In musical terms, Iceland is probably still best known for its 1980s export, the Sugarcubes, featuring pop oddity Bjork. In recent years, Sigur Rós (pronounced See’er Rose) have been adding their name to the list of famous Icelandic exports with their freaky trip rock featuring songs with lyrics comprised of a language they made up themselves. While this might not leap out as a PR and marketing man’s dream job, add in the fact that the songs seldom fall short of the 6 or 7minute mark, making any radio plugging tasks nothing short of a nightmare.

Nightmare is a word I stumbled upon more than a few times while doing my research before we met Sigur Rós. They are notoriously monosyllabic and extremely introverted in their approach to selling themselves. Interviews often degenerate into yes/no sessions. As I pondered what to ask, it dawned on me that with my reasonably strong west coast Scottish accent where people often misunderstand me was I really the best person to interview Sigur Rós? Probably not, but interesting, well, hopefully it would be….

From the bare-footed stage performances to the fact the ‘Jonsi’ (singer/guitarist) plays the guitar using a violin bow, nothing seemed remotely standard about Sigur Rós. The violin bow had me thinking of Led Zeppelin but there is no standard guitar rock to be found. The eccentric singing style and tripped out whale like sounds had me thinking Radiohead but it’s typically slightly less intense and, as Liam Gallagher one described Thom Yorke as a “googly eyed little fucker”, with Sigur Rós, thankfully there are no “googly eyes” on display.

As you can imagine, the amount of contradiction with an act this untypical is quite impressive, relentless in their refusal to change or play the corporate rock game, they are actually signed to a major label. Even more impressive is the dismissiveness about their collective output. “Our songs are about nothing,” they proclaim. The complete lack of desire to succeed has seen them cut their touring from the long gruelling schedules normally associated with bands at this level down to 3 and 6 week stints. Commercial success, or fringe amounts of it, found its way to Sigur Rós with their most accessible album to date, Takk. While many bigger names in music are waxing lyrical about the genius in their soundscapes – supposedly Chris Martin of Coldplay had their records playing in the background while wife Gwyneth Paltrow gave birth – the commercial radio station still seemed nothing short of sceptical.

After many years of making music, there was perhaps a definite intention to make the 2005 ‘Takk’ album more accessible if not commercial, Sigur Rós disagreed choosing to employ the ‘natural progression’ argument. They later followed up with the 2008 ‘Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust’ which was well received. Currently we eagerly await the release, reportedly sometime next year, of their latest effort which they announced at the end of May had finished recording.

We met up with Sigur Rós to discuss life on the road, life off the road, imploding band stories, flirtations with fame and a desire to be awkward in the face of stardom. Here is what they had to say…

Eddie Leonard: Seeing as you’re far better known now than when you started out, is there more pressure to make an album a specific way. Is there a difference in being popular from trying to become popular?
Sigur Rós: No not really. Who do you mean from?

Is there more from yourselves, pressure in the group?
No, no, not really

What about pressure from major labels. You do have a major label deal in the USA?
No, no, we wouldn’t have signed for this label if that were the case. EMI knew what they were going into with us, so it’s just the same.

In previous years you seemed to have spent a long time touring compared to now, although you say it’s because of people having families. Is there also an element of not being too close together for too long to minimise tension in the band?
All about the families, yes. We try to keep it as short as we can, but still economically ok.

Yeah, short touring becomes more costly, how do you balance this?
We just try to make it all work out?

So you have a large merchandising stall, then?
Ha ha, yes yes, we try…

Does the shorter touring help keep you settled into life in Iceland? It must be very different from the quiet life when you’re on the road?
Yeah, eh, on the road there is the lifestyle, we just try to get into it, other times we just relax and don’t do anything, you know?

How do you combat the radio play problem? Would you do shorter songs?
Now is the first time we’re getting radio play actually, mainly in the UK, but not too much. Yeah we have problems but you can’t think about that too much….

Is it deliberately anti-commercial?
No no we just do the music like it is. Be adventurous.

So have you ever tried to make a 3-minute pop song?
No no we don’t really try to do anything. We just see what happens.

Do you still say that your songs “are about nothing”?
I like the idea that people connect to the music and think about things but no, the songs are not about this; we all have our own ideas.

What about people’s perceptions of the songs? Do you ever laugh at what some people think the songs are about?
No ‘cus they are about nothing, so it is only people’s ideas.

Do you ever write negative or angry songs then?
No, no we just always see what happens. I think when we write music we have to get into a certain state of mind you know? It’s very hard to pinpoint an exact emotion, it’s always open.

You are quite famous for one-word answers, so if you could choose one word what would it be after a bad interview?
Probably ‘tired’ you know?

What about after a good show, how would you sum that up in one word?
Oh, energetic probably, ‘good’.

What about people leaving your show early, what word would you have for them?
I don’t know, eh…

Do you wonder what they think?
I don’t really see anything. I’m concentrating.

More info www.sigur-ros.co.uk | www.myspace.com/sigurros

Yarah Bravo probably has best been discovered in recent years as member of One Self alongside Dj Vadim and Mc Blu Rum. She also works as the sometimes front woman for ‘The Soundcatcher Soundsystem’ and live group ‘The Russian Percussion’. The daughter of South American freedom fighters she has circumnavigated the world twice, speaks 4 languages and exudes a streetwise cool.  UPFRONT Online caught up with the cutesy Mc and level headed owner of Mothergrain [a record label, clothing label, and studio].

So, how did she start out on the road to becoming Yarah Bravo the charismatic hip hop artist? “I started off writing poetry in school, my teachers encouraged me, and it became some sort of escape for me. But I didn’t know what hip hop was at the time… I was still fairly young, and I guess I listened to mostly Brazilian music as it’s what was playing in my household. As well as some Bob Marley, Beatles, Grace Jones, and stuff my parents listened to… you know!”

Around the age of 10 she got hold a mixtape from a friend’s older brother and fell in love. “It had Public Enemy on it, as well as A Tribe Called Quest, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, 2 Live Crew. So yeah! I pretty much fell in love.  I also realised that my poetry wasn’t too dissimilar to what these cats were doing, but they were doing it over beats, while mine was just on paper.”

Finding inspiration in the mixtape Yarah took to reciting her poetry over music that was in the house at that time. That was until she had the money to buy her own vinyl – with b-side instrumentals, “I would straight up just rhyme on top of Total, SWV beats. At the time I guess I was like 15-16. That was back in the days when we also had YO MTV RAPS; I would record every single episode. I remember watching Grand Puba and Mary J Blige for the first time, freestyling in the studio, and yeah she was rapping… I looooved me some Mary J!”

Nothing like a typical day in the life of Yarah Bravo? “Yarah Bravo ain’t your typical girl”. Describing it as “organised chaos” every day presents something different, outside of course the showering, vitamin intake, email checks and stopping to breathe in the sun. On the road the story’s the same but as she stresses, “you get kicked outta hotel rooms, all airports look the same to me now, and yeah when I do shows I party hard. I am a narcoleptic insomniac, so I rarely sleep, but I could pass out in the middle of a conversation if you ain’t stimulating me.” Those in Luxembourg hoping for a reception with Yarah should take heed and prep up on stuff outside idle chit chat.

Wishing to be defined within Hip Hop culture as a lass “doing her own thang”, she sees herself as a worldwide hip hop nomad with the universe as her playground. Speaking about the male dominated sector of Hip Hop, Yarah sees her role as a way to inspire younger girls to make music as well. She wants to promote that it is about feeling it. It’s not the only option; to strip of their clothes, as perhaps mainstream Hip Hop culture suggests. She wants to set the record straight; that there is a different side to hip hop then what is shown in that mainstream. “I think that is important for the younger girls for sure!”

Speaking out about the lack of prominent woman in Hip Hop culture Yarah states, “it as an Evil Circle, cause if you have no one to look up to as a role model, a lot of the times you don’t realise your own potential to do certain things within certain fields.  If all you see are dudes doing hip hop, a lot of girls might not want to step into that arena.” Yet, she goes on to say that there are many amazing talented woman out there, hence the reason behind the UNITY project / stage for Hip Hop Kemp (The biggest Hip Hop festival in Europe, if not the World). She wanted to showcase the wide range of talented female Mcs from all over the world. Headlining were “legends” Roxanne Shante and Bahamadia and a showcase of talent “holding it down today” like, Invincible, Eternia, Stacy Epps. Also invited to take the stage were emerging talents Mauikai, Eyeris, Shania D, Badcat etc. “It was very successful! Hopefully it inspired people to create more of a balance within our hip hop community. Women have strong opinions and are able to offer a different perspective; some just need to be shown the way.  If I can help, I am more than happy to do so.”

Having been a member of and always toured with groups Yarah is stepping out on her own and enjoying the creative control, “I do it all myself, I set up my show, and use all my ideas.” Following suit with her self-imposed ethos, “Follow your heart. Don’t do shit if it don’t feel right!”

Speaking about the writing process Yarah says, “usually it just comes to me, I’ll feel an urge to write and create, although when there’s a block, if there’s a song that’s gotta be finished then inspiration is sought from the things around, TV, music, a good walk!” She goes on to say that writing lyrically is in a way a therapeutic process, “I have a vision in my head of a song. It’s like a painting, and I slowly lay it out. There are moments when it is frustrating, if what you have in your head sounds nothing like what you’re laying down.”

For Yarah though it is the performance she enjoys most. This is the opportunity to get her points across and get ‘that’ release.

Stating Janelle Monae, Kid Kudi, J*Davey, Chromeo amongst her current musical inspiration, she also listens a lot to early 90’s R&B like Total, Xcape, SWV, Keith Sweat “and shit”. She has worked with and shared the stage with some notables of not just the Hip Hop scene e.g.: Talib Kweli, Manu Chao, Grand Master Flash, Mos Def, Roots Manuva, De La Soul, The Herbaliser, The Gotan Project to name drop a few. “Rocking with Method Man and Redman was definitely an experience, especially having them call me out during their set saying “yoooo are you Yarah Bravo?!”"

Yarah had previously said, “The European scene is flourishing, it is so dope! Because the acts out here are doing the music for the love of it, and not for the cash, not for the cars, nor the bling. If I dare to say, I even feel that hip hop at this time is even more “real” out here.” Asked which artists from the European sector has got her attention she mentions Waxolutionists, Mapei, Cleo, Mestiza, Loop Troop, Foreign Beggars, Lady Lykez, Big Red and Ty as some of the stand-outs! “But, always check my MySpace page as I promote peoples there too.”

Right now her desert island collaboration would be Timbaland “I think he is the ill’est producer out there. And it would be a dream to work with him, or The Neptunes. But even with more unknown producers, who can create that heavy sound. For me it ain’t really about the brand, the name. But the actual product, the bass, and the heaviness of the shit they create!!! Not sure about being stuck with Timbaland on a deserted island though? but Pharell is hot!”

Reflecting on her career thus far Yarah is proud of all her musical babies, “it’s like I gotta love them all, even if they make me cringe.” But right now she is most happy with her newer stuff. “The stuff I’m working on now is what I most proud off, as I’ve grown a lot as a song writer, and I’m focusing on making good songs and not just good raps like I used to think. Although this latest stuff is not released yet.” Yarah goes on to say, “In fact I am probably currently most proud of a song I did in Spanish, ’cause I kinda wrote it on a plane, and when I got off I went to perform it in front of 2000 people in New York city, opening up for Manu Chao, I liked that challenge a lot, as it was he who asked me if I could write a song in Spanish to open up his show… And I did!”

So what’s the future hold for Yarah Bravo? She’s on the same wave length as hard pressed UPFRONT bloggers, “World domination!!! or buying an island and retiring, hahahaa!”

Yarah Bravo plays Verso in Luxembourg on the 18th April. Make sure you catch her! Tickets on the door [NO PRESALE].

More info: www.myspace.com/yarahbravo

QUICKFIRE for those intimate things you’ve always wanted to know about Yarah Bravo.

One life changing moment?
When my best friend in life got cancer.

Worst job you’ve ever had?
Working at a cruise company.

Worst bad habit?
Falling asleep on my computer.

Most treasured possession?
Someone’s heart, and my super rare pair of Adidas

Desirable superpower?
Flying

Words to live by…?
“Make dreams come true”

Does your musical style influence your underwear?
Yes that’s why all my underwear is FRESH

“The Internet: transforming society and shaping the future through chat.” (Dave Barry writer and humorist)

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit!

It’s a ‘buzz’ word for the moment – ‘social networking’. Millions of us are currently, yes right now, cosied up in front of a computer screen – chatting! Chatting online, through chat rooms, applications, devices, platforms, forums with ‘friends’. That is ‘friends’ in the digital sense! Friends we know, friends we don’t, friends of friends, friends we’ll meet, friends we won’t. Back in the day, social networking was achieved whilst quaffing free champagne and devouring delicate volovants off a silver platter. But that old style interaction is the new ‘disconnected’! It’s a new era. As my ‘friends’ (that’s category A, the ones I actually really know) will attest to; I’m rarely offline. In fact my ‘Away’ or ‘Not Available’ status is truly reserved for those occasions when I’m loitering in real-time on terra firma, really quaffing champagne (albeit not free) with my non-virtual group of category A’s!

It is true! Google it! Almost everyone is into it. This new digital era where time, space and the continuum divide is lost. You can find and chat to just about anyone – that is anyone hooked up – about anything, at any time and from anywhere.

But where will this all lead? This “transforming and shaping of the future”. Is there a point where the ‘Online’ and ‘Offline’ converge? Berlin based artist, Aram Bartholl, through a number of his – I’ll take over this public space – exhibitions, including the exhibit ‘Chat’, is posing these very questions. “In which form does the network data world manifest itself in our everyday lives? What comes back from cyberspace into physical space? How do digital innovations influence our everyday actions?”

In the true essence of online chat – we chatted online!

[16:11:33] Aram Bartholl:
ok, here we go

[16:11:40] Aram Bartholl:
chat chat

[16:11:44] Deborah Causton:
hey

[16:11:47] Deborah Causton:
how’s it going?

[16:11:53] Aram Bartholl:
fine thx

[16:11:56] Aram Bartholl:
and yourself?

[16:12:04] Deborah Causton:
all good here…

[16:12:24] Aram Bartholl:
you are in Luxembourg now?

[16:12:35] Deborah Causton:
yeah… have you been here before?

[16:12:49] Aram Bartholl:
no, I haven’t

[16:12:56] Aram Bartholl:
and it’s a pity I am not coming myself to perform ‘Chat’, because I am busy with a workshop in Berlin

[16:13:15] Deborah Causton:
it’s a fantastic little place… very beautiful

[16:13:23] Deborah Causton:
yes, that is a shame

[16:13:34] Aram Bartholl:
yes, but next time I will

[16:13:40] Deborah Causton:
I do love Berlin, very creative place!

[16:13:55] Aram Bartholl:
yes, it’s a good place to live

[16:14:03] Deborah Causton:
I thought about it, moving there, maybe one day

[16:14:21] Aram Bartholl:
yes sure, everybody is thinking of that!

[16:15:06] Deborah Causton:
moving to Berlin, I’m sure… it is still affordable housing, unlike the rest of Europe

[16:15:22] Aram Bartholl:
yes, it’s cheap but most people earn money somewhere else, economy is not so good

[16:15:55] Deborah Causton:
money is not everything

[16:16:34] Aram Bartholl:
sure

[16:18:08] Deborah Causton:
anyway… the first question I have as an opener

[16:19:00] Deborah Causton:
was – you’ve stated before you are trying to establish a link – “What I try to do is to establish a connection, a link between the digital, virtual world and the real world.” What would you say would be your fundamental purpose in this objective?

[16:19:16] Aram Bartholl:
I think somehow it is the other way around. The potential of the social web is that all users can start creative projects and share them with everybody. From the masses to the masses. Somehow leaving the art business on the side, so art comes from the public!

[16:20:44] Deborah Causton:
But do you not feel that the public need guidance, in that not everybody is creative nor thinks with a creative purpose?

[16:22:03] Aram Bartholl:
The tools / languages are maybe a bit limited. YouTube, for example, is just small clips and it is all about attracting attention to your clip. But, this development is definitely a new cultural era! 

[16:22:12] Aram Bartholl:
to your question… I’m not so interested in really connecting on and offline, in a sense of…

[16:23:30] Aram Bartholl:
(one moment)

[16:24:43] Aram Bartholl:
(back)

[16:24:48] Deborah Causton:

[16:25:11] Aram Bartholl:
…streaming media in the net and out again. I’m more interested in building bridges. To think about how we use the net and how it relates to everyday life. For example; it is very normal for us to chat right now. Yet it is a big difference to talk face to face (even on the phone is the first virtual step).

[16:27:01] Deborah Causton:
Would you consider it almost a social experiment?

[16:27:31] Aram Bartholl:
hehe, yes a very big one. but in fact it is not an experiment. It just happens and we have to learn how to use these new communication channels and be aware of the difference.

[16:28:48] Deborah Causton:
How important is this evolution of social networking in its ‘virtual’ form on your work? Do you see it as an ongoing reflection of what you will do?

[16:30:04] Aram Bartholl:
In fact it is funny that everybody is so excited about the NEW social web because the social aspect is not new at all. That is something very old, basic… families, groups, villages. Social is human! But in opening up these new channels and platforms (which do have advantages to real life) everybody is excited about it. The social web development is just one of the branches I follow with my work. I’m curious to where this development will lead.

[16:33:00] Deborah Causton:
But the reasons now, why we network, do you think they have changed, developed, differ? Is that something you consider?

[16:33:54] Aram Bartholl:
Sure, online relationships differ very much to offline friendships. The online world has its very own culture and develops much faster. But, our day to day life in public space is not yet influenced so much by these networks.

[16:35:07] Deborah Causton:
Do think they will be in the future?

[16:35:32] Aram Bartholl:
I think so, but it will take more time. Although web development is so fast!

[16:35:58] Deborah Causton:
How do you imagine the digital (virtual) world becoming more integral to the offline environment?

[16:36:30] Aram Bartholl:
The majority of people on the net use email and standard web as the main thing. Twitter and all the new services will take more time to get accepted by the masses. It is a good question. It is always a question I am posing, but I don’t yet have a unique answer to it. But the literal way I’m transforming online symbols to offline objects exactly addresses this question. Google, for example, will not put up big red markers in a city [‘Map’ Project]. But, I’m sure at some stage someone, like Google, will address billboards with location awareness advertising.

[16:40:14] Deborah Causton:
So your work, in a sense, begins to address this issue, bringing a possibility for people to socially network, grasp virtual possibilities in public places?

[16:41:28] Aram Bartholl:
Yes, that’s one part of the idea. To think about the different rules we use on and offline. To be aware of the difference in meeting somebody face-2-face in a cafe or just on Facebook or Skype

[16:42:29] Aram Bartholl:
(I can’t see you. I can’t hear you. What is your body language…?)

[16:42:52] Aram Bartholl:
Are you pretty…

[16:42:56] Aram Bartholl:
?

[16:43:03] Aram Bartholl:
lol!

[16:43:13] Deborah Causton:
I don’t look to dissimilar to my avatar…

[16:43:14] Aram Bartholl:
There’s a good example.

[16:43:21] Deborah Causton:

[16:43:27] Aram Bartholl:
I dare to say things like that on chat but I wouldn’t do it in reality.

[16:44:16] Deborah Causton:
What are your personal views about the way people interact… do you think you gain more from a telephone call or a real meeting than, for instance, this kind of chat?

[16:45:17] Aram Bartholl:
Of course!

[16:45:29] Aram Bartholl:
(Moment)

[16:46:27] Aram Bartholl:
Ok, back!

[16:46:39] Aram Bartholl:
That’s the difference with online chatting…

[16:47:01] Deborah Causton:
What about Second Life is that not one step too far? In that you really are creating another dimension, almost a fantasy…?

[16:47:53] Aram Bartholl:
(To the question before…) Sure to meet and talk in real life is still the most important… I think! While giving a workshop like ‘Friends’, the communication around the table is an important point to the piece. People who don’t know each other not only get in contact, but work together. Something very classic, it just doesn’t happen that way on the net.

[16:49:18] Aram Bartholl:
At least it is different. Yes Second Life, for sure it is one step too far. But it illustrates very well the classical idea of cyberspace, or as I prefer to say digital space! We are not just talking about 3D and games, but also Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and there is much more happening right now!

[16:52:09] Deborah Causton:
Do you consider what you do to be artistic demonstration? Or are you more interested in just making a statement about the ways we interact?

[16:53:06] Aram Bartholl:
hmm it’s hard for me to interpret myself. But I’m more interested in making a statement. Although the statements in my projects are very subtle, just underlying. People read different messages into them.

[16:54:47] Deborah Causton:
Would you say you were ‘for’ or ‘against’ virtual/digital worlds?

[16:55:19] Aram Bartholl:
I used to tell my personal story on this whole topic. I grew up with computers and games. I graduated in architecture, then hung around on a machine for +4 years. I did web design, flash, video and all that stuff. But at a certain point I got sick of it! When you lose your hard drive all the work is gone! A fancy 3D model is outdated half a year later! I love the seductive universal machine… but I also hate it and want to try and get away from it…

[16:57:57] Deborah Causton:
You want to create a new trend?

[16:58:02] Aram Bartholl:
My initial drive was to get back to physical objects and projects. Work you can touch and feel but that still has a relation to digital space.

[16:59:30] Deborah Causton:
Do you think artistic interpretation needs to represent a technological understanding in order to survive/keep up with the times, remain relevant?

[16:59:42] Aram Bartholl:
“hey hello, are we living in that rectangle on the desk?”

[17:00:23] Deborah Causton:
Here I’m guilty, a little, of that!

[17:00:33] Aram Bartholl:
He he

[17:01:06] Aram Bartholl:
hmmm… that question applies very much to the media art <-> visual art relation/discussion

[17:01:35] Aram Bartholl:
‘New media art’ was all about the technology and its influence on society. It somehow separated itself from the contemporary art field which has its very specific rules. Right now I’m more based in the media art field, although my work involves very little technology, but talks about the use of it. In fact the art field discussions are not that interesting. The work itself is the most important, although for the ‘art business’, behind the scenes, it could be important in which field one is working…

first virtual step! (At this point we switch from the online environment to the telephone….)

Aram:
I prefer this way!

Deborah:
it was an experiment; just to see if it would work!

Aram:
Good experiment!

Aram reiterates that he spent a lot of time on the computer. The development of the projects stems from that. He was asking himself – ‘How you can translate the digital world into everyday life, and if this can actually have any influence in ‘real’ life?’ When asked if he wants people to evaluate the outcome and not pigeonhole the concept, Aram says, “It’s definitely the outcome of the project. It’s creating an image, taking rules/ items from the web, the virtual world and placing them into context in real life, in a real space with the purpose of bridging these different places.”

Aram doesn’t really let political motivation play a part in his work. The underlying idea is ‘Hey look it’s not all about online!’ He goes on to say, “For me, my whole thing is more about what’s human, what’s social, and what this means.”

There also isn’t any intention to avoid gallery space. Rather that the work presents itself better in public spaces hence his popularity at exhibitions and festivals. “Somehow it is true that the classic white cube is very disconnected from what is happening on the street. It is more a question of how to best represent the work, so I often do performances and workshops.”

At the 2008 FutureSonic Festival the hot topic of debate was ‘Social Networking Unplugged’. Aram, who was present there with his ‘Friends’ exhibition, reiterates, “It is so funny, because this is what was discussed at that festival. Everything we learn to do whether in family or school is all about social networking. It is how we function. Everybody is so excited about the possibilities of social networking online… it does, of course, have an advantage with new developments, new opportunities which are different to what you get in real life.”

When reflecting on his own work Aram goes on to say, “It is a bit exaggerated to suggest that I’m attempting to bring online to offline through these projects. Yes I want to interact more in public ‘real’ space. It is something we do anyway even if the communication is not that lively on the street. Screen based interaction simply cannot compete with sitting in a cafe, talking face to face! That is, and should be, much more normal and much richer. For example at the drop-in workshop (Friends Book), people would come along and it would take 45 minutes or 1 hour to make their book. There would be 6-8 people sitting round a table and they would get into all sorts of topics and this is not something that was set up or had anything to do with a digital process. The digital process is more a catalyst to encourage the standard thing.”

With a growing catalogue of works based on questioning online interactions and digital processes in real time, what important discoveries has Aram made? “Probably the fact there are so many different channels going on in the digital space. We have to learn a lot on how to use them! The privacy discussion, and how you behave on the web and what it means for your real life. We have to learn how to deal with those things. There are also the big brother topics and the surveillance laws are getting stricter and stricter. There are all these people who talk about their private life, put personal details online and then leave all that information on the web just like that! It is an interesting field to talk about and what will happen there.”

So the internet and these social applications bring a whole new meaning to the ‘freedom of information’. Inevitably people will start to ‘lock-down’ as they become aware of their information floating in cyberspace? As Aram points out, “As an example, we throw up all our pictures on Facebook. There was a woman who wasn’t employed as a teacher (in the States) because there was a picture of her online holding a beer. People will realise, they’ll start to understand some of these things. The ways they are doing it is too public. It all comes back in the end. Google will never forget what you said on the web.”

So for the moment the social networking ‘buzz’ remains at the forefront of the internet’s development. There are new ‘social networks’ being reported daily. Places where you can go and develop new ‘friends’ with similar/dissimilar people. Chat, chat, chat! “That is the whole point of the internet… not just since Facebook but all the forums and mailing groups. The spacial/geographical space is just not there – I can connect to anyone on the web. For example, who is out there interested in butterflies? That is the power of the web… no boundaries! There are no time problems and you communicate in a totally different way. We wouldn’t be having this interview right now if there was no web – if I had no website, if my work was only known to my neighbours. I’m really aware of that. I’m not against the digital space I just think it important to combine the good things from both worlds. Maybe spending so much time on the computer – the way you think, the way you see the world will change. We will try to apply digital rules to the real world. For example, with Facebook I could ask you to be my friend. To be a friend on the web it’s ‘yes’ or ‘no’, there’s nothing in-between! There is much more variation now in our types of friendships. But in real life, it still remains much more complex.”

——–
Aram Bartholl’s ‘Chat’ exhibition was present at the opening of the new Exit07 bar (Carré Rotondes) on the 19th September 2008.

Since 1995 Aram Bartholl lives and works in Berlin. In his art work he thematises the relationship of net data space and everyday life. More information about the artist and his various works can be found here www.datenform.de

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This interview was first published in SALZINSEL magazine in October 2008. SALZINSEL is an independent magazine covering culture and arts in Luxembourg, its regions and beyond. It includes articles on various themes, events, institutions and artists, but also creative texts, music and visual arts. The purpose of the magazine is to serve an effective exchange between people involved in these fields. For more information www.myspace.com/salzinsel. or join the group on Facebook.

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Photographs courtesy of Aram Bartholl

Plugged in…All the time…and surfing the wave of cultural diffusion 

A little background information…
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky was born in 1970 in Washington DC, to academic parents. Following his college years spent amidst the ‘whispering pines’ of Bowdoin College, Main, and having picked up degrees in French literature and philosophy, Spooky began writing science fiction. In the mid-nineties he began his recording career with a series of singles and the ’96 album, ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer’.

Described as a fusion between electronica and hip hop, it marked the beginning of a prolific career which, apart from a not inconsiderable output as a recording artist would include, composer of film scores, author/editor, multimedia/performance artist, producer, professor of music and political activist. Oh yeah, and did I mention that he’s partial to doing a bit of DJ-ing on the side.

If anything characterises his output to date it would seem, at least on the surface, to be its diversity. That much, at least, is true of the wide range of people whom he has chosen to collaborate and work with. Everyone from avant-jazz collectives, to Dave Lombardo of Slayer, to most recently Yoko Ono. If there is an over-riding philosophy behind everything that Spooky does and which allows him to move and shift effortlessly within and between one area and another it is the idea of collage. The idea of mixing and juxtaposing given materials, sounds, cultures and disciplines to create something new. Indeed, you could think of his entire professional persona as a kind of collage, with all the fragments going to make the whole.

When we met at the Philharmonie last summer we managed to have a few words in between a very officious waitress taking orders and Spooky checking his emails on his palm-top. Always connected, you couldn’t help but feel that if he himself had a USB port you could plug the guy in and he’d download you a finished article whilst polishing off his salad. Unfortunately, he didn’t, and anyway I’m analog, so we did it the old-fashioned way.

We started by talking a little about the ‘New York is Now’ project, a video portrait which uses found footage and jazz music to create a vision of the city ‘as a structure made of many rhythms, some local, some global, – all syncopated to a collage based aesthetic.’

We took the scenic route.

 ‘It was a project I did for the Venice biennial. That was a project where I went to Angola in West Africa for six weeks. It was amazing because they were soviet Africa and the U.S. had tried to assassinate and destabilise and destroy a lot of the leaders in that region. At one point Fidel Castro had thirty thousand Cubans in the middle of Angola fighting U.S. sponsored warlords. The U.S. you know, we know how to pick ‘em. We always sponsor some twisted tyrant or dictator or something.

So anyway, to make a long story short, I wanted to go down to this country and check it out. They had an art event called the Luanda Triennial. So I ended up hanging out in Angola for four to six weeks, something like that. It was amazing because I got a chance to really see how Africa responds to all these different situations.

So for example, they’ve got gold, oil and diamonds. So now there’s thirty thousand Chinese in the middle of downtown Luanda, which you would never guess. The Chinese are there because of the oil. Or there’s a lot of Swedish because of the Ericsson company. They’ve discovered this new metal that allows you to have a weird cell phone.

But anyway, I spent time there and checked out African rhythms, because I was very curious about… If you look at Brazil… Brazil is basically a lot of Angolan music because the Portuguese took the slaves from Angola and took them to Brazil. So if you go to Bahia in the north of Brazil, or if you go to Sao Paulo or Rio, a lot of the main styles there, you could take the exact same style and you would be in Luanda. There’s even a martial arts style called Capoeira, it’s like the west African martial arts form. It’s like a dancing and fighting movement. I’ve been to Africa a couple of times before. Mainly Senegal, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Egypt. For this project for the Venice Biennial, I recorded a lot of what I was doing when I was in Angola, and then used it at the opening of the Venice Biennial.’

Visually, (for the New York is Now project) the idea is to apply DJ techniques to film. So I found a lot of early ‘art’ films, and remixed them. I applied sampling, cut and scratch all that kinda stuff. This year I have my first film coming out in November, so I did the Venice Biennial project as a kind of  first step. It was a really beautiful opening. We had thousands of people come out for the Biennial opening. All sorts of people from all over the world were hanging out.

A lot of the ’Art World’ types got a chance to see that DJ-ing isn’t just music, it’s about collage and it’s about certain kinds of historical art forms that have migrated to digital media.’

And it’s that last idea which forms the bigger picture of what DJ Spooky is about.

I started out mainly as a writer and artist and DJ-ing was meant to be a hobby, but the art world being what it is, DJ-ing was very lucrative (chuckles), and it was low stress. You could just show up. I produced my own tracks and I made my own rhythms and beats. In the mid-nineties, there was me, DJ Shadow, DJ Crush, Coldcut was a little bit earlier than everybody… but we all started dropping more instrumental hip hop albums and we started getting a lot of attention. It just took off in its own way. I’ve played with lyrics and vocals. But for my albums, a lot of the time, they’re instrumental.

Curious, you might think, given that Miller is also a writer. DJ Spooky has, of course, also been heavily involved in mixing, remixing and producing other peoples work. The eclectic list includes amongst many others, Korn, Nick Cave and the aforementioned Yoko Ono. I was curious to know how these relationships came about. Did these people, generally, seek him out?

Yeah, pretty much. People either call up or they send an email to the website saying ’We’d like you to do a remix’. I’ve worked with all sorts of people. I’ve done film soundtracks; I’ve worked with string quartets. My new album is with Kronos quartet. They’re an amazing string ensemble and they’re doing the sound track for my film. The whole film is ‘remix-able’.  The motto for the project is ‘Director as DJ’. You can choose any scene in the film and remix it, and Kronos play all these string arrangements so you can take say, some kind of Russian string sounds and mix it with dancehall reggae or hip hop. It’s a long story. It’s a lot of editing; you stay at the computer for hours.  

I suggest that Yoko isn’t someone who, to put it mildly, has enjoyed very favourable reviews lately.

No. Yoko, she broke up The Beatles c’mon! (laughs). Her new album’s slammin’. She’s seventy years old and she’s funky! I did her first hip hop tracks. She’s an old friend. Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth played guitar on the track. My style is never one style. I think every DJ, to keep their ears fresh, really should listen to many styles. The problem about hip hop or house or techno is people just get into one thing. I listen to Hong Kong film soundtracks. I listen to Brazilian funk. I listen to crazy sounds from Angola, Egypt… I think a good artist, period, not just DJ not just producer, should keep their mind open. The problem with American music is that it’s an ignorant culture. I’ll say it straight out. People just listen to pop radio or MTV and think that’s the world. I really think that it’s a problem, that people take the easy route. They don’t do research, they just listen to what everybody always says is popular. I think it’s incredibly important to say that ‘it’s a big world’ y’know. Why not check out all sorts of styles? Even though it’s easy, people still just listen to just their main, one style. I couldn’t listen to normal hip hop all day, every day. I would be bored out of my mind. But there’s some great music coming out of India, out of Japan, out of Luxembourg, Switzerland, wherever…
Keep it fun.

In a interview relating to the piece, Miller said that he constructed the persona ‘DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid‘, to give him his full title, as a conceptual art project. As the project developed he came to see it as the opportunity for what he describes as “coding a generative syntax for new languages of creativity.” I felt this might require a little clarification. For myself, you understand.

Let’s put it this way. Beats and rhythms are about permutation. Every culture on the planet has some kind of relationship to a drum. Whether it’s Irish bodhrans, Swiss guys playing on the mountains. Who knows?
But with sampling and electronic music, what ended up happening was that all those traditions became the archive. If you go back to the origins of hip hop and house music and techno, everybody was sampling old records because that was all they had. Then drum machines really kicked in and then the software kicked in, and people had a lot more options. I remember in the mid-nineties I made my first album with an Akai 3000 sampler, and it was a big deal to have 32 megabytes of memory. Now, my film is five gigabytes or eight gigabytes, I mean it’s ridiculous. The reason I was talking about this idea of ‘new languages’ is to simply say that sampling has opened all these different doors into how people think about rhythm. The main problem about music right now, is that it’s all 4/4 beats. I’m surprised that people are not more playful with rhythm.
But to cut a long story short, collage means that anything goes.  

In his critical book on modern art, ‘The Painted Word’, the journalist, author Tom Wolfe once illustrated the idea of conceptual art by recounting, more or less, the following story; A penniless artist goes into a café and sits at the bar with a glass of water. In a moment of inspiration he has an idea for a truly original work of art. He grabs a napkin, dabs his finger in the glass of water and documents the idea. He then keels over and dies. The water evaporates. Is this a great work of art? He asks. A conceptualist would argue that it is. For in conceptualism the idea is hero and the object, zero. I was interested to know if DJ Spooky had read the book/heard the story and in what way had his own work embraced conceptualism thus defined.

No, but that’s a great title. Ideas are the currency of the twenty first century. If you look back at the twentieth century, you had mass culture , the production of mass objects, mass everything. The model T Ford car, the first wave of computers, and so on. The twenty first century is about mass customisation. You can change and transform almost any tiny bit of software information. You can make a software building, you can make the building a symphony, you can make the symphony a satellite or a cell phone. The concept for a lot of this comes from the point of viewing it as the language of creativity. How you put together a language is by building blocks of meaning. So rhythm for me, is just one layer and so is sequencing, and how you put together the, for lack of a better word, linear or non-linear quality of a piece.

You are looking at analog versus digital, cause the twentieth century was analog and most of the music that most people hear is from recordings that were done with analog and not digital processes. At this point my laptop is my studio. I can make art pieces with it, I’ve done movies on it, I’ve done sound pieces. I did a home mini-studio session in Angola, working on the film. This is just the beginning. Within the next ten years as memory gets cheaper, you’re gonna be having cell phone movies or iPod symphonies. Miniaturisation and the ability to interact with software are really gonna open up, literally, the entire creative process to making an entire world culture. One where the older forms from any culture or race; India, Africa, Asia, everybody’s gonna be able to exchange, and probably will exchange, because who wants to hear the same stuff over and over.

This ties in with another of Millers ideas, though to be fair it’s hardly original, that with the advent of cheap hardware and the ubiquitous presence of the internet, the end of big media is at hand. Is it time to put the pennies on the eyes of all those mega news organisations? I mean shucks, it just seems like yesterday that they got to go 24/7.

Well, I mean, it’s the Youtube generation at this point. How much people are getting from the news in the U.S. is a joke. A lot of Americans don’t even know where Iraq is, never mind what’s going on there. It’s the most televised war in human history and nobody has any idea where it is. It’s a real problem with the U.S.
The bulk of the population doesn’t have a passport and doesn’t even travel. I mean Bush is from one of the wealthiest families in the U.S. and before he was president, he’d only left the country maybe twice, and one of those times was to go to Mexico to get a taco. America’s really fucked up, but anyway I travel a lot and I want that to be part of my artwork, and not just be an ignorant American listening to Brittany Spears.

Given that the technology allows more people to do more things, and presupposing an even passing familiarity with Youtube or mySpace, you’d have to ask yourself is it necessarily going to be any better?

That doesn’t mean that every track you hear is a good track either, with music, or that every symphony you hear is a good symphony, or every book is a good book. It just means that, I think, democratisation of culture is what technology really leads to. Because on the one hand, anybody can create, but that doesn’t mean that you’re gonna listen to everything or read every book. I mean, you could basically say that ninety per cent of everything out there is shit. I don’t read every tabloid newspaper, I don’t read every newspaper. I don’t read every website. You can’t. But with whatever your focus is or whatever style you’re into, you’ll probably be able to find enough information that gives you emotional and intellectual satisfaction. Playlists, blogs, all that stuff is about people trying to surf this huge amount of information. DJ’s, we’re surfers already, cause we’re already riding this huge volume of music, trying to check out all the different styles and pull good styles out of the crap. DJ’s, we’re quality control!

An invitation to select tracks for a compilation album from the archives of Jamaican label Trojan (In Fine Style: DJ Spooky Presents 50,000 Volts of Trojan Records), presented Miller with another opportunity to exercise his quality control faculties. The expression, ‘like a kid in a candy store’ came to mind.

Jamaica. My name for it is ‘The Loudest Island in the World’. They crank out so much music, I have no idea how they do it because it’s a small island. It’s been hugely influential. It was amazing to go thorough their archives because they have so many artists like, Bob Marley, Lee Scratch Perry, Barrington Levy, Michael Rose from Black Uhuru. All these guy did at least one or two songs with Trojan records over the last forty years. They were the Jamaican version of Motown or Def Jam, a label that was hugely influential. Anyway, they gave me access to their archive and I could pick any songs from it. I thought, damn, I don’t even know where to start, ‘cause there was so much. But it was beautiful. I got a chance to listen to a lot of old Jamaican 45’s.
The next person in the series was Jonny Greenwood, the guitarist from Radiohead, he (also) did selections from Trojan, and the next one up is Fat Boy Slim. They’re making a series.

Miller‘s book, ‘Rhythm Science’ published in 2004, has been described as a kind of manifesto for many of the ideas he was developing and I wondered if the kind of people who where going to read it and see his installations, the so-called high art, might not have listened to hip hop or that sort of music before.

The whole division of high and low culture and all that, is a real problem because a lot of people from differing scenes might not be literate in the other culture. So how can somebody from a university say that this (hip hop) is low culture or primitive, if they can’t even understand it? Or how can somebody from a hip hop or electronic background dis classical or academic music which they don‘t understand? And each one becomes reactionary. I like a lot of styles. I just think the whole thing of the playlist on the iPod has changed and destabilised everybody’s categories. It’s very rare that you like an entire album. You might like one or two songs. You put that on a list and you make a totally different style. You put that on the iPod and put it into shuffle and it’ll change everybody’s albums. I make music now that’s respecting the playlist mentality. It’s about going away from albums back to the single. It’s the same thing with my books and the same thing with my film. It’s about the selection of fragments. So my texts, you can read them as an entire book or you can read just one fragment. 

To come full circle, I was curious to know what it had been like growing up in Washington DC| and how this had affected his worldview and work.

DC is an imperial capital. It’s got all the paradoxes of American culture, the twistedness, the celebration of violence. My dad was Dean of Harvard University Law School, my mother was an academic as well, so I grew up in a house of professors basically. We travelled a lot. We used to go to Jamaica every summer and we also travelled to Europe and Africa… So I didn’t grow up in a normal American way. For that, I can only thank my mother. She was like…‘You can’t grow up in a normal American environment’. She refused to let that happen.

Miller seems also to be following the family tradition, and is himself a professor of music mediated art at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

It’s fun. I like ideas. I like talking about ideas with artists, to writers, to people who are into culture. Saas is in the middle of the remote Swiss alps and I like the idea of just taking a break from all the music and art and stuff… and the people who teach there are amazing. I’m usually there for about two weeks in the summer.

DJ Spooky or Paul Miller for that matter shows no sign of slowing down. In finishing, he mentions a new movie which he’s working on and also a new book to which he has contributed and edited, Sound Unbound. It is a collection of writings in the fields of sound art, digital media, and contemporary composition including contributions by numerous luminaries, amongst them Brian Eno, Chuck D, Steve Reich and Moby.

www.djspooky.com

www.myspace.com/djspooky

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