FACTS:
1. Life
2. Sound
3. Infinity
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Most often it’s things that are outside of my immediate experience that I would like to somehow understand or inhabit. This can be environmental like a setting in the distant past or future but most of the time its also a perspective on an experience that’s on a temporal or spatial scale I can’t even really comprehend.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
It was soon after I had a computer. Windows used to have a program called Sound Recorder which had some basic pitch and echo effects plus the ability to cut, copy and paste audio. The first track I wrote was just mixing breakbeats I recorded off CDs and the Windows startup sound slowed down and reversed. I still have it. It’s pretty terrible.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Arvo Pärt – Alina / Tabula Rasa [ ECM] Deathprod – Morals and Dogma [ Rune Grammofon ] Godspeed You! Black Emperor – F♯ A♯ ∞ / Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada [ Kranky ] Sigur Ros – () [ XL ] Autechre – Untitled / Draft 7.30 / Tri Repetae [ Warp ]
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Kraftwerk (the building, not the band ) and the freezing winter I spent there with old friends from Australia. It was just way too cold for us so we stayed indoors like marooned sailors. Flights were cancelled and delayed due to a snow storms in England . It was great.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
In Bristol, I love my local pubs. Most of the people I know here I’ve met through music and they are often away so the mid-week pint is when we get to catch up.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Aside from inventing music I would spend the rest of my time focussed on contributing in any way I could towards a solution to a very difficult problem that would help humanity navigate the future. Even if my involvement was just helping those more capable get a bit closer to solving it, that would be worthwhile.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Thomas Adès’ ‘In Seven Days’ (Signum) recorded with the London Sinfonietta and his Violin Concerto (ABC) recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Terrence Malick. I’m working on an idea right now that could really use his input.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
As a performer, the last show at Atonal with Roly Porter (as Altar). It was the first time presenting an album worth of new material and everything came together perfectly. As a spectator, Kara-lis Coverdale at Mutek in 2016 – for the first time in years I closed my eyes and experienced an entirely new sonic world that I could not really take in all at once.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
It is essential in that it is the process by which ideas are turned into materials that can be seen and heard. The nature of the technology will always impact that creation and it is the relationship between the processes and the materials that most often determines the final form an idea will take.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I do – a sister. She is also involved in music, singing in choirs and musicals though her relationship to it is more grounded in music that is classical and sacred – Bach, Palestrina, etc. She has always been supportive in a way that only family can be, an absolute faith in me even when I am not in any way demonstrating that I deserve it.
Paul Jebanasam will be performing in Berlin on 29th September 2017. Check out his music here.
