Where do the ideas for compositions come from?
Garry Cobain: With sound itself! We try to refrain from being overly intellectual as a starting point, but prefer to push sound, record, process, whatever until something resonates and transports us somewhere where speech and thought become unnecessary. All of our music, whatever the style, revolves around this principle. We believe that it corresponds to something much deeper than the brain or thought, but instead to something more fundamental and resonant.
What were your working methods in the days of Lifeforms and do you still employ methods similar to those of today?
As previously. Brian [Dougans] and I are ‘slaves’ of sounds. Processing, sampling, recording, splicing, combining until we have that resonant “inside” feeling that none of us can explain. Brian and I are in sound together simply because we respond to sound quite identically. Sometimes this affinity is quite creepy and again and again it surprises us. Sometimes we may be arguing about our differences in ‘perspective’ when suddenly something illustrates exactly this so clearly that we simply walk out of the discussion realizing that there is something much deeper in our attunement that none of us can explain … Lifeforms really evolved around the collection of hundreds of hours of organic and synthetic fragments put together with the above effect … I guess things changed a bit around 1997 when we started to develop our psychedelic potential and began to apply our experience to sound the song and the lyrics. This eventually led to the formation of amorphous Androgyne in parallel to FSOL. At their core, they employ the same techniques but with very different end points.
What do you consider to be the purpose of your music and music in general?
Activate these centers and senses that are beyond words, beyond thoughts, beyond the ‘brain’, which in turn can connect with hidden but accessible dimensions. I think our unspoken and non-intellectualized process of working like the one above has always been the same for the past 20 years, but I have never been able to verbalize it in this way before. What has probably changed is the actual frequencies I respond to and the way they are combined. A psychedelic dimension has opened up to me that now instructs much of my work: this has to do with a certain release of focus, an ease with our use of the computer!
What do you think are some of the possible obstacles to making music with technology?
It is quite easy to get carried away by the strengths inherent in a particular computer program rather than imposing your own particular vision of communication. I think making music is an opportunity to discover one’s inner voice, one’s individuality, so using technology as a tool is more important to me today than just being in a technology race to use new techniques first and, therefore, stimulate temporarily. However, computers are great when faced with a battle or balance with your own voice. Without this discourse between the two polarities, I think it is always lacking.
How do you think the role of music changes as our relationship with technology changes?
Technology is used to filter everything today, the entire experience, and while computer music is too often associated with being fairly obvious machine music, this is changing rapidly now and computers will color more and more in very subtle ways. everything from production to editing and sonification of all conventional instrumentation and recording. In fact, this is the biggest revolution happening right now: the interplay between performance and the computer, capturing performances and editing, sonifying, and collaging. I think music is at a critical moment. It can be an activation code for spiritual and revolutionary freedom, or it can become a homogenized adrenaline feed, stimulating all the external “apparent” senses, but without connecting with anything more deeply and fundamentally linked to the great questions of our existence.
3 tips for growers
1. Music is both a discovery of oneself and a discovery of sound.
Ignore the rules, don’t get intellectual, dive into a different center, the heart center, and explore and manipulate the sound until it resonates and creates feeling there. By maintaining this balance between external sound and internal response, you will be guided at each stage of the creative process toward something that is deeply personal and original. Authenticity that others will recognize and therefore enjoy or feel the merits of diving in. This immersion is the ultimate goal of great ambient music.
2. Don’t let technology take you
It is a tool, be the master, NOT the servant. Yes, delight in surprises, mistakes, and the unexpected. Go down the burrows of the tech rabbits to see what can be discovered. But periodically, bring the experiment back to your vision and try to impose that attitude on technology. In that way, innovation is perfectly balanced between innovation of technology and innovation of the soul. Without the other, BOTH of these are equally insignificant!
3. Music can be haunting, it can be contradictory
Don’t be afraid to express the full range of human emotions. It is a common mistake to simply use pleasant, soothing sounds. Great revolutionary music can include any texture you like as long as the sound transports you to a deeply immersive and emotionally charged place. Don’t be afraid to balance the light with the dark, the harsh with the pleasant. Harmonic with dissonant, rhythmic with arrhythmic. Good music always has opposite polarities to varying degrees. Play with them!