This is a text-based interview I did recently with Omar Fadel Hadi from Iraq.
He raised some interesting questions and I hope you find something interesting in my responses!
1- how did you start making electronic music ?
Ans :- Listening to Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle in the early 80’s triggered my imagination. I got a kids’ keyboard and realised you could remove the plastic case and mess with the electronics. My father also bought me a reel to reel tape recorder, which was an amazing gift at that time and got me even more hooked. I would create drone tracks by bouncing across the tape and playing it back at half speed.
2- How did you discover your particular sound ?
Ans :- Do I have a sound? I think I find sounds I like and tend to refine them across various releases. Lately I have been trying to challenge myself not to fall into the same traps as before.
3- What inspires you and what makes you want to
keep producing music ?
Ans :- I get inspiration from everywhere but mostly I’m looking for new avenues in my process. At the moment, I’m very interested in manual creation of sounds using noise boxes, pedals and tape recordings, and trying to keep away from DAW’s like Ableton which increase my anxiety too much.
There’s too much choice now and I’m trying to narrow my choices down, if that makes sense.
I need to keep making music and sound at this very moment to keep my sanity.
4 – What are a few key lessons you’ve learned about producing that other aspiring musicians and producers could take advice from?
Ans :- (i) Don’t over-produce if you’re making dance music. Most club-going people don’t care as long as there’s a beat.
(ii) If you’re making beatless music and sounds, I’d advise being yourself with the caveat that nobody really wants to listen to you playing the same time-stretched sounds through a giant reverb for 30 minutes.
(iii) Music should have a story to grip people’s imaginations. Once they have a story in mind, they can listen to your sounds alongside it and appreciate it more.
(iv) Keep the mistakes – sometimes the mistakes are what makes a track great.
(v) Don’t rush anything. It’s better to come back to a track after a few days, weeks or months with a different mindset. The human brain perceives music differently depending on variable external parameters, so it’s quite a good process to ignore something and listen back later, before releasing it to the public.
I recently made an 18 minute track of granular sounds for my ‘Strange Minds’ series, which sounded great to me for a while, then I thought “nobody in their right minds will listen to this” and excluded it from the release.
5- What outside of music inspires you to create ?
Ans :- Dada, Anti-art, natural gardens and forests
6 – What gear do you use in studio/live ?
Ans :- Hardware
Tascam stereo digital recorder.
Synths
Novation Circuit Mono Station
Novation Circuit
Mutable Instruments Shruthi
Drum Machines/sequencers
Error Instruments Passive Operator
Arturia KeyStep
Korg SQ-1 sequencer
Effects
Eoten B – glitch/fuzz
Koma BD-101 delay
Koma Field Kit FX
Jomox T-Resonator II
Zoom MS CDR70 Reverb/Delay/Chorus
TC Electronic Flashback Delay
Utilities
Decadebridge audio/cv Matrix Mixer
Software
Arturia Pigments
Tracktion Waveform 12 for compiling and editing.
A lot of AU and VST plug-ins
Various iPad applications and effects.
7- What’s next for you as an artist ?
Ans :- More field recording and use of natural sounds processed with the above hard/software.
8- Which 3 artists have influenced you the most growing up ?
Ans :- Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, SPK (pre-1987)
9- Describe your sound for us. What do you want people to feel when they hear your music ?
Ans :- At this very moment, it’s the sound of decaying beauty, entropy, panic, paranoia, calm dreams and mysterious nightmares, the kind which hold surprises around each corner.
I want people to identify that they are not the only ones with fleeting thoughts encompassed in the above. I want them to use my music as an outlet for their troubles, if that’s at all possible. If they’re angry at the state of the world, they can play something heavy from my ‘2525’ album. If they’re in need of comfort, any of the ‘Strictly Drone’ series or S.E.T.I.’s ‘Sleep Environments for Interplanetary Travel’ are the required therapies.
10- Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Ans :- I’m about to start a new collaboration with someone but I’ll keep it secret for now.
11- How does the way you make music reflect the way you live your life?
Ans :- They’re quite similar – I start with all the best intentions and plans but things get chaotic pretty quickly.
Can we learn lessons about life by understanding music on a deeper level?
Ans :- I don’t know but it’s a great comfort when you need something that human or other sentient interaction can’t give you.
12- Did you experiment with other genres before settling on ambient?
Ans :- Not with any purpose. I tried making electronic music with ‘dance’ beats and what I do now is an escape from that. It’s not always ambient…perhaps more like soundtracks or environments. Ideally, I’d like the listeners to decide what genre it is.
13 – Why is Music an important part of your life and what does it mean to you ?
Ans :- I can’t imagine a life without music. It’s a catharsis and a liberating force, as well as a companion whose shoulder you can lean on when you need to.
14- What is it that you learn as a musician from each new album that you compose and record?
Ans :- I’m not a musician myself but I’ve learned that music has an infinite number of possible doorways that you can open and you don’t always need a room full of equipment to make something meaningful to someone.
15 – What is your most productive time of day for writing music
Ans :- Two hours after waking up, whenever that might be.
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