Klimek - Interview with the sound researcher
What kind of electronic equipment are you using? Do you have a studio at home? You play several instruments as well, yes?
At the present time I am producing mostly on a purely virtual level. Besides my mixer, a midi-controller and my microphones, which I am using for outdoor recordings I have three computers I am working with.
I don’t play an instrument. I mean, of course I have used and recorded instruments abused by myself to create sounds and tones, but it would be highly pretentious to call myself a player of a classic instrument. This is a point at which I sometimes feel very seesaw-like, sometimes wishing so much that I would have started to learn classical music composition and also mastered a classical instrument back when I was younger, something which right now would demand too much time and concentration from me. But then again I realize that avoiding this time consuming exercise, which demands an unconditional focus and plenty of discipline, has allowed me to do those things a classical musician couldn’t do and see during his career. High level of virtuosity is rarely reached, has a high price and can become a curse - making you a prisoner of yourself and slave to your once developed/established/marketed/style/aesthetics.
It’s very intriguing for me to see the shift, changes and development in the performance of electronic music and the recent mixing of classical instruments with computers and computer music. On the one hand, I see the role of computer software being reduced in live settings to an effect device (for example recording and looping the played sound) and on the other hand, I am observing a high output of new hardware and software opening doors to a new dimension of virtuosity for computer music performers, but who mostly are missing the opportunity to practice and master a device properly. I still can’t help listening to Terre Thaemlitz’s “Super Bonus,” for me one of the biggest pieces of computer-produced music to date.
Can you tell us about some of your future projects?
I am trying to shift with my work to forms less focused on music and sound. I feel that those issues I have tried to address in my releases so far are rarely of interest in the music world I have travelled through. I have prepared three works about the Upper Silesian region in Poland, which will be a mixture of participatory art projects, installations, music events, historical excavations, documentations of oral history and social work. The next Klimek album will be ready soon, and as mentioned above it will deal with soundtracks, pathos and the relationship between storytelling and “real life” (an alternate title for this album is True Lies).
I am in the middle of working with a vocalist/chanteuse, which is very exciting to me. She has a beautiful voice and I hope we can find a productive way of working together. The “Ghetto Ambient” project is still open for me and I will have to think more about a comfortable home for tracks from those recording sessions (and start to record even more tracks) – preferably in combination with my own photo-based visuals.
Klimek will be performing with Murcof at the Club Transmediale Festival on 30 January. The event will be at the Carl Zeiss Planetarium, Prenzlauer Allee 80, Berlin.
