even make mistakes and some random stuff happens that you didn’t expect, and sometimes it sounds awesome. I like this feeling of discovery.

Can you talk about a work, event or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you? 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?
 
Robin: I think when I started working with electronic machines and loop-based workflow it really unlocked a whole new world of creativity for me and I was feeling stuck for a few years before that. I used to write all songs on guitar and I felt like I’d already done everything I could in this way, but since moving to Berlin it changed a lot and I never do that now.

So I think my first Scar Polish EP ‘Science Friction’ is very special to me because it represented a new beginning.



How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?
 
Jingyun: I feel that our collaboration is really gaining for both of us. Based on the fact that we share a lot of similar tastes about sounds (animal sounds, lofi sound effect, and all the unconventional sounds that can trigger your imagination) and music instinct, most of the time it feels really smooth when we are jamming together.

Sometimes when we listened back to our recording, we mixed up who made which sound.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

Robin: What I like about loop-based music is that you can make small iterations which can eventually build into completely different sounds. Maybe it’s reversing some sample, changing the pitch of a sequence, processing and resampling with FX, you have the opportunity to morph smoothly from one thing to another.

I’ve really enjoyed working with the software Endlesss for this exact reason, that it’s an Endlesss transition into something new. Me and Jingyun’s Endlesss jam has been going on for almost two years now and it’s transitioned through some many radically different stages.
 
When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances?
 
Jingyun: So far, each of our improvisations is an effort to capture the exact moment (the mood, the environment), and to find the right sound to react to each other. Last summer we traveled to Poland with a Volca Sample and a Volca Keys synth.

The jam we did in the forest sounds very different compared to the jam we did in the studio. It sounds like we were chopping the sound ingredients and pouring into the boiling soup on a camping fire. I remember using a lot of bubbly water sound, and Robin reacted with his vocal singing ‘my fire bubble’. I can picture the air, the camping fire and the sleepy darkness surrounding us.

For us, if we try to repeat what we did for improvising, the creative process will probably lose its magic.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?
 
Jingyun: Same BPM is the only rule I guess. In some situations we are even recording and looping the sound from daily objects like pots and pans. I think breaking the rules and limits is what we want to achieve through this project.

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?
 
Jingyun: When we are improvising, especially with samplers and synth, we are always trying to find the right sounds that match.

The decision making in live is mostly depending on intuition. It is like trying to match two fabrics together and you know when two colors or textures fit well together.

It's also about interaction, like playing chess. Our own decisions are influenced by each move we made before.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

Jingyun: I feel most creative in the state where I create music for nothing else but my own enjoyment. And overcoming self judgement is also important for our band.  

Robin: I always switch on coloured lights before starting jams these days. Helps me shift away from my normal state into a creative state. Sometimes I like to put the gear on the floor too. Gives me this feeling of playtime, like a kid plays with toys.

As adults we often forget how important it is to have this playtime feeling and to explore our curiosities.
 
How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

Robin: Well I think most of my best ideas come to me in the middle of performance, in a larger space and louder volume so I guess bigger is better for me. That’s often where “jams” start to become “songs” when little bits of magic happen in a gig and those things end up in the studio version of a track.

The intensity of live performance seems to activate something for me.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?
 
Robin: I find it hard to compare the two really. But it’s all fleeting moments in way.

Even if you write and record it as a song rather than do a improvisation, most likely no one will remember it or you in 100 years. Better to think about what you can experience right now.