Loop

by Guillermo Escudero, Dec 2001 (Santiago, Chile)

1. Could you tell us about your creative process? Do you start working on a track or an album having some theme in mind, or does your process begin improvising with sounds that make sense right away?

Well, both situations can happen, or a mix… sometimes i have a concept or an idea about sounds or forms and work towards that. Sometimes it happens that the original idea doesn’t work, or i discover something more interesting along the process, and i end up arriving somewhere different from what i had in mind. Some other times i’m just experimenting with sounds, and come up with something really good, then find ways to use it and give it some shape.

2. How are you able to avoid repeating a formula and create something new? How do you free yourself from your own references?

Well, there are two sides to that question. One is that i have a certain set of values, references, techniques and aesthetic inclinations, which tends perhaps to give some consistency to things i do. On the other hand, i don’t have a “formula”, which is to say that whatever i may be working on, it doesn’t need to be expressed with the same formal solutions. I can be working on a single idea or principle, and apply it in ways that can sound radically different.

3. Is your tendency in music production to incorporate electronics, the instruments that you normally use, or both?

I have been using the guitar as a starting point for sounds, but the “instrument” i play is an array of electronic devices, of which the guitar is just a part. What i use naturally changes according to what i need to do. I can use anything from a rusty fuzz-box to sophisticated software, from analog modular systems to toy amplifiers. Sometimes it’s simple, sometimes it’s complex. Sometimes it fits a small table, sometimes it takes a very large one…

4.Could you please explain your participation in MIMEO, and what its all about?

MIMEO is an orchestra of collectively improvised electronic music, which operates and takes decisions over a sort of email democracy. The music is fascinating, for its impression of infinite depth. In 1998 there was a 3-day festival in Cologne, and Mimeo were the only participant in it. I got invited to play with them, and after those 3 days it was decided that the orchestra should have a fixed line-up, which was the 12 people that played in that festival. Usually i play guitar and electronics in Mimeo.

5.Do you think that the avant-garde scene its more known in comparison to some years ago? In this sense do you agree that people like Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke among others had been determinating in the promotion of this music?

My impresssion is that there’s not a great difference. Records sell the same and the same number of people go to concerts. Of course Jim and SY have an important role, but i don’t see it as determinating, they wouldn’t also want to carry that on their shoulders, i think…

6.How do you see your music in some years time?

I have no idea. I do everything i can so that each record i release has as long a life as possible. The earliest recordings i released are 15 years old and they still sound as fresh as when i made them. The worst possible thing that can happen to me is releasing something to become dated a few years later. My ambition is to make timeless music. In the future i’m likely to explore new music materials, such as music boxes and bridge vibrations, and new tools and methods too.7.Do you think there are some aspects that had not been covered or developments in the musical research field still to be work out?
Of course, there are worlds to explore, not only in the development of new music forms. We’re also just at the threshold of developing new ways to listen to music and new ways to perform it. For instance, the live performance of computer music is a problem still to be solved. No matter how exciting the music may be, what fun is it to look at someone sitting and staring at a computer screen? Why do that on a stage? We have massive processing power now, but the ways to access and control it are still extremely primitive. On the receiving end, DVD and surround sound technologies have hardly scratched the surface of the new world of possibilities. It has developed a bit for video and computer games, but not yet for music. And there’s more…