song: opus 41 in b
orpheus
by mikrosopht
HELLO ORPHY! HOW ARE YOU MY MORNING/ YOUR EVENING?
i'm good :). i'm gunna be on the coffee pot tomorrow though :)
I hate that stuff! ick! but thanx for stayin up for a few to chat... so u r located in Australia, where at xactly?
about 1 hour from Adelaide, in South Australia. "The Barossa Valley" .. it's wine country but i don't drink wine.. yeah i don't drink much coffee either, but sometimes i get writing a tune until the wee hours of the morning and i need to stay awake at work :)
so what kind of musical scene is/is not there? heh heh yeah those are sometimes the best ones! could you name a couple of your favorite tracks youve done with the sleep deprevation scenario?
haha yeah. okay to the first question, not much up here. "electronic music? what's electronic music?". to give you an idea i had two of my song played on the local radio BBB FM up here, between Duran Duran and Cindy Lauper. the radio dude didn't really know what to make of my track "Composing in the Nude". it was hella funny.
to the second question, i started using sleep deprivation as a way of writing about 5 years ago i guess. by that time i was fairly well respected on Aminet (the old amiga scene thing), and when i started using sleep deprivation people didn't know what had happened. i got comments like "man i like your other stuff but what's all this artsy crap?" it wasn't artsy but it was more an expression of me. i was really starting to experiment
after three days of no sleep i'd start to go all lucid, and apart from wandering over to the local service station (it's a wonder i wasn't hit by a car on the way there), getting suddenly hyperactive and talking the store attendant there half out of his wits, i started writing some really weird stuff.
that is great! so you've gotten a fair amount of exposure then? Duran Duran is ok but they arent quite *POW* if you know wut Im sayin :8']/ ... the scene is practically the same in the states spare a few areas of house and trance... damn that is quite a method of writing you have cooked up! Any incidents where you've gone too far with the sleepless activity and just collapsed or something?
i still find i'm more inspired at about 2am.. i don't know why that is. my favourite track on sleep deprivation? hmm. possibly (Seashore) Mellodrone. that one is one of the first i did on sleep deprivation and i was doing it hardcore at the time. i hadn't slept in days. it's about 5 years old now.
night owl style 5 yrs strong, woo woo! so how long have you been composing?
nope, i'm glad to say i've never collapsed per se. one problem i've encountered back when i was 'experimenting' with drugs as a mode of writing music, is that when i go back to the tune 'straight', i can't work out what the hell is going on. i had one tune in particular which i never finished. once i took some of the same substance again and loaded it by accident, and i could understand what was going on! i did some work on it, and again, it's lost somewhere coz i can't work it out :)
i started composing about 10 years ago. that was just mucking around in trackers. it was pretty basic stuff and no one really liked it except me. but then electronic music wasn't really strong back then.
i've basically spent the last 10 years studying music by myself. both experimentation and technique-wise.
what sort've styles have taken hold on you along the way? what genres do you favor?
see, that's the thing. most questions i can answer but when someone asks me what genre i write, i just stop dead, coz i don't know what to say. and i still don't. in my opinion, fuck genres. genres are like static points in a tide of possibilities. i've kind of made a pact with myself never to stick in or write in one particular genre. and now it's kind of become habitual i'll have an idea for a tune and i just write it. i could be wrong, other people might see my music as fitting a very specific genre, like IDM, or Techno, but i don't see it that way.
its true that stamping a product with its content is something that is habitual for everyone, but there are elements of genres in your music... the first song of yours I heard was death of a ninja, certainly a tribute to the chip!
yes, most certainly a tribute, and a salute in a way. i love that old Commodore 64 music, coz i grew up with it. but for me there's a real big difference between thinking "i'm gunna write something in the C64= genre", and thinking "i'm gunna write a C=64 tune". to use this dumb ass new age analogy that's floating around, words are symbols for things. the word "tree" is not a tree, it's just a word we use for convenience. so i don't write something that fits the description of a tree, i write "tree". there's a difference.
are you planning on writing a song in the tree genre any time soon?
i already have.. it's called Plant Life
>X')o|
heheh.. define habbæ for me
hehehe :)
please?
oh hehe. well i dunno, you're probably better asking minusbaby on that one :). he came up with it when we were both over tired and fuqqin up. i think it's better left undefined :).
so are you still into sting?
yeah, i love Sting. i love a lot of other music too though. i can really relate to Sting for some reason. Sting is Gordon Sumner, but he hates being called that. that's one reason i can relate to him. i'd rather be called Orpheus than my given name.. i can relate to his music too. as dumb as it sounds i think we have a lot in common.
what kind of treehouse would you have? what kind of tree for your treehouse?
also he cops a lot of shit but a lot of people cop a lot of shit when they're at the top. i like what he did with the Rainforest Foundation, etc... if i ever make it to a position of power like that i'd do the same.
a treehouse? i don't know what it is about treehouses. i loved them as a kid and i'm still a kid ;). i'd probably have a big one, in a big tree. and just hang out there. i'd probably just go there to put my feet up, you know?
yeah... with a laptop for choonz hehehe
haha nah i don't think i'd take the tunes into the treehouse. as much as i love writing tunes i also love to get away from it all. i try to stop at least once a day to smell the flowers.
ok..choose one: 8track/tape/cd/mp3/vinyl/thomas edison wax/ ?
ooh tough one. okay process of elimination. cd sucks, coz it doesn't capture all of the harmonics which supposedly we couldn't hear. mp3 sucks for similar reasons although it is fantastic for music distribution. 8track is good quality but no thanks (i like convenience). tape, naaah. now, thomas edison there's an interesting fellow. apparently out of his many many inventions, he applied for a government grant to develop a machine which can read people's minds, or be controlled by people psychically... and this is a famous inventor we're talking about here! needless to say his application for a grant was turned down. :) anyway, i'd have to say vinyl for the moment. i still like the sound. though i hear 24bit 96kHz stuff on DVD is sounding mighty fine
so give me the scoop on your super kewl new album, Ive heard it is very psychological and mood altering eh?
yeah, that's the goal. there's a lot of new technology (and old) on how the brain reacts to certain sounds/beats/combinations of sound etc., and it hasn't really been used much in music. it's been used in experiments, but for a lot of it there's not much information released to the general public about specific techniques. so i've painstakingly researched it and worked it out and it'll be worked into this new album.....
so are you going to have listeners do you evil biddings?
it's mind-bending stuff. one of the techniques is called something like Binaural Beats (depending on what variation you're talking about). it's a technique you can use to "train" your brain's current state to another state. like for example, send someone to sleep, wake them up, help them concentrate. that information has been around for a while, but the info that's not readily available is on the combination of those sounds......
so for a much simplified example, using a "wide awake" sound and a "fast asleep" sound together results in your brain wide awake and your body fast asleep. a very strange sensation indeed. the idea is to work all these technologies into the album to augment the music.
interesting stuff! so any sneak into what exactly you plan on combining to do what with the listener? nothing illegal I hope? though I don't think they've made any laws yet about this sort've thing. heheh
no not illegal.. well it's becoming more obvious what i want to do as the album comes together... the idea will be the beginning of the album will 'loosen you up' and relax you. the second part will be slightly uncomfortable and a little bit confrontational, but in a way that doesn't make any sense, so you let your guard down (because logic can't fight if the battle isn't in "logic"). the third part... well, you'll have to wait and see :)
Im definately going to have to check it out! enooze is proud to have one of the only two tracks from this album available on the net! (the other, Polygen, is available at the orpheus metempsychosis home) how do you write, and what do you try to achieve when you write?
hmm, well, when i start writing a tune i don't really have anything in mind to achieve. i might be able to hear what i want the end result to sound like in my head (getting it into the computer is the hard part), but that's all i have to go on. so basically i know what i want the tune to sound like from the word go. really what i'm setting out to achieve is to design something new. not so much a new sound, or a new tune, as a new way of implementing it, or a new perspective. perspective is very important to me. i like Mr Bungle coz they take quite a normal song and play it with all the wrong instruments and it sounds nuts. i try to do the same thing.
So I heard you decided to drop the university lifestyle? Where were you attending and why didn't it work out?
i was attending at flinders university and i dropped out because i suddenly realised that the scholary system we have in place is both as rediculous as it is pointless
Was there a defining moment that made you leave the university?
hmm, that's a tough question. i don't think there was one point in time when i decided to leave. it's more like the realisation crept up on me slowly over time until the full significance of it was obvious.
I want to agree with you on this, but I am attending college right now and though I find it traditional and out of touch with our lives today it is the best thing for me to do right now... what year were you?
Im in my second year now heheh
i'd been at university for four months.
damn! thats quick!
so were the creative inclinations too much to try and overthrow? :8']/
i was never interested in school, i thought it was a farse. i still do..
I think its a robot that we all dance with and some people simply turn it off, good on you for taking that step! though its much harder to dance when youre alone eh?
unless youre the one throwing the gig! heheheh
it's an odd one. you've probably heard this before, but most people go through their whole lives and never actually do what they'd really like to do. like this one guy i met on the ferry back from tasmania. we were sharing the same cabin, but we'd never met before. anyway we got talking, and i asked him what he was on the ferry for. he said that his wife had recently died, and that he was moving back to western australia. i asked him what he was going to do there... he said that there was nothing for him to do there, that he was 56, and that he'd done everything he wanted to do with his life. i told him i didn't believe him, because i hadn't met one single person who had done everything they'd wanted to do with their lives. the way i see it, you have this life, and you're free to live it as you will. sure there are consequences for what you do but they're all part of the choices you make. the way i see it, i want to be a musician. and if i don't make it i'm going to die trying, literally.
I understand how much this means to you as well and Im doing my best to help get your name out there like you deserve! What do you think of that Orpheus fan club?
>X')o|
my smiley decoder... dammit where did I put that bugger.. erm heh umm so yeah what are you up to over thar?
well, i'm writing a tune for my new album ;). i'm jamming it live as we speak :)
shit isnt that wrecking your brain?
heheh
so where xactly is this going to figure into the albums scheme of psychological things?
well, that will depend on all the other tracks i write. so far about 9 of the tracks i'm writing for the album fit together perfectly. i've never had that happen before, so i'm assuming all the other tracks i'll write will fit in there perfectly as well. when they all fit together i think it'll be obvious how to psychologify it :)
makes ¢en¢e! Im definately going to have to check it out!
:)
so have you had any recent propositions for placement on kik ass compilation cdsz?
yeah. apparently they're using one of my (5 year old!) tracks on the surgery records compilation #2, and on the micromusic compilation (respec' y'all!). that's all i can say right now ;). oh and yesmamma (part of yesmate) are looking at releasing my 'orphy on a floppy EP', 20 minutes of hi-fi audio packed onto an ordinary 1.44MB floppy disk. how do they do it?! ;)
on a floppy? thats rad! howd that idea get taken into effect?
whats the yesmamma all about?
well it'll be synthesised on the fly from the floppy disk. so you'll probably need a 500MHz + machine to run it in hifi, but it'll be better than mp3 quality hehe
crazy technology! thats frressh!
yesmamma is an offshoot of yesmate. they're a little record label who are dedicated to the artists. they were involved in the recent release of the warchild cd, and have just started selling music on the internet. i'm still deciding whether i'll sell on the internet. i doubt it so far. i still like cold hard CDs (or better still vinyl)
do you find all of the companies and artists getting interesting in electronic music reassuring of good times to come or evil coz of exploitation and fadz or sum answer unxpected?
hehe yeah it should be :). we've already worked out how we're gunna do it. i'd also like to see the EP on vinyl too, for those who don't have Windows, or just for convenience. we'll see what happens :).
i think it's weird. now there are computers, there's like, millions of people writing music on their computers. and a good deal of it is very good and some is exceptional. now i think we're starting to bring components from other styles of music into electronic music, rather than it being mainly rhythm-based, it's getting rather interesting. i'm wondering, with all of this good music, how are just a few people going to be discovered and become really famous like in the past? all of a sudden anyone who wants can write music, and we're stuck with the old system of record labels. i wonder how long that's going to hold out.
Any predictions on how things will shape up for you and the whole electronic scene in general?
heh, for me i don't know. for the electronic scene? i don't know that either :). i am however very interested to see how it all shapes up.
me 2! fo sho! so iz ther anything that enooze readers gotta hear from the big O befo we go out the dough yo?
thanks to everybody that's listened to my music.
no problem, and we'll keep listein br0! keep 0n keepin 0n!
and all the best with enooze mate.
orpheus website