Current mood:
workingCategory: Quiz/Survey
A couple of months ago Soisong answered Yannick Blay's questions for a French magazine called Elegy. The translated version is now available in the latest issue of the magazine, here comes the original text in English:
- How do you work together in Soisong? What starts a song? Do you have any restrictions?
Sleazy: There are no restrictions. So far, I seem to have started most of the tunes but Ivan has turned them from something very childish into something much more beautiful and thereafter we have made additional contributions alternately.
Ivan: In the beginning we did not know how to do it - on the first EP the songs were 50/50 where it comes to the origin.. however, I always wanted to work with Sleazy's unique taste for decadent melodics. This can be found in many of his earlier works.. Things like "Halliwell Hammers" on the ElpH album.. xAj3z was concieved at my place so I had a great opportunity to play all kinds of "background music" to Peter, stuff he had never heard before - different types of jazz and obscure pop. I believe this strongly influenced the direction in his sketches.
- You have both a precise and incredible concern on sound. How can you be complementary?
Sleazy: Sometimes I think SoiSong is like the child's game where one person draws a head, folds the paper so the next person cannot see it, who draws the top of the body, who again folds the paper so the next cannot see, who draws the legs, feet etc, so when the whole paper is revealed it is the sum of many parts. Fortunately Ivan and I have very similar tastes and appreciations, so the results are not so monstrous!
Ivan: I feel we have a very similar sense of intensity and power that can be carried in music, even though expressed through disticntly different methods and sounds in our solo outputs.. That's what makes working together exciting and interesting.
- Is there any domains more mastered by one of you?
Sleazy: I would say Ivan is much more of a perfectionist, and concerned with the exact nature of the science and mathematics of the finished waveform, whereas I am lazy about this, but sometimes have a sense of the picture seen from across vast distances of space.
Ivan: Techically speaking, Sleazy is also very much in the Apple world of music making, whereas I run a PC and have little awareness of all kinds of new software. He is good in analogue equipment while I have some classical training in piano and guitar in my background..
- Have you got, each of you, a talent that the other has not?
Sleazy: Sure! Many, fortunately!
Ivan: I wish I could learn to sleep on the airplanes as easily!
- Are some tracks more Sleazy, and some more Pavlov, according to you?
Sleazy: I would say mostly NO. Because we start exchanging ideas at the very birth of each track, they are all the children of both of us.
Ivan: I always feel they're Soisong, and I don't mind taking the risk and going completely out of the more familiar world of COH to pursue the feeling I have with the piece we're making. Identity is nothing that feels important when we work together.
- Who decides and choses the obscure titles of the tracks ?
Sleazy: In the case of the album, most of the titles come from the lyrics, which are in a language neither of us speaks. Although I was first able to get them recorded, Ivan was the first to be able to decide how to write them down.
- What do you mean by xAj3z, for example?
Sleazy: Since the approach of SoiSong tends to be anti-Earth languages, and in favor of lyrics that are beyond human understanding (at least on an intellectual level), we did not want the album to have a title that could be compartmentalized by a specific meaning, even if we did, how would we decide what earth language it should be in - English? Russian? Swedish? Thai? Japanese? Sanskrit?
We feel that the unstated and visual overtones present in modern-day system passwords, are as close as it is possible to come to our intended meaning, using conventional keyboards and fonts.
Ivan: On the techincal side, album titles are passwords to our website and we feel they should be imitating the existing password prinicples. xAj3z was an intuitive choice, and feels somewhat poetic, in an unusual sense - I also found that if spinning the title written in various typefaces, a meaning emerges. The meaning intended in the music.. or maybe it's just me! :)
- Was this album composed and recorded in this very world or in a parallel universe?
Sleazy: Thats a good question! ,-) I'm afraid I am never really very sure where I am at any given moment, so cannot confirm or deny exactly which Parallel the album was recorded on, almost certainly several.
Ivan: I had a feeling that the album was rather taking us somewhere, as opposed to us taking it to what it is. I was always surprised by the way songs were coming out of our hands.. I have never done anything like this and I know neither did Sleazy - we were both in awe for each of the songs, which most literally emerged from somewhere as we worked on them.
- The format of the CD is quite interesting and strange. Who had the idea? Pianostealth?
Sleazy: Since I have been making packaging for records for so many years, I usually leave the design concepts to Ivan who has a mind that suits those kind of puzzles (as well as a love of Origami). Both cd packages so far have been designed by him, and manufactured by hand in Thailand. Once the package exists even in prototype form, I enjoy presenting it in different forms, and new lights.
Ivan: Stealth is a technology of disguise. Piano is a classical instrument. xAj3z could not have any other packaging concept. The music is made in computers, and the technology is used to disguise itself.. and to make it sound like a piano!
- Is it a way of both fighting against downloading and release an original piece of art in the same time ?
Sleazy: Downloads are part of everyday life now, and we encourage at least some free access to SoiSong's music, however we certainly like memorable packages to arrive in our own postboxes from time to time, and so try to make ours "art" if that is the right word.
Ivan: We are well aware that one can download our albums from torrent sites, and while we do not encourage that for reasons of de-evaluation of music as art, we do not mind.
- Is it both of you femininely represented in the artwork?
Sleazy: LOL! SoiSong's attitude to sexuality is a complex one that has not so far been much investigated.
The image in the package does contain aspects of both of us, as well as of two very beautiful asian friends of ours. As to gender I can confirm (from going to the gym with him) that Ivan is biologically male, but as for myself or the two beautiful asian friends, I can make no definite statement ,-)
Ivan: I have known many females of various ages and cultural backgrounds in my life - still today, I wish I could understand what "feminine" actually is.
- Difficult, with Soisong, to not think about Coil even if the voice of John Balance is obviously lacking and if the general atmosphere is a bit warmer. However, the profoundness of sound textures is also maybe more effective than ever if we compare Coil to Soisong, and maybe more important than melodies, just as the work of COH. Do you work differently on this work as you were working on Coil? What about Ivan and COH?
Sleazy: Our way of working (see above) is so different I do not see that SoiSong sounds like Coil at all, although sometimes Ivan says to me "Thats really TOO Coil, can you try it a different way?" so I guess you must be right to some extent. I certainly feel that Ivan's contribution makes SoiSong much stronger.
Ivan: As I appear to know Coil's output a bit better than Sleazy, I am very cautious to try and keep away from too direct Coil references often suggested by the melodics he comes up with. "Pentium Jazz Processing" is a sort of "mental technology" I developed to expand these melodics way beyond their origins and it is based upon the intuitive way I make COH records.. perhaps, it's my "next step" - the method is so versatile, it can be applied to anything, including real drums and artificial voices!
08.08.2009 Paris - Bangkok - Stockholm
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