Kurremkarmerruk, aside from being the master namer of Ursula Le Guin’s, The Wizard of Earthsea, is a London based DJ and electronic music enthusiast. After hearing his darkened twostep/dubstep style (found at zshare) at the alternatively popular ‘Wonderland’ parties in London, we arranged to get together for an intimate Q&A!
I want to start by deeply thanking you for agreeing to this interview, it’s been a real pleasure so far,
The pleasure’s all mine, I love your blog.
So, as a musical dynamic, what are the most important elements of electronic composition and production for you?
I have always been drawn towards music, and it is within that word that my tolerance is monitored. There are a lot of electronic songs that are not affiliated with that word which are more of a scrambling, offensive jargon of atonal, otherwise chaotic sound that is just very irritating, especially because it is created within a paradigm of music that is so severely criticized by foreign listeners. Any producer who is bold enough to really tackle the scale of musical notes consciously, with a multidimensional approach within the symmetry of melody/harmony, bassline and percussion, consciously, as if inspired, can be recognized by anyone. Just because we have the technology to condense the sound of a burning school-bus crashing into an intricate multi-coloured-glass-latticed dome, killing everything, doesn’t mean we need to release it as a song within the genre of ‘Intelligent Dance Music’, which by the way I think is the worst thing that has ever happened to labeling. I love the music at the heights of what IDM offers, it’s a major part of who I am and how I resonate, but whoever had the audacity (no doubt some marketing/PR chief inventing something catchy for the kids) to label an entire genre of music uniquely more ‘intelligent’ than the rest is terribly mistaken. That being said, I think the majority of ‘IDM’ is poor, with the hook of being able to create something so thoughtlessly abstract it’s just numbingly confusing for either an ignorant elitist audience, or an unfortunate herd of ‘simple minded’ sheep, being too big, very sharp and carrying too much bait. Keep it simple, not minimal, just simple, and clear with intended direction, keep it aware and conscious.
What do you think is necessary for our society to experience with music in this day and age?
I feel that it is of massive importance that we shake and help one another to wake up from the shackles of the corporate industry, the major music business and all of the attached attitudes that immediately follow from them. We need to move forward and up our vibration, and this can’t happen whilst innocent people are being brainwashed by an energy that prioritises making money over the development and distribution of the positive attitude. If only the industry/major radio stations weren’t afraid of constantly releasing something that forces us to validate our reality, with vibrations of real ecstasy and beauty that allows us to challenge our lives, and not crush us back into the regular grind of modern life, with the same songs, the same people and the same sound. Explore what’s happening in other places of the world, I understand that music is all one energy so why not find out how it is manifesting in other places of the world, and share it. The only thing that I’m doing is trying to keep with what is happening NOW, below the surface in little raves that are dedicated to playing contemporary electronic music, because man it’s been getting very exciting in the past few years and there isn’t a better time to be able to easily find where everything is and where it’s all coming from, not to mention what has inspired it.
What do you think is ahead of us, musically, in the next twenty years, what can we expect?
Oh, man, immediately the future is very uncertain so I wouldn’t be expecting anything from anywhere, it would be a waste of time wouldn’t it? However, one thing that I recognise is that technology and music are having much more of a symbiotic relationship, one of mutual benefit, so with the advancements of music equipment, with the techniques of producing becoming easier to refine, with the variety of sound expanding with the times and the generations of old and new experience, the quality of music is always going to reflect that. I’m waiting for someone to design a cerebral music device that just attaches to your head and you can dream all music you want into reality, without having to spend laborious hours, tasking perfection through obsolete machinery. Vision music is also something that I’m looking forward to; someway/somehow I want to experience a mass synesthetic club/dancehall experience, where sound is interacting with our ability to visualize all sorts of otherworldly, beautiful things, literally. Everything should become much more easier with time, and everything will be so accessible to us that eventually we’ll just become the music itself and open our arms and it will be there.
Cool, well, thank you for this brief interview, is there anywhere we can hear you playing, any raves you want to big up?
Sure, I’ll be playing at the Elysian Project, on the 26th of February, at Hidden, Vauxhall, London. It’s going to be a huge party as it’s the joining of three very serious alternative dance nights, under one roof so I can’t wait to see what it’s going to be like. Big love to Pejhy, all of you know what it’s about and there’s a lot of love coming from here, keep vibing!
More information about the Elysian Project can be found – http://www.elysianproject.org
