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Geroyche
Geroyche : Hi. Thanks for having me here tonight ;)
I am Tamas. I am 25 years old. Guess the days of the teen-aged phenomenon are over ;)
I am not Bulgarian, though my artist name seems to have a meaning in Bulgarian (most Slavic languages actually (?)). That's a mere coincidence. I am not Hungarian either, though i was.
However i was born and raised in East Germany. Just never've been East German, technically.
I am, and am not, lots of other things i guess. But i think that'll do for now. SZ : Do you have any analogue backgrounds ? Geroyche : I have no history of making music prior to experimenting with ModEdit 1.0 in early 94. SZ : What do you aim at with electronic music ? Geroyche : I want to transport the message of left-wing revolution, increase the riot movement through parties and destroy the music SZ : How did you get on C8 ? Geroyche : I don't remember how i came across the site in first place. Must have been in early '99, probably through a link in an issue of the Datacide magazine. I immediately joined the c8 mailing list and did learn from and contribute to it quite much.
During spring 2000 i felt like i needed a Geroyche homepage and set one up at my university's web space. That url was not at all handy however and on august 4, 2000 i got the idea of asking Stevvi, the C8 founder about joining C8.
I knew he liked my music and we've had some nice conversations over the mailing list, but i wasn't sure if that'd be enough. On august 5 it was all settled and now i'm quite honoured to have the neighbours i do :)
SZ : What is the story of your releases on labels like Kool Pop, suburban Trash ... ? Geroyche : Actually it all evolved around Joel from Berlin and Christian.
Kool.Pop 12.003 was the first vinyl release i was on. Kool.Pop was found by Joel who also ran the Midiwar mail order at that time, nowadays digitalworldnet. I also met both Peter from Lux Nigra and Stefan from Suburban Trash at Joel's place. I did keep them updated with new music from that time on.
My first appearance on Lux Nigra required some guerrilla tactics :)
I'd heard about existing remixes of Peter's track 'Pocket Monster' from the {Biophilia Allstars LP} and the ideas to release those and more (Peter had asked certain people) on a 12".
I decided i'd make a remix too (coz my milkshake, it's better than yours ;) which i then presented to Peter. It took him by suprise i guess, but he did like the remix and i was in.
Stefan from Suburban Trash has been quite supportive from the beginning. He always said he wanted to have a track for a compilation, make other releases later on, and did basically let me decide with tracks to use. I was really excited when he suggested to release a solo ep.
There have been ups and downs concerning the release schedule - at one point he wanted to put his label to a rest - but it all went fine in the end.
I consider all those people my friends today and am in close contact with them. SZ : During your live acts, what is the common reaction of listeners ? What about your mixing happenings ? Geroyche : Hmm. After my liveacts i usually have at least one conversation about Buzz, the software i use. Other than that i can't really tell about a common
reaction, depends on the context really. I've heard reactions ranging from 'how long are gonna continue to play, I deejay on different occassions in different contexts.
My friend Slik and i have one sunday a month at a local venue called Voxxx. More or less calm idm/electronica/indie hiphop/abstract. Haven't had someone demanding to lower the volume for quite some time now ;)
There are regular visitors that enjoy the sound and once in a while ask about a certain track..., the scene is quite small, but i enjoy those sundays... The Voxxx is thank god quite active in electronics. I sometimes play the more danceable aspects of abstract electronica in a party surrounding. I did for example deejay and play live as support for Richard Devine and did get lots of positive feedback especially for my dj-set preceding his liveact. The rarest case so far has been me playing breakcore/speedhall/gabba-influenced records. That's in a most different context.
People who like straight gabba, speedcore or hard& fast techno. After those sets, in my hometown at least, i tend to hear that it was really awesome, fucked-up music like they had seldom, if ever, heard before. At least the people that don't leave the room tell me so ;) SZ : What would you plan if you had to do music for money ? (What about « motion picture » ?) Geroyche : That's a tough one. One answer (quite standard i think): i'm glad i don't have to do it for a living, this keeps it true. Undistorted. Fun.
On the other hand i'm most productive with some kind of deadline ahead. So maybe that'd be positive pressure for me, who knows for how long. Would i like to make a score? Yes...but i'm afraid not having a musical education is quite a drawback for this purpose.
I really love movies. Making a score is quite a large scale project. I sometimes think about starting with making a new score for an existing movie, at home. Without announcing it, so that i have no pressure....but i didn't so far, and i'm better under pressure anyways...
difficult, you see :)
But i hope it will eventually happen one way or the other. SZ : Why do you think people need « musical education » to perform a score ? People needed to be musicians as they were not able to record their tracks but to write tablatures. Now, with all the devices you can use, this time is end, isn't it ? Geroyche : Learning to read and write notes is not mandatory anymore. True, luckily. That's why i can produce tracks :)
But, having a musicial education also means to gain knowledge on chords, progressions that kind of stuff.
Of course there are lots of people who learned that and then got stuck in the most boring framesets, creating music for commercials or shopping malls or whatever.
But there's the saying 'You have to know the rules to break them'....i believe in that, and i believe that only knowledge of notes, progressions, chords, whatever would enable one to evolve a whole score beyond trivial note progression.
Maybe that's a little dramatic....i'd be glad to be proven the opposite :) SZ : What is your favorite score ? Geroyche: There is no lone favourite I like Badalamenti scores - Mulholland Drive in particular, some from Carpenter (like Dark Star :) , the stuff Wendy Carlos
did for Kubrick (the theme for 'The Shining' is among my very favourites) but also more jazzy ones. Bullitt by Lalo Schifrin is outstanding.
The score for Forbidden Planet is also very exciting, pioneering for electronic scores.
I'm a sucker for dark soundtracks also...there's not much like listening to The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut or The Exorcist soundtracks late at night, at home. SZ : You frequently use echo efx in your tracks... What sort of atmosphere you want to create then ? Geroyche : You're right. I don't like dry sounds too much, Of course you could argue that everything sort of blends together, loses precision and focus with reverbs and delays used. But most of the time i simply don't intend to achieve a clear, precise, functional sound.
Well, i mostly use more than one reverb and/or delay and try to combine them in ways such that there's always something vivid in the signal.
The aim of reverbs is to create spaces for the sounds to move in. And i like the deep, haunting atmosphere of that. Distant, distorted signals that have a short life of their own. SZ : Would you describe your home studio ? Geroyche : Sure...let's see if i can remember it all... ;)
A pc with Athlon XP2400+, 512MB RAM, 17" Iiyama CRT and Nvidia nForce2 on-board sound, running Buzz Tracker. :)
I've got a mono-multifx unit from Korg (Pandora's Box 1) and a Boss HyperfuzzII distortion somewhere... unused for like 5 years.
Oh, and i have 2 turntables + a small battle mixer from Ecler.
Sometimes I think about getting a reasonable proper soundcard and a midicontroller, but what the heck.. SZ : You compose your tracks with Buzz tracker. Why did you choose this software ? What is buzz made of ? Geroyche : Well, to me at least, it was a logic evolution to use Buzz. Back in the days tracker meant having instant fun with a small (mostly free) programme using preloaded samples, SZ : My spying-flying ear has heard about your contribution in "Ventilator tonträger" label. Would you tell me about this ? Geroyche : You *are* well informed ;)
The latest release i'm on is the Voxxx Series A Sampler [Ventilator Tonträger 0002]. And i'm not only on that one, my friend Slik and i we are the people responsible for the concept, artist contacts, tracklist. We are responsible for the electronics department of Ventilator Tonträger.
First of all SZ : This label seems to be opened to large a scale of music isn't it ? Geroyche : Yes. That's also, but not only, due to different people behind the indie-rock and electronics branches.
But the decisions to incorporate both branches under one brand have been made very early.
It just came down to having different people decide the details because of the in-depth knowledge concerning a certain style.
Furthermore each departments is open to a wide range of music that's loosely connected to the topic.
I mean the Voxxx Series A sampler in itself covers a range of electronics wide enough so that some people i know don't like one end or the other.
We do also intend to connect the branches with collaborations and/or remixes in the future. SZ : What is the weather like tomorrow ? Geroyche : "I honestly don't know. I mostly likely won't leave the house tomorrow. If it's gonna be like today then we'll have a sunny autumn day with 18° and clear air. All the same to me, as long as there is no rain so heavy that i don't hear the music in my room anymore." Interview by R47474C.
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SZ : Hello Geroyche ! Lets introduce yourself ! Who are/aren't you ?
I got a soundcard on christmas 93 and learned that it was not only good for hearing sounds from pc games That's all due to Christian/Society Suckers, whom i met in school.
The good thing about the tracker scene was, and still is, that you can learn production skills as you listen to music, since you see its 'source code' right in front of you.
Why electronic? I never learned to play an instrument. I always fancied techno. I like to be alone.
industry by getting a major deal and use the advance to start a new label while i never give any music to the major... wait...erm. no...
Actually i mainly want to carry a certain emotion without the 'help' mostly shallow lyrics [apart from my ragga-mashups ;) and short, concise phrases]. I want to create distinct sounds, as far away from synth presets and obvious effects as possible.
That's about the one constant in my 'aims'. In 97 i'd probably have signed the first sentence of this paragraph...3 or 4 years ago i'd have talked about how i want to revolutionize rhythm & beat patterns...['Body Talk' is pretty crazy],
However, so far the album i've been enjoying the most this year is Lawrence - The Absence of Blight [Dial LP04]...and it has straight bass drums all over...
We (that's the Society Suckers and some more school mates of mine) did order there since about '95/96. The Suckers
sent Joel self made tapes for the mailorder. That's how the contact did establish more closely. When we (that's Wintermute and me) heard that Joel did start Kool.Pop we decided to send him a demo-tape [well, Wintermute did ;) it was one of four copies actually, some time in '98]
and he liked it... afterwards we went to visit him quite often, and now we're good friends.
it's raining and people are standing outside?', 'more noise!' and 'too much noise!' to some very nice compliments such as 'haven't heard anybody do that before'.
So far it's been mostly positive :) People dancing towards the end is always a good sign.
My liveacts are generally more beat-oriented...stuff like the bitpop a-side will most likely occur at the beginning...if at all.
Then again i would maybe write less tracks and do more like presets for (soft-)synths....
or i'd try and improve my skills in making hiphop/r'n'b/pop/*insert temporarily successful style here* tracks ;)
while you had some common restrictions (limited channels, limited samples, limited quality, no midi, no real time effects, no real time synthesis, ...).
Each new tracker loosened some restrictions. Like having higher quality samples, more channels [hand made delays or flangers are fun ;)], more samples, more elaborate commands.
But the very basic restrictions remained...your source are samples.
And uniqueness in arrangement can't help the fact that you cannot dramatically change to sound of samples without effects. Of course in the mid 90ies some basic software synths and wave editors providing basic effects for DOS did come up.
You could then load the manipulated samples or rendered (static) synth sounds and work with them. That was a tiresome way to work which i didn't really like, though i know people that prefered this to using buzz. And the few hardware effects i bought did soon show limits that i wasn't happy with.
As soon as i discovered Buzz in 98 (i wish i could remember how, probably through the Maz-Soundtools homepage) i felt like a whole new world opened - which in fact did.
It was entirely unique at that time and to some extend still is, for combining tracker-style sequencing and real time sound creation/manipulation.
And it was the way to make a huge step towards creating what i really wanted to achieve in terms of music.
It's one large studio with unlimited cables and as many synths and effects as you want it to have. You can have 20 copies of the same distortion all with different settings or 20 different distortions all with different characteristics. You can control each individual setting at any time with tracker commands and almost every week somebody gives you a new synth, effect or tool for your rack as a present.
Meanwhile Buzz features elaborate ways (Peer Control) to control any setting dependent on a signal, be it the output of any machine or lfos...but also grammar based sequencing or parameter interaction through python scripts. The development of the core app is stalled however and the heat is on between several clones that will provide the ability to use almost any buzz machine in a new environment that loosens more or less of the still existing restrictions.
the compilation brings together the local acts Echorausch, Vio lat Cen and me. We've known each other for quite a long time now, played at local parties together and each of us also has releases on other labels. This is the first time we appear in a common context in the "outside world" however. And we also have Setzer and Mochipet from Canada and California in our circle.
That's the almost typical story of coming across music on the Internet that you feel has to be released. Well, between the first intention to have own releases and the realisation lay quite some time. And these two are not unknown anymore now, especially Mochipet had a busy release schedule 2003/04. But that's all the better for us now :)
Voxxx Series A is not only this sampler. It will consist of 5 more 12"es...one by each project. So i guess my next solo ep will be out under my own supervision.
The first reactions to the sampler are very positive, we are also very lucky to have an old friend with refreshing yet classic ideas of artwork.
We hope the whole project will be as well received as it is precious to us and we'll see what comes after that.