Latest String Series contribution brings us luscious droning electro-acoustic ambience from Dublin-based Zvuku.
Tell us a little about your musical background ie influences, formative experiences, bands you play/played in.
I started out (at the end of the nineties) dj'ing electronica, jungle, ambient, classical, noise (and anything else we could get our hands on) on power fm (the dreaded Saturday night midnight to 4am slot) with a long time friend, droid - renowned crackpot and runner of the famed Blogariddims podcasts http://www.weareie.com (I was under the name slug back then). This led us to part running "The Fear" club in the now disappeared Funnel. The Fear (http://www.thefear.ie/) continued as a label, releasing electronica, Hip, Hop and lastly Jungle. The Fear has since sort of morphed into Ruff Revival - a jungle / Dubstep label - which i'm still involved in.
During these years i've always dipped in and out of producing music - trying to teach myself musical composition etc, with a few releases here and there, but it wasn't until mid 2009 that the current project of Zvuku started - mainly due to getting some studio space at the time, letting me finally house all my equipment in one place! Zvuku (za - vu - coo) explores my love of ambient, noise, classical, drones etc.
Describe your process/approach to music-making/composition. Is this piece (ie the one submitted to SSTN) typical of this?
The process of making a piece usually starts from one melody line and goes from there - halfway slump - the submitted piece - started from a recording i made of bowed guitar (i've been teaching myself how to play for the past 6 months) and led from there. I built on top of that with composed violin samples and more processed guitar. I built it to be arranged and processed live (the "studio as an instrument" concept) - the base recordings are cued in Ableton live and then pushed through effects (numerous pedals and MAX/MSP) and the mixing desk to create the piece - to this end, halfway slump is a one take recording with no over dubs, recorded direct from my desk. Other pieces (like "half full" or "somethings can't be taken back" - up on my soundcloud) are made and recorded in much the same way.
What sort of equipment (e.g. instruments, computer, hardware, home made gear etc.) do you use to make your sounds?
Abelton live and a 12 channel outboard soundcard are the centre of it all, with any effects - pedals, borrowed echo's, ones written in MAX/MSP, reaktor etc - i can get my hand on, to process the sounds on the fly. There are numerous synths (nord modular, roland jd800 to name a couple) i've collected along the way and my guitar. As i mentioned i've been teaching myself how to play the guitar and I'm moving to it being the main instrument for composition. The live processing recording is done with all of the above and also a 24 channel mixing desk, and a few midi controllers (Launchpad and BCR2000)
Info on upcoming gigs, preferred web address, releases etc.
Upcoming Release - Half Full by Zvuku - Coming in October 2010 on Rural Colours - http://www.ruralcolours.co.uk/
http://www.ruralcolours.co.uk/releases/P4/P4.html
Upcoming Gig - supporting Roger Eno - SubVersion presents: Roger Eno & special guests - March 2011 - http://subvertcentral.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53881
http://soundcloud.com/zvuku
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