Interview with Artemis Kowalski

Artemis Kowalski is an interesting character that started in the field of industrial influenced dance music, derived from Wax Trax studios, Metropolis and Cleopatra labels but slowly moved towards more experimental aspects of Power noise electronics with cinematic aspects of ambient music.
Keeping true to his roots with very distinguishing rhythm and other musical ambitions he got involved in collaborative work with PBK,
We asked him a few questions to shed some light on his approach to composition and how he does it.


1. One of the most important parts of our life when you are a musician or sound designer or both seems to be the time of our teenage years which shapes our sensitivity towards sound and music in general. How was it in your case? What shaped you and gave you the kick towards starting it?

During my teenage years I was listening to a lot of Oi, Punk Rock and a bit of Thrash: Combat 84, The Last Resort, Fear, The Membranes, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Camper Van Beethhoven, Alien Sex Fiend, MDC, a local band called Feast of Saints, Dead Horse and Stormtroopers of Death... I found the use of synths, samplers and drum machines by these bands fascinating, especially by The Membranes with their Kiss Ass... Godhead! release. It didn’t seem like such a fusion would complement punk but it’s this perfect dichotomy between traditional and electronic instruments that yields this bizarre hybrid of an album where drum machines are so out of place yet somehow work so well within the song structures. I suppose those bands likely planted the seed for my interest in electronic sounding music and instruments-- but I wouldn’t buy any electronic music making gear or attempt to try and make any form of electronica until in my early 20s.
I also loved film from an early age so I think musical scores and soundtracks may have also helped to shape the music I make today. In my teens I was especially focused on watching every silent film I could get my hands on. These films were heavily reliant on and driven by the musical score and it either made or broke the scene—but of course this is true of any film and soundtrack. The result of the sounds and score’s impact on the viewing experience (be it good or bad) didn’t escape me and I think I’ve always kept that tucked away in the back of my mind.
The real kick was probably hearing bands on labels like Wax Trax, Metropolis and early Cleopatra Records. I initially wanted to be something like 16 Volt but it never worked out with a guitarist. Later exposure to bands like Numb and labels like Ant-Zen caused a shift in my musical preferences as did re-establishing links with my cousin PBK, who introduced me to the harsher and more experimental worlds of noise.

2. As a person in his 40’s you have seen different phases of technology development which also created a different kind of approach towards composition? How did it change for you since the 1990’s?

My first bit of electronic gear was Ensoniq’s ASR-10 sampler. Sounds were saved to floppy disk but if you had larger files you would save them to an external drive via SCSI. Although memory could be expanded from the factory 2MB, you were still limited by a maximum size of 16MB—which really isn’t much. The Boss SP-303 introduced me to smart media cards and now you could sample up to 64 MB. I liked the increased sample size and recording time but found it was nowhere near the workhouse the ASR-10 was. Ergonomically though, the 303 just never really worked for me. The SP-505 introduced even larger smart media (128 MB) and I found it a very intuitive piece of gear. Of course, all of these pale in comparison to samplers of today, as most are around 16GB of internal memory—so a vast difference. I think these limitations however forced you to be infinitely more creative vs the instruments of today and those who use them as they aren’t forced to come up with a solution outside of the box.
Recording wise I used cassette a bit and then later that advanced to DAT and then standalone CD-burners. I didn’t multi-track at first so everything was “sequenced” into the ASR so that I could record multiple tracks, effect and pan them and then send my signal out as a stereo master to whatever recording device. I started multi-tracking with Fostex’s VF-16 and it had a built-in cd burner, so this eliminated the need for a standalone unit. It also allowed me to incorporate more layers of sound in to live performances as I could use the VF-16 to play backing tracks or sounds and effect them in real time. Of course these days all of this can be done on a computer with greater amounts of storage and unlimited tracks. I was vehemently anti-computer for music creation/recording til late 2011 but since that time I now use both hardware and software. Both have their pros and cons and some projects lend themselves more to one than the other. Personally, if it sounds good I no longer care what it was made with. I do find that computers/laptops have made music creation much more accessible to the public and there is a heap of software out there that makes it very simple to quickly and easily make “music”. The downside to this is that everyone and their brother wants to be a superstar and there is an endless amount of absolute shite now being released by bedroom producers in nearly every genre.
In the 90s, if touring, you could bring an absolutely ridiculous amount of gear with you on planes and not be charged. Sadly this is no longer the case, so I think this has also led many people to the laptop for backing tracks, fx, etc. If I had something the size of an ASR today I wouldn’t dream of trying to play anywhere which I had to travel by air.
I’m also creating softsynth vsts now in programs like Reaktor—something I would have never considered 25 years ago and I’m not sure that the means to do so were available then.
One thing I do miss is S/PDIF and digital optical, which have been taken over by USB. USB is meant to be superior to or at least equal to in audio fidelity but I find S/PDIF and optical sound fuller, have sweeter highs and zero ground loop issues or noise artifacts. Unfortunately there isn’t too much gear offered these days that have these connections.
I think the biggest change for me would be the use of a DAW. Prior to that everything was based on sound where it fit into the mix or composition, but now you also have a visual representation available. This allows you to move sounds throughout the recording with relative ease to see what works and what doesn’t, whereas before such a thing could become very time intensive with the means available at the time. Most of what I do has always been primarily sample based and, aside from memory, samplers haven’t really changed all that much.

3. Do you have a certain piece of equipment that you really like?

I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a chap in town with an original Arp 2600P2. Although I don’t own it nor can I take it home with me, Roger lets me tinker with it most anytime. This means recording hours and hours of source which I try and incorporate into compositions at a later date—often resampled, effected etc. So I wasn’t wasting heaps of time getting a feel for the machine, I bought Arturia’s standalone ARP 2600 V soft synth. Although not an exact duplicate, it’s very close and allowed me to learn the ins and outs of the machine and really dive in to the real thing. The ARP is my favourite bit of gear right now and I’m using primarily that and 2 synths I created, Gamera and the Resonance Munro, for all of my projects, be it original compositions, collabs, remixes, etc. I also really like the Ensoniq FIZMO but find, like modular, it’s often very difficult to duplicate a sound twice. This means having to record absolutely everything to capture those happy accidents—which is very time consuming. UVI makes a vst version but it’s only a rompler so it doesn’t catch the true transwave synthesis of the machine... I wouldn’t waste my time with it.

4. Apart from the specific musical idioms you are using there is an aspect I can’t stop thinking of – which is a very strong pull towards a cinematic aspect of what you are doing. Am I wrong?

No, as mentioned earlier, cinema was and is very important to me. Because I’m not making pop music, I always imagine music as taking you on a journey. There’s nothing worse to me than a song that simply stays in one place for the duration of the track. I think music should take you from point A to point B and possibly everywhere in-between. If you look at a landscape, it’s always changing, sometimes very dramatically, sometimes only subtly. A soundscape should be no different: slowly or aggressively changing so that the end point is not the same as the starting point. I look at whatever it is I’m working on at the time, which will be some sort of idea or theme, and I imagine visuals as the music progresses—so in essence the “soundtrack” is creating this unmade film in my head. I don’t know how other people perceive music they are listening to, but for me it’s very visual, very filmic.

5. How do you see being active as an underground musician now and back in the 1990’s or 2000’s? I mean promoting your stuff and gaining some attention?

Pre or very early internet it was word of mouth or writing to labels you saw in underground fanzines. If these labels liked your material, they would release it and put ads in magazines, etc. If you received a good review of an album, this helped to promote your works and increase your reputation and sales. Venues and/or festivals used to pay decently for live performances and labels would often pay most, if not all, of your transportation and accommodation fees. I remember playing the Knitting Factory and getting $500—and that was fairly common-- but these days you’re lucky to get $100. If you go on tour now it’s generally up to you to meet all costs.
Fanbases were smaller but passionate; people that liked your music owned a physical copy. There was no streaming, no facebook, soundcloud, youtube, etc. I remember when MP3.com first appeared—it was a real pain in the arse trying to upload songs longer than 3 minutes with dial up but now that’s all changed. Because of social media and countless music sites the potential for self-promotion is far greater now than 20 or 30 years ago. However, I’m not sure that faster world reaching internet is necessarily better. Most streaming sites pay less than one cent to artists for streaming a track of your material. With the exception of bandcamp and personal websites, it takes ages to make any money on digital music sales. This is also the age of ‘Look At Me’, meaning a person interested in say industrial or noise music, for example, has to wade through hundreds and hundreds of bands/projects that fall into these categories that have tracks up on bandcamp, etc. Many of these are shit, the music appears to be made quickly with a laptop and very generic or basic programs and there’s no real art or craft to the compositions—but hey I have material on soundcloud and 50 other sites. Due to this inundation on the web, it’s harder than ever to get noticed or stand out. People send me links to their music all the time; unless I personally know them or they’re sending demos to Samboy I tend to ignore them.
Fortunately I still have a decent following and know a few people in the right places. I play out live very little these days. As far as promotion goes, I tend to let the music speak for itself. Once an album is complete I send material to magazines that have received my music well in the past. If they write a good review, I post that on my website or social media and it tends to lead to additional sales and new followers. As I get older I seem to find myself becoming increasingly anti-social. If people like my music, that’s great but if they don’t, well that’s fine too. I’m past the point of earning a living from music; it’s now more of an obsessive hobby. I find my free time is more and more limited these days so I don’t spend all hours promoting myself. Rightly or wrongly, I let the music do that.

6. Do you feel being inspired by making collaborative work with other musicians? What drags you towards it?
I enjoy working with other artists that create music I find interesting. Ideas are often presented to me that I wouldn’t have considered in my music making processes and I find that stimulating, ie it challenges me to approach or create things in a different way to work within the outlines and structures presented—and of course to complement the other artist’s music. So yes, I do find collabs to be inspiring as they tend to push forward new forms of creativity. I think the real draw is the unknown: what can I do to enhance or add to what has been presented to me? I might start off in one direction and end in a completely opposite one. Then I send that to my collaborator and they might tweak or add some more things and I might do the same after they’ve finished. The final product is something unique that neither of us expected and I get a great amount of satisfaction from that.

7. Plans for the future?
A sequel to Noise Pigs, a collab with Nocturnal Emissions, a tribute to Master/Slave Relationship with the project Military Position, a punk/proto-punk covers album and 25 year old archive material released on vinyl. Throw in a few remixes and the future’s sounding bright.

discogs
Samboy Get Help Recordings
Samboy Get Help main