Download - The Word Magazine

More documents

Recommendations

Info

68 The columns Talent Rise and shine White Car White Car makes dark and broody industrial house music with a menacing streak. The band’s productions – Vortex funk meets darkroom boogie – are cold, calculated and composed. What you hear is what you get. And what you hear is hard. We skype-call White Car head honcho Elon Katz to talk about his slew of side projects, Chinese underground music and painting a house white. Interview Nicholas Lewis Your love and use of analogue equipment is well-documented… When I first discovered electronic music and started to play with it, I was using computers for the first five years and then I started to buy real analogue hardware instruments, real synths, real drum machines and so on. It’s moved from the computer to outside the computer. I still use computers to record and to do all the editing. My music is still very much written on a computer but the sound doesn’t come from a computer at all. You sent me some of your most recent releases. Can you explain what the difference might be between you recording as White Car, you recording as Aguire, and you recording as Streetwalker, your project with Beau Wanzer? Aguirre is kind of an earlier project, that I started in 2005 with a buddy of mine I went to high school with. We really got interested in a lot of electronic music together, listening to a lot of Warp and Planet Mu records, stuff © Zara Katz
like that. Post-rave, UK stuff. White Car is a solo recording project that is based around taking these genres of electronic dance music that are very specific to the context of where they came from, and then morphing it into my songwriting and bringing these movements of electronic dance music closer to singer-songwriter territory. It’s not club music, but it very much uses all the ideas from past eras of club music to kind of start its foundation. And then my solo recordings is experimental electronic music, much more abstract and working with ideas of texture and sound. White Car is more of a cultural party fun project whereas my solo stuff is made with modular synthesisers so far so it’s much more about picking up sounds and then trying to make them happen. In a very broad sense, your music tilts towards the dark side, which might seem odd for someone who comes from California… There’s a lot of darkness in California. There’s no short answer really. It’s not a personal extension of ’my’ darkness. I think that the darkness you hear in the music is the story that it tells, more than who I am. What story does it tell then? It’s the story of humanity, human beings. Ignorance, oppression. America is kind of in a state right now where people are worried. It’s not a full-on depression, but there’s definitely a sense of darkness in the country right now with being at war for 10 years and the economy going under. Some people live in darkness and some people in light. I think that the stories I’m drawn to in terms of those I want to tell as a songwriter tend to be stories about darkness because it’s hard to learn from happiness. A lot of people say you learn more from your mistakes, and this is kind of the same thing. You profit more from being with darkness. I’m not depressed, but I’m introverted and I do have a pessimistic look. I don’t really look at people and have faith in them, and I think that comes out in my music. But I wouldn’t say dark, it’s such an overused word. It’s more paranoid, multi-faceted in its darkness. In the same way a Cronenberg or a Lynch movie is dark - you’re more intrigued by its darkness than turned off by it. There’s humour to it. And I think darkness is funny. My sense of humour is very black and very dark and I think that bands that take themselves very seriously in how depressed and how dark they are? That to me is fun… Coming back to White Car, when did you start recording as a unit? The first songs, the first EPs…. The first release was the White Car EP that came out in February 2010 on Rainbow Body Records, a Chicago label run by a guy called Chris Sloan and I had met the guys from Music the band Gatekeeper, and we had really connected. I started hanging out with them more, playing with their gear, they were playing me a lot of music I hadn’t heard before. I got really inspired by a lot of it. And that was how White Car came about. We played our first show in June 2009, together with Gatekeeper. ˆ White Car is […] based around taking these genres of electronic dance music that are very specific to the context of where they came from […] bringing these movements of electronic dance music closer to singer-songwriter territory ˇ You write most of the band’s songs right? I do yes. Orion (the other half of White Car) helps with the visual side of things, he plays electronic percussions. He is an editor, which is more helpful than anything else at this point in time with where we’re at with music-making. I’d say that in the last 10 years the most innovative instrument has been laptops and computers and being able to make better recordings in your house. Everyone’s a solo artist now, no one’s in a band anymore. That’s why there’s so much music now. But everyone’s recording themselves and half these people don’t have anyone in there helping them make their music. That’s what Orion does, he’s an editor. He comes in and listens to it and says “I like this part, I don’t like this part, this makes me think of this, this makes me think of that. We kind of understand each other’s language so well that I kind of understand where he’s coming from with all these ideas. You’re working on your new LP at the moment. It was supposed to be out in August right? It was supposed to be out in September. It’s gone through a few different versions, it’s a work-in-progress. Working on the music by myself mostly, there’s a sense of isolation to it. It’s hard to gage when its done. But right now, the release is set for late February 2012. How important do you think Chicago’s past underground scene was in shaping your current sound? I don’t think that this music is only discoverable in Chicago, but being there, being in proximity to it and being in proximity to people who hold it really close to them made me revere it more. There are a lot of people there who are really interested in the history of Chicago and Chicago music and are interested in making sure that people hear a lot of the older records. So, just in terms of a physical thing, you can go and find good Chicago house records in almost any record stores, which may not be the case somewhere like California or Ohio. Can you describe your recording space? Is it mad scientist type lab or clean-cut minimalist studio? Oh I’m pretty organised. But, you know, there are a few cables flying around. I’m at a stage where I’ve been using a lot of the same stuff for three years now, and I’m trying to switch it out. But I’m in the process of also being broke, so I’m trying to figure out how to build a better studio for nothing. But it’s pretty clean: three or four keyboards, synthesisers, a couple of drum machines, some processors, a computer and some racks. It’s like, you know, a small room’s worth. What’s behind the name White Car? It’s literally a reference from a Cabaret Voltaire song. There’s a song on the last record Code called White Car. The song is about wealth and extravagance and the darkness of having money, which has always been interesting to me. I guess I resonated with that song. And the image of a white car always fascinated me, there was some mystery to it, some pre-conceived notions about it. The image of a white car is very creepy to most people, it’s always associated to kidnapping, or human trafficking. Plus you have to have money to keep it clean… If you were guest editing our white album’s music special which icon would you want to interview? There’s a good Chinese band called White. I would look into them because it’s very interesting to think of China’s underground scene. I think they’re from Beijing or Hong Kong. Last one: what’s your plan tomorrow? I have to paint a house. White…. White Car’s forthcoming album ’Everyday Grace’ is out on Hippos in Tanks in February 2012. white-car.net 69
Page 1:
Volume 04 — Issue 05 Neighbourhoo
Page 8:
8 The contents Neighbourhood 23 Whi
Page 12 and 13:
12 01 08 05 07 The whiteboard Exhib
Page 14 and 15:
© Courtesy of the artist and D+T P
Page 16:
© Paul McCarthy, courtesy the arti
Page 20 and 21: 20 James blake @ L’ ancienne Belg
Page 22 and 23: 22 The papers Cinema Art Society Cr
Page 24 and 25: 24 Jungle fever Here’s an interes
Page 26 and 27: 26 high Drama Like fake boobs, coca
Page 28: 28 The papers The smooth operator T
Page 31 and 32: The fuTure iS free buT free doN’T
Page 33 and 34: tennis poles were brought in direct
Page 35 and 36: “(I don’t have a fear of the bl
Page 37 and 38: “I fear the blank canvas because
Page 39 and 40: The cheesemonger A father and son b
Page 41 and 42: Life 41
Page 43 and 44: Life The law enforcer: Johan Denolf
Page 45 and 46: I like to find the truth, to dig be
Page 47 and 48: process helped me create my own fou
Page 50 and 51: 50 The look Heritage Design rue Bla
Page 52 and 53: 52 The showstoppers Fashion Beauty
Page 54 and 55: 54 The showstoppers 05. Knit hits C
Page 56 and 57: 56 The nod Play People Heritage The
Page 58 and 59: 58 The fashion Word Fashion Consume
Page 60 and 61: Left: Top Ingrid Vlasov, Skirt John
Page 62 and 63: Cotton blouse Nicolas Andreas Taral
Page 64 and 65: 64 The fashion Word Left: Dress Ing
Page 66 and 67: 66 The columns Talent Rise and shin
Page 70: 70 Jane’s addiction Nostalgia Whi
Page 73 and 74: every instruments and JR was runnin
Page 75 and 76: Like I said, this interview is goin
Page 77 and 78: © Sarah Eechaut Bouchéry, Brussel
Page 79 and 80: Hotel Conrad’s Bar Loui The gourm
Page 81 and 82: Au Vieux St Martin The staple of th
Page 83 and 84: Le Chou de Bruxelles Another obliga
Page 85 and 86: for storing: Joseph Joseph melanine
Page 87 and 88: for drinking: bugatti’s Milla esp
Page 89 and 90: from left to right Far Too Close (S
Page 91 and 92: Culture 91
Page 93 and 94: Culture 93 Visit thewordmagazine.be
Page 95 and 96: Page 19 Desperados desperados.be Pa
Page 98: 98 Before we leave you… Play The
show all

Download - The Word Magazine

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?