Sat, 30 Apr 2011 / Post a comment
This time it was the loved/hated Facebook to warn me about what would happen at Brancaleone Saturday, 26th. I realized that 5 days before the event, the number of the confirmations of participation was amazing. We all know that Facebook is the realm of appearance and it isn’t so reliable, but in this case it hits the spot. Those who were at Brancaleone this time, more than any other, must be proud for many reasons. One of these is the risk that the party was the last in which Sasha Ring appeared in Rome with his project “Apparat”.
The opening was placed in the hands of the Martux crew and in those of Daniel Meteo. Then black screens, no one in console and a prancing Brancaleone, waiting for listen to one of the most respected artists by the Roman public. Screens begin to take color and here he is, him, with his crazy hair cut. He walks toward the console: the magic starts!
Before the show, between crazy and throwing water men, we interviewed Sasha in order to know something about his past, present and future.
Hi sasha! Let’s start from the beginning: how and when did the first approach to the electronics happen?
A long time ago! For my all my life I’ve been listening and making electronic music, I never did anything else. Already when I was 14 I was immersed in the world of Hard Techno. I come from a small town in east Germany where we often organized rave parties ‘couse there, we had lots freedom: we did what we wanted. Then I moved to Berlin and there I started to produce more melodic music, but we’re always talking about electronics. Only six or seven years ago I started listening to different genres such as Steve Reich, Radiohead and others like those; so I expanded my musical tastes, they became more interesting and certainly they created the Sasha you have now in front of you.
In 1997 you moved to Berlin. As a result of this, how do you think you changed the way you are and your music?
As I said, until I was in my hometown it was all about Hard Techno,infinite raves, drugs … I was stuck in this life for 2-3 years, which are many when you’re a teenager. It was a long but fantastic and crazy period. After a while this life starts to be hard and you need to change… I needed to leave so I moved to Berlin for a quieter life. I enrolled in a school of graphic design and I stopped everything, I stopped smoking, taking drugs and all things that demage my health… But obviously I’ve never stop drinking beer. I went ahead with this life for a while, and this affected not only my personality but also my music. I built my lilltle studio, I bought synthesizers, samplers, and I began to realize that Techno annoyed me; so finally, I changed my gender and I started making more chillout music.
So definitely also your personality changed…
Yes, certainly. When I moved to Berlin, I never was at home and my conception of everyday life radically changed because I was always either in the study or at work. It was a quiet life. Ellen was essential. For the first year I did not meet anyone in Berlin, and then, when I met her, it was amazing. The situation in the city was not the one we have today. Berlin was not a friendly environment. Berlin people didn’t talk with me ‘couse I was a stranger. Now is different becouse you have so many mixed people from all over the wolrd, and if you go to a club, you have like 20 new friends istantly. But when I moved there, nothing like that. I just met the right people and all started.
In 2006 you worked with Ellen Allien to “Orechestra of Bubbles”, a very particular album. How and why was this collaboration start and what is the idea behind the album?
It was born a long time before 2006, I’ve been friends with Ellen since 10 years and we’ve been talking about making music together several times, but it never really happened until that album. Ellen was already a famous DJ who played everywhere and about me, as I said, in Berlin I started to work hard, so it was hard to spend time togheter. we were like “Do you know we have to make an album together !?”. So at the end we managed to see us in the studio and we started. We created an album to spend time together, and it was really cool. For two years we were traveling together, we had great times.
From a musical standpoint, when we started we didn’t know what we were going to do. We had worked together, but never so thoroughly. In fact, the first week we were looking for a sound that we never found out. Infact what you hear in the album is a sound that varies greatly from song to song. It was like “Hey, this is cool. We have to work on in!”. The album is made of moments like that. Then you must also consider the suggestion of where we were: it was winter and the study was on the top floor, and everything was white outside. It was like christmass: when it’s white outside and you are inside where is warm. I do not know how to explain it, It is not a concept album… Each track is a different moment. We did not know where we were going with our music.
In 2000 you started this project: Apparat. Why? What was the necessity?
When I moved, as I said, everything changed, I started making completely different music. I’ve never thought about releasing it … I just had a flatmate who came from the same small town I was from, and he knew Marco from Shit Catapult. My flatmate gave him my music… I didn’t want it! Than Marco called me and he said “This is great, I wanna release it” and I said “What the fuck?! That’s crazy! Why not?!”. This was the moment when Apparat was born. I thought that I needed a name. “Apparat starts with an “a” and it is gonna be on top of every list” I thought. A very practical thought (laughs).
Marco was working on the label, it was alone, and there was to much work for him. It took one years to release my album. So he aseked me to help him with the label, becouse I am a graphic designer; so I worked on the graphic. At the end both of us released my album.
There are lots of differences between “Walls” and “Moderat”. What do you can tell us about these two albums?
Walls was born after the Apparat an… after the Ellen Allien and Apparat work. Women always go first! (laughs). After working with Ellen, I wanted to try something different, so for the first time in my life I started to record a lot of real instruments. Walls is definitely electronic, but it has many real sounds. I was tired of the usual electronic, then I started to record strings, drums, guitars and things like that. I really liked this new way of working and I definitely changed my sound. In fact, then, Moderat came, where this changing is more evident; and now a new album is coming out… I do not know when (smiles)… That is just a bit electronic, but for the most part is made up of real sounds. Right now I prefer to record sounds insted of create them: it is more human, more real. I want to go into the studio and to have immediate results. It ‘s a more musical approach. It is also crucial to see how the instruments are recorded, what pattern should be given to the microphones… The magic is there too!
What softweares and hardweare do you usually use?
Right, all is changed now. When I started, 10 years ago, I created a very old scool set-up and with that I created my first album. On the contrary I made the second one completely using laptop. It was a great revolution. It was not easy: for us at the beginning it was strange having to adapt to this new approach. For this reason I’ve always worked in parallel with hardweares and for this now I work with real instrument. Even today sometimes I use Reaktor, because I worked a lot with programs such as Max / MSP, for example.
Do you still work with Max/Msp?
Well, many of the things I did are based on that visual programming language. All shows for Moderat were made with Max/Msp and real instruments. Right now I don’t use it any more. I rather play with real things, stuff that you can play closing your eyes, feeling your soul. I reached a point where it was the same with some softweares, but I decided to set a limit … It was a personal choice.
Note: In all this, Sasha’s speech was interrupted by a cheerful member of his crew, who started to sing without reasons: “Your Love … Your love … Your love … “. Sasha, obviously, did not lose the opportunity to answer him singing very well: “Shut the fuck up”
Talking about your future: what are you going to do?
I’m working on my last album. It took a long time. All began when I’ve been in Mexico with some friends. There, we made music like a real band. It was cool, but it was not what I had in mind. When I returned in Berlin I started to work again. I finished it two months ago using things recorded in Mexico, but also many things I created into the studio in Berlin with the help of my friend Pizzy. I can tell you that is an album in which the electronic represents only 20%, the rest is real instruments. Probably many of you will not like it, but any way I need to change and evolve myself. It’s boring if you do the same things over and over again. So let’s see, It’s gonna be out after this summer. After this album all will be completely different: no more show like this, I’m gonna play with a new band, I’ll stop to play electronic like this, no rave shows anymore but concerts at 10 o’clock… For old people (laughs). You will see. I’ll come back in October!
Thank you! We are very curious to see what you are going to do this time!
Yeah, It will be interesting! Thank you and I hope you enjoy the show tonight!
