Published
Name: Koen Holtkamp
Nationality: Dutch, NYC-based
Occupation: Sound artist, composer, producer, visual artist
Current release: Koen Holtkamp's new album Nightlife, featuring contributions by Matt Bauder, Greg Fox and Ben Vida is out via Western Vinyl.
[Read our Ben Vida interview]
[Read our Greg Fox interview]
If you enjoyed this Koen Holtkamp interview and would like to know more about his music and upcoming gigs, visit him on Instagram, and bandcamp.
Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?
The impulse is always there. In my teens and earlier it was a way to escape but over time it became a way to connect and focus. Whether I’m actually working on a project or doing something more mundane like laundry I’m always thinking about it at least in the background.
The groundwork for this record was created while acclimating to new surroundings. After twenty plus years of living in small apartments in Brooklyn my family and I moved to a house a couple of hours north surrounded by nature where the loudest things are generally birds and insects. So I went from a very urban, somewhat claustrophobic existence surrounded by concrete to a very welcome sense of openness and calm in the woods.
Aside from that, visual art and films particularly those dealing with perception and optics, books, friendships and of course music are all great inspirations. I worked in record stores for years when I was younger and that’s what I consider to be my musical education.
I’m still very much an avid record listener and collector so it’s an ongoing process. I have a semi regular record listening and ping pong night with friends in the area that has been really inspiring. Which is why I named my studio the Rosendale Table Tennis Club.
For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?
This can fluctuate somewhat depending on the project but to speak about my more recent working methods my approach has gotten looser.
For Nightlife I started out just making sketches in the new space with the idea of both responding to it in the casual sense of getting to know a new working environment and creating a new approach that would feel fresh and in some way reflect this. But it was really about experimenting and not at all focused on any end result.
I believe the first piece that started to take shape and was somewhat the template for the overall direction was the first piece on the album, ‘Slow Fox Run’.
Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?
In the case of Nightlife the preparation phase which was not consciously done as such took about 2 years.
Looking back now after a few years, leaving the city to a more rural setting became somewhat of a reset. It was a welcome shift at this point in our lives and created a new sense of permanence that allowed me to take my time to re-evaluate the direction I wanted to go in.
Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?
For the first time in my life I have some room to set things up in a more lasting long term way. I really took my time with letting it all take shape and it’s something I continue to work on.
The biggest goal for me right now is to have it be as immediate as possible. To have an idea and be able to go to my studio, turn a couple things on and go is such a gift.
For Nightlife, what did you start with? If there were conceptual considerations, what were they?
I began with the idea of taking my time to explore and enjoy that process rather than thinking about any sort of end product.
As things progressed I started to think about working towards creating a specific sound or instrument with the modular synth almost like developing a character but I was not really thinking about composition.
Tell me a bit about the way the new material developed and gradually took its final form, please.
After making sketches for a couple years I started to hear a through line in some of the material that felt like it had a distinct identity.
I edited some of these together to form a very loose structure for what would become the basis of the album .
Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?
It depends where I’m at in the process. I try to keep things as open as possible until the end.
Mixing and editing is where I tend to exert the most control as for me this is the work in terms of what I do where you really finalize what the album is going to be before letting go. Most of what happens before that is play. Not to say I don’t take it seriously simply that it’s less rigid and the outcome is not necessarily clear to me.
In terms of collaboration I try to keep it extremely open. Matt, Greg and Ben are all artists whom I deeply respect and have followed and been friendly with for years. I had Greg and Matt in mind specifically when I edited the backbone for the full record so I intentionally left space for them in the compositions.
Had they not been available, there wouldn’t necessarily be drums or horns on the record as it wasn’t so much those instruments but their individual distinct playing styles that I was drawn to which is why I approached them to contribute.
Initially I sent a handful of tracks to Greg with basic instructions mostly in regards to the instrumentation and a loose idea of what I had in mind structurally. He recorded his parts at his studio in Brooklyn. I was surprised by some of his playing as I had not imagined the double kick on ’Northern Flicker’ for example but ultimately it pushed me in new directions that I think really expanded the scope of the project which is something I welcome in collaboration.
I then took the tracks he sent and made a rough mix of the two of us which I brought to Matt. I also sent Matt a mix of some references beforehand to kind of set the tone (Joanna Brouk, J.B Lenoir, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Pharaoh Sanders, Codona etc) then we recorded all of his parts in one sitting in a couple hours at his place nearby.
So the record is very much a studio creation. We never actually played together and each of the instruments was recorded in a separate space.
When I was thinking about how to approach mixing the material I thought it would be more interesting to emphasize the characteristics of these different sonic spaces rather than take the traditional approach of trying to make it sound like we were all playing in the same room. The goal was to define each instrument as its own unique sonic character and space separate from one another while also having them work together in a cohesive way.
In passing it sounds like a band but if you really listen it’s mixed more like an electroacoustic record.
Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on? How much improvement and refinement do you personally allow until you're satisfied with a piece? What does this process look like in practise?
I could work on a piece forever but that’s not healthy or enjoyable.
So it’s really about just letting go and once that choice has been made I’m not that interested anymore.
How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?
For me tracks on an album are smaller parts of a greater whole.
I'm not really into singles either as a listener or producer. What I really admire and try to achieve with my own work is a well constructed, dynamic overall listening experience where the pieces have a direct relationship that goes beyond their individual identity.
Obviously they need to work by themselves as well but they’re very deliberately composed in relation to one another so it’s more than just a collection of tracks.
What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (performance)?
Most of my work is quite simple melodically speaking so production and mixing is huge for me and I enjoy diving deep into it.
Even a subtle shift in balance can make a dramatic difference when you're focusing on details.
Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?
I see sound more as shapes than in colors. That said I find optics and color relationships endlessly fascinating. I work with optical illusions and dynamics between colors a lot within my visual output.
When I designed the art for Nightlife, I spent more time just balancing the color relationships than any other aspect of the design.
After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?
For me it’s more of a sense of closure or letting go.
Usually I’m somewhat relieved to move onto the next thing as the hardest part is always finishing something. I work slowly so I spend a lot of time in each world.
I would love to know a little about the feedback you've received from listeners or critics about what they thought some of your songs are about or the impact it had on them – have there been “misunderstandings” or did you perhaps even gain new “insights?”
Since I make somewhat abstract instrumental music I don’t often get responses in regard to what a piece is specifically about but it can create a mood for certain people which often seems to be calming or meditative.
With my old band Mountains on three separate occasions couples reached out and mentioned that they had specifically chosen to play our music while giving birth. Only one of these couples were people we knew.
While this certainly was not on our minds when we were making the albums I can’t really think of a bigger compliment.
Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing 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?
I do think there is an inherent difference between a functional task such as making a cup of coffee vs a purely creative act such as writing music or making a film.
But making a great cup of coffee or a terrible cup of coffee or anything in between can inspire and affect the creative process. Beyond the obvious influence of stimulants in coffee, the actual sound of the pouring of the liquid, the grinding of the beans, a spoon clinking against the inside of a mug, the particular aroma of the beans.
These types of things are basic signifiers that many of us connect with and can inspire or influence in various ways.
