Lost And Sound
Lost and Sound is a podcast exploring the most exciting and innovative voices in underground, electronic, and leftfield music worldwide. Hosted by Berlin-based writer Paul Hanford, each episode features in-depth, free-flowing conversations with artists, producers, and pioneers who push music forward in their own unique way.
From legendary innovators to emerging mavericks, Paul dives into the intersection of music, creativity, and life, uncovering deep insights into the artistic process. His relaxed, open-ended approach allows guests to express themselves fully, offering an intimate perspective on the minds shaping contemporary sound.
Originally launched with support from Arts Council England, Lost and Sound has featured groundbreaking artists including Suzanne Ciani, Peaches, Laurent Garnier, Chilly Gonzales, Sleaford Mods, Nightmares On Wax, Graham Coxon, Saint Etienne, Ellen Allien, A Guy Called Gerald, Jean Michel Jarre, Liars, Blixa Bargeld, Hania Rani, Roman Flügel, Róisín Murphy, Jim O’Rourke, Yann Tiersen, Thurston Moore, Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family), Caterina Barbieri, Rudy Tambala (A.R. Kane), more eaze, Tesfa Williams, Slikback, NikNak, and Alva Noto.
Paul Hanford is a writer, broadcaster, and storyteller whose work bridges music, culture, and human connection. His debut book, Coming to Berlin, is available in all good bookshops.
Lost and Sound is for listeners passionate about electronic music, experimental sound, and the people redefining what music can be.
Lost And Sound
Dorian Concept
Oliver Johnson, the synthesizer maestro better known as Dorian Concept, graces our latest episode with tales of musical evolution from "failed jazz artist" to electronic music luminary. Renowned for his collaborations with Thundercat, MF Doom and Flying Lotus, Johnson opens up about his unorthodox journey and the creative philosophies that guide him. We journey through the making of his latest EP, "Music from a Room Full of Synths," recorded at the Swiss Museum for Electronic Music Instruments, where jazz, funk, and hip-hop merge with club sounds.
Another topic that came up was on how Dorian navigates artistic identity and societal expectations, revealing how personal experiences can forge a path to authenticity. From childhood piano lessons that prioritized play over pressure, to encountering musical influences that shaped his tastes.
If you like what I’m doing with Lost and Sound, please like, rate, review or subscribe to the show on your podcast app of choice – it really does help.
"Music for a Room Full of Synths” is out now, check it out here.
Follow me on Instagram at Paulhanford
Lost and Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica
My BBC World Service radio documentary “The man who smuggled punk rock across the Berlin Wall” is available now on BBC Sounds. Click here to listen.
My book, Coming To Berlin: Global Journeys Into An Electronic Music And Club Culturet Capital is out now on Velocity Press. Click here to find out more.
Lost and Sound title music by Thomas Giddins
playing keys for thundercat and flying lotus and releasing his own music on labels like brain feeder and ninja tune. My guest today, dorian concept, gets called a synthesizer virtuoso. But if you're expecting a tech heavy conversation all about superhuman musical skill sets, you're in for a surprise, because after all, all this is Lost in Sound, the podcast that meets the artists that work outside the box. But first, lost in Sound is sponsored by Audio-Technica, a global but family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio-quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high-quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to AudioTechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. Ok, it's really cold, so let's do the show. Thank you, hello, hello and welcome to episode 153 of Lost in Sound.
Speaker 1:I'm Paul Hamford, I'm your host, I'm an author, a broadcaster and a lecturer, and Lost in Sound is the weekly podcast where I chat with an artist who works outside the box, from global icons to trailblazing outsiders and emerging innovators. We talk music, creativity and perhaps that most daunting part of being an artist the practice of life. Previous guests on the show I've spoken with have included Peaches, suzanne Chiani, jim O'Rourke, jean-michel Jarre, mickey Blanco and Thurston Moore. And today you're about to hear a conversation I had with Dorian Concept. You can listen to my BBC Radio documentary the man who Smuggled Punk Rock Across the Berlin Wall by heading over to the BBC Sounds app or on the BBC World Service homepage, and my book Coming to Berlin is still available in all good bookshops or via the publisher's website, velocity press. Okay, so how are you doing? I hope you're really good. I hope you're having a really good day. It is really really cold in berlin. I came down with like a really random sniffly cold yesterday, which I'm still. I'm still sort of picking myself up from, so I a little bit coffee. I might cough or sneeze as I'm talking to you here. I'll try not to. Obviously I don't want to get snot all over the microphone, but anyway, I hope you're doing good.
Speaker 1:You're about to hear a conversation I had with the Viennese synthesizer virtuoso Oliver Johnson, who's been recording and playing music for almost two decades now under the name Dorian Concept. He's a self-taught autodidact. He supposedly once described himself as being a failed jazz musician and that electronic music was his compensation for never making it. As a jazz artist, he first started getting attention back in the mid to late noughties after releasing a series of YouTube tutorials back when YouTube was just emerging and that era, that golden era now, where musicians and artists were putting stuff out on MySpace taste makers like Giles Peterson, marianne Hobbs and Benji B and in the past decade, as well as a series of solo albums on labels like Ninja Tune and Brain Feeder, he's had some pretty high-end credentials when it comes to people. He's played for, touring in Flying Lotus's live band, playing on records by Thundercat and MF Doom, and his music does feel a bit like it inhabits, like with those artists, a curious and really exciting bit of space where elements of the past like jazz and funk and hip-hop sort of refracted and and projected into the future somehow. Well, we had this conversation because of a new ep that he's put together, called Music from a Room Full of Synths.
Speaker 1:The EP was recorded at the Swiss Museum for Electronic Music Instruments, or SMEM abbreviated. It's a home to thousands of keyboard synthesizers and electronic music equipment dating back to the 1950s equipment dating back to the 1950s and the word synthesizer, virtuoso, gets bandied about when people have talked about dorian concepts in the past. But fear not, what you're about to hear is not a muso conversation. Um, it's not a conversation fixated on gear or on extolling the virtues of, like, really, really high-end musicianship.
Speaker 1:If anything, I found Dorian to be a very deep philosophical guy, very much in contact the impression I got, anyway with the way instinct and intuition and being open and curious plays a role in his creative DNA, and you're about to hear that in a second and if you haven't already, please give the show a subscribe, give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice, whether that is Apple or Amazon or Spotify. And yeah, so this is what happened when I met Dorian Concept. Okay, so how are you doing today? Are you in that process yet of unwinding for the festive season, or does the work carry on for you over Christmas?
Speaker 2:You know, right nowcember seems to always just be crazy. The to-do list is kind of um maxed out and at a point where it feels like it's just yeah, it's just a burden and, um, I kind of like to have a lot to do. But there's also a point where just yeah, you don't really know where to start and what to finish, and so it's you're in this flow state as well, which is kind of it's all right, but, yeah, I'm a little bit overwhelmed at the same time.
Speaker 1:So I'm just yeah, yeah, same with me. Actually, I feel like the work or just the amount of things to do increases but the will to do it decreases, and, um, it's a weird time. But do you do about like new year? Are you someone that like seizes on like things like a new year as an opportunity to sort of think about things fresh, to like maybe think about what you've done, like what creativity you've done for the last year, and reappraise it? Or are you just kind of continually keep going?
Speaker 2:yeah, I don't know, I think I feel it's just like an extra task to do that. You know, I'm just trying to like I don't know, I think I feel it's just like an extra task to do that. You know, I'm just trying to like, I don't know, I'm just trying to get rid of all these tasks, and it's weird. Yeah, it's like you said. I feel it's one of those things. I guess, just by communicating and talking to people, it's when you find out that you're not alone with it, because I even even I forget about just like just social stuff, like just talking to friends, and but as soon as you talk with other people, everyone seems to be in that like kind of crazy december. It's weird, like, whatever profession, job or family situation you're in, no, I'm just looking forward to kind of having a bit of free time and a bit of um, yeah, just less obligations maybe, and it's always.
Speaker 2:It's always a tricky one, I guess. When you're self-employed, on one hand you're just happy when you've got projects or stuff to do, things to finish, so it's a sign that things are going well. But then, with that kind of, comes this point where you have to learn to maybe not overdo it and you kind of have to. So I think, like, the longer I'm doing this you know, I just turned 40 in september and like I'm trying to feel out this point, because it's like you can't, really I feel you can't rationalize that much. You kind of have to feel out when you hit that point of like, uh, now I'm over my capacities and uh, so yeah, I'm just, that's the maybe the one thing that I'm just looking forward to when I get back to that middle part again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I can relate to that. We never quite know what the future is going to hold, being freelance and or just working in the creative industries, and planning a calendar ahead is always quite hard. And then you do get these big build-ups like this time of year, don't, don't you? You know, um, but you know, is it what I mean? I'm loving, I'm loving the ep, and I want to talk about it's. It's an ep, but it kind of feels like an album as well. Do you what? Where do you stand on it? Is it more of an ep or an album for you?
Speaker 2:I think, just like lengthwise it's an ep because, you know, it's like 22 ish minutes or 20 to 22 I think, and it's maybe it was.
Speaker 2:It just has to do with this whole trend of shorter albums having become quite a thing.
Speaker 2:You know, like 20-25 minutes being kind of released as albums nowadays doesn't seem to be too unusual and I'm just a big fan of more, uh, kind of long form listening, like I'd say, like the. It's the same with, like both live shows and albums. I think that you kind of peek at it like 40 minutes, yeah, and with special albums they could go over an hour, like there's there's a couple a special, there's a couple special ones that, yeah, they could just go on forever. So I think it was just this like knowing that it's um 20 minutes made me a bit like self-aware about not wanting to call it an album, but at the same time I do agree that I feel the story's there, you know. So maybe we sometimes compartmentalize these things too much into be it this or that and it maybe doesn't really matter that much, but it's, I would say, just maybe on this, like just for my discography, I'll call it an ep, but also in my heart it feels like a project, yeah, so yeah, it's fully realized.
Speaker 1:It's about something, or it was. It was and I wanted to talk a little bit about that. So music for a room full of synths came about in quite an interesting way. Did you record everything at the swiss museum for electronic music instruments?
Speaker 2:for electronic music instruments. Yeah, exactly, it was all recorded and all even mixed and, all you know, edited, arranged there in its entirety. So like it's nine tracks, and there's one track that I excluded because it didn't fit the. I don't know, it just didn't fit in. But the nine tracks were recorded in 10 days and each track is kind of an homage to a day there, and like one of the tracks called Kushul, for example, and that was a day where me and a friend went to get like a saffron brioche at this bakery around the corner. So there's all these little yeah, it's pretty much like about these everyday, or the track Outside Yourself, for example, I recorded. Well, it was an interesting one because I just remember having the volume on very low and there were two people in the room like the whole day with me just communicating and I just recorded while I was also there with them. So it wasn't like kind of, hey, quiet down, I'm trying to record something here, like it was just me doing a track next to hanging out with people. So there's all these little stories attached to each day that I was there. When I took it home I didn't think much of it.
Speaker 2:I did have this issue with arranging music for a long time, where sometimes, as electronic musicians, we can get caught up in this whole loop.
Speaker 2:You just work on a loop in many instances and then you just ask yourself, how am I going to arrange this? And it's all very Excel sheet-ish where you just have these blocks and you have to find a way to think how do you stretch it, how do you repeat it. And the interesting thing is, I feel, with the residency there, I kind of found an interesting solution to that dilemma by just doing longer takes of whatever instrument was there to a click track. So sometimes in track three, the touch, I just recorded a hi-hat and I was just hitting the eighth notes and then I just remember I'll just randomly stop the pattern and then I'll do it again, and just through that I kind of layered every other track in directly into the arrangement because I didn't edit that long hi-hat take, for example. So there were, yeah, a lot of little different um tricks that I started using, but maybe I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it was all kind of recorded there, all done there, and that's really exciting um, because I think there is this on one hand, you know you are in some ways seen as being like in inverted commas a gear guy, but then there's also, you know you are self-taught and you do have this sort of autodidactic approach and what you were saying there so very feels very much in touch with being very intuitive and seeing what happens within a session. You know, and incorporating things like that. And I was wanting to know for you, like how important is, I guess, the balance between sort of like gear and intuition? How does that play out for you? How do you manage to keep feeding in fresh ideas or like not being beholden to being too technical, like you also mentioned about how, like you know, arranging can be a bit like looking at an excel sheet sometimes. You know um with these two worlds. How do they balance out for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's a good question. You know, I feel I just recently had I gave a workshop here in vienna and when I just kind of went through my past, it felt like there always were these two parts in my artistic identity. And the one was so that at a very young age, when I was starting to learn, uh, the piano and had piano lessons as sheet music just never translated as a, it just kind of, and I think for a long time I kind of took that as a deficit or I was trying to hide it, and I was just very fortunate that I had a piano teacher at that time who was also very playful in her approach. We did like a lot of kind of graphic notation and she had, like these kind of was one piece called like cat and mouse, and we would just run up and down intervals, me and her, so she yeah, I think it just shows how important you know, like if the first kind of contact is, you know, not threatening or there's no pressure involved, and if it's not like if someone's not going to screw in with your curiosity, then that's already a good teacher.
Speaker 2:Kind of screw in with your curiosity, then that's already a good teacher, and that was in this case, you know, yeah, very lucky for me, especially in a time, like you know, the 80s and 90s, where teaching often was very authoritarian, especially in music and the arts. So I just kind of was able to go with that intuitive approach and obviously I did have to learn pieces, but I learned most of them by just looking at my teacher's hands and it was more like a photographic thing and just, yeah, one thing I have today is just this feeling for intervals and it's like, I mean, I think the language is just that. So if the finger just has to, you know, the farther away you kind of push a button on on the clavature, it's just like the higher the note gets and you can visually, just at some point, you know, get a feeling for what that means when it comes to your translates, to your ears as well. So it's just a different kind of visual system maybe, and so even here already I kind of maybe found a bit of a weird, you know something that's just very much my own system and that maybe took the whole and maybe the technical system of the notation, which was the correct one or the one people over a lot of, you know, decades have just agreed to use. Maybe that's something that's similar to the synthesizers in the world of electronics. There are some things that I can touch on, like a feeling, or just my ears, that I work with when I kind of work with a synthesizer, where things do make sense.
Speaker 2:But then there's this whole landscape of just I don't know if it's just things that inherently don't interest me and, um, if there's a part in me that is, you know, almost like allergic to certain things. So I don't, as again here, like be it a deficit. So I don't, as again here, like be it a deficit, or maybe I don't even have to judge it. But something that I've seen as a deficit now is just like, yeah, I just always seem to find a system that just suits me.
Speaker 2:And with electronic music, I think the big connection to it was always just video games, as a kid and as a teenager. So there was this component of being playful with something that's electronic and obviously just having this 16 to 32-bit soundscapes that I grew up with at the time. Yeah, those two just kind of connect this playful, intuitive approach that I was lucky enough to develop still as a kid and then just being obsessed with video, video games, those two things just now. Still, that's right. Maybe it still makes sense that I have a bit of a more playful approach to these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's funny how some of the things that we we sometimes, early in on our lives, we feel are like, like you mentioned, deficits, actually can become our strengths, you know, if we think about it in a different way. You know, I I remember at school I didn't learn music because we all had to learn the recorder, like the recorder flute, and if you forgot your recorder that day, you were made to use, you know, like a measuring ruler instead and play a measuring ruler, and it just felt so authoritarian to me that I didn't. I I waited till I discovered weed and things like nirvana before I kind of found a way to play instruments.
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, it's interesting. That's also what I think in so many things concerning your childhood is like, if you just don't have pressure, like that's already a good thing, if you can just play without people trying to shape you or get you somewhere. Cause once you're a teenager, like as you said, it was the same for me that just that just kind of felt like the beginning of it all was when I was just like consciously deciding on the music I like not like what people showed me or, and I think it's good to show like it's. I'm not trying to be like a waldorf waldorf, but like I believe that it's good to show kids stuff. Like you shouldn't pressure. That's again, it can be pressure to be like, yeah, you do whatever you want, you know like.
Speaker 2:I think that can also be pressure because like, yeah, some kids might want guidance or just like to just see things that you do, and so that's why I think, yeah, the more you can just see, if you can just alleviate pressure in any way possible for a child when it comes to learning something or being um, I think it'll always pan out into some kind of um unique approach to something when they're older, because maybe they'll just have had time to develop internally in relationship to it as well, instead of a validation seeking external like a system.
Speaker 2:And it's weird because, like at the same time I am, I do believe strongly in like some kind of tradition and music and like the older I got, the more I also got interested in, you know, looking backwards through music and just seeing all the things that were there. But I do believe that it, um, in the best case that's also something that just comes through personal interest and not through this obligation to know it before you can do it. It's already a burden. If you tell someone you have to know all this before you can do something, you're just kind of burdened, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do really 100% agree subjectively with what you're saying as well. Like again, the danger of the other side is, like you mentioned, the Waldorf approach of just like I guess, like kind of anarchy, but I feel like it is relating to what you're saying. I think it's about finding ways to translate ideas that relate to people, and you know technical ideas, things like that like how can the language become relatable to people so that they can find their own way to understand it and transform the language into something that is useful for them and useful for communicating with people, perhaps?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's just maybe still a bit of a society will always have a hard time just acknowledging differences, maybe because it's maybe society always is based on kind of categorizing, and just that's the same thing with academia that you know, I also come from a very academic household and my parents my mother was a teacher and my father studied philosophy, history and then worked with students all his life, and it's um, and yeah, and I was the artist, you know. So it's kind of like um, it obviously made sense for them to just be like, hey, this is, you know, you just study music, you go ahead and do that, but then I couldn't, you know. So it's like um, yeah, then then you end up obviously trying to mask and hide that you can't do it, but it's um, or in my case, I think I've been pretty straight like up front with it at some point, just like, yeah, this at this one, it won't work for me this way, you know, and I just had to kind of find a way for it to work. And um, I feel like maybe we're slowly seeing just through people being able to share their own stories, and that's maybe one of the upsides.
Speaker 2:Also, the whole digital media and the possibility of everyone just being able to, you know, share their story once they have a phone in their hand. It's not like you don't need institutions or you don't need um a big group of people to sanctify, like sanction, something to be like this is right, this is blah blah, obviously like the tricky side with on a political spectrum, with fake news, blah blah. Yeah, I'm just speaking creative, purely creatively, like there's a it's good to have the freedom to just say things like yeah, I'm, I do this differently and that's why I don't know if you um. In the press text, I also quoted marshall mcluhan. Right, yeah, organized ignorance. Um, there's like this whole talk he did on organized ignorance.
Speaker 2:There's this whole talk he did on organized ignorance, which I thought was very interesting.
Speaker 1:I don't know that talk. I'll check it out, but I'm quite familiar with the medium. Is the message or the medium is the massage. But how does that apply for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's interesting, I don't know where. He just had a talk where he talked about this phenomenon of organized ignorance, saying that you know, at a certain point knowledge gets in the way. You know, like if you have a lot of scientists and they're trying to solve a problem and they can't get to it, he said he just needs one person that doesn't know anything about this field, that has the confidence or that just that says no, I know how to solve it. But in most cases these people don't come from these circles. You know of people that have been studying, and so he just says that, basically, a lack of knowledge at some point helps solve problems that you know we can't solve with our knowledge anymore. So he um yeah, and he was interesting, as he also mentions that it's kind of knowledge that creates ignorance, the same same as how rich people create poverty.
Speaker 1:So it's like, yeah, it's just an interesting talk and maybe I was yeah, because I studied in a school in Salzburg in multimedia art and there was, yeah, we just had this learned a lot about Marshall McLuhan and I think his takes on the time we're in are just very still obviously I mean you, you call yourself, or you have in the past called yourself, a hobbyist songmaker and that idea again, maybe going into what you're saying there about mcluhan, about maybe not being an expert, um, I guess, in terms of like you know, you're well over a decade, maybe sort of 15 years or so, into being like a, you know, being a professional musician, professional artist. What does that give you, this idea of being like a hobbyist? Is it about like not being an expert? Is it about like not becoming too sort of set into like a particular pattern with with your stuff? Is it about sort of keeping something back for yourself? I was just quite curious about how that defines for you oh yeah, interesting hobbyist.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I've ever mentioned.
Speaker 1:Maybe someone wrote that about me, or but it might be accurate, it might be one of those press releases, yeah, okay no, but it's, it's, yeah, it is pretty accurate, I think.
Speaker 2:Maybe, maybe for me, yeah, I definitely just try to keep a beginner's mind when it comes to, or just like the novice kind approach, because it's it always seems to just help me, not to, you know, get too stuck. At some point in my creative development I feel like the more professional, and especially again here maybe we're talking about the whole technique of something, or just like knowledge in the sense of knowing what to do, and there is a point where it kind of made things a little bit like tighter for me, you know, and it never really, maybe it never worked for me in the sense that I felt like I got better at something by learning more. But it's and I also don't want to, I don't want to talk down on knowledge or learning something, but I just purely mean this, you know, in the sense is like identifying myself with a kind of a vast array of things that I know about stuff and I can. For example, I know a lot about gear or music genres or specific, uh, artists or an era, and like I personally never felt like I could cover all of this stuff and it's um, so it for me it just feels more natural to, yeah, just do something and then, purely, maybe by feeling or intuition, judge if it's, you know, if I see it as being, uh, worth sharing somehow, and that's how I've just kind of kept going. And the interesting thing is also, when I look back at my whole catalog, there is a there's definitely like a kind of um, a red line that kind of goes through it or there's a characteristic to everything, but it's, yeah, maybe it's also just made me, um, a bit more adventurous, you know, by not getting stuck to a certain genre or marrying with a certain aesthetic or, um and uh, I do see my kind of, or have seen my, the skill that I have, especially on the keys and everything. It's developed over the years.
Speaker 2:But even in parts there there's certain harmonies or certain melodies that I still use, that I've used 15 years ago, but they just, I don't know, maybe I'm a bit of like, I'm just a bit traditionalist in that sense that I don't feel like I need to. Maybe there's also this when it comes to music, there's often more pressure to artists having to keep developing, whereas I've seen the visual arts you can just do your thing, you know, yeah, and it'll like the progress will show itself. Naturally, you know it could be very limited means that you work with and if you just continue doing it, like you just see it change and morph anyways. And there's and that's kind of maybe also how I see my craft, like I've been doing the same thing for this whole time in a weird way, like it just feels like I'm repeating things rather than always. You know, in this case I've changed the equipment, the gear, the place where I make the music, but I just want it to be an expression of what I, of my craft. So it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and going into that, you said before that you see yourself, or in the past that you've seen yourself, as a failed jazz musician and the electronic music was kind of a compensation for not making it as a jazz artist is. Is that along the lines of what you're talking about just there, or is? Is that move on to something else, do you think?
Speaker 2:no, no, yeah, that's. I mean, it's definitely a point that you know it ties back into this whole, um, yeah, to this thing of me for a long time thinking that because as a teenager I was, you know, obsessed with a lot of like the 60s and the music of the 60s and the 70s jazz, modal jazz, parts of the kind of early fusion releases Herbie Hancock, miles Davis, bitches Brew and some Coltrane records. So there was just like music I was obsessed with and it was music that also I also wanted to be able to play but that obviously, through my lack of, you know, being able to read sheet music, I just couldn't study it. And, yeah, electronic music just kind of saved me, saved me from the, this feeling of having to do it, you know, the same way as most people were doing it, which meant to study an instrument, play with a band, blah, blah, and it just kind of let me, you know, kind of record the layers by myself and it's.
Speaker 2:It's just a thing I see often with many people that have kind of gone their way a little bit, it often starts with a bit of resentment, you know, with like being left out from, like feel like you're left, or a rougher kind of teenage time, you know, when you're just like you feel like you're left out, you're just a bit odd, and what you do you, you might be good at something but it doesn't.
Speaker 2:People don't really get it, or like um, or people try to compartmentalize you but it never feels like you're trying, it really suits you and stuff. And I think I've been going through a lot of that too, just that feeling that I um, yeah, just that I don't really fit in anywhere and that it just gives you that extra bit of or it maybe even forces you to just have to do things your way and it's um, always a risky move because many people do that and they never you know um, or they only get praised once they, once they pass away, or they just never get noticed and um. So in my instance it was very fortunate that I actually ended up, you know, getting kind of recognized and being seen for it and um, and then when you get older you have to kind of get rid of that resentment of you know having to prove it to someone, or show or stick it to the man you know, because that's not like an energy you get old with, I think.
Speaker 1:So it becomes a bitter energy then, doesn't it? It becomes. It becomes something that actually ages you if you don't. Um, yeah, it was like I think when you're teenage you can have a stooped neck and you can chain smoke and it looks kind of cool. And then, when you feel a bit older, it's like actually I have to start doing some exercises now and learn how to stand properly, you know, and have my back straight. But yeah, no, it's interesting what you're saying there about how it changes. And I mean so. You grew up in Salzburg, I grew up in Vienna, I studied in Salzburg, right, okay, yeah, okay. So I mean what you mentioned earlier on about like video games. You know what were the sort of childhood influences, musically, that you first picked up on?
Speaker 2:My childhood actually, we were mostly listening to radio and my mother was listening to a lot of classical music, just a little bit of Beatles, so very, I would say, kind of standard for like the 80s and early 90s. Nothing too specific, but it's, I think, around the time I was a teenager. 80s and early 90s nothing too specific, but it's, I think, around the time I was a teenager, so mid to late 90s. Um, one of the kids I was playing basketball with just showed me a tupac album. So it was like the whole west coast um, the west coast sound, which always, I feel like at that time, was also a bit more kind of musical and less grim than the kind of east coast you know. Wu-tang clans seem to be more that's like the grittiness and the darkness of the? Um at new york were kind of mirrored there a bit more, but la, it seems always felt a bit more. Yeah, oh, I'm sorry phone, no worries, I, I just had to turn it off.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the LA hip hop had a bit more of a brightness, I guess a bit more of a bounce.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. I mean, obviously the lyrics were also. The lyrics were definitely still just as tough and real, but it's, yeah, the musicality behind it. I think that's just like the samples they took, and there was also synthesizers used there with the whole like leads, the lead sounds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and the kind of David Axelrod samples or I guess it was like it was more like interpolation, wasn't it? Like with Dr Dre, for example? So it had that, I don't know. There was that sort of yeah, definitely, whereas I think of Wu-Tang Clan, I think of I love it, but it's it's this sort of scratchy, grainy noir, whereas the LA stuff was more yeah it was like a rounder bouncier sort of sound, yeah, exactly a bit more kind of popular and musical and just like um.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just more kind of maybe um, traditional also and just a sense of like yeah, chords, melodies and like um, and also be a sunnier, maybe even at least in in most instances, how I remember it, or you know, like the whole snoop snoop dog album with a lot of like kind of singing hooks and like people were kind of singing and the refrains, stuff and but it's, yeah, I think it was kind of just, you know, as we were talking about with before, maybe there's a certain zeitgeist and at that time it was like rap music was capturing just something fascinating for young people. I feel like the whole journey backwards also started through just realizing that a lot of the motifs and things inside of the songs are sampled from old jazz, soul and funk records and at the same time, through the means of production it comes to just the history of it. You know also got produced on samplers or synthesizers or used and like there's. It's so correlated and related in the way it's used and it's always very contemporary. I think like rap music always mirrors something very contemporary, both in technology and in like spirit.
Speaker 2:So, and also the late 90s in Vienna with the whole downbeat scene, the you know Kruder and Dorfmeister. It also felt like the first time there was something kind of happening. So like through this discovery of just like rap and hip hop and jazz and funk and soul music came this kind of knowledge of the scene in vienna which was also spirited, yeah, the whole, like vienna scientists and so like more trip hop and um, which also was very sample heavy but like it was kind of like beats without rappers already and then yeah, yeah, and going into the idea of the hobbyist as well.
Speaker 1:It's you know me or you, we're not going to be miles davis, you know we don't have, we don't. It's an interpretation or like a filter through our own experiences, and so, um, and I find that that is sometimes that. Can you know that the idea, the difference between, like, imitation and inspiration comes into play there, I think, as well. Like I, I grew up in a place where, um, there were a lot of bands and most of them were covers bands and most of them were like emulating the technique of other artists, um, rather than perhaps fight, and I don't think there's anything wrong in that like, I think that there's like a beauty in a craft to kind of sounding, you know, just trying to cut the exact tone and the you know sound exactly like something else, but, um, just as maybe as a process of figuring it out.
Speaker 1:Really, you know, um, but um, being inspired by something, perhaps in like a more abstract way. Like, I think that you, you are, and I think a lot of artists who do really interesting work are it's, it's something else, isn't it really? It's it's taking that inspiration from um, I don't know, like not being prohibited by thinking, okay, miles davis did this with bitches brew in 1969. It's like, okay, how does that, that album, make me feel?
Speaker 2:yeah, exactly, it's very much about the sub, like just kind of finding a way to channel that subjectivity and this like um. Yeah, like you said, the like, the way in which you see it, and maybe also just the kind of um. It's just always interesting to see how things correlate and how um, especially with instrumental music. I think it's so fascinating because you don't um, you don't have this um restriction that lyrics bring with them, where you feel like you have to listen and understand something which is to to me, most music with lyrics anyways, it's just closer to literature than to music in many instances. Or like theater, maybe you know, like I see it as kind of you portray or you present something kind of and now I think that's also kind of been changed where a lot of the and many songs where you can hear either rappers or singers not really being audible anymore. It's a lot more just about the vibe and about the expression which I, which I personally love, because that's just where music shines again. But, yeah, instrumental music and um and the, I think this era of yeah, I think you could always and that's also one thing you know once in late 90s, and then once I found out about a label like labels, labels like Ninja Tune or Warp Records, so a lot of the UK kind of indie labels that were just doing very something. And I think we just also found out about it through having seen Window Licker on you know late night MTV or something. So there was an interesting time to see kind of these things cross over into like mainstream media and into the kind of pop music channels like MTV, even though they were very obscure and something about the late 90s or like the 90s in general was, I still think, very, yeah, unique in the sense that you could have very obscure things mixed in with pop culture. Maybe it's kind of getting closer to that era again. Interestingly, I feel it's a lot more common now again too, but it's yeah, it just kind of gave us all, like me and my whole kind of friends and insight into nonconformity.
Speaker 2:I think you know, and that you can. You don't have to oblige and follow all these ways to do things and it's, I think, something that teenagers just love hearing, because you're, anyways, you feel like such a mutant and so weird and just like a reject from society and you'll kind of hang out in all these places that no one wants to go to at night, like parks, or you are like an outcast as a teenager, you know. So that's why, and the part of me, yeah, and outcast as a teenager, you know. So that's why, and the part of me, yeah, and I think it's. It's also the first time you just go through this big range of emotions that you just before.
Speaker 2:Just yeah, and I think music is just like you said again, yeah, just a soundtrack to this like intense time and it's maybe that really is like a big source for a lot of the things going forward is just to still be in touch with this whole, this kind of mess, you know, from back there, and not trying to clean it up too much I love the way you describe that.
Speaker 1:I I do relate to that like. I know, when I'm making work that I feel really happy with because it's not a conscious thing anymore I think it used to be when I was a little bit younger of of feeling that feeling of like. When I think music hits, you hit hit me particularly strong, like from the age about 16, 17, 18 years old. You know when, like you're saying, when you are an outsider, you know just not necessarily even being an outsider aesthetically or like within a, so like the social groups I was in or wasn't in, but just in terms of like, you know you're too young for this and you're too old for that. You know you're in between things and and you're discovering all of these new things.
Speaker 1:And the way music responded to me for that we think with me it was, yeah, it was like things like Nirvana and Early Rave as well, shoegaze, indie, things like that. You know I discovered things like Miles Davis and hip hop a little bit later on. You know they weren't quite my entry points into music, but I think for quite a time that was something I strived for, like some kind of essence of just like that feeling of how I felt, and it didn't matter. It didn't have to be the music, it was just like maybe it could be. You know, smoking a cigarette on a winter's afternoon would tap me into like this feeling of it or like the way certain words are phrased.
Speaker 1:You know, when I'm writing, you know I get that sort of feeling back then and and I don't think I'm so bothered about that now I feel like I don't know whether it's like you were saying earlier on about like you have to get rid of and I'm not saying it's like bitterness, like, um, you have to leave behind certain things of your young part of your life for the next part of your life, um, as an artist going forward. Do you feel um, do you feel like less um beholden to your past? Now? Do you feel, do you feel free, going forward?
Speaker 2:um. I think it's like um. A part of it will always, you know, just be there and it's um in both instances. I think a part of it will always like a part of the whole mystery and a part of like all these, or the whole playfulness, the curiosity that I just like see as my main, as the main sources for any creative work that I do. I think they're still directly connected with something, um, that I was just feeling back then. So it's kind of important to just kind of harness that and just to kind of keep the um, keep that connection there. But at the same time, all the stuff I also find problematic about my past, it's kind of like I think you can kind of understand them and then in the best case, I just not try to work from that emotion but also maybe doesn't eradicate, like you can't erode that ground and like the soil from it. It's a bit of like um contaminated spring, maybe that's there and you just don't have to, shouldn't drink from it anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah but it's still like the water is still flowing and you have to kind of so it's, yeah, like I've always had this um interest in kind of, I've always been interested in looking back and, um, there's always been a certain sentimentality that I've worked with or that I've become to kind of seen as, um, being inspirational, and I also understand that it can. There's some people where it's a burden and they need to just kind of always look for the next thing to be or do, and some people just love, you know, just having, you know, a clean cut with their past. But for me there's always I don't know, there's just still interest in looking back and I think there's just as much potential in the past as there is, you know, in the future. And it's just, um, it's about how willing, your willingness to just kind of look back, uh, with the new vocabulary of things that you just continuously learn as a human, you know, with every experience, or if you see a certain I don't know, for me, um, this also just means that with every project or something I finish, it's an invitation again to see things as done on one hand, but it just opens up a whole new set of questions and that just make me, you know, go both ways again, like, yeah, what do I want to do next, but also, I don't know, I've always just been.
Speaker 2:You know, obviously it's a very common thing in a sense for people to say, like working with limitation is a. And maybe many people like debunking this, like, yeah, you know, you can do whatever you want, you don't need limitation. And but for me it's it's shown absolutely true, as can be that limitation also in the sense of like singling in the things you want to look at and just really focusing on, be it it's not just a certain piece of gear or an approach or but just singling things out in your life. Somehow that just helped me to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for them. You know, it's. It's also what I said before with, like, even with the music, even with my approach of repeating many chord structures and melodic structures, if I keep on doing them, like, after two years something just happens, you know, and it just like. It's almost like there's a switch that flips. And I feel it's the same with, like.
Speaker 2:You know, when you've trying to mine your own past through your life, sometimes you just find this one little thing and it'll only pop up because you've kind of obsessed over it a little bit. So it's yeah, and you can get lost there too. It's dangerous too, I guess. Yeah, and you can get lost there too. It's dangerous too, I guess, because you can get lost. And obviously I think we've become aware of like the tricky, uh, like nostalgia as being a bit of a curse and a burden as well, and especially sentimental, like now in our society too. I think sentimentality isn't always. It can be a sign of not going, you know, wanting to go forward as well, but it's but instance. I just feel like you can still extract things from the past that make sense to my future at least.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not like saying there's one golden route for this. These are just different perspectives and it's very intricate different ways that you can see these things and talking about taking things from the past. This is a very cheesy segue into talking about the synthesizers at the SMEM for the new EP. I don't know much about this. Can you tell me a little bit about what this building building is like? You know what its history is like, what it's like going there?
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's, it's a museum in Switzerland, in Fribourg, in the Western part of Switzerland, and it's very, yeah, just a very unique place because it holds over five or six thousand instruments electronic music instruments, so synthesizers, effects, pedals, mixers and organs, so anything that basically needs an electronic plug to kind of batteries to start it and switch it on.
Speaker 2:You can kind of find it there from the last like 60 to 70 years and it's a collection that, as I understand, was started privately by an actor, a swiss actor, that seemingly collected many synthesizers without being a musician, so he just had this.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I remember this correctly, but I think he was obsessed with a band from the 80s, maybe genesis or, but yeah, I have to look at that up again and he just, uh, continuously bought gear and it's um, and then at some point invited some people over and to show him what he had bought, and they were so surprised that seemingly, the next thing, one thing led to the other, and they were just like, yeah, let's continue what you've built.
Speaker 2:And then they turned this into a museum that's become very, a very popular destination for people that, like over the last years, for people that are just, yeah, interested in getting a glimpse into the past and um, because obviously this is a bit of a niche thing, but you know, many of these instruments are the source for so many songs, be it dance music, pop music, whatever.
Speaker 2:There's some kind of patch on some kind of synthesizer and you will play some kind of melody or chord and anyone will recognize it and yeah. So they just kind of mirror all these instruments. They mirror something specific about one of the decades that we've seen or been through or archived, and that's what makes it so fascinating, because it's, yeah, because I think I would say up to 20 years ago, all of these instruments or maybe around 20 years ago still, many of these instruments were selling for very low prices and with the developments and kind of the software side of things, uh, when it comes to music making, they were all kind of seen as just um big junky things that we don't need anymore, because now we can do this all from our computer with a midi keyboard.
Speaker 2:and it was just like it's just over the last 20 years that people realized, yeah, you can't, can't, you know, fully replicate. You may be sound wise, you can replicate it, even though it's also that's one of those things that's up for debate.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like a similar I would say to you know some alternative like medicine, things like globally, or something Some people will be like yeah, this works or this doesn't, and it's the same with the analog synths, and but something that's obviously very real about them is just um, I think they do all have a certain character and they all have their own sound, they all have their own story. They all have their own smell too. Um, it's um so very. It's just a part of our history and um fascinating to now get to that point where we can tell stories with these museums.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you feel a bit at all like a kid left alone in a toy shop?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. So like the first time going down there, like first evening that we arrived to Fribourg it was, I think I've took a picture of myself and I've really kind of looked happier, Because it's yeah it's just a beautiful sight to behold and also maybe just to know.
Speaker 2:On one hand, obviously I had to know I could just like run around and just take whichever synth I wanted and try it out. But it's also like, yeah, just joyful to know that these are archived and taken care of and there's some really caring and knowledgeable people taking care of these instruments. It's a very cool place to visit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you listen back to the EP, do you hear the music? How much of it do you hear the music and how much of it do you hear? The memories of being at that place recording it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think at some point the music always kind of just it does capture something of a memory for me personally, but it's also I'm kind of happy that it doesn't like hold the like. At some point even I like now forgot which gear I used. It was becoming very intuitive with my approach there, because you had to kind of learn how to navigate with so many things to choose from that at some point maybe there were a couple songs that I really just on one day I just recorded two or three synthesizers and that's it. So again, I also learned that I had to kind of limit myself in order to get somewhere. It's also like maybe on the contrary, also there's a bit of a.
Speaker 2:I just feel a bit haunted down there too. You know, there is something kind of awkward about all these old instruments and maybe this record a friend of mine also says it sounds very alien to him and I kind of like this idea that it's a bit this ghoulish. You know the sense talking especially when you do something intuitively and, um, you kind of let the, you try to let those instruments also speak for themselves or to other than you know, planning on what you're going to do.
Speaker 1:They're just like more maybe a bit less like being left alone in the toy shop and a bit bit more like left alone in like toy story, the characters story coming to life yeah, exactly, that's kind of that's a good description.
Speaker 2:Yeah it. For me it was a bit bit about exploring the characteristics of all these individual characters. I think maybe that's also what I've always liked about gear, because when you work on a laptop you can get all these different, you have the option to choose from thousands of different instruments. You can just click through them. But when, when you're just like when there's just one instruments and there's just a certain range of things you can do and there's just a certain sound that you can, that you have to kind of accept, so it's it's also very I don't know, it's kind of very human. You know it's like whoever is in front of you and whoever you have to deal with, be it at a counter, counter or at a meeting or just opposite of the train you know it's kind of like you're that's where whoever gets your attention is going to make you, you know, think about who it might be. I just like to speculate.
Speaker 1:That's a nice way of looking at it, actually. You know, yeah, and you've worked with some incredible people. You know, if I think about, like thunder car, flying lotus cinematic orchestra, would you I mean, I'm it's probably hard to like pick one thing that you've learned from collaborating with people, but is there? But I'm gonna ask you anyway, um, is, is there something that like just sort of stands out that I think sometimes we can learn things just very simply? You know, like, from from like one short exchange, and then we go oh fuck, I didn't think of it that way. You know like, say, for example, with flying lotus, was there anything that going in and working with them just changed your outlook?
Speaker 2:yeah, 100. The one thing that just springs to mind instantly was when I was at the. I was in montreal with thundercat once. Um, there was quite a long time where they had this thing called the red bull music academy, which was run by some very motivated people that also were based in germany and cologne, and it's a very sweet group of people. That's yeah or um, you know it was. They got money from red bull and did whatever they kind of wanted, which was very cool, and they just had a very open approach to um and a very interesting, like very good curation, I feel, on the front of which lecturers are kind of people they invited to participate and hang out there, and, and me and thundercat were there in montreal in 2017 and I remember us kind of recording a track together and he always he's obviously just like an incredible, just a virtuoso bass player and he's his timing is just like so tight, and we were, I remember us, kind of recording something to quite a fast track, maybe 190 bpm or something and I just remember him kind of nailing everything that he was playing on like over the click track and, um, I was doing something on um, on a core chronos on um, on this kind of workstation.
Speaker 2:I was playing some drums on a workstation and then recording some keys as well, and I just had this feeling that I, that my timing was always kind of drifting and um, and obviously I was maybe at that time I didn't notice that I was maybe trying to just like, um, yeah, I was kind of comparing how well I could also, you know, play to that tempo, just as I feel like he nailed it so much, and then he kind of saw that I was getting a bit frustrated and he just um, very casually, just said, hey, man, don't worry, that's, that's you.
Speaker 2:And um, he just kind of embraced how my timing is, you know, and how I and it's weird because up to that point I also remember whenever recording music or when, uh, doing, uh, recording loops, I would always just do it as long as I felt like I had one loop, that kind of fit the song, and then I would use that and never since that point.
Speaker 2:That's why, when I kind of got the confidence to do more like long form recordings and, you know, just like doing three minutes of a certain synth melody, and the interesting thing is that I feel like this because my timing, which at that time often felt like was always a bit off, like it just wanted to be itself. You know, and that's like now it's just a feel I have and I can embrace that like side of how my rhythm feels and it's actually like and, yeah, just kind of took some, um, you know some incredibly gifted bass player and, um, very sweet person, steven, to just be like, hey, you know, that's you like, it's yeah, sometimes I think maybe the outside, people from the outside can see things in you that you're maybe trying to work against, and they can just be very. And he was just so on point with it and made it so clear that, yeah, it definitely changed my whole outlook on just recording my playing, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a beautiful story. And that goes back into what we were talking about, or you mentioned near the beginning, about how certain things that we think are our weaknesses or our defects, if we look at them in a different way, can be our strengths.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, it really ties into that and how that's 100 true, it's, it's uh, totally linked and that's like the metaphor yeah the metaphor.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um oliver, thank you so much for chatting with me today hey, thank you as well, and, uh, all the best, paul, yeah okay.
Speaker 1:So that's what happens. Uh, when me, paul hanford met dorian concepts for the lost and sound podcast and we had that conversation on the 16th of december 2024, so if you're listening to this podcast the day it came out, that happened yesterday. Um, dorian's album or ep, rather the music from a room full of synths is out now and if you like the show and you haven't already, please do give it a subscribe. Give the show a rating and a review on the platform of your choice. It really does help a lot. It really gets the podcast known and spread about and makes it popular and all those nice, nice things. If you're thinking about like buying me a Christmas present or just doing a bit of Christmas karma, that is the thing to do. But anyway, whatever, I really appreciate you listening.
Speaker 1:And if you want to hear more of my voice, like this time on the BBC, you can listen to my radio documentary the man who Smuggled Punk Rock Across the Berlin Wall by heading on over to the BBC Soundsc sounds app or on the bbc world service home page. And my uh book coming to berlin is still available in all good bookshops or via the publisher's website. Velocity press audio technica are the sponsors of lost and sound, the global but still family-run company that make headphones, turntables, cartridges, microphones, studio quality yet affordable products, because they believe that high quality audio should be accessible to all. So, wherever you are in the world, head on over to audiotechnicacom to check out all of their range of stuff. The music that you hear at the beginning, at the end of every episode of lost and sound is by my good friend, thomas giddens, hyperlink in the podcast description.
Speaker 1:And so yeah, that's it. Um, I might, if I get time, put out another episode before the end of the year. I don't know yet. I don't know. It's right now. I'm on the street in neukölln in berlin and it's really cold and I'm just trying to juggle up whether I fancy getting another coffee or not or whether, like, that extra amount of caffeine is gonna shoot me over the edge, shoot me really far over to the edge of the other side of being, where you have a cold and you feel a bit like nose runny and you just don't know what you're doing because you've had too much caffeine. So I just don't know all of these questions. Whatever, I hope you're having a fucking brilliant day and I'll chat to you soon. Thank you.