Bubblegum Club

Author: Dhevan Bergmann

  • Bubblegum Club mix Vol 13 by VELD

    Having listened to Richard D. James Album at 16 and discovered the music making software Fruity Loops soon after this, Veld fell in love with electronic production techniques. We had a chat with him about about his musical journey and got a bespoke taste of his talent with his Bubblegum Club mix.

    Can you tell us a bit about Veld?

    Veld’s the name I’ve been recording music and occasionally djing under since about 2012. You need a name, right, to keep it all in order?

    How would you describe your style?

    “Loose”. My brother says he can recognise a consistent style in my music, but I’m not sure that I could. At one stage I honestly thought the best thing I’d ever made was a mashup of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and “Numbers”, but it turns out it was Girls who made it. That little slice of cryptomnesia might suggest I’d like to sound like a mix between Whitney Houston and Kraftwerk. Actually I’d like to sound like a mix between RZA, Plaid and Kris Wadsworth. Still not close.

    Can you tell us about your musical background – who or what sparked your interest in electronic music?

    Warp Records. Warp Records did that. In it must have been 1997 or so. Of course those artists had their own influences, and there’s never a break in the chain, but for a 16-year-old in Durban it felt like an utterly new mode of expression, completely sui generis.

    At that stage my top records were probably Van Morrison and Pixies. But after I heard Richard D. James Album that was that. I didn’t want to listen to music with guitars in it for the next five years. Because you’d know how it was done. Electronic production techniques seemed to allow for the possibility of hearing sounds that had never been heard before. And that was so exciting. A few years later when I came across a version of Fruity Loops 1.0 from god knows where I thought I’d found the keys to the kingdom. How long I spent trying to reconstruct Squarepusher’s “Red Hot Car” on those four midi channels I don’t know.

    After Warp, African Dope Records was massively influential. As well as putting out incredible tunes, I could go out and see the artists playing this stuff live. They made the idea of producing electronic music attainable. I remember nervously knocking on the door of their studio in like 2002 and Fletcher being very hospitable and showing me the little Korg, I think, that they’d used to make those noodly worms on Neon Don’s “Life is Neon”. It had note names written on tape on the keys, and I was like, well if they can make tracks like that without knowing exactly where F# is, maybe there’s hope.

    What are your musical influences?

    Riaan Botha, Matthew Rowles, drum and bass, 90s east-coast, 4AD, M-nus, Warp, African Dope, Field Marshal, Brainfeeder, Astralwerks, Ghostly, Hyperdub, Bleep, Kitchener’s, Fact Mag, Mouldy, Wendy House, Cellphone Jazz, YouTube, etc. etc.

    Listening to music is obviously hugely influential, whether because it informs my taste or provides specific inspiration for a track. But an equally important influence has been the way in which my studio has evolved, and the way in which my use of it has evolved. Getting a new DAW or effect, getting to know an old effect a bit better, learning a new keyboard shortcut or a scrap of music theory, deciding on a new sample folder structure…It’s prosaic stuff that ultimately determines how sounds are going to emerge from a session.

    What do you want to express with your music? What emotions should it evoke within the listener?

    Evoking anything’s not really the motivation behind me making tracks. For one thing not a lot of people hear them, so the idea of making music for an audience seems a bit grandiose. To the extent I’m trying to express anything it’s what I’m feeling at a point in time, but it can’t be as immediate as if I were an actual musician making my guitar weep because my dog died. The process is drawn out: I’m going to be coming back to a track over days or weeks or months. So it becomes a case of exploring the palette you’ve established for yourself, or the logic of a concept. The reason I’m making music at all is because I love that process so fucking much, particularly the sense of exploration and progress. Surprising myself – capturing something in a heavily mediated process that sounds fresh and contingent – is the drug.

    What’s next for Veld?

    Keeping on trucking, learning about music, seeing where Ableton takes me. I’d love to have a track used on a surf clip.

     

  • Onyx Ashanti // “We can be our technology”

    Onyx Ashanti is a musician, programmer, 3D print-designer, writer, performer, inventor…a self described child of the internet, and disciple of the open source philosophy. He is the creator of a new way to combine improvisation, dance and sound design with his invention “Beatjazz”, which merges between art and science, representing the intersection of hardware, software and concept.

    As a raver in the ’90s, Onyx Ashanti felt very strongly about the synergistic power of electronically generated music and psychedelic compounds for constructing new realities, and so he set out to design new realities. “The goal is that this completely interfaces with data and social reality so that they merge into something that evolves.”

    The Beatjazz Controller is a wearable, wireless, 3-node network interface for a complete live performance architecture designed to enable completely immersive live electronic performance. I interviewed Onyx Ashanti to find out more about where the idea came from and how it has evolved.

    Who is Onyx Ashanti?

    There are multiple answers to that question. Onyx Ashanti is the name that came to me in a dream after the verdict of acquittal for the officers involved in the Rodney King police-terrorist attack, back in 1992, as the beginning of a journey to comprehend myself anew.  But also, Onyx Ashanti is a guy I dreamed up as a child. Someone who was who I wanted to be when I grow up. And still again, Onyx Ashanti is a transitional myth to get me to the next iterative stage of self design. The name allows me to paint reality and design my self.

    You can do what you do because of this interface you have created. Can you briefly describe why you began the process of developing this system?

    That depends on your definition of what I do. The interface is in a constant transitional state. I think of it as a kind of coherent boredom modulator. The interface is the artifact at the end of the process trajectory. The real game is in the design and programming of something that can interact with the idea matrix to produce such an artifact. I’ve had grand ideas for ages but only recently has computing power been sufficiently powerful and cheap to allow for those ideas to be interacted with in realtime at such high quality. I feel that if I can create something that can modulate boredom, then it will have other cognitive benefits as well. That helps move it out of the zone of entertainment and into the realms of reality design, based on the idea of reality as a projection. This would make the “music” it produces a psycho-cymatic, sono-synaptic reconfigurator…THAT has definitely modulated my boredom, as a musician of 35 years, and will have beautifully unpredictable results. So I guess interactive unpredictability is an easy way to say why I do what I do and what made me start.

    Photography by Onyx Ashanti

    Your work is starting to link into cybernetics with the addition of a neural transmitter added into your interface. How is that coming along? (as you nearly caught on fire before one of your TED talk events). Is it making progress in terms of how you want it to interact with your interface and can you give us a short idea of what it does?

    Hahahaha, yeah, I solved the fire problem :-). Now I call what I do, sonocybernetics. It is the transduction of data into sound. The purpose of this sonic transduction is to make use of the brains ability to adapt to any form of coherent data input, in this case, sound. Humans have very sophisticated sound computational mental architecture, baked in. So currently I have been working on refining ways of understanding sound in a computational sense, like typing, mouse control, navigation and ronbotic control,  but also for neuromodulation i.e. entertaining the wave dynamics of the brain. I needed to get the system stable before I moved on to the next step which is to read realtime EEG (brain waves) signals into the system to guide my neuromodulation  protocols more precisely. I feel strongly that there is a communication that can be had within oneself that will result in unpredictable “non-bored” states. And since the system has so much room for evolution (I am currently only using 8 parameters out of a possible 255), it will evolve exponentially beyond a certain point….theoretically.

    Each new parameter added doubles the complexity of the output. The primary synth is called “complexity” as it is for playing with complex modifications to the sound, in real time. There is also a keyboard and mouse replacement with sonic feedback called Func. This is what makes it an interface instead of just a musical instrument. The music trains the brain as well as provides feedback for all the functions of the system. This constant feedback and expression is where the cybernetics aspect expresses itself.

    Do you have any prior history/knowledge with the study of cyborgology and post-humanism?

    My previous interactions were all mediated through pop culture but in the last 7-8 years, I have voraciously read research papers and subscribed to various blogs  and authors who have more grounded ideas regarding what is doable and what is possibly responsible. My issue with cyborgology from a pop-cultural stand point is that they are always a project of some sort of skunkworks…they, the cyborg, never just iterate themselves. The cybernetics are always impressed from outside of their own control. That aspect of cyborg mythology is irritating.  Norbert Wiener, the creator of cybernetics, thought so to and even wrote a book about the issue called “The Human Use of Human Beings” on the topic, and post humanism is a sort of dressed-up self hate, in my mind. How can we be post-human when we haven’t mastered being human yet.  Or even really have a reasonable grasp as to what this state of being actually is.  Let’s focus on being optimal-human and from there emerge into whatever state that creates. Post-human and trans-human both leave me cold in regards to a ‘why’. That question became a much more interesting one, when asked after the emergence of open source technology like arduino, reprap 3D printers, linux, pure data…new questions with much more interesting new answers. Trans/post humanism must be re-assessed now and perpetually as a self iterated form. But the emphasis and trajectory should be on optimal humanism first, which will intuitively move toward transhumanism. Post-humanism, to my mind, is a question for someone else other than myself. The other two I just mentioned are  keeping me fully engaged.

    Photography by Etienne_b

    How do you think our relationship with technology is changing?

    I think of technology as a noun and a verb. In my mind, technology is the natural expression of human beings. It is the hard coding of ideas into time. “Our” depends on whether you are predominately creating technology or consuming it. For those that create and modify technology, the ability to go from idea space to time space in 1-3 steps is creating a new dimension of possibility. We can evolve ourselves now. We can be our technology. New questions have to be asked and new answers must be comprehended usefully. For those that do comprehend, it is important for them to create a bridge to those that do not. A way for anyone to be able to program their reality as well. When we all realize that technology is what we do as a species, we can design the entire construct to be more communal and participatory. Open source technology moved in this direction strongly.

    How do you think cybernetics will transform design, art and fashion in the up and coming years?

    Well, cybernetics at its most simple would be the ability to constantly interact with the data and information used for the process one is involved with so things are increasingly able to emerge more and more quickly from idea space.  Instead of 2-3 years to get to a point, things can be sorted in weeks or months. Core ideas in hours or days. Also creativity can bloom without the necessity of  large sums of money, which will and already has enabled a cross pollination of disciplines. I see this trend becoming much more fractal if only just in my own work.

    so…

    When this fully integrates itself into fashion, which to me is purely body worn symbology, it will mutate every single preconceived notion of what people wear on their bodies. Self-iterated personalized fashion will have a profound effect on society because how one dresses projects affiliation with resonant ideas. So I feel strongly that every dominant fashion expression that currently exists will form the primordial basis for much and many mutations which will cross pollinate endlessly as it becomes the “norm“, whatever normal means anymore.

    I’ve been wearing 3D printed footwear only, for the last 2 years and I had no idea how much people look at each others feet. But add to that that my “exo-feet” have also made my feet vastly stronger than they were before I started wearing them and can see very clearly now how to take those benefits and build on them going into the future(s), with evolving techniques that emerge as I learn more about myself while wearing them.

    With technology advancing at such a rapid rate, you seem to be creating new enhancements for your interface at a rapid pace. It is helping with your progression?

    Learning how to learn iteratively, has been the greatest asset  gained from the last decade, for me. Having an interface that will, say, eventually allow me to interact with CRISPR technology (gene editing), means that I can funnel everything I learn through a cybernetic prosthesis that enhances brain function and information interaction by converting it into sound forms. Everything is digital now which means that better digital interfacing will be immediately applicable to any form of information I want to study and use. My thoughts on the idea of the “singularity” are that the human brain/mind are natures quantum computer and nothing I have ever read in any research paper gives me the impression that there is any limit to what we can learn, process and use, if we interact with it constructively and intuitively. We could easily outpace computers intellectually because we can use the computers as prosthesis to do it.

  • DJ Lag to release exclusive ‘Trip to New York’ EP to fans for free

    Gqom innovator, DJ Lag is about to strike again with his first, self-titled EP having only come out last year. DJ Lag is a pioneer who propelled the  Durban Gqom sound straight into the capitals of the international electronic music industry.

    DJ Lag has performed across the country, including at the Cape Town Electronic Music Festival, and has shared the stage with respected artists such as Skrillex and Euphonik at the Bridges For Music workshop in Kliptown, Soweto. He debuted in the international scene at the Unsound Festival in Poland and has since performed in a number of other cities.

    The King of Gqom, together with his management company Black Major, is dropping an exclusive EP to fans via WhatsApp for free on the 14th of July.

    DJ Lag’s Trip to New York EP is a 3 track EP with a remix of Khonkolo from Okzharp. The only way fans can get the EP, is by heading over to djlag.com and making sure they are on the send out list by 11am on the 14th. The EP will sent out to all those who have signed up in time.

    Fans who sign up for the EP will be the first to get exclusive links to future tracks.

     

  • Beezi Flybynyt: self-taught multimedia artist and experimental electronic producer

    Beezi Flybynyt is a self-taught multimedia artist and experimental electronic DJ and producer from Johannesburg. He is also known as IAMWINDOWS 95 which speaks to his character as a vaporwave producer and digital artist. He is a collector of vinyls, cassettes, clothes and books based on psychology, metaphysics and theology.

    With his release of the avant-garde Electronikamontage vol 1 EP earlier this year I spoke to him to find out more about his art and musical projects.

    I’d be interested to hear what your mindset was going into the EP that you just released, Electronikamontage vol 1

    Electronikamontage is a plunderphonic tape. The idea came from an artwork I made which is also the cover art of the tape. So basically I make soundtracks for all the artworks that I make. This helps direct the viewer’s imagination when viewing the images.

    The first track I did was ‘Frequencies’ with Ramintra, a producer from Bangkok.  The direction of the song gave birth to the direction of how I wanted the tape to sound. The song started as an ambient and experimental sound that I used to focus my attention on when I was meditating and trying to heal my depression. I was going through a lot at that time. I spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to put the tape together. I even developed a habit of not going to sleep just passing out on the chair.

    Where do you draw your inspiration from?

    My inspiration comes from anything that captures my attention, like seeing musicians I know performing live. It gives me ideas and the energy to go home and spend the whole night playing with my drum pads. It also comes from conversations that my friends and I have and sometimes from artworks I make or images I take. Images give me a sort of a direction on how I translate visual elements into sound. You can find me on Photoshop editing an image while trying to come up with the right notes for the bass line of a song on ALBETON at the same time.

    Aside from making music, you express interests in photography and design. Tell us more about this?

    I grew up around different artists who introduced me to a lot of cool stuff like Adobe. My old friends used to take me to art exhibitions and workshops. I got to meet a lot of artists in different fields that liked my personality and how I presented myself with fashion, and they would ask to photograph me. I was creative but couldn’t express it until I had my own equipment. I got my camera and started taking pictures of different designs of buildings, of fashionistas and of anything that captured my attention with interesting detailing.  I got Adobe Suite that enabled me to play around with different software and I started manipulating images I took to create vaporwave digital artworks.

    Tell us where you grew up? And do you feel your city has influenced your music?

    I grew up in different places in and around Johannesburg. I am from Katlehong but have also lived in Gosforth Park, a small suburb near Alberton north. I also lived in the JHB CBD. I spent most of my time in town because of school. I used to play in game shops ,internet cafes and buildings around the city where my friends used to live.

    Yes the city influenced the direction of my music because in all the places I lived people there listened to different genres and in town I got introduced to electronic music artists like James Zoo and local artists like Card On Spokes, Christian Tiger School and Nonku Phiri. I listened to a lot of artists from record labels like Ninja Tune and got to a point where I wanted to make my own music and come up with my own identity and sound; I wanted a style that would express who I am.

    What are your plans moving forward with producing and what can we expect to hear from you next?

    I am working on upgrading my Ableton live sets, getting more bookings, as well as making videos for my music and adding vocals to my beats.I am also working on a tape called ALONE, which is about a girl. I will be dropping it soon.

     

    Check out Beezi Flybynyt’s blog and, bandcamp and souncloud to keep up with his work.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Bubblegum Club mix Vol 11 by Lost Lover

    Lost Lover has recently released a song on Wet Dreams Recordings new compilation, ‘Work Not Hype’. The exclusive mix that Lost Lover made for us will take listeners on a sonic journey through dark electronic beats. For a little more insight I interviewed Lost Lover about the inspiration for the mix.

    Can you please tell us more about yourself?

    Lost Lover was conceived in Johannesburg about 3 years ago and born in December 2016, inspired by the city’s infamous advertisements to retrieve lost Lovers.

    Everybody remembers a Lost Lover and with remembering also creates one every day. Memory is not stagnant. It changes with every present moment and inevitably adapts for the sake of necessary projections of the future. Your Lost Lover(s) shapes future Lovers and the lives with and without them.

    Lost Lover will tell stories, wear faces, speak tongues and dance in languages of many within a world inhabited by Animals, plants and Spirits. We will exoticise each other in ways and stare only through kaleidoscopic lenses of all colours, except White and Black.

    Lost Lover is a projection space, a piece of Art created by many.  Lost Lover is generally not one person and if so then tomorrow it would be someone else.

    What are your influences regarding your music and how would you describe your music?

    The music is influenced by a need to shed over-self awareness, or imagined and assumed outside views of self. A search to find a calm relationship based on embrace and capitulation and trust. To have the freedom to speak powerfully through beauty and fight with affirmation.

    This hopefully leads to a sound that is forward and playful, patient, angry, committed. Embracing and dramatic at times.

    Your sound has a pretty distinct, refined darkness about it; to what extent do you think these hypnotic dark elements and atonality are part of the whole aesthetic of your music?

    Darkness is not intentionally there but maybe it is a strong part of the aesthetic. Time will tell.

    There always has been an affinity for dissonance on many levels and Atonality is a result of focus being set on rhythm and sound more than harmony based on a musical school or tempering.

    Tell us your inspiration behind this Bubblegum Club mix.

    The main idea was to make a long set. In the past years people have been uploading sets of 30 minutes, sometimes even less and rarely playing sets longer than one hour. This approach ignores the potential and force a set can have with enough time and only with enough time. Some of the strongest tracks in the set are over 10 minutes long and  they need space around them.

    It is a challenge to listeners to trust and give themselves into something deeply for their own sake and to encourage a listening culture which promotes patience and  concentration and which embraces depth.

    When you produce and mix, do you go with the flow of what you are feeling or are the tracks conceptualized before they are produced or included in a mix?

    A mix like this is very conceptual and carefully selected. There is a reason for each track to be in the set. Flow comes into play in the transitioning between the tracks.

    In Production it is slightly different. It is not a concept but a state and a sound. A state of being is the equivalent of a concept in a sense that it connects everything together but it is different because it is not an intellectual but a spiritual and emotional child.

    How were you first introduced to electronic music and have you had a formal music education at all?

    Lost Lover has only existed digitally so far and is only a few months old. Education is still to come and nobody knows if it will be formal. What has been created so far are results of what was brought along from previous lives, genetic programming and ancestral conditioning.  No questions have been formulated yet.

    Where do you draw the most inspiration when producing music and what are your primary tools for building your sound?

    As mentioned earlier, Inspiration is really a state and very rarely a reference. A inspirational state is reached through being alone and finding a pure state not digested through any human beings reflection.

    The tools for the sound are mainly very processed field recordings, especially most of the complex textural sounds. Different kinds of syntheses also but more important is sequencing and through that how sound moves in relation to time.

    Can you tell us about some of your future projects being released soon and your work on ‘Wet Dreams Recordings’ new upcoming ‘Work Not Hype’ compilation?

    The Only released so far has been one track on ‘Wet Dreams Recordings’ titled ‘Your Lost Lover’ Which was the first Lost Lover track finished, It is intense, someone on soundcloud commented with ‘Yoh this is cold’.

    The ‘Work not Hype’ compilation is very different to other South African Releases. The courage in the curation should inspire many.

    There is an EP and an Album Ready to find a home. Future projects will be in many different forms and energy through sound will always be a companion to it if not always in form of Music.

    What was your creative approach on these up and coming releases and what was the process of creating these songs?

    The Album was inspired by 24 hours in a far eastern city and the approach to composition was almost rigidly conceptual. The main ideas were laid down on a song per day basis whilst inspiration was fresh, then refined later.

    The EP is more recent and probably more mature sounding, The track ‘Your Lost Lover’ is part of it.

    What are your current thoughts on the growing South African scene? Who are some of your biggest inspirations at the moment and why?

    South Africa is a country which keeps on giving birth to new and pure cultural movements and Artists. It is a privilege to witness and share a time with them. There are lots from different directions but my favourites at the moment are:

    Jazzuelle, Vukazithathe, Hlasko/Kaang, Nonku Phiri, Jakinda, BCUC, Urban Village, TheGooddokta, Big Space, Sibusile Xaba, Stiff Pap, Jumping Back Slash.

    All mentioned are pioneers. Some in music and some also in a life besides music. They all are working with the world in their very own unique and powerful way. They symbolize a strong curiosity and courage to explore and experience.