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interview to AEMC head Louis Nelson
taken Nov 21, 2021 - Feb 04, 2022 and still unpublished anywhere else
LN: First of all I want to mention I don't have questions prepared, I'm just spontanously thinking of questions a long the way, if you have a topic you want to talk about please say so!
That said: I am very curious to know how you started out as an artist. Which music did you make? Did you first start off as an acoustic musician for instance?
DP: You won't believe it, I still don't perceive myself as an electronic musician. It's generally difficult for me to classify what I do as any definite genre, I want to try everything, although I have to pay for it with some superficiality.
Let's just say I am a man who makes music mainly using a computer. I started with guitar and keyboards, then devoted a few years to mandolin, and now I do a lot of percussion. It just so happened that God did not endow me with virtuoso superpowers, but endowed with stage fright in excess, so that computer seclusion turned out to be a saving channel for my creative energy. So my music became electronic quite recently, when I felt that this genre gives me the opportunity to do everything alone - or almost alone (AEMC is a separate story), and with relatively little cost. At the same time, using a computer, I can also write music and arrangements for acoustic instruments, which are then performed by professionals in their field.
LN: When was the first time you started playing guitar/keyboard? Did you grew up with a lot of music?
DP: I was lucky. In my early childhood, I had my own room and my own record player with a set of children's records. Children's composers in the USSR were allowed more than ordinary songwriters: borrowing from ideologically suspect genres, and sound experiments, sometimes very radical, and just fooling around, to the delight of themselves and people. There was a lot of different music in our house, but since it was important for parents to understand the meaning of the songs, Western music almost did not penetrate to us. With the exception of Joe Dassin and the Paul Mauriat Orchestra, whose influence I have not got rid of so far 🙂 Of course, the whole air was saturated with disco rhythms then, but at home we had heart-rending Russian and Gypsy romances, semi-underground authors-performers, who for some reason were called bards, and Soviet smash hits in huge numbers. As a toddler, I imitated my father's big tape recorder, performing these hits with all the tape defects, gluing cracks, noises and interferences.
At the age of seven, on my own initiative, I signed up for the boys' choir at the Palace of Pioneers, where everyone was accepted, regardless of hearing and abilities. I stayed in the choir for six long years, consistently going from descant to bass. Mostly we sang songs by Soviet composers about a happy childhood, plus some classics and folklore; in some songs I managed to master all the parts during this time. I have not lost my respect for the correct voicings and admiration for the bold polyphony so far.
In parallel with the choir, I studied piano and theory. I won't say that it was very exciting, but somehow I avoided a lifelong allergy to classical music, which often hit graduates of music schools. There was little creativity in this: composition, arrangement, improvisation were almost not taught there, and I fell in love with playing scales and textbook works for hours only after 20-30 years. But the training of hearing was tough, and I am grateful to my teachers for that , although then, of course, it did not seem like an ideal pastime :)
I remember another fun of my childhood, the passion for which I have not been discouraged so far. When all my relatives gathered at my grandparents' on holidays, I liked to arrange improvisational performances. I would take some simple song, give my younger cousins something that could somehow sound (usually it was toys) and come up with his own part for everyone (which, of course, was immediately forgotten). I don't know about the audience, but for me this plastic gamelan was a pure delight! So many years have passed, and the musicians still don't understand what I want from them, even when everything is written with notes 🙂
LN: Can you share a link of some of those USSR children recordings Dmitry?
DP: I like how this interview turns 🙂
Even in my wildest dreams, I could not imagine that I would have to recall such things for Dutch interviewer :)
This song called Winged Swing from a children's sci-fi film was a huge hit in the USSR; it was sung everywhere by both children and adults. I still sing it to my child when pushing him on a swing.
In the next song about a mongrel puppy that looks like all breeds at once, I was entrusted with a particularly responsible role - I barked like a dog between the verse and the chorus. We were filmed several times on regional television, but, unfortunately, I did not find these footages. Apparently, I tried very hard that even after six months, people on the streets asked if I was the boy who barked on TV? Up until the release of the AEMC record, it was the highest point of my musical career :)
And one more song about a happy pioneer childhood with a pronounced four-voicing.
Now it doesn't seem complicated, but as a child it all seemed like a real mystery, especially when all the voices formed into something whole.
LN: Haha yes the internet is a strange place! I will listen to the links this evening!
DP: And few more words about my early influences. Great Soviet composers often earned their living by composing music for cartoons and films for children. So the music of Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidullina was familiar to me (of course, it was too complex to be loved). But the Soviet Winnie-the-Pooh with the music of Moisey Vaynberg impacted on me the most. I still listen to this music with great admiration; surely it was the first source of my love for odd time measures, tonal acrobatics, walking bass and clumsy melodies! I’m still surprised that I didn’t become a rapper under the influence of the Soviet Winnie the Pooh.
LN: That is amazing. I really enjoyed the music, the rapping pooh was incredible and very surprising.
Would you say that your music is very much influenced by these early soviet compositions? And you said, you didn't have a lot of western music laying around in your youth... when did you begin listening to western music for the first time (if ever)?
DP: Whether I want it or not, the earliest aesthetic impressions largely determine the creative manner of any adult artist. At first, it really bothered me when they told me that there were some Soviet notes in my music; I wanted to distance myself as much as possible from this background. But after all I found the strength to look at this matter from the perspective of a researcher and tried to figure out what in this legacy is worth to pick up as a flag, and what it is desirable to part with as an anachronism.
As for Western music, of course it was all around: open windows, thin walls, the first cassette recorders. The authorities could limit it on radio and television, but they could not forbid people to listen to it and distribute it. The air around me was shaking with disco, and, of course, I liked it, and even then I was surprised how different this music is from what my compatriots perform, even when they copy it note by note. However, there were exceptions. The Latvian band called Zodiac brought me and my peers to indescribable delight - so I got hooked on space disco at the age of 10, and I still respect this genre in various forms.
From Zodiac, a short path led to Didier Marouani and Space - this was how my long and very smooth immersion into electronics began. In general, until the age of 18, I was quite promiscuous in musical tastes and greedily grabbed everything that was available. If I limit myself to what influences me now in one way or another, I can recall Electric Light Orchestra, Jean Michel Jarre, Pink Floyd, Queen, A-ha and Yello.
Only now I realized that US music did not exist in my childhood at all - except of course Michael Jackson. And when I first started listening to American pop music, I couldn't understand where these people put the melody and why it could be so popular.
LN: Thank your for these amazing stories, they might seem normal or small to you, but for me this interview... it's the same intensity as reading a good biography.
So you have been making (or peforming) music basically your whole life... did you make it your profession? If not: did you at one point try to earn money as a composer/performer?
DP: I'm sorry if I'm too talkative 🙂 Hope, we will be able to shrink this stream of memories to an acceptable size. I would not like to turn this interview into a questionnaire made up of dry facts, especially since they are completely dry in my case: I cannot boast of any great musical achievements. In fact, my real musical biography took off only 10-12 years ago, and it was a very smooth climb. I've played pirate folk punk and mantras in an electronic arrangement, accompanied meditative practices and contact improvisation jams, performed a lot in vegetarian restaurants, made song arrangements to order. So far it has not become my main profession, but I do not rule out that it will happen someday.
LN: Well I disagree, I haven't read one single dry.
Before I ask you to elaborate on "pirate folk punk and mantras in an electronic arrangement, accompanied meditative practices and contact improvisation jams".... I think AEMC is full of people who are greatly talented and work hard on their art. I often ask myself the question (and I want to ask you the same): Does living in a world where your biggest talent (or one of them) isn't being recognized (in a professional/ financial way) makes you bitter in any way? Or would you even prefer this situation, where art is more a hobby than a profession?
DP: We have come to the moment when my Ego begins to split. I am pleased to see myself as a kind of Zen master who accepts things as they are and just tries to do what he likes as best as possible, without really bothering about world's giving back. But lately I've been clearly hearing a loud voice of a subpersonality, for which recognition is much more than a couple of encouraging comments on a social network. Yes, I want to be paid for my work, and paid a lot, and I want influential media to recommend my albums, but at the same time I don't want to betray my interests and inner needs. It sounds fantastic, especially considering my age, but while I close my eyes to these mundane, but quite natural desires, the internal split is intensifying and making life more difficult for me.
LN: That's very well put, I think you just described the sentiment of a lot of artists. Did you got tempted at one point though? In other words: did you betray your interests and try to reach a bigger audience? And if so; please share a link of the piece. (last question before we go on to more positive things!)
DP: It's probably important to say here that, although I feel like an experimental musician, this experimentation is more an inner feeling than a specific style of music. It's more about polystylicity, about the ability to move freely between different cultural layers. In addition to ambient, minimalism and free improvisation, I am interested in baroque, jazz, dub, art rock, funk, folk and world music - and in each of these directions I want to do something. To be more precise, all this in different proportions seeps into what I do. That's what I feel like the big experiment of my life. For example, the latest work at the moment, a duo with Leonid Perevalov, sounds almost like easy listening. There is nothing there that could be considered experimental music, but for me an important intermediate result of my experiments with modal improvisation, percussion groove, harmony, composition and mixing, not to mention the showdown between my subpersonalities 🙂 Thanks to Lyonka, whose clarinets added a little sourness and bitterness to this honey.
In this regard, the book about Schnittke's film music that has just been published helps me a lot. He was forced to devote most of his time to working in the cinema, it was his only source of income for a long time. For the first years, he felt the strongest mental discomfort from this split, but then he was able to find positive aspects in this, which, on the one hand, trained him severely, and on the other, gave him many valuable opportunities. In the end, even in his academic works, he moved away from the stubborn avant-garde to polystylistics and stylization, and even included some fragments of his "light" soundtracks in them.
LN: Do you usually find inspriation because you started messing around/ composing? Or do you start composing the moment you have an idea about the musical direction/content?
DP: I try not to think about inspiration at all. This is a very capricious lady, to whom it is easy to get attached. I work every night, and my projects have been developing for a very long time: weeks, months, years - so whether there is inspiration or not, I always have something to do. Of course, there are times when some melody or idea comes that needs to be fixed urgently (usually it happens in the morning, at the moment of awakening) - in this case, I can move my plans (and sometimes the plans of people around) to pay attention to what is so impudently climbing out. But usually I try not to do several projects at the same time, preferring to dive into one thing.
LN: Do you have any musical plans for the future? What would you like to create the most at the moment?
DP: My plans really don't like being talked about and then cruelly scoff at me 🙂 Therefore, I have to think a hundred times about what I can say out loud. There is, for example, one bold idea for our chaotic compilation, but for it to materialize, a lot of things have to match. A duo with Jonathan Roberts have came to the stage of mixing; I really like the ambient sound of his saxophone. But my main work now is the new album of the avant-prog virtual band Compassionizer, where I am responsible for bass synth and percussion*. By the way, four AEMC musicians made their remixes on the compositions from our latest album, so we will soon have a rather unusual addition to this already unusual music. And speaking of remixes, an experimental remake of my piano album Fourteen Mornings is almost ready, in which AEMC musicians also took an active part. I must say that the level of work of my partners was so high that I had to seriously improve my skills in order to somehow match it.
I hope I don't talk too much, and those who look after my behavior will pretend they didn't hear anything 🙂erring to dive into one thing.
*Since Compassionizer is a mostly Russian band, I quitted it after beginning of full-scale war, despite the strong antiwar position of their leader, but anyway I'm still proud of the album we made together.
LN: Oh I didn't know of the Compassionizer, I'm listening to An Ambassador in Bonds. So cool!
A while ago you said: " I've played pirate folk punk and mantras in an electronic arrangement, accompanied meditative practices and contact improvisation jams, performed a lot in vegetarian restaurants, made song arrangements to order."
And I said I'll get back to that. Now is that time. So: you release music under Bayun the Cat, you play in Compassionizer. Can you elaborate on the things you have done?
DP: What was before Bayun the Cat is actually a prehistory. This is not even a search for myself, but an attempt to break through my own fears and complexes. It was an important experience for me, which in many ways turned me and hardened me, but this period was not marked by any significant achievements that I could be proud of. It took me a second time to get married and change my country of residence for this bubble to finally burst. And this, of course, is the great merit of my wife Lala, who believed in me more than I myself 🙂 She is a wonderful artist and it gives me great pleasure to make videos of her work and combine those footage with my music. Something like this.
Of the first works recorded in Kyiv, it is worth remembering a duo with pianist Taras Fenik, recently released on Aural Atmospheres. Although the main star here is of course the virtuoso Taras, I am truly proud of these meditative and passionate improvisations especially considering we never played together before this recording.
I am a big fan of baroque concertos, which in their fluidity and infinity seem very ambient-like to me. From time to time I make more or less straightforward attempts to combine these two genres. So, for example, a small Concerto for Aquarium Fish appeared - these simple pieces I played to my wife when she was pregnant. Without touching the musical text of the original, I allowed myself to experiment a little with the sound.
Just the opposite in sound was my recent collaborative project called The Ambient Flute Orchestra, where I tried to combine the efforts of five flutists who played without hearing each other. I am still surprised by this work, I listen every time with a strange smile on my face.
So far, my only full-scale solo album is the set of meditative piano improvisations Fourteen Mornings. I work slowly, my interests are constantly changing, one crazy idea replaces another, so, apparently, the LP format is not very suitable for me, and the next one will most likely have to wait a long time.
LN: Thank you for the elaborate answer and for all links!
In the liner notes of your flute project you write: "The result doesn't promise a simple listening experience". When you are composing, do you think about your audience and how to reach them? Or do you take yourself as reference?
In other words: what are your thoughts about inaccessible music?
DP: At some point, I realize that right now is the time for something very complicated, or vice versa, now I should not hesitate to be simple and understandable. In fact, the result is never too complicated or too simple 🙂 I can think about how it will be perceived if I want my music to be sold or licensed, or if I compose something commissioned, for example, for some dance performances but this rarely happens.
It's much more important to me to be surprised by my music myself.
LN: Can you describe what you hear when you listen to your own music? Does your music tell you something about yourself?
DP: Rather, I tell the music about myself when I create it. Even if my head is busy composing or mixing, the music is somehow filled with my feelings, my experience. But, of course, it is important for me that the end result be perceived as something more than my complaint about life or some anecdote happened with me a yesterday. It's optimal when my creation separates from me and flies into the sky 🙂 That's when I'm surprised and fulfilled.
LN: Interesting! What is a composing technique or method that you like?
DP: It's how I am that I always need to try different things. The things I probably most interested in are classical (or rather pre-classical) counterpoint and improvisation. Today I can be passionate about serial techniques, a week later I study the brass voicings in the big band, and a month later captured by tribal polyrhythmia. Yeah, it is difficult to dig deep in this mode, but I am not sharpened for digging by nature. Thanks to Communal Music, I tried a creative sampling for the first time, which for a person with notes in his head is like walking on his hands.
Speaking generally about my methods, I am haunted by the interaction of the random with the thoughtful. No matter what theoretical debris I dive into, one imp will definitely jump out of the snuffbox and offer to roll the dice - well, for example, here. But if it smells like anarchy, a dude with a stone face and a black suit will certainly appear who needs to put everything in its place. That's how "we" live. Sometimes it comes to a fight 🙂
LN: Thank you so much Dmitry, I never dreamed that this interview would be so interesting. I will ask a couple of questions and then we are done I think.
What I am curious about: About what piece are you most proud? And why?
DP: In such cases, they usually say something like "I am proud of the work that has not yet been written."
But since I am only learning to be proud (and learning persistently), such an answer would be an attempt for me to slide to the usual rut of false modesty.
Therefore, I will still venture to answer more specifically. More often than other works I remember Two Felt Pens for clarinet and trombone. There is nothing radically experimental in this duet, but this is a place when my love to Moondog and rarely performed old composers like Jan Dismas Zelenka and Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf is blooming lush. This is also in many ways about my personal history, so every time I hear this melody, I'm happy that all these strange conclusions, decisions and turns, which my life were full of - all this gives its fruits.
LN: Ok, interesting. So you are primarily proud of that piece because it somehow represents your life? In other words, you are thinking about how genuine your music is, rather than how "good" (whatever that is) the piece is. Or is it something else?
DP: When I compose, I think more in musical categories than narrative ones. I can come up with some kind of story, but it will be more of a structure than a script. It gives me pleasure to watch how what is brewing and boiling inside me finds an outlet in the things I create, but I prefer not to control it consciously.
LN: What is your latest musical obsession? Which musician is your biggest inspiration at the moment? And which non-ambient artists are big inspirations for you?
DP: I listen to a lot of albums and don't get attached to anything. I probably listen more than three times to classical records only. I really love baroque guitar and lute, especially Sylvius Leopold Weiss. This is the kind of music that I can easily forget to turn off, and it will play until morning. A big discovery for me was the Portuguese composer Carlos Seixas - his guitar sonatas are completely unlike anything else Baroque. Lately I've been listening to a lot of ethno jazz, afrobeat and other exotics. The recent album Saet El Hazz by Maurice Louca has deeply sunk into my soul. This is the type of improvisation that inspires me: with the head in the new, with the feet in the old and with the heart in the now.
LN: Brian Eno once said: "Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”
Do you agree? Is this relatable to your music?
DP: I think when Brian Eno said that, he didn't imagine how many subgenres, how many versions the ambient of the future would have. Try, for example, to ignore dark ambient. You will either turn it off, or you will soak it completely, even though there is often nothing to cling in this music. You can try to read something in parallel, but at least half of your attention will still be absorbed by music.
As for my music, I am often told that it is well perceived by the background. I try to take it for granted, although it is certainly more pleasant for me when it's listened to attentively. In this regard, friendly comments from AEMC colleagues, of course, sound too flattering - after their thoughtful words, reading something standard like "well, it would be fun to play some game to this music" is like an emergency landing, and not the softest.
LN: Do you want your audience to listen very closely and multiple times to your composition or do you prefer that they are listen to it as background music or as meditation? In general I mean, because you compose very different genres.
DP: Of course, I am pleased when my music is listened to again and again, when they return to it after some time. The world is full of disposable music, I would like to believe that mine is definitely not like that :)
On the other hand, the number of listenings does not always translate into quality. It gives me much more satisfaction when my music is deeply lived by the listeners. When listening to it, people can move in a spontaneous dance, or plunge into deep meditation, or rush to draw something, or cry from a an influx of incomprehensible feelings, or describe their experiences in long messages, or engage in long deep sex.
They may hear it once and not even know what it was, but this experience will be very important to them. When someone tells me about it, I'm over the moon with happiness!
LN: You said that you tell music something about you when you compose... could you try to put into what you tell? Are there reoccuring themes?
DP: I'm quite a slow character and a big fan of stepping on a rake many times, so I'm provided with topics for self-study and fuel for creativity for a long time :)
But I try to burn this fuel without residue, so that the results of this creativity are valuable in themselves as music, and not as an example of art therapy. Playing and composing, I accept myself, my abilities and limitations, oddities and mistakes. Even achievements sometimes have to be purposefully accepted, because there is so much resistance and disbelief inside. This is a big work, and creativity in it is the last stage, but it is what gives this work meaning and purpose. I hope my little light is noticeable and somewhat encouraging (even if the music doesn't sound like that).
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