Svengalisghost

You note an eclectic range of influences for your work, including film and your work as a light technician, what directions do they push you in production wise?

Well my work as a lighting technician began to influence my production after I started programming moving lights and running shows for clubs and live acts. I think it was also my fascination with the phenomena of synthesis that lead me to start thinking about making tracks that emitted a certain color in the listeners mind. And my love of cinema helps me plot out the scenes of the track. Do I want a long shot or a close up, jump cut or slow motion? As a moving light programmer I started to look at most of the lighting consoles like the RoadHog or Grand Ma almost like synth, a lot of the movement of moving lights are based on waveforms like the sawtooth, square, sinero, basically lfo’s to control these fixtures. You also find a lot of common terms like rate, offset, delay, attack. With Cue based programming you choose how the effect or position starts (attack), went it peaks (decay), how long its stays (sustain) and when it moves to the next position or effect (release). I really learned a lot about synthesis during this time. This exposure helped me start to visualize the music that I make.

You are revered for your passionate live shows, what approach do you take to your sets?

I do try to connect the tracks with a link similar to how some sketch comedies like Mr. show or Monty Python tied their sketches together. I’m usually on the dancefloor or in some backroom getting a little baked and drunk before the show to get into the zone. It’s important for me to see the evolution of the party (from the soundcheck to a packed floor), where the energy of the night begins to sweep me up into a sort of altered state of consciousness so that I can become a conduit for this cosmic energy. I guess it’s similar to being in a voudun ritual or partying with the Dogon tribe. I wear shades so that I can totally lose myself, and become one with the music. Occasionally I come out of the trance and realize, fuck I’m onstage now.

Your productions carry a futuristic and at times psychedelic nature, whilst retaining some of that gritty Chicago House sound. Is this a conscious decision?

Definitely. I feel like Chicago in the mid eighties was a really experimental time for producers, Chicago was a lot grittier as a city as well which I feel was a petri dish for the music that was produced at that time. Growing up in Chicago and hearing those new sounds as kid really left a deep imprint on my sonic sensibilities which bubble up to the surface from deep with my subconscious. The futuristic aspects come from me being influenced by the writing of William Gibson, Aldous Huxley, Stanislaw Lem, J.G. Ballard, Phillip K. Dick- basically proponents of this dystopic future where the high technology is commandeered by the low lifes! And maybe the psychedelic nature comes for the many acid trips I took while living in Mexico, this time definitely opened up some forbidden neural pathways. My main goal is to induce a trance or some type of hypnotic state within the listener or dancer. I guess seven months of daily acid consumption turned out to be a positive thing after all.

Which other producers or artists are influencing you right now?

Right now I am vibing on a lot of video art and obscure cinema- experimental/surrealist stuff like Suzan Pitt, John Whitney, Maya Deren, Matsumoto Toshio, Shuji Terayama, Jordan Belson, Carmelo Bene, Frans Zwartjes, Man Ray, and James Broughton.

As far as music I’ve been diggin’ this cat Gunnar Haslam, Dungeon Acid, Frak, Nicobus Tase, Greg Beato, The Sun God, Jahiliyya Fields, Society of Silence, Ornette Coleman, Klinik, Antenam Vale, Max Berlin, DSRD and MPIA3.

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