VIRDEM on "How To Water Your Synthesizer"

Hey, Clara. I'm alright, and yeah, I'd say I'm quite ready. Go on with the questions!

Well... mostly I got bored of always making the same shit, right? I mean, I see This Ends Here just as a betterment and polishing of the maturing concept in This Could Have Continued. After a bit, it gets repetitive, so I just... kinda came back to IDM, infused with jazz, drum & bass, chamber music and just me fucking around on digi-modular synths. I guess also a bit of minimal and microhouse, but mostly the previously mentioned [genres]. Don't get me wrong, post-rock is to this day my favorite genre, but with Ontario Burial Service Orchestra (VIRDEM's side project) I just moved the post-rock content from VIRDEM to there. Plus, with the upcoming Liability Waiver LP2, I've just kinda been addicted to making jazzier, more technical content. [...] But I still tried to keep How To Water Your Synthesizer a light listen... except for some tracks.

God, uh... shit, I mean... Markus is probably gonna kill me for talking about it, but it's a complete change in genres. All I'll say is we leaned in the more electronic part of the electroacoustics... and that it's nu jazz. We're not making straight jazztronica, but, y'know... it probably won't be what you were expecting... Either way, I hope it's well received, and if we can, actually add vocals. That's all, for now.

Well, I didn't directly take inspiration from any artists or records, but I think I can hear some Four Tet and Squarepusher in it... maybe because of the instrument choices and, of course, the heavy jazz influence. [...] But recently I've kind of been out of my usual listens, I've been on stuff like This Town Needs Guns, III Considered, Tortoise, and one of my new favorites, Xander Naylor, absolute genius. Oh yeah, and of course more post-rock, primarily God Is An Astronaut, The Day We Left Earth and Camera237. All of those are amazing, recommended to everyone. And yeah, that's all so far.

Oh, like none of it. I have over 300 unreleased tracks right now, which I'll never put out.

Ooh, well! For the arrangement I mostly use FL Studio and BandLab... my, uh, "ways", are pretty unconventional to most people that witness me produce and compose in real-time. First things off, I put in plug-ins in the mixer for the sake of mixing whilst arranging and composing. My sound design is pretty simple, due to my synthesized sounds being mostly made in VCV Rack and then processed in FL with effects and EQing. My modules are just a basic polysynth with VCF, LFO, some cool modulation and distortion modules... and perc models, of course, tightly intertwined with randomizers and glitch modules. The drum machines are either just basic FPC drum machines of which I just customize the transients and EQ to fit in a certain frequency range, which works like a charm even in the built-in FL Studio EQ underneath the effects tab on the mix channel. My guitars are just me playing my classical and just absolutely demolishing it with effects to make it sound like an electric or distorted, or just... stock Morphine generator guitars, really. It's really simple to make good sounds without spending a cent, you just have to put yourself to it. For the composition... yeah, it's just me applying what I've learnt via jazz harmony, dissonances becoming consonances with certain chord extensions, tensions between tones, use of tritones, et cetera et cetera. Also voicings are really important: I think if you can voice chords properly, even just basic 7-chords, you're halfway there on the job.

Most of my songs don't really have a melody... unless it's a loop, or me soloing on the lead instrument. My tip? Use the blues scale a lot, and as long as you keep hitting the I and V of each chord in the progression you can hit whatever dissonances, of course with a certain harmonic awareness of your next move, and of course try to be consistent with it.

I kinda listen to everything, really. I mean, I can switch from avant-jazz to contemporary folk to IDM to post-rock, in whatever stream or era of the previously mentioned. Recently I've really been focusing on glitch and jazz-influenced post-rock, as I said before. But I think the regular listening artist for me is Squarepusher, at least now. If I'm not up to the intensity of Jenkinson's [Squarepusher] stuff, probably just put on The Idiots Are Winning by [James] Holden or Millions Now Living Will Never Die by Tortoise.

You just struck a nerd-nerve right there! Mostly post-Hegelian philosophy books: anything by Stirner, Žižek, Deleuze or Hegel himself are some of my favorite reads, but if we're going narrative... probably Camus and Danielewski... oh, and Kafka of course. I mean, my two favorite books are Danielewski's House of Leaves and Kafka's The Castle.

Twin Peaks and Eraserhead. I think we can end this one here.

Another easy one: Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I mean, the pure mix of atmosphere, virtuous instrumental technicity, emotion, improvisation and composition is just insane. Plus, they're very supportive people, they have fair pricings, a very set moral base and the best politics I've seen in... any band, really! Love them with my heart and always will.

Definitely Autechre. No one else does what they do like they do it. They still sound like the future even from their '90s albums. I don't think anyone will ever compare with their genius. Amazing, amazing duo.

Aleph Zero is... the best I can describe what it is, it's a multi-media community and independent label made for artists of all kind. As of now we just take graphic design and music, but we'll be taking way more soon: like literature, videogames, photography, videography and digital visuals. I've also been planning with you and Daniel to open our store as soon as possible, Nullspace Store. On the "why", well... I made Aleph Zero Productions because I felt like an actual independent multi-media community was missing, and I think we should give all small experimental artists of all kind a chance and a place to feel welcome in and interact with other artists. Get critique, feedback and tie friendships, all free of charge. Give them bio pages, sponsor them, make them work with other artists... I just think it was a beautiful concept and I wanted to make it a reality. I mean, we're still small, clearly, but I hope more people come to us because we really are trying to build a compact and supportive community. There's many struggling and very talented artists out there, and I would love to push them towards not giving up, giving them an audience and make their dreams a reality. Also music classes would be really nice to organize, but that's probably going to be in the far future.

I've collaborated with Eris Valden of Novarise and my buddy Markus Bauer of my band, Liability Waiver. I created many bonds with all artists, I mean, I have many friends in here, like Sp!nner, Lux, AURVEX and elitester. I also worked with post-rap trio Black Box Recoil State, which... God, I'll never recover from. They are mad, in the best way possible. I must say all people so far have been lovely and reasonable, and I can't wait to meet more in the future.

Absolutely. At least Ontario Burial Service Orchestra will be having CD releases of LP1, and maybe shirt designs. Aleph Zero Productions is also gonna definitely have shirts and baseball caps with the logo, 100%. I am also looking forward to pressing CDs of Sp!nner's THE DARK or Star, and Liability Waiver's In Circles and upcoming II.

Oh, yeah. Definitely. I live in the middle of fuckin' nowhere, right at the tip of the boot... but this "nowhere" has a long musical history of pretty amazing bands. Plus, both of my parents are musicians that have been in bands that experimented a lot and pushed boundaries. I thank infinitely my parents for not only existing, of course, but for setting such a path for me and always believing in whatever I was doing. That's all from me.

Thank you for the interview, Clara. I'll see you around.