Name: Matthias Grübel aka Telekaster
Nationality: German
Occupation: Producer, guitarist, composer
Recent release: Telekaster's new album Lontano is out via Empanada Musik.
Recommendations: Ocean Of Sound by David Toop. I also recommend The Soundscape by Murray Schafer.

If you enjoyed this Telekaster interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit Matthias Grübel's official homepage. He is also on bandcamp.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours.  What happens in your body when you're listening?
 
Actually I share a similar perception. I see and "feel" sounds as objects with certain shapes and textures, based on their character.

For example spikey vs roundish sounds, angular vs circular sounds, clean/hard surfaces of sound vs unstable/glitchy ones. Bubbles or balls vs blankets, carpets and veils. Also shapes like spirals, swarms and clouds are very familiar for me when I visualize sound, as well as more hard to grasp states like smokey vs airy sounds. It's of course all totally subjective ...

For me, also the positions of these shapes and objects within a certain perceived space matter - and their physical relationships, the distance between them, difference in size etc. It influences how I think about something I want to create.

As for many people, colours also do play a role here, but funnily enough the colours connected with certain sounds are shifting a lot, almost as if they depend on my mood or maybe the time of year.
 
How do listening with headphones and listening through a stereo system change your experience of sound and music?

To me they were always almost two different things. I spent big parts of my childhood and youth listening to music more or less exclusively on headphones. It became so normal to me to be that close and intimately exposed to sound, that often the music I liked felt too plain or too "far away" for me when I listened to it in a room on a normal stereo.

I always loved details, I always loved stereo width, panorama and effects - even as a kid before I knew how it works and what it was exactly. Headphones allow for the proximity and focus to actually perceive such details well. To this day, if I really want to know what's going on sonically in a mix, I take headphones and a moment to sit down and listen like that.

For me, the other side of experiencing music and sound is the more physical part. Big speakers, good systems, bigger spaces, concerts, clubs filled with sound ... Of course I love volume and the physical sensation that only such situations allow for. It's a fascination that also never gets old for me.

Today, both when listening and producing, I constantly switch between headphones, hi-fi speakers and studio monitors, depending on the situation or task, and I find all of them equally important experiences. 

 
Tell me about some of the albums or artists that you love specifically for their sound, please.
 
There is so many that I can only briefly name a few examples ... In terms of how sound is used and how sound shapes entire compositions, I would first mention the work of Fennesz, a pioneer in modern guitar sound and a master of sonic landscaping.



I love Harmonia, who were groundbreaking soundsearchers in the 70s.

[Read our Roedelius of Harmonia interview]
[Read our Harmonia's Michael Rother interview]

The Spirit of Eden LP by Talk Talk has captivated me since I discovered it in my 20s - because of its depth and transparency in sound.



[Read our Tim Friese-Greene of Talk Talk interview]

The Pearl by Eno/Budd/Lanois and the self-titled Música Esporádica album achieved something very similar over the past few years - these two also were big influences on my new minialbum Lontano.



[Read our Brian Eno interview about Climate Change]

Someone who created an incredibly unique sonic language is Burial, quite otherworldly and at the same time highly emotional and futuristic.



Surprisingly, I find very similar qualities in something as "retro" as Time Out Of Mind by Bob Dylan, which is a quite swampy Americana album, but one that sounds like it came from another planet too.



More recent deep listening highlights for me are Space 1.8 by Nala Sinephro and the latest record by Rich Ruth.



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?
 
Of course certain sounds can encapsulate moments and feelings very well, and our psyche seems to subconsciously re-connect with the emotions that we felt in that past moment once it gets re-triggered by the same or similar sounds.

For me there are a lot of childhood memories connected to sound as well as more recent travel and nature experiences connected to soundscapes that, not unlike the memories of certain scents or tastes, will stick on the inner hard drive forever.
 
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 like to realize that comforting sounds are not always necessarily beautiful sounds. Of course I love to hear the swells of ocean waves, the dynamics of wind blowing through trees, footsteps in the snow and other classics - and I think a lot of that is because of strong experiences that are connected to the sounds and then saved and stored as a package.

But I think from a sound perspective there is a lot to find in things like airplane drones (while being onboard), boat engines or steady machine pulses from workshops or factories. It depends on the situation and the perspective.

I love the noise of clattering cups and glasses in a bar even though it's harder to make conversation then and technically a sound that's not intended to be so present. The sound of frying in a pan is also beautiful in my ears and can be very diverse and dynamic. The same goes for the ambience of a distant highway, where the passing cars blur into one hazy line of static.

I think, my love for white noise or hiss as some kind of mood enhancer is quite obvious in my music. For this reason I also love bitcrush plugins which can open a similar territory when breaking up clean sounds and of course analogue amp overdrive and distortion. Such sound qualities can actually be very soothing and in my head I often connect them to wind, waves or rain. For instance, on my tracks Between Years or Norden you find a lot of this going on.

On the other side, both in real life as in music, noises that really hold little beauty for me are high pitched stings, stabs and cutting sounds. The dentist drill might be a good example. Or metal getting cut with an electric saw.
 
Are there everyday places, spaces, or devices which intrigue you by the way they sound? Which are these?
 
For sure ... places like tunnels, underpasses, churches, gym halls, places with a beautiful reverberating quality have always intrigued me and I love to spend time listening or capturing field recordings in there.
 
Have you ever been in spaces with extreme sonic characteristics, such as anechoic chambers or caves? What was the experience like?
 
I actually have been to an anechoic and completely deadened room (one that was used for therapeutic reasons) when I was young. It was during my civil service year when I was working with special needs kids. It was fascinating. When speaking, a voice sounded as if it just dropped from the mouth onto the floor, as if nothing stayed up in the air.

I remember very well that in my head I could hear a strange high pitched sound that was not a tinnitus or something like that. Later on I was told it might actually have been my own blood flowing, there seem to be experiences like that in such spaces.


Telekaster Interview Image (c) Matthias Grübel

Do music and sound feel “material” to you? Does working with sound feel like you're sculpting or shaping something?
 
Yes it does! I like to think of a piece of music or a mix as some kind of three-dimensional space with a certain landscape and design. It comes back to what I said before about all the different shapes and textures I see and perceive in sound.

When I work I feel like I am organizing and arranging them, putting them in perspective and relation with each other and therefore craft a spatial picture inhabited by those shapes. In the end I hope a listener can discover an enjoyable pathway through these landscapes that I mapped out there.
 
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?
 
I have too little experience in this field to speak about it in depth, but I love animals and would like to believe that sound, which is the basis of language, can also transcend the barriers between species the same way that it transcends the barriers of languages and cultures among humans - in the shape of music.

This said, as a little funny side-note, I think I realize that the plants in my studio (I have quite a few) seem way more vibrant and healthy when I spend many days in a row working next to them with the sound floating around in the room, as if the frequencies stimulated a kind of happiness, growth and stability in them. :)
 
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?
 
Luckily I don't have Tinnitus issues and I really try to always be aware of the dangers. I do protect my hearing at loud concerts and I usually don't spend an evening with an ear next to a speaker at a party. Also I try to work mostly at reasonable volumes.

I do encounter a certain hearing fatigue at times, mainly when I am working in theatre projects, where we rehearse 7 or 8 hours a day in the space and I often also work in the studio or with headphones in between rehearsals to prepare new material or work on mixes. T

owards the end of a project I might face a mix of over-exposure, tiredness and time pressure. What can occur is mainly headaches and oversensitivity to sound, mostly just for a few hours at a time, and I know I need to tune it down a bit then, take quiet night walks or just try to sleep a bit more and better.

In fact, I think especially sleep is crucial to relaxed, joyful and objective listening.
 
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 think silence is a factor for everyone that creates and works with sound. It’s literally our blank page that we all start with.

The possible omnipresence of sound was a huge thing for me for a long time, and it’s something that has changed a lot over the years. Until my late 20s I always needed music, always needed to enhance experiences with it and also always wanted musical input - and found inspiration in it. Even in nature or just walking down the street, I would always carry an Ipod or something, it was just always with me.

Today I have to say - because of the time I spend working on my own music - I listen to music way more selectively and more focused again, at home on vinyl and CD, and I also started to appreciate silence as a huge source of relaxation and inspiration. At the same time, experiencing soundscapes outdoors, in nature or even in the city, has also become so interesting for me that I don't feel the need to overpower them with headphones on every walk I take.

In this context I often think about that passage in Ocean Of Sound by David Toop that describes a random street scene ambience as if it was a composed piece of music that could be memorized, notated and re-performed. 


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?
 
It's an interesting thought experiment with many possible outcomes, but given the times and world we live in, I fear that would lead to a massive acoustic competition in the public space, and to a capitalization of acoustics in general.

Maybe we would constantly receive unwanted voice/sound spam on our phones and our cities would be flooded with commercial noise-trash the same way they are now flooded with commercial visual trash trying to convince us to consume and self-optimize in just the same way, simply on another sensorial level.