Name: Sietse van Erve aka Orphax
Nationality: Dutch
Occupation: Sound artist, composer, performer, label owner at Moving Furniture
Current release: Orphax's new album Embraced Imperfections is out now.

If these thoughts by Orphax piqued your interest, visit his official website for more information. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, bluesky, and mastodon.

For a deeper dive, we also recommend our previous Sietse van Erve interview, and our conversation with him about the link between music and autism, our interview with him about the freedom of playing live., and his selection of albums that he loved for their sound. 

We also recommend our torpedo interview from the same series, whose member Caro also reports many of the sensations expressed here.



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?

This really differs per day, mood and situation I am in. When I am really listening to my own music, with the purpose of listening, it often gives me some serenity. But I have that with more ambient drone and minimalist music. The goal with my music is of course to influence perception of time and space, and this is what also happens to me.

But other times I also analyse my own music. Trying to recreate what I did, especially when I recorded the music live. I improvise a lot live, so I can’t always recall what I did at a later stage.

Take for example my live albums Less Is More, Structure, and Embraced Imperfections. Sometimes there are transitions in the back ground, where something magical happens.



I usually listen to my music with eyes open. Only when working on a new composition can I sometimes sit down with my eyes closed to fully focus on very small details.

This is usually when I am working on short sections within my composition and have those on repeat for a long time.

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

This also depends on the moment. But I use headphones a lot during my day job. The office where I work is very noisy. This does a lot with my autism, and if I don’t wear them I get totally stressed. So it is for me not even a thing to listen differently to music, but also a way to cope with daily things.

But I do like how with headphones you can block out everything else. 100% focus on the music.
 
John Cage would disagree I guess, hahaha.  

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?

Hearing drones (in nature) usually make me really happy. What makes me less happy are the sounds of cars in the street.

For some time now, I have been really bothered by the traffic in the street we live in. This started during a period of road closure, which made our street the redirection traffic had to take for a few months.

I find it very hard to deal with, annoyingly so because our house is really nice.

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?

Happy sounds: natural drones, train sounds while standing under an underpass, children playing (in the distance).

Irritating: cars, people talking loud on phones, crayons on chalkboards, (electronic) arpeggios.

Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?

I would love to visit an anechoic chamber one day. The way I understand it, it's a really bizarre experience.  As for caves, or huge cathedrals or empty factory spaces - I can tell I love it.

A couple of years ago I visited the caves of Han in Belgium. And the sounds where amazing. All the water dripping, the small streams. The acoustics are crazy over there. Love it.

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

I twice played in a church and that was quite something. One of those was in the crypt of the Grote Lebuinuskerk in Deventer, The Netherlands.

I performed in the Roman crypt of the church, which was a half open space. During the soundcheck I had my synths running and left the crypt to listen to the music from the church. On the other side of the church, the sounds became so overwhelming and surrounding it was impossible to track down the source of the sound from there. It was bumping around in the church like crazy.

Because of this I decided to half-way my performance send listeners into the church. So, the audience started in the crypt, but half-way they had to leave the crypt and wander around in the church. That was magical.

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

Yes, for sure. It is a form of sculpting and shaping to me. But can’t really explain how.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

We live in a world with constant sound pollution.

There are not many spots, at least here in the Netherlands, where you can’t hear human activity. There is always this certain buzz from traffic or planes or other noises. And as I explained above I am currently really annoyed by traffic in our street, because you always hear it. These things really have an impact on people, mostly subconsciously.

In another way I think sound can negatively influence people is with the loudness war. Dynamics to the max, all details lost. You hear this in pop music, advertising, the radio. But even in our little underground music scenes it seems to be common, for example in so called “power ambient.”

This can be overwhelming, which live might be really nice but in day time can also become too much. It’s a constant bombardment with information. I can imagine at some point this just becomes too much.

I think we could all do a bit more with quiet time. I find this in listening to subtle contemporary drone and ambient music, as well as contemporary classical music. Where others might need more time out of the city.

Or the people should claim back the streets from the car. That would be good on multiple levels I guess ;-)

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 situation as explained above in the caves of Han was a beautiful experience.

Another sound that is really impressive to me is the sound of the Amsterdam colonies of rose-ringed parakeets. When they gather in the evening in the parks, just before they sleep, it is an insane sound. If you never heard it, it is quite hard to explain. Though, while very impressive, I also wouldn’t want them in the tree outside our garden. Every morning and every evening would be a bit too much.

One day I hope to make a proper recording, and use it as source in a musical composition.

Tinnitus and developing hyperacusis are very real risks for anyone working with sound. Do you take precautions in this regard and if you're suffering from these or similar issues – how do you cope with them?

Like many of us I also have a form of tinnitus. Lucky enough mine is not really present and most certainly not that annoying.

It is is a soft noise layer, but it is so soft that I don’t hear it anymore even if the music is at very low level. It is probably the result from playing drums as teenager (not always with special safety hearing protection), in combination of always wearing headphones when outside, also started as a teenager, for blocking out stimulus.

I take more care of my hearing now. With concerts, I almost always use hearing protection. And I listen to music on my headphones at lower volume now. With noise cancelling headphones this is also so much better than it used to be without.

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?

I am with Glenn Gould on this one, I guess.

But for me there are limitations in to what kind of sound. I really like to listen to music all the time. But I'd rather not hear sounds from surroundings (the cars, again).

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?

This is a ridiculously good question. I wish I knew.

Would be a good experiment to do, everyone just listening better. Not only to music, but also really listening to each other. Maybe we will see we are much more alike.