Name: Luka Kuplowsky
Occupation: Singer, songwriter
Nationality: Canadian
Recent release: Luka Kuplowsky's and The Ryōkan Band's How Can I Possibly Sleep When There Is Music is out via Next Door.

If you enjoyed this Luka Kuplowsky interview and would like to stay up to date with his work, visit him on Instagram, and Facebook.  
 


When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Hello! What a great subject to discuss. I appreciate the invitation.

My body cannot help but move! It's always compelled in whatever setting to locate some rhythm that can be acted out of my body in some way. This may be dancing or gently tapping my hand or foot, or perhaps locating the energies of my body in stillness.

Whenever I sing the lyric from the record how can i possibly sleep when there is music. And dancing ... I love dancing too, I smile. Such truth there.  

My eyes are usually closed when deep listening. Usually on the floor with my ear proximate to the stereo speaker. I have a very fond memory of listening to a Jon Lucien record Premonition this way.



The volume was low, but my ear’s nearness to the speaker ballooned his resonant voice and it registered some deep feeling in my body. It’s a lovely way to listen to music.

How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

They are distinct and each pleasurable, especially in relief to one another. Aside from the auditory details that arise through the headphone’s proximity and focus to the ear, there is more often than not a movement through the world while wearing headphones. I love this, because I love to listen and move.

However, the stereo listen cultivates a focus, a relationship to one’s space, a mediation of the receiver/speaker’s specific warmth and tonality with the song. For me, it is almost always a deeper listen.

I’ve been thinking about this with my new record and how it translates in headphones and stereo systems. It was recorded live and mixed to create a sense of the seven-piece band performing for the listener in a stereo field. There is a great pleasure in the details and feeling of surround on headphones, but I personally just love when it blooms from a stereo.

The additional layer of mediation from a warm speaker or the vinyl’s ambient hiss also draws out an experience I prefer in listening.

Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.

Sound is a very interesting way to frame a discussion of favorite albums.

In one sense the sound is inextricable from all the other elements of a recording, but perhaps if we are to hone in on sound, we could specify the fidelity of how the performance is captured and then also, the types of sounds used (instruments and their combinations). And even then, the list would be endless. This is too difficult. But to start somewhere:

"Jenny The Blues" - Andre Ethier:

Andre and Sandro Perri’s trio of records are so special. They sound like a quilt: scraps of sound lovingly threaded. so many details to get lost in. I love how distracted the arrangement is, constantly reorienting your attention to different textures, tones. So nice to listen to on headphones.



Sandro’s “In Another Life” is another favorite song that allows you to take pleasure in locating the detail of the small sound, texture. While in that song the sound exists in a blur or drift or sway, Jenny is so dense, rooted and clear.



pisces - “454”:

This song is so incredibly sad and heavy and beautiful. the extremes of speed and slowness, boom and crisp, the momentum of how the delay creates this relentless momentum. And then the release and shock of the change up: gunfire. The song slows and the melody’s resonance deepens, the words thicken. Ah!



Do you experience strong emotional responses towards certain sounds? If so, what kind of sounds are these and do you have an explanation about the reasons for these responses?

Rain. I’ve always been drawn to it. I guess it’s a rather common attraction. Emotionally it seems to relax me, put me into a contemplative state, but one that is rich and pleasurable in the act of slowing and noticing. And then the variations of rain. Rain on a tin roof. Rain on leaves. Walking in the rain and the sound of rain bouncing off an umbrella (mm).

Maybe it’s somewhat rooted in my love for the bus stop scene in Miyazaki’s Totoro. I watched it at such an early age and it remains perhaps one of my favorite scenes of any film.

If we are to move from ambient to arranged sound, the path of the wind song from Totoro leaves me with such a feeling of longing. A melancholy that is very pleasurable to feel. specifically that airy synth that plays the melody.

There can be sounds which feel highly irritating to us and then there are others we could gladly listen to for hours. Do you have examples for either one or both of these?

I have an aversion to the sound of being inside a car while ice is being scraped off. Even writing that out makes my nerves tighten.

Well I mentioned rain as a more ambient pleasure, but for a musical instrument, perhaps the guqin.

Writing this out led me to search youtube for rain and guqin videos. Of course, there are many videos with this pairing and they are quite nice.



What are among your favourite spaces to record and play your music?

I love playing in the tranzac in Toronto. Specifically the southern cross. It is a very dry, dead room where sound feels very present and close. Both as a musician and listener, I've probably played and heard live music there more than anywhere else. The building consists of two other rooms as well (the main hall and the living room).

And since we’re on the topic of sound, there is a great pleasure (or sometimes displeasure) from the way the three rooms often spill over to each other. The unexpected mixing of the sounds (often generically diverse) can be a real treat or nuisance.

A local music archivist, Joe Strutt, has captured countless concerts in the tranzac over the last ten years. His website mechanical forest sound is a treasure for archiving the beautiful scenes that have developed out of / through / adjacent to the tranzac.

Here’s a recording of a monthly event I run with Thom Gill out of the tranzac called the holy oak family singers. Joe captured a recording of me covering Glenn-Copeland’s Ever New last summer.

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?

Interesting. It tends to be more intuitive or abstract for me. It’s all reaction and feeling and I sort of lose sense of what my body is physically doing. There is certainly that shaping/sculpting aspect to the process, but it's not towards a clear end. You just kinda strip or add to the work until the feeling finds some balance.

Although it usually doesn’t feel finished until it's brought into collaboration with other players. The song usually requires something unexpected and outside myself to clarify its expression.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

The purring of a cat. It’s no surprise that it has healing properties. To place one’s head on the belly of a purring cat or to have a cat on your stomach and for their purr to vibrate through you.

What depth and complexity in the modulations! And the gesture of their sharing this gift with humans. It brings me to tears.

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

Whenever I think about this (and I do alot), I think of Marisol de la Cadena’s concept of the uncommons.

That our communication with non-human animals is a crossing point of understanding between worlds that acknowledges that which exceeds each other. There is communication, certainly, but it’s one that brushes up against, or is in excess of, or intersects through divergent interests and desires.

Excuse the philosophical language, as I am currently in a phd program and thinking alot about our relation to animals.

We can surround us with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

This makes me think of my relationship to headphones and walking. It’s at times unhealthy. It is fun to dramatize the ordinary with music, but can also get oversaturated. I often have to remind myself while walking that the ambient sound surrounding me is just as engaging and moving.

Silence is of course relative to your environment, but maybe we could call it a stillness, which is both the lack of sound but also an internal meditative state.

For me, living in a city all my life, those moments where the sound stills or settles are rare and precious. It allows you to listen to the multitude of sounds of one’s body that are so often masked by the drone of a city. It's a good way to reconnect to the bodies we move through the world with.

Seth S. Horowitz called hearing the “universal sense” and emphasised that it was more precise and faster than any of our other senses, including vision. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?

Interesting. I wonder if precision and speed are necessarily valuable characteristics. Although perhaps their relative nearness to experience (rather than consciousness) would open up a greater range of feeling, or a feeling less anchored in visual confirmation.

Any shift or attunement to a broader range of senses would radically change our world. New pleasures would open up, new sensitivities would create new boundaries. How music is valued and engaged with would certainly change.