A conversation with Taylor Deupree
This interview was taken in October 05.
I was documenting myself about your work and the first thing that really impressed me is the amount of things you do: you run a label that includes 3 separate projects (line, happy, term), you realize photography and graphic design, and you’re a very prolific musician. I can count 17 records recorded between 1997 and 2005, solo or collaborating with other musician. So, I have to ask you: how can you do that? How do you menage to keep concentrated on so many different things whitout loosing the focus of the creative process?
I actually often wonder that myself. on a simple level i’ve learned discipline and learned how to multitask in my life. i’m incredibly busy, there is no doubt about that. on top of all of my creative activities i have a son and a personal life and a house to take care of. really, there’s not much rest, but i wouldn’t have it any other way. i hate being bored, i always need movement.
On the creative side, there are different levels of time and complexity with my cd projects. for example, the project i did with Eisi “every still day” took a very solid 6 or 7 months of work. it was very, very challenging. but then there are cds like “live in japan, 2004″ with christopher willits that are recorded live, so the bulk of the work has been done already on tour. in general, collaborative projects take less time because we share the work. i have done a proper solo cd since “january” in 2003, and haven’t released a solo cd on 12k since “stil.” in 2002. this is my main goal now, to get a new solo cd on 12k in early 2006. we just moved out of the city into the country to a very inspirational modern house in the forest. i’ve been without music for over a month as i’m renovating my studio, but it’s complete now and i have a lot of creative energy waiting to come out.
I run the labels very casually, yet efficiently, so it’s not so difficult to keep them moving; and the music… well, the music is life, so there is always a desire and the ability to make time for it. i don’t sleep much.
These are some words you wrote on your web page:
“If there were one central word that described most of my work it would be “minimalism.” […]I believe that the single sound, color, or line, free from filler or dramatic intention delivers the strongest emotion, and this simple vision runs through everything I do”.
Do you see a connection between the need of expression through the essential and the hyper-stimulating world we live in? Do you think looking for a ‘working simplicity’ can be a spontaneous answer to the contemporary ‘non-working complexity’?
Absolutely. i think a lot of my interest in minimalism stems from a reaction to the overstimulation of modern society. i’ve lived in new york city for 15 years and that place just makes you hurry. it’s fast, the pace in the city is incredible, if you don’t move fast you get buried. we live in the country now, it will be interesting to see where my music goes as a result of such a drastic environmental change.
I’ve been taking the hectic city life and flipping it around to quiet minimalism in my music. now at home i’m surrounded by trees and quiet sounds of nature i think i’ll be able to allow these things to influence me more directly now, i won’t need to inverse my environment to affect my music. or maybe i will. maybe i’ll need the noise of the city back in my life and express that in music.
You recorded lot of collaborative works so I’d like to know a bit more about your way of thinking the relation between author and work. Forgetting for a minute the need to earn money from your work, do you agree to the idea of a free access to the cultural production? I mean, would you consider what you do as something that has a social genesis and a social value and that for this reason should be accessed and reworked by everyone?
I come from the mentality that “all information wants to be free.” this is a good, if often impracticle, credo to stand by. i’m in an ironically luck position becuase i don’t need to make money from my music (that’s what my graphic design business is for). so it frees me up to create non-commercial works. however, i also feel very strongly that all artists should be compensated for the time and passion. i spend an enormous amount of time and mental energy, not to mention money, doing my music and i think being paid for what we do is important. i feel very strongly against making recordings or performing live for free, i’ve simply invested too many years in this. likewise, despite the small size of 12k, i try to make sure that the artists on my label get paid.
I definitely respect artists like Kenneth Kirschner who really devote their creative output to free distribution and reworking, i think it’s a very forward-thinking way of approaching art from a personal and cultural point of view.
In terms of social value, i don’t always think of my music in a large cultural sense. i think it would be a bit egotistical to think that way. sure, it would be nice to have my music, or the music of my peers, stand the test of time and find a place in history as something important, but, we don’t have any real control over that. only time will tell. i’m not trying to create history. i do what i do because i love it on so many levels and it helps me learn more about myself any sort of reviews or historical documentation is really a wonderful bonus.
My music really isn’t specifically about anything. it comes from inside me so it’s pretty self-reflective. i’m not writing songs about life, love, or pain. however, when someone else hears them they may have a more tangible meaning, might strike a chord with an aspect of their lives.
The Post_Piano 2 Open Remix Project has been a great success: you received over a hundred of new tracks created using the Kirschner’s sketch. Did you get any particular impression about the global music-makers panorama?
PP2_ORP was totally surprising for ken and i. first of all, we did not expect to get 101 entries, it was a bit overwhelming. Also, what we didn’t expect was the overall diversity and quality of the mixes. it was really hard to narrow the selection down. we originally were going to put up 15 mixes but quickly realized that wouldn’t be enough so we tried going to 20. on the final day ken and i couldn’t decide between two tracks, so we just put up both and increased the final number to 21. a lot of great material didn’t get posted but we were looking for a variety of styles. sometimes we’d have 3 great tracks that all were somewhat similar in style so we’d just pick one of those, even though the other 2 were impressive on their own.
What was also exciting about the project is that for the most part all of the contributors are relatively unknown artists. it just shows the incredible amount of talent out there from people that have this passion and some of them may not be able to get the exposure they’re looking for. PP2_ORP is not a huge project but we hope that it helps give some people a little bit of exposure. this was a nice, unintentional bonus. we were expecting a bunch of remixes by friends and 12k artists, which would have been promoting the same people we’ve already been promoting. it was refreshing to get such a selection of new artists.
Let’s move toward a more technical angle: I’m a music maker myself so I’m deeply interested I’n your creative process as a musician. I’d like to know a bit about the tools you use and in wich way you relate to them (hardware, software..)
My work revolves around sound design and timbre. i’m a big follower of Eno’s idea of “vertical sound,” where the timbre and sounds themselves contain the movements and emotions of a song and frees you up from having to adhere to any linear start/finish rules. that’s the way i’ve approached music for many years.
My writing process starts with my folders of sounds on the computer. nearly every day i create sounds and file them away into categories on my hard drive. this soundbank then becomes the pool from which i work.
When i go to start a composition i will search through the archive for a sound that i find particularly inspirational at the moment and then use that as a starting block for the piece. i never have a finished piece in mind when i start one; i don’t know what the ending will be when i lay down the first notes. there’s often a lot of analogies made to painting, that experimental artists “paint with sound”.. i find this is true with my own music but i use a lot of reductive techniques… so it’s really more sculptural in a way, or really a combination of both. i start with an empty soundfield, like an empty canvas, and like paintings or sculpture there really is no beginning or end. i’ll build up sounds and layers, like paint, but i’ll also spend a lot of time peeling away sounds, making holes and spaces.. so that’s quite sculptural. i’ll also often work on the beginning of a piece, and then the end… and finally complete it with the middle.
I’ve never been shy to talk about my tools. some artists don’t want to give away their “secrets”, but there’s nothing secret to what i’m using, nothing anyone else can’t go out and buy. these are just tools, not magic boxes. my main compositional tool is Digital Performer. i’ve been using it since 1990 when it was just called Performer, a midi sequencer. there isn’t a single piece of software i know better than DP. 15 years of using it has given me a pretty deep understanding and absolutely no reason to look to other similar software; it’s simply fantastic and does everything i need it to do. my studio, naturally, has gone towards software over the years, hardware synthesizers being replaced by virtual ones, but i always used my nord modular, and now nord G2. that’s one piece of hardware that probably gets more use than any of my software. i also still have much of my old analog synthesizers and a bunch of small acoustic instruments. over the last couple of years i’ve been increasingly interested in acoustic sound sources, as many electronic artists have, which i think is pretty evident with a lot of my recent recordings. also, a tool like Kyma is really well suited to process live inputs so that was one thing that initially got me interested in exploring those types of sounds.
I’m very fascinated by sounds, design and process. i try to give myself a good base of tools that cover different strengths and try not to overlap too much. for example, the hartmann neuron VS, is amazing for noisy sounds, so i tend to use that for distressed and grainy types of textures, whereas Virsyn’s Cube is beautiful and pure. these two synths are so different from each other, that’s why i have them in my studio. i’m also a big fan of modular synthesis for the freedom it gives, so i use a lot of instruments like reaktor, tassman (very unique sound) and of course my Kyma system. this is all the core of my studio and really let’s me do just about anything i can imagine.
When i compose i like to set limits for myself, base each album around a set of rules or restrictions, or have a concept that requires such. studio technology gives us too many choices. i find restricting myself to specific tools, software, or techniques actually gives me more freedom to create and to think, without these self-imposed limitations it’s too easy to get lost in the technology.
I have been spending a lot of time learning about mixing and mastering as well. having great sound generating devices is only half of it, i think. having great mixing tools, the best EQs and compressors is hugely important. i haven’t invested in any nice analog outboard gear yet mainly because if i do i only want to buy the best, and the best can be VERY expensive. i feel that plug-in technology has really come a long way to approaching analog sound and for the type of music that i do have felt it’s best to keep things in the digital realm. so, i employ a lot of great mixing plug ins like the UAD-1 stuff, the sony oxford dynamics, and the URS equalizers. sound and tone are so important in this kind of music that we do.. the focal point, the most important thing, so i think people really need to pay attention to not only creating great sounds, but mixing them and presenting them in the highest quality way possible. especially with minimalism, it gives you nothing to hide behind, no decoration to mask poor form. i seek out the most beautiful tone i can find.
How did you menage to fill the gap between the possibilities that a compositional environment offers and the difficulty to perform live the music you created?
I’m definitely a studio musician, i much prefer working in the studio over performing live. live performances have really been a struggle as i try to find a good balance of laptop-ism and live improvisation. the past few years i’ve really been experimenting with different techniques at live shows, most of them unsatisfactory (apologies to those audiences who may have caught one of these unrehearsed experiments), but lately i’ve stumbled across a method that’s really been enjoyable for me. basically, bringing a keyboard for live playing, and starting with a nearly empty palette of sounds and building up an amorphous landscape of sound. very nonlinear, very vertical. just sort of a jungle of small sounds that fills the room and drifts around. utilizing a lot of repetition but having no real beginning or end, very ambient, very sleepy. so the performances have basically been one long piece that contains fragments from my recordings as well as new sounds. sometimes they work really well, sometimes not, but i really have to have a lot of elements of improvisation in my performances or i just get bored on stage. in my mind i keep going back to the performances of Steve Roden. i spent a week with steve touring Brazil and his performances were 100% live, spontaneous and totally unique to the spaces he was performing in. still after all these years steve’s performances are the best i’ve ever seen, i use him as a benchmark, as a reference to what is really exciting in live performance.
There is a lot of discussion about laptop performances, how “live” they are, if they are too boring or whatever. i really don’t think an audience can always tell the difference between someone who is really improvising or someone who is just playing long sound files with no room for error. so, the debate will go on. sometimes i envy those people who can have a preprogrammed set, to know it’s always going to come out the same, and come out well, but god, that would bore the hell out of me. it’s not challenging enough. i need to allow for error and, i’ll use that word again, challenge.
I’ve been recording all of my performances lately, too, and they become raw material for new studio compositions or possible releases in their own right.
Wich aspect of your work makes you happier? Is there a part that definetly gives you a satisfaction greater that anything else?
Writing music is by far the most important branch of my creative activity. i love photography and design, but music is really my soul. i really love technology and designing sounds but i like even more to see how those sounds become finished works and how they interact with one another.
The ironic thing is is that i never listen to my own music, i am far too self critical. once i finish a cd and get copies back from the label or the manufacturing plant i look at it and then put it on the shelf and move onto the next project. the music is so personal that i’m sort of afraid to listen to it for fear that i will not like what i did. it took me over 2 years to be able to listen to “January” after it was released. i read fantastic reviews of the cd, many people saying it was the best work i had ever done, yet i couldn’t get myself to listen to it. as much as these kind of reviews keep me going and give me confidence that what i do is a success, they put a lot of pressure on me when it comes time to follow up with a new recording. i think one of the reasons it’s taken me so long to make a new solo work is that between “stil.” and “january” i really found a peak of the style i was going for and i’m not sure i can do any better, so i’ve been trying to find a new direction. i always need to challenge myself and keep exploring new sounds and techniques. i think that’s part of the reason i enjoy collaborative work so much, the creative process involves a lot of learning and sharing of ideas. it’s incredibly refreshing and exciting, and this energy reflects back onto my solo work.
Last one: are you planning some new activity for the future that will move in a completly unexpected direction as HAPPY did?
Well, by now it’s no mystery that i’m interested in exploring more pop forms of music. not with an intention of abandoning more experimental styles i already do, but just as a new angle, and new direction to explore. for the past 2 or 3 years i’ve been listening to a lot of sort of slow indie rock, even more than electronic music. bands like mojave 3, coastal, landing… and others. it had a big influence on “every still day” and will probably have an influence on my next solo work.
Christopher Willits and i are going to be working on a new project, the follow-up to “mujo.”.. but we’re going to take it to the next level with a lot more live instrumentation and vocals. we know some fantastic singers and instrumentalists. we really want to challenge ourselves and create a really deep and well executed project.
Other than that, i have no specific plans for unexpected turns. i tend to work very impulsively. 12k will certainly explore new sounds. both of this autumn’s new releases take different directions for 12k. antti rannisto’s “ääniesineitä” is super minimal, almost techno and sawako’s “hum” utilizes vocals and a lot of field recording.
January 2007 marks the 10-year anniversary for 12k so there will definitely be something unique happening around then … unless i choose to wait for the 12-year anniversary.. which may just be more fitting.