Kaj Duncan David is a British-Danish composer of experimental and electronic music based in Berlin. Trained in classical and electronic music, he is active between overlapping scenes.
He regularly creates sound for dance productions (most recently for Michelle Moura and the São Paulo City Ballet). Other projects include experimental music theatre and audiovisual concert pieces and performances with lights.
Berlin label Hyperdelia recently released his second album ‘Only Birds Know How to Call the Sun and They Do It Every Morning’. An extraordinary work of sui generis avant-garde electronic music made with Danish contemporary ensemble Scenatet. Sci-fi chamber music exploring language, childhood and altered states of consciousness in the age of machine learning.
FACTS
1. Facts are slippery.
2. To accept that knowledge is metaphorical is not to disavow it, but rather to understand that it is always based on social agreements that involve power relations and that ultimately define who is the sovereign and who is the beast (Paul B. Preciado).
3. Death is the mother of beauty (Wallace Stevens).
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
I think the biggest inspiration for me is the ineffable. For me good music taps into this space. It’s often not possible to describe why music moves us. And yet I think everyone has very strong connections to certain albums or concerts. Listening to certain records transports us back to a moment in place and time, or to a certain feeling. It’s very mysterious. It might sound cheesy, but for me making music is a way to grapple with these great mysteries, like consciousness and the universe. It’s like tripping, a way of looking inward and at the same time feeling super-connected to the vastness of existence.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I grew up with lots of music around me at all times. Both my parents played instruments for fun and listened to albums (cassettes) constantly, from classical music to classic rock and Turkish and North African stuff. I was lucky to go to schools that had a focus on music, and began piano lessons at age 6. After a few years as a young teen playing in bands with friends I got fed up with the energy required to coordinate our rehearsals (which were mainly spent smoking joints and jamming badly). When I was 16 or so my dad managed to get hold of a copy of a pretty retro MIDI sequencing software (Voyetra Digital Orchestrator); a little later my sister’s friend gave me a Cubase crack. I sold my guitar amp and bought a desktop PC and started making electronic music. Which I continue doing today.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
The Cure – Pornography
Herbie Hancock – Headhunters
Talk Talk – Laughing Stock
Autechre – Amber
Baden Powell and Vinícius de Moraes – Os Afro Sambas
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Music, artist bubble, a nice place to live, 1989.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
I think it might be the path that runs along the Panke (a little river) from Gerichtstr. in Wedding to Pankow.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Before deciding to study music I thought I wanted to be a photographer.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Yesterday I bought Plight and Premonition by David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1988) on Discogs. It hasn’t arrived yet.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Hermeto Pascoal
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
As performer: last November playing my album Only birds know how to call the sun… at Mayhem in Copenhagen.
As spectator: the first time I saw Sunn O))) play was on their Monoliths and Dimensions tour at KOKO, London – in about 2009 or 2010. It’s the album with Attila Csihar on vocals. My friend dragged me along and I had at the time no idea what we were going to see. I was completely blown away by the ritualistic performance, not to mention the volume and bass. At one point there was a pause in the intensity for some minutes, in which there was a slow trombone solo drenched in echo. Then the bass washed over us once again. It was epic. I’ve seen them a few times since in the hope of a similar experience, but have been disappointed every time, unfortunately.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
It’s very important. Without electricity my music doesn’t happen.
11. Please tell us a bit more about your new LP Only Birds Know How to Call the Sun…?
It’s a concept album of strange songs that are sung by an imaginary character, some sort of infant cyborg on a psychedelic trip. The music is all performed using MIDI instruments like an EWI, a drum-pad, some synths and a cheap MIDI guitar / controller. It’s three musicians from the Copenhagen-based interdisciplinary performance group Scenatet and myself performing. I play the part of the main character: vocals with a talk box and a vocoder. Actually the album is constructed from MIDI recordings I made at the best gig I mentioned above, the one in November at Mayhem. I then edited the tracks and overdubbed my parts in the studio.
The composition process was very slow. I wrote sketches of the music over quite a long time that I then notated for us to be able to perform. After playing the music a few times the songs also matured a little before I went into the studio to finish them off for the album.
The lyrics, as well as a very beautiful text that is included on the cover of the LP, were written by Maikon K, a friend and very sensitive and sometimes extreme Brazilian performance artist who also happens to be a magician with words.
