Name: Automat
Members: Achim Färber, Zeitblom, Ingo Krauss, Max Loderbauer
Interviewee: Zeitblom
Nationality: German
Occupation: Bassist, composer, improviser, producer
Current release: The new Automat album Heat is out via Compost. Heat features not just the new Automat line-up but also a string of guests, including Scott Montieth (Deadbeat), Barbie Williams, Gemma Ray, Prince Alla, and R Zee Jackson.

[Read our Scott Montieth aka Deadbeat interview]
[Read our Achim Färber interview]

If you enjoyed this Zeitblom interview, and would like to find out more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Facebook.  

Over the course of his career, Zeitblom has worked with a wide range of artists, including Fred Frith, John Zorn, Arto Lindsay, Pole, Hanno Leichtmann, Zeena Parkins, J.G. Thirlwell, Bern Nix, Pyrolator and Christian Marclay.

[Read our Pole interview]
[Read our J.G. Thirlwell interview]
[Read our Pyrolator interview]
 


When did you first start getting interested in musical improvisation?  

My first contact with improvisation was when I became interested in jazz music.

I actually come from post-punk and was socialised with bands like Talking Heads, Joy Division, Pop Group, This Heat and so on.

A band like Rip Rig & Panic has me looking at musicians like Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman and Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

[Read our interview with Gareth Sager of The Pop Group and Rip Rig & Panic]

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances involving prominent use of improvisation captured your imagination in the beginning?

I was particularly fascinated by the recordings of Ornette Coleman that he made with his then 12-year-old son Deonardo and Charlie Haden on double bass. The albums are called The Empty Foxhole and Ornette at 12.



Coleman developed a system of composition and improvisation called 'Harmolodics' which he later perfected with his band Prime Time. On the record Body Meta, for example, he combines a tremendous compression of the music with a permeable groove.



Focusing on improvisation can be an incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

There are two different ways I approach improvisation at the moment. With Automat, we often go into the studio without any guidelines and just start improvising from sketches.

For example, on our second album plusminus, we went into the studio with no guidelines at all and recorded groove-based improvisations in just one take. Almost all of the pieces appeared on the album with these basic recordings of bass and drums and some overdubs.



The recording session was designed as an experiment. We didn't want rehearsals, we wanted "first takes", so no repetitions of the recordings.

When I work alone, I turn on the machines and listen to my material and let it decide. I concentrate on the space between the sounds and try to intervene as little as possible. I let the sounds be themselves and reduce and reduce until I get to the core. A kind of sonic meditation.

When there is no closed form, each moment can be a centre that is connected to each other moment.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to improvisation? Do you see yourself as part of a tradition or historic lineage?

One of the most elementary ideas behind my music, whether improvised or composed, is a music of reduction, a simplification of the material to the essential, a music of concentration on the qualities of the individual tone and its components, a music of the here-and-now, which places sounding immediacy before the abstraction of the structure, a music from which I have seemingly taken my leave as a composer or improviser as an initiator of emotion and structure, a music of ritualised self-sacrifice.

If I follow a tradition, then it is probably those musicians who follow the creed: The sounds should stand for themselves, without referring to anything or depicting anything other than themselves.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to improvisation - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

I started improvising late and was lucky enough to work with extremely good musicians. In the early 2000s I had a lot to do with Tony Buck from The Necks and we had some great gigs that inspired me a lot.

[Read our Tony Buck interview]
[Read our Tony Buck and Magda Mayas interview about improvisation]

Also the collaboration with Christian Fennesz under the name Golden Tone was another important step for me in terms of electronic improvisation.

I was able to bring all this experience to my collaboration with the musicians of Automat. We are not a pure improvisation band, but it remains an important part of the development of tracks.

Tell me about your instrument and/or tools, please. How would you describe the relationship with it? What are its most important qualities and how do they influence the musical results and your own performance?

With Automat I play - both live and in the studio - a Spector fretless bass that I have owned for over 30 years. I saw it in a music shop in Munich and knew immediately that it was my bass.

[Read our Nik West interview about the bass]

I own a few other basses but none of them play as well as the Spector. It has an extremely thin neck with a low string action and has very voluminous basses especially when combined with an ampeg B15 amplifier. The B15 was the standard in pretty much every studio in the world for many years and dominated the sound of the 1960s and 1970s. James Jamerson used it when he recorded for Motown Records.

I used to have a lot of effects pedals, but now I just use a DOD envelope filter and my fingers to manipulate the sound. In my studio I work with Logic, Bitwig, Softube and GRM Tools software and a lot of equipment from the Swedish company Elektron. I also often work with the Granular Synthesizer by Tasty Chips.  

Can you talk about a work, event or performance in your career that's particularly dear to you? Why does it feel special to you? When, why and how did you start working on it, what were some of the motivations and ideas behind it?

The digital wall - neue ufer by wittmann/zeitblom & liebert, which was performed in Ulm in 2022, is certainly one of my most important projects of recent years.



Not only the incredible size of the installation but also the immense amount of work we put into this project makes it an exceptional position within my oeuvre.

The artist collective wittmann|zeitblom & Liebert realised a 68-minute video/audio loop that attempted to map the transformation of the idea of flight from the moment of its mythical emergence to its modern materialisation. Large-format video projections and a synchronised soundtrack transformed the historic city wall of Ulm into a 900-metre-long walk-through work of art with the help of 39 high-performance projectors and an audio app.

How do you feel your sense of identity influences your collaborations? Do you feel as though you are able to express yourself more fully in solo mode or, conversely, through the interaction with other musicians? Are you “gaining” or “sacrificing” something in a collaboration?

Music as an end in itself as its own autonomous entity, which is neither language nor a carrier of feelings or meaning, a means of expression or communication - instead of a representation of the external musical, it is exclusively a sonic presentation.

The music lives for itself, creating an intermediate space, a landscape, a state, regardless of whether in my solo work or in the collective.

Derek Bailey defined improvising as the search for material which is endlessly transformable. Regardless of whether or not you agree with his perspective, what kind of materials have turned to be particularly transformable and stimulating for you?

The focus is on sound - physicality, richness, colourfulness of sound matter, sound spectra, sound types, sound gestures, sound objects, sound particles, sound masses, sound densities, sound threads, sound bands, sound patterns, sound groups, sound aggregates, sound emergence, sound courses, sound sculptures, sound situations, sound landscapes, sound research, sound perceptions ...

Different temporal-spatial expansions of sound as point, line, surface, body and space including various resonance, reverberation and echo effects, fades, contrasts, superimpositions, combinations, transformations.

Music as a spatial sculptural form.

When you're improvising, does it actually feel like you're inventing something on the spot – or are you inventively re-arranging patterns from preparations, practise or previous performances?

I am an analyser. I always remove everything accidental and incidental because I want to get to the core of the matter, to the essence, the archetypal.

To you, are there rules in improvisation? If so, what kind of rules are these?

Explore

In a live situation, decisions between creatives often work without words. How does this process work – and how does it change your performance compared to a solo performance?

Automat has this mysterious something that works live and in the studio and that you look for as a musician.

There are many descriptions of the ideal state of mind for being creative. What is it like for you? In which way is it different between your solo work and collaborations?

The most important thing is to create a consistent framework for the creative process.

Clear structures give you the freedom to express yourself creatively.
Discipline and freedom make a good combination and are not opposites.
Opening the creative windows requires strict discipline in everyday life and enables focused efficiency.

This is as true for my solo work as it is for my collaborations.

How do you see the relationship between sound, space and performance and what are some of your strategies and approaches of working with them?

I am looking for spaces in which one wants to perceive a gradation of colouration; spaces in which there are different regions of colour or brightness instead of a uniform colouration of space; spaces in which different musical elements can be located at different points, or areas in which sounds are conducted through space in a kind of decorative gesture.

In each of these articulated spaces, as in the conditioned spaces, one recognises that both the properties of the sound emitted and the methods of its transmission play a fundamental role.

In a way, improvisations remind us of the transitory nature of life. What, do you feel, can music and improvisation express and reveal about life and death?

In the words of Samuel Beckett: saying without knowing what.