P041: Cabeza de Vaca – Boris Bunnik special and interview.

For only the second time we focus an entire show on one artist. First was shed, but this week it is the turn of Boris Bunnik to fill the full hour of Cabeza de Vaca on Scanner FM . Most recognisable as Conforce, he is however using eight different names for his work.

There is plenty of biographical detail in the show as well as a bit of analysis and interpretation. In addition there has been a significant contribution from Boris himself who generously don

ated some time to answer some quick questions by email which will suffice for notes for today. The good news is there is already a new Conforce album on the way, scheduled for October.

CdV: You grew up in Terschelling, but are you still based in Leeuwarden or have you moved on again? Was the photo for the “Machine Conspiracy” album taken in Terschelling? I find the image somehow quite representative of your style as it somehow conveys the idea of “atmosphere” which is paramount to your tracks. How much of that kind of island and low-land geography influences you?

BB: I think the pace here is what is most influential on what I make and do to be honest. The further you go up North the calmer the pace somehow.

I'm not aware of a specific atmosphere, it's a sub concious thing. But looking back you might be able to declare or relate sounds/music to a certain environment.

The image from the machine conspiracy album was taking on the island indeed. I go there every once in a while but my main city at the moment is Leeuwarden.

We have space, I think it's always present in the music.

CdV: You also work as a photographer and designer. Your other photos are often architectural and geometric to emphasise “form and function” and even dystopian ideas yet you have said that a lot of your music is “non-linear” which seems to work against this idea of “physical control” or “architectural” production methods. What would you say then are your non-musical influences on your sound?

BB: I don't like to pinhole things but when it comes to photography I would say i'm a guerrilla street photographer. It's something i'm developing every day and planning to exhibit in the future.

When it comes to photography/electronic music and artwork. I do love  symmetry, textures, lines, grids etc Abstract stuff.

As electronic music remains very repetetive. I love the subtle evolvements. 

Non-musical influences are mainly travel experiences, conversations with people and the empty moments where you have time to clear the mind and get refreshed to be able to start and enter new creative paths. So nature s very influential.

CdV: Sticking a bit with the Netherlands, you have tended to release mostly on Dutch labels. How important has the community there been to you? One curiosity I also always had was with language and was always fascinated by artists from say Netherlands or Germany releasing track and album names in English. It is obvious from an accessability point of view, but have you ever considered using more of the Dutch language to express this idea of community or origin, for example?

BB: I don't really feel part of a community, maybe a bit in my own town because there is something creative expanding here.There are a few down to earth like minded people here I can go along with very well. Shared passion and friendships are the base.

I think the web connects communities and this helped me to establish and get inspired for sure.

I have a strong relation with the Dutch labels and I like to keep it this way. Communication in your own language is a lot better and somehow more trustworthy. The music should have a proper platform. Delsin and Clone offer this. I have a lot of confidence in them also on the long term. I've stepped a bit away from the of releasing tiny bits on labels all over the globe. It's a bit strange sending a personal product over to someone you really don't know, and you may hope you get your little amount of money for it.

It's abstract.

Never felt the urge to use dutch titles because it sounds pretty retarded. I can't take it serious because the titles get too much attention or something.

It's so explicit. Music is a universal language so why not use universal language track titles.

CdV: You have now used up to 8 aliases Conforce, Hexagon, K2vx, Mi-24, Silent Harbour, Vernon Felicity, Versalife and even Boris Bunnik! Except for Conforce and your earlier work under your own name, most of these aliases seemed to have started around the time of the Conforce “Escapism” album. Was that coincidence or was it a way to kind of escape (sic) the success that Conforce was achieving at the time and give you a bit more freedom to explore creatively?

BB: Freedom of expression and fun mainly, yes.

Diversity is really important to me. And Using the names helps me to focus a bit more.

But in the end it's all me. It really isn't about the name but about the music but for me it's a way the get a way of the whole perception you create.

Maybe I'm too stubborn to do just one thing, always resisting routine. Sometimes I think I have audio schizophrenia. My brain works like this, it gets bored easily. Sometimes this is an advantage. There was a sort of fusion going on as well of all projects in the new Conforce album that will be released on Delsin at the end of October.

CdV: In an interview with “What people say” you mentioned that each of the aliases is a kind of mood which is very clear: Versalife is more electro, Conforce more Dub for example. But are there any hardware and or software differences as well behind the names to help keep them apart, or are your moods drawn to different equipment or processes in the studio?

BB: It's all mood related. Of course instruments colour your music but it also depends on how you control them and shape them.

But in general the timbres are coming from the same pieces of gear.

CdV: How do you play live these days in terms of the aliases? Do you now get a lot of bookings for Versalife and people come expecting the Conforce sound? Is Vernon Felicity more of a live project and Conforce a DJ, for example?

BB: Depends on what people want. As conforce live I play very diverse livesets. Not the typical loopy orientated sets most people do, or over conceptualized.

I can go a bit more deeper or more focussed on the floor. It's about the balance.

Versalife is only live. With other projects I don't have any ambitions to go on stage with a specific sound. That was never the intention to conceptualize it.

Also with the Versalife project, it just was there. No concept.

CdV: K2vx and Mi-24 so far have only one track each. Will you keep developing these aliases or were they just one offs? Is there any meaning behind the names?

BB: No they were fun projects and I shared a fetish for Russian helicopters with Jorn from other heights. That's why.

Number	Artist	Track	Label	Year
1	Conforce	Sonar conversations	Meanwhile	2010
2	Silent Harbour	Geometry	Echocord	2012
3	Versalife	Dawning of a new day	Clone West Coast Series	2013
4	Mi-24	Stealth mode	Other Heights	2011
5	Boris Bunnik	Starview	Glideslope Music	2007
6	Vernon Felicity	Sequential	M>O>S Recordings	2013
7	K2vx	Sequential	Field Records	2011
8	Hexagon	Envolvement	Delsin	2011

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Plastic dub and the new musical revolution

A quick round-up of some of the recent electronic releases and news.

The vinyl vs MP3 revolution

First up, props to the people at Lost in Musik  for an interesting and clear minded analysis of the economics of producing and releasing electronic music. There are many important revelations in the article, not all of them surprising. The obvious one is that nobody is making money in these days of piracy and downloads. The other being that releases are essentially meaningless agglomerations of songs as most people are buying music by the individual track. This is kind of funny and sad as it represents a conceptual chasm between more traditional music fans and the younger generation and is essentially an indictment on the immediate and over supplied market of modern music. That is to say, that what was once the next level of the musical creative process, binding a collection of tracks together by theme, flow, artwork, mood etc into an album or ep now seems an antiquated and pointless gesture as it will now be less and less appreciated as a whole and reduced to the “essential” elements.

Part 2 of the essay is due to go up on their site as this is posted, but there are still a few questions remaining.

Firstly, there is a slow gathering of momentum in dance music to give the right to download MP3 versions of the tracks when you purchase a vinyl album or single. Some labels doing this at the moment are Kompakt (at least with albums), Kontra Musik and Delsin (see below), to name a few. How is this effecting vinyl sales? When will we see more of this as it is frustrating having a nice record sitting at home, but being unable to put it on your mobile device without paying for it again or making an illegal download.

Another side of this is why some albums come out with such a greatly reduced number of tracks on the vinyl format than the CD/digital release? Is this really for improved audio quality as often stated or is it to promote sales of the remaining tracks by download? A few examples of this might be the Kontext album “Dissociate” on Immerse, Martyn’s “Great Lengths” (see also below) and Conforce’s “Machine Conspiracy” on Meanwhile, to name but three. Here the example is Conforce “Stop hold”, present on the CD, but absent from the vinyl.

Secondly, in all genres and not just electronic music, there has been another slow evolution where both vinyl and CD releases are being remarked as box sets or luxury products to increase desire for ownership. Some examples of this might be the recent Plastikman or David Bowie “Station to Station” box sets, the recent 4 vinyl sets on Styrax and Ann Aimee (see pictures and below), and the luxury versions of singles by Theo Parrish, Tensnake or Burial with Massive Attack, usually by the Vinyl Factory.

The latter is described lovingly by Fact in record geek speak:

“‘Four Walls’ / ‘Paradise Circus’ will be available exclusively as a limited vinyl edition of 1000 copies worldwide, pressed on heavyweight 180 gram 12″ vinyl, and housed in a hand-numbered, gold glitter screen-printed sleeve  featuring artwork by Massive Attack’s Robert ’3D’ Del Naja. Fans can pre-order it right now through vfeditions.com – this has now sold out. The edition will be released on October 17.”

This brings us to another issue of availability: such low runs of highly desirable products means only the nimble will make the purchase and the rest will be left with their MP3s, legal or otherwise. Anyone who ever received mail order catalogues like Boomkat will know what I mean. If you don’t get straight in to get what you want, you find everything sold out, often within hours. Just look at the chaos  surrounding the release of the Sandwell District album back in January as one example and check the current price on Discogs.



Martyn – Ghost People

Given the trend for buying individual tracks, it raises the question as to which track you would go for on an album or single if you could only have one? In the case of Martyn’s new album “Ghost people” on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label, the answer is a no brainer. The only track you need here is the last one “We are you in the future”.

This is not to say the rest of the album is a turkey, far from it, but there is so much drive and vitality on this track that it stands apart from what comes before. However, Fact mag  while also singling out this track and praising it as “the most composed, well-produced record of his career” they also claimed the lack of surprises sunk the ship despite all the quality production. While I agree completely with the reviewers assessment, I would put a positive spin to the lack of surprises. It is true that “Ghost People” is kind of mindless in a way, but I actually enjoy that side of Martyn’s music as a positive: great well-made tracks that just work and no nonsense. “Great Lengths” for me was something of a disappointment, partly given that the vinyl version stripped away so many tracks and broke the flow (see comments above), but partly because the full length recycled a few tracks and almost added too many. Which was the real album in the end? So while it did signpost a big genre swing, for me the swing was already underway and the album, as good as it was, was too overblown and undefined to catalyse another step forward.

Scuba and Hot Flush

I have often used Paul Rose aka Scuba as an example of house revivalism and its betrayal of dubstep that could seem quite negative, but my intentions have always been against the vacuousness of trends with nothing but respect for scuba’s music and label. The latest run from both man and label only goes to continue my sense of awe at his work ethic, creative capacity and quality control. Not to mention the continuing sense of the house invasion into bass music, evident again on Scuba’s excellent new 12” “Adrenalin”

In a certain way I find both Hotflush and Scuba approaching a sound reminiscent of Martyn, but at the same time on another level. There is a certain plastic sound to the production, where the sounds seem smooth and fluidly moulded and colourful in matt or brilliant sheens. But where Martyn keeps it simple, Hotflush and Scuba seem to complicate it by mixing the pleasure principles and chemical production values of labels like Innervisions with the avante garde leanings of labels like Hyperdub and the deeply rooted urban spirit of post-Burial electronica. A kind of plastic dub if you like.

Curiously, one of the B-sides to the “Adrenalin” single, “Everywhere” resembles the Luomo track “Could be like this” from the 2003 “Present Lover” album.

On the eve of the release of Luomo’s new album “Plus” on Moodmusic, this example perhaps goes to show where Luomo might have ended up following different trends and instincts. In several interviews over the years, Sasu Ripatti has claimed to be tormented or frustrated by the press harking back to his landmark debut “Vocalcity”. Since then, Ripatti has embarked on a long odyssey to avoid repeating himself as if to undermine the press. But having arrived at “Plus” I am left with the thought that Ripatti’s anxiety on this issue has cost him dearly. So much of “Plus” sounds forced, clumsy even. It is not so much the technique that is gone (Ripatti has always impressed under his Vladislav Delay moniker and parts of “Plus” really shine brightly), but rather it is perhaps the spirit that is lacking. House music is essentially soul music and the presence or absence of such sentiments is essential for success or failure.

In addition to some average vocals Ripatti also makes life difficult for himself on “Plus” by trying to marry the smoothness of house with the fragmented angles of electro and the results do not always pay off.

But back to Hotflush and the one track idea: only a brave man would go for one or the other of the two vinyl (and additional digital) tracks on the new Paul Woolford and Psycatron 12” “Stolen”. Absolutely mind-blowing. If having to choose I would go for the first dub mix as it contains one of the best synth hooks I have heard all year. The build ups are feisty and the heavy weight drum programming adds an inescapable momentum. Here the first (vinyl) dub mix is presented in edited form as part of a recent Fact mix by Woolford.

Finally, the Hotflush duo Sepalcure of Travis Stewart (Machinedrum) and Pravin Sharma (Braille) are set to release their debut album in November. The album is a mesmerising blend of Hotflush’s plastic dub sound, the more grounded breakbeat styles and warm synth washes of earlier Hotflush releases like Joy Orbison and Mount Kimbie and the complicated, paranoid collage elements of the new Flying Lotus school of sound.

The Dutch oven

Finally to Holland where there is plenty cooking inside the Dutch oven. Delsin sister label Ann Aimee has released the first two of four limited colour 12”s in the Inertia series (pictured above). The music is forceful and distinguished with the line-up of the 16 artists drawn from the local pool of Dutch producers and several international guests. Local DJ and producer Niels Luinenburg aka Delta Funktionen has also reassembled the set into the labels first commercial mix CD called “Inertia: Resisting Routine”. The mix will not be released until December, but in an intriguing move, buying the CD  will also give access to the individual tracks.

Also from Amsterdam will come the Rush Hour “Amsterdam Allstars” compilation which will sample the current (high) state of the art of the Dutch capital. A taster 12” has just come out with one exclusive track by Young Marco not to be included in the upcoming 2 volume set of double vinyl! A slightly different business model then to Delsin/Ann Aimee.

Young Marco - Hoodoo(Not available on 2xLP) by rushhourrecords

The other sampler track is by Amsterdam-based, but not Dutch born producers Juju and Jordash. This will appear on the albums, returning to the question of whether this needs a vinyl release at all for what is essentially one track.