It is the sort of sound you might expect to hear in deep outer space – the sound of planets aligning, synthesised notes rising and falling like an angel’s sigh. The muffled heartbeat of the bass throbs from deep within an echoing womb; tambourine rattling past the microphone with a sudden metallic swoosh. High above it all a chirping flute swoops and soars, like some giant intergalactic winged thing.
In September 1978, English composer Brian Eno became the de facto father of a whole new noise. Writing in the liner notes of Music for Airports/Ambient 1, Roxy Music’s former synth player set forth his manifesto: “Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularising environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to ‘brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms), Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.”
Eno’s choice of the word ‘ambient’, taken from the Latin ambire (‘to surround’), was a deliberate one: his were soundscapes that could alter your state of mind; put you into a ‘higher state’ – the sort of existential altitude usually associated with psychedelics. Inspired by John Cage, who occasionally composed by throwing the I Ching, Eno had made possible Clockwork Orange; Pink Floyd; The Orb and Aphex Twin; down-tempo chill-out designed to ease a tripped-out mind.
Emerging custodians of that sound here include DJ Nicomatic, James Speck (on the splendidly named Korg Kaosillator) and Tim King (guitar), who collectively – under the moniker Electronic Universe – are perhaps Phnom Penh’s first and only live ambient fusion outfit. Joined for their all-improvised, totally unrehearsed three-hour debut earlier this month by flautist Anton Isselhardt, their second gig could feature anything from radio transmitters to a singing saw. The Advisor assembled Electronic Universe at Meta House to talk sonic trips, silly named synthesisers and Mixmaster Morris’ secret acid stash.
‘Kaosillator’ is my new favourite word.
James: If you go on YouTube and type in ‘Kaosillator’, there are whole albums made entirely on one of these things [points to small flashing box]. It’s got a very cool sound to it. You’ve got tons of effects. The real reason I bought it is because it has something called a ‘vocoder’, which is specifically designed to handle the human voice. Do you remember the old song by Joe Walsh, Rocky Mountain? ‘Duh duh duh duh RooOOOcckky MountAAAin…’ In the late 1960s and early 1970s, people got into the whole synthesised voice thing.
Tim: Like Cher! ‘Do you belieeeEEEeeeEEEeeeve in life after love…’
James: It has 16 effects. YOU-CAN-SOUND-LIKE-A-ROBOT or you can lalalaLALALAlaaaaaa… [Sings]
If I had one of those, I’d be making crank calls all the time.
James: The other cool thing is if I put it in a certain key, it’s then got all these scales: pentatonic, chromatic, names I don’t even know. It’s deep music theory: Egyptian music is based on this one particular scale – and all of a sudden it’s got this sound that’s really Middle Eastern. I usually keep it on standard chromatic, which is like a blues harp. Stevie Wonder has this double harp and he’s changing keys with his thumb to take it deeper; same thing here. If I’m with a band, so long as I have the key I can sit there and play all day and every note is in the scale. It’s perfect. That’s what we were doing: Nico was laying down the key, Tim was playing guitar and I was just going nuts on this thing – and it worked. I was playing with the Ukes Of Hazard once and Dylan Walker had a small one. The first time I heard it was when we were at Sharky’s and he added this PSYCHE-FUCKING-DELIC thing. This became our signature sound. We’d be doing a gig and the Kaosillator would come on and people would be, like, ‘What the fuck?!’
Nico: And this was the first time improvising for Anton. He really had to push himself. After about 45 minutes, he said: ‘Are we going to have a break?’ No!
How would you describe this sound you’ve created?
Nico: I have no idea! [Laughs] I really don’t know. The good thing is it doesn’t have to have a name. It’s trance, ambient, meditation, ethno, world music, mixed dub… whatever. I use three or four different sources.
James: And you’re looping, right? Because I would do a sound effect and then I’d have my hands off the Kaosillator but then I’d hear it again and go: ‘Oh, he’s sampling. He’s grabbing it and moving it into the mix.’
So you’re all mad professors, yes?
Tim: That’s right, yes!
Nico: I feel maybe this is a contemporary jam session: like the old concept of a jam session, with a blues harp and stuff, but for the 21st century.
Three hours is a long time to jam without a break. What does it feel like? Do you go through different states?
Nico: Yes, yes, yes, it’s a trip! This time, for the last track I just let it play and then it stopped and at some point there was this break, this silence…
James: Nico went away but Tim and I kept the beat going; I’m jumping up and down, going WEEEooooWEEEEooooWEEEooo and Anton says: ‘When does it end?!’ I don’t know! Just keep playing! But maybe a break might be nice after 30 minutes.
Tim: No! Three hours! It’s nice because I could take my guitar off, go have a drink and then come back. And you can add anything into it: flute, a trombone, vocals…
Nico: I think there’s room for two or three poems.
This is a bit of a departure from your original sound, Nico, isn’t it?
Nico: I joined my first band at the age of 13: punk, new wave noise. We worked with a Casio sampler and a drum set, with noisy and very provocative German lyrics. I wrote them in school and I remember one teacher called me up and she took the piece of paper off me and she read it and I think the track was called Kill The Pope, or something like that, but she was the art teacher and she said: ‘Very good, Nicolaus! Very creative!’ [Laughs]
Good job it wasn’t the religious education teacher.
Nico: Yes, yes! After this we started to be more consumable, we turned into a school pop-rock-blah band. Then my friends and I went to the first ever Depeche Mode gig, when their first album came out, at Metropol. They had four kits, a synthesiser and a tape machine. This was way before Midi; you had to have a clock on the tape machine to synchronise all these synthesisers. The problem was they only had one LP, so they could only play for 40 minutes. At the end they rewound the tape and had to play the whole set again! That was the only way to do an encore: to actually rewind the tape. This must have been 1980. We decided, while we were having dinner after the concert, to kick out the drummer and to not have guitars; just use synthesisers. That was a new thing. This was the future: no more rock and fucking roll! We started to record and did a few demos and eventually we went to Amsterdam and this was the first time I heard house music. We felt it was exactly what Depeche Mode had done a few years before, just with a different beat – it had become more black. Black music was all about the beat, so instead of these kind of white beats, people would thrown in the black beats and it became house. In 1999 I founded a record label, D’Vision. By then the Berlin Wall had come down and the whole scene transformed into a pop scene again. That was the time when we were underground and independent and produced only records we liked very much. At some point these A&R record companies would come in. They didn’t even listen to the music. They said: ‘So, you have a blonde singer? Are you intending to do a video? Has the singer big boobs?’ It’s about the music! Listen to the track! ‘No, no. Just send us the band biog and make sure the singer shows her tits a little.’ This was the point we quit; the point all these techno DJs started to sell out and people would suddenly get $10,000 for one night. I had been trained in piano and flute, but when I was a kid I realised I could never be as good as the people whose music I liked to listen to, so this was when I got into synthesised music. It was very convenient because you could just programme the sequencer in a way you’re not able to play. That’s what I did and that’s what I still do.
James: This is when we got right into the groove. We’re grooving here… [Dances to recording of their debut show]
Reminds me of Frank Zappa.
James: He was doing it acoustically, before the Kaosillator even existed.
Tim: Zappa had a digital audio workstation, so he was able to manipulate digital signals towards the end of his career. That’s now standard, but he had one of the first – way before we got into all this computer stuff. We had one at Berklee Music College in Boston, too, which isn’t far from MIT.
Nico: Next time, I’m going to use Tibetan bowls: I have a whole CD, recorded by a German musician. What’s interesting is this multi-source thing in terms of the media. If I had more space and a sound technician, I’d also connect turntables and probably some radio transmitters and all that stuff. The ambient DJs created this; that’s what it all goes back to. At the end of it, you don’t really know if what you heard is what other people heard! But for me personally it was great fun.
How similar is established ambience to what you’re doing here, with this live ambient fusion concept?
Nico: There are lots of ambient groups, but most of them perform only with synthesisers. You have this poor use of guitars: at the beginning of the ambient movement, things like guitars were prohibited. They wanted to get rid of the rock and roll thing. That changed in the middle of the ’90s. Bands like The Orb did a lot going in this direction. In Germany, it’s not an open concept. Normally, for young electronic musicians, they’re just electronic.
Tim: That live aspect, when you’re making the music happen, it’s not the same as stuff that’s recorded in a studio. And here at Meta House, where you’ve got live visuals on the screens, it’s mesmerising.
Nico: One of my friends is a music scientist based in Berlin and he’s written a thesis entitled What Is Not In The Manual. In it he says that art in electronic music starts when you do something with the instruments or equipment which the equipment was not intended for. For example, German electro producer, Pole [real name Stefan Bretke], who dropped his Waldorf 4-Pole filter in 1996 and broke it but liked the way it sounded: it scratches and makes these funny noises; it’s broken, you know? But that’s the art. This is what I’m trying to do here; things that are unplanned, uncontrolled, untypical wiring; interesting stuff. I even want to use a singing saw.
James: I want to try the vocoder!
Nico: You can also plug the guitar into the Kaosillator, but then one of you is out of a job… [Laughs]
Nico: I started with a Korg synthesiser when I was 16 because they were quite affordable, but they don’t produce them any more; they’ve become vintage. Nowadays Korg produce these gadgets: they’re synthesisers, you can play them, you can plug a guitar into them, use filters…
Everyone: NyyyyYYYYyyyyEEEeeeRRRrrrr…
Nico: English musicians were really groundbreaking in this kind of sound. There was this ambient DJ, Mixmaster Morris, really in the beginning. I remember he played at The Love Parade in 1991: this older English chap who looked a little bit like one of Ken Kesey’s followers, the Merry Pranksters, with this huge cylinder hat. This guy, nearly 50, he looked completely stoned so we went up to him and he was playing only world music records, sometimes on 70RPM – very slow; very weird stuff, really trippy. We went up to him and said: ‘Hey, Mixmaster! What’s your inspiration?’ He took out one of these record covers and pulled out a whole album-sized blotter sheet of LSD. [Laughs] Guys like him, like Alex Paterson of The Orb, even Jah Wobble, who played with John Lydon. Did you know he went to Thailand to record a whole album with Thai molam artists? Fucking cool! You had this Jah Wobble dub bass and then these Thai musicians on top. There are people still recording this kind of thing in studios; I’m not sure how many people listen to it, possibly it’s only for art critics and connoisseurs, but…
You have to have the outer edge in order for everything else to follow.
Tim: When we’re doing this, I feel like Nico is the mothership and we’re just little spaceships flying around him, interacting. You couldn’t do this with a couple of kids who have no musical experience. You’ve got to have some experience playing with other people. That’s what makes me so happy: you know James isn’t going to do anything too weird or outlandish, nothing uncomfortable. You have to have the idea that you’re not the solo star; the music determines who does what. You feed off each other, off the mothership.
WHO: DJ Nicomatic, James Speck (Kaosillator) and Tim King (guitar)
WHAT: Live ambient fusion
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.
WHEN: 9pm August 22
WHY: “Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think” – Brian Eno