Part 2

How much of the original space still survives in our inner world of it? Or, to ask the question you raised: Where DO the boundaries between inner and outer experience lie from your perspective as a composer?

One of the pieces on the record, “Sun,” is heavily influenced by an experience I had when I was younger.



I was on a school trip to London to see a play in Covent Garden and we had arrived early. We were given the time between arriving and the theatre opening to explore and see London. My friend and I decided to walk along the South Bank down to the Tate Modern.

On entering the Turbine Hall we were met by Olafur Eliasson's installation, The weather project. A radiating sun, suspended at the end of the hall, washing the entire space in warm orange light. I was completely taken aback at this moment.



The artwork itself was created to allow people to exist inside of it, their experience as important to the art as the material creation itself. At that moment I felt overwhelmed by this idea that we were all here, having our own experience, but also having a collective experience at the same time.

This for me is mirrored in music a lot. When we gather at a concert, often the music can invoke an inner experience, but we are all there together having a collective experience. Music for listening alone, together.

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

Absolutely, in many different ways. For me writing and performing music is a physical experience. The instruments I play have a big effect on the way I feel and consequently the way I perform.

I try to write as much as possible with hardware instruments and record as much live as possible and stay away from presets on computers. I believe that by doing this, I am ensuring my music remains genuine and unique, as no one performs the same way I do. We all will perform slightly differently. I then work with these performances and work them into pieces. This feels like sculpting to me.

The other way I find music material is when you amplify it into a space. This amplification creates the physical presence of music and how you place speakers in relation to the building and the audience inside it can completely change the experience.

I would assume that, for many listeners, music which creates a specific mood and music which evokes a specific place might not be that different. What's your take on that?

I guess moods could be described as inner spaces. Places we occupy within ourselves and allow ourselves to sit there. This can be a wonderful and an overwhelming experience.

The music we listen to has the power to shape our experience. I think the perspective shifts that music can provoke can fundamentally change how you experience something. Be it a person and the relationship you have with them or a room you are in and the feeling that space has on you.

Music can change our spiritual and physical experience.

For the pieces on Inner Realm, does it matter "when and where one enters it" in the sense of a narrative that needs to be followed from beginning to end?

Not explicitly, but I am a believer in the album as an artform.

I always craft my albums to have an order that feels right for the music. It should be a listening experience that flows.

I find it quite interesting that this album is coming out on Sonic Pieces, which means that the physical object itself adds an even stronger tactile element than usual. Can you tell me a bit about the importance of the accompanying art for this release and what it adds to the music from your point of view?

Working with Monique was very important for this record, both in the incredible artwork she has created for the physical artefact and the process she helped me on curating the album.

A lot of the tracks that are on this record have existed in one form or another for a long time. It made sense to me that the Dream Sequence tracks would feature on an album for Sonic Pieces as I had written them for an in-store performance at Mi-So (the Sonic Pieces and Miasmah record store in Schöneberg in Berlin).

Starting from there, Monique, Erik and I listened to the music and gradually it became clear which tracks should feature on the record and which not. This moment was very significant in the establishment of Interior Realms.

As I mentioned before, the listening experience of an album is very important to me. So too is the physical artefact that is made. When someone buys a record of mine, I want them to feel like they are holding a physical artwork as well as a sonic one.

Because of this, I have wanted to work with Monique and Sonic Pieces for a long time as the way she crafts her records is such a beautiful artistic process. Hand made, every record is constructed bit by bit by Monique. The love and care she puts into these works is something I value a lot.

A painting by someone like Rothko can seem to create a place, but it can also, as I've gathered quite often, make people hear music. Would you say that this "inner music" raised by a painting is similar to the "inner space" created by music — and if so, what does this say about the notion of what we tend to regard as "pure" spaces and sounds?

I regard it in a very similar way. All art has the incredible power to influence our experience. A moment of contemplation in front of a painting by Rothko can induce a strong reaction.

I also find his interest in how his works can have a physical presence fascinating. The Rothko Chapel is his prime example of this, creating an experience not dissimilar to the one of Eliasson's The weather project. A visual artwork having a concrete physical presence.

I'm not sure what a 'pure' space is, but for me the moments that art affords us to have a solitary experience simultaneously to a collective one is an incredible metaphor for how we can live together. Creating space for all experiences to exist at the same time.