TANGO INTERVIEWThis interview appeared in TANGO 6/96 (English translation).TANGO: Your last comments in ND sounded something like: "...more software!" However, what do you think about the notion that with the approach of artificial intelligence humans are loosing more and more individuality and creativity? There are rumours around that things become more dependable on the power of those who actually produce soft- and hardware.JOHN WATERMANN: My comments were meant ironically. But there is no doubt about it, that we easily could fall pray to those forces you mentioned. On the other hand, we should execute our right of choice and remain individuals, not listen too much to advertising, which also is used by the producers of soft- and hardware. Better mute the sound of TV commercials between programs and catch up on magazines articles. I am more concerned about the day to day hassle we have with software. Contrary to public belief - or hope for that matter - , things definitely will become worse in the computer industry. Because of the increase in power and sophistication software developers cram more and more features into their product. So do their colleagues. Which means that one software has to fight against all the odds (bugs) and incompatibilities of the other software. Software developers just can't or won't envisage everything what is going to go wrong. They rely on feedback from their customers to eventually fix the problem. Picture some drug or medicine. The man developing drug X in the laboratory only has one aim in mind: to fight the illness or disease. Yet the patient swallows already his 19 pills in the morning, one against X, another one against Y, a third one against Z. This hellish cocktail has to have bad side effects.TANGO: I also read about your constant investments into purchasing new gear. Can you make a living from your music or other creative works in general?JOHN WATERMANN: Absolutely not. Who really can? To pay for new hardware and software I have to sell machines I can do without (obtained in better times) and send another reminder to the labels to finally pay another instalment for the CD released years ago.... TANGO: Have you ever had any commissions?JOHN WATERMANN: For a start, I don't give any encouragement, because I fear I would have to make concessions, and I rather do my own stuff, take it or leave it. The work of an artist has to remain autocratic. I am quite sure that I wouldn't get commissions anyhow. Most people can live quite happily without my music, which they find irritating. Modern experimental music seems to slide more and more into academia or into the bland and non-committal. It needs more roughage. Eat some sand to clean the stomach. Nothing is defined, a sugary pulp, sweet fluff of nothing, pleasant to the ear. The most tragic part of course is that so many labels are run by illiterates of sound, who look towards other labels, equally incompetent, and copy their trash, thus perpetuating the sorry state of affairs.TANGO: Are you performing live? JOHN WATERMANN: It certainly would help to push the cause, but I never felt attracted to live performance work, I always have loved studio work, pursuing my own voyage of discovery.TANGO: Please describe in more detail what gear you use and also explain about the technical side of your sound organisation.JOHN WATERMANN: The computer I bought on Tuesday is obsolete on Friday. It really is impossible to describe the gear I am using at the moment, because I might not have it anymore the time this interview is published. I have some stuff, which I won't sell or can't sell, because nobody wants it anymore or doesn't know what to do with it. I haven't really acquired that much over the last two years, only new software. The only 'real' machine I bought was a Korg Wavestation A/D, because I immediately sensed its enormous potential. The factory sounds are sweet and nauseous of course and probably geared for the American ambient market. But that is easily fixed, in particular when you switch off the inbuilt FX section. I acquired a lot of equipment with only one single purpose in mind: whether it could be abused (metaphorically speaking), and was it lending itself to an unorthodox approach? Early delays with uncommon modulation and a grainy output appealed to me more than so-called 'professional' gear. Of course anEventide Ultraharmonizer can do things no other machine can do. But so can a Roland vocoder, as soon as you corrupt the traditional microphone input. Same with the Korg DVP l, which has a rewarding freeze method, if you take the time and cross boundaries. I got my t.c.electronic 2290 delay updated to 11 seconds some years ago, because long delays work in the background on its own and make a convenient canvas, if one feels lazy. I still hang on to two Korg 3000 delays, because the inbuilt pitchshifters and envelope followers are so crude. These delays I have used extensively for my cut ups. A Roland 2000 and a Lexicon PCM 70 is probably all I will ever need for reverb. On the sound generating side I only have a TX816, a DX7 II (hardly ever used), a TX81Z (extensively used for CALCUTTA) and an Oberheim Matrix 6R (programmed entirely to only generate repetitive machine sounds). I got rid of my 24 track mixer and just have a little Macky 1604, which sits right next to me upright in a rack, as I never really touch it, because I mix down via computer. I have no samplers anymore, because I hadn't used them for years. Contrary to what people might think, I did nearly all my cut ups with a Fostex multitrack, using only 4 tracks. I also have a harddisk recording set up and a SONY PCM 2700 DAT machine for mastering, also a SONY TDC-D10PRO for field recordings.TANGO: Are you ever listening to your previously released works?JOHN WATERMANN: Hardly. The exciting part is the time of creation. All what comes afterwards has mostly to do with trying to sell the stuff. It takes the icing off the cake. You have to send reminders and see friendships crumbling. Most unpleasant indeed. I absolutely hate it. When I listen to old stuff of mine, then it is mostly for technical reasons, comparing output levels against others, too much reverb, too little reverb, that sort of thing. But often quite unexpectedly the artistic side takes over. One suddenly has reached a healthy distance from ones own compositions and is finally capable to judge them quite well, so as if somebody else has written them. Great sound! O how awful, how pretentious...TANGO: Is the technological side of your music constantly evolving? Together with soft- and hardware?JOHN WATERMANN: I certainly hope so. Listen to releases going back only a few years ago. You immediately can pick the gear being used, which more or less has dictated the style. What I am saying is that technology can't be underestimated. We all fall for it, I certainly do. But I don't feel overwhelmed by machines. I am using the entire array with an open mind and treat it as a pool from which to ladle the stuff, in other words I always feel in control. I have just tried out some new software, interactive real time audio processing stuff, which was due to appear sooner or later on the market, now that computers get more and more powerful. Of course I haven't touched a keyboard for years and just played the mouse so to speak, but this stuff is very exciting, frequency shifting, ring modulation, pitch- and envelope following as you go.TANGO: ILLUSIONS looks like (to me) more 'horizontal', containing plenty of information-like material. Later works like CALCUTTA hold more 'vertically' suspended sounds, displaying much more emotionally, state-of-trance like stuff. If this observation is correct, will this trend be expanded in your forthcoming projects?JOHN WATERMANN: I have cut down on using loops, but I still use repetition in a composition (a kind of loop) to give the listener points of reference, because he has to deal with noise and not with melody. It is easier for him to rest in those anchorages, from where he can branch out and come to grips with parts, which initially are confusing for him and thus comprehend the whole. The only thing I know is that everything will change again, because of the evolving technology. From the purely artistic point of view collage always draws me in, because it is so open-ended and leaves so much room to breathe, and after all we are living in an age of total fragmentation. I am still fascinated by Cage's notion of chance and indeterminacy. I am constantly trying to perfect my idea of 'music without result' or 'music going nowhere' which probably is an anathema in itself. It fascinates me, because I seemed to have become such a finicky structuralist and rather would like to hang loose. Nevertheless, two new CDs are coming out, VERTICAL BEACHES and THE TRIP, both quite unlike CALCUTTA or ILLUSIONS. As a long term project I am working on ROSE, Gertrude Stein's marriage-nightmare to the Polish alcoholic X.Y. I got tape recordings from their daily domestic squabbles, absolutely magic! This could easily lend itself to the more 'horizontal' approach you talk about, but I might also force it into a vertical direction. ILLUSIONS was so successful because it had a bit of everything and wasn't really that good. As you know the double CD was made up of the 3 previously released albums and carries only the title from the last album, which turned out to be a bit confusing. THE DEAD CALM OF COCA COLA (the album), which is integrated in the ILLUSIONS CD was actually much more audacious. The ice was broken, I thought I finally could do what I like, therefore it has quite some good tracks on it. Unfortunately real commitments are often dissipated by those tracks which turn out to be more 'accessible'. TANGO: In the ND interview you stated that the initial stimulus for composing was a strong need to get sounds for your own movies. Did that mean that visual images are main vehicles to derive sounds from? Or was this just something belonging to an earlier period and later on the priorities simply shifted?JOHN WATERMANN: Priorities always shift. Multimedia has exploded over the last years and I am absolutely ecstatic about it. You have to address certain subjects with a real passion. It probably will take me quite a while to finally get all the money together to pay for the gear necessary, but I want it badly enough, because I know that I finally have found my 'ultimate medium'. TANGO: Since the end of the 20's experimental explorations with sound tracks became first attempts to what later on became known as musique concrete (e.a. Walter Ruttman). How much have cinema aesthetics affected your views in regards to sound?JOHN WATERMANN: I saw Ruttman's 'Opus' series and 'Melodie du Monde' probably 25 years ago in Berlin. I always have loved a certain kind of cinema. But I have my reservations in regards of interrelating dependency of images and sound. "ENTR'ACT" by R. Clair is silent and pure cinema, sound would probably spoil it. I think that cinema aesthetics had no influence whatsoever on my views regarding sound. Although I have always merged the two, they could or should run independently side by side and shouldn't affect the outcome. I am of course aware of lucky coincidences.TANGO: I am not trying to attach labels to your kind of music, but do you see yourself as part of the musique concrete or postfuturism movement?JOHN WATERMANN: I have no idea, whether my stuff could still be called 'musique concrete'. I think the period of classical 'musique concrete' has truly disappeared. The real masters have exhausted the field, times have changed. TANGO: Do you have any collaborative composers/artists? I don't really mean compilation releases.JOHN WATERMANN: Minds with similar interests attract each other, one somehow drifts together quite naturally. Yet collaborations are not easy to get off the ground and I am not too good at it. Some projects never seem to get past the stage of good intentions. They demand a lot of explanations, a lot of letter writing. I feel rather guilty towards Ralf Wehowsky from P16D4, because our project is still pushed on the back burner and only simmers slowly because of my lack of effort. But I think we will release something worthwhile eventually. I am also collaborating with Masami Akita/MERZBOW. We don't rush it and take it rather easy. TANGO: In ND you mentioned your meeting with Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry during the sixties. Were those composers your initial influences? Who else influenced your views then and now? Contemporary academic composers?JOHN WATERMANN: I never have met Schaeffer personally, I only came across his music, when I was in Paris and bought a 45 called AMBIENCE and later on by getting the 'SINFONIE POUR A L'HOMME SEUL' and other works. Of course I was influenced by Schaeffer. I might be wrong, but I think that Schaeffer's rather grandiose and laborious theoretical work always smacked of trying to stuff it in an academic envelope and thereby giving it status, when in actual fact he just had a lot of fun spinning the old 78s and cutting tape. I have to mention Parmegiani, who's approach and treatment of sound I find highly sophisticated and which has always impressed me. Obviously one doesn't really know whether one is influenced by what is around at the time. I had done tape loops in 1957, long before I knew about Schaeffer, but his approach struck me as so much superior to what I was doing with the equipment available. Current influences? I very much respect John Wiggins. Although I only have one album by him and can't even play it anymore, because I had to sell my record player, I find him occasionally on cassette compilations. I was always interested in BRUME, not to forget G*Park, who consistently puts out good work. I have a very intense letter writing relationship with Bernhard Gunther in Germany who's music couldn't be more different to my own and yet we both are tuned in to a similar wavelength and can't wait to hear the next release by each other. Nobody influences each other really, I think it rather is the time we are living in, which has the real effect on us and which forces us to do what we do. I am not attracted to academic output at all. Don't forget: Cage and Feldmann were quite unique creatures. So much coming out of universities is just terrible, by far surpassed by artists, who twiddle knobs in their bed rooms. On the other hand universities are bastions of experimental radio. Where would we be without them?
INTERVIEW for REVUE & CORRIGEE, number 24/ June 1995(copy of the interview done for TANGO)The French text is identical to the English text
INTERVIEW for ODRADEK, Number 2, December 1995text in German, translation planned
INTERVIEW for ND number 16/1992waiting for electronic text from ND
