Interview / Martin Brandlmayr, Manfred Grübl / Version 5

Manfred Grübl: Your latest CD, On Dark Silent Off, strikes me as heading in the direction of film music—and it’s completely different from your previous CDs. How did that come about?

Martin Brandlmayr: I think a lot happened in the time leading up to its release. Martin Siewert, my longtime musician colleague from various other projects, joined Radian after Stefan Nemeth left in 2011. On Dark Silent Off was our first proper trio record in the new lineup (Martin Siewert, myself, and John Norman, who—like me—has been with us from the beginning). We had already produced an album together back in 2014—a special project with Giant Sand mastermind Howe Gelb. Martin’s approach to his instrument, the guitar, as well as his extensive experience as a producer, had a huge impact on our sound. And it took a long time before we released something again because we wanted to take the time to develop a common way of working. In 2012, we were invited by the Viennale to play to films at the Gartenbaukino. Part of the pieces on On Dark Silent Off were created during this live scoring of 35mm films. We even got to choose the films ourselves and opted for La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker as the centerpiece, and then there was Siegfried Fruhauf’s Mirror Mechanics (2005), Ben Russell’s Black and White Trypps Number Three (2007), and Peter Tscherkassky’s Outer Space (1999).

MG: Yeah, Tscherkassky is magnificent! So, how did it go at the Gartenbaukino?

MB: We were standing on stage while the films played above us on this huge screen. I remember it very vividly. We had developed the pieces in the rehearsal room using digital versions of the films, and then played them for the first time on location at the Gartenbaukino with the 35-mm films. We still had to adjust a few things, such as the timing, and then we started that very same evening. We set La Jetée to music together with Fritz Ostermayer as narrator. That film has always fascinated me, just like many other works by Chris Marker. La Jetée isn’t really a film in the strict sense—it’s a series of still images. The movement comes only through editing, music, and speech. I find that fascinating. It’s also interesting that in another work by Chris Marker, namely Sans Soleil (1983), a similar effect occurs—but exactly in reverse. The sequence of images isn’t tied together by a coherent narrative, as in La Jetée, but is rather loosely strung together. Here, the images are moving, but they usually remain in a static state, in one shot, actually an image that is memorized.

MG: So, you worked with live improvisation and pre-prepared sound files?

MB: Exactly. We played fixed sections that were synchronized with computer sequences, and in between, we had more free passages. It was a mix of both. Later on, we picked up parts of this material and developed them into pieces that we then integrated into regular concerts—so without film—sections that reappeared in altered form on On Dark Silent Off. The title track, for example, and another piece called Scary Objects. Even the record title On Dark Silent Off carries this cinematic element. I keep thinking back to the dark hall of the Gartenbaukino, the atmosphere during those rehearsal sessions. The silence and the darkness of that huge space before any sound emerges or the film’s light illuminates the room. Light and darkness, information and non-information, sound and silence—this tension has always fascinated me. And within that tension, Radian’s music moves. The hard cuts between sound and silence, between the audible and the imagined, are what shape our music. It’s always a play where what’s conceived co-composes with what’s imagined—or better, the sounds are composed around the conceived idea. It even starts with me having a pulse in my headphones during concerts—a pulse that synchronizes me, as the drummer, with the computer; a rhythm that the audience can’t hear. I’m already grooving, even though the audience hears nothing of it yet.

MG: How has your music changed and evolved over the years?

MB: I think the reduction of our early years has faded a little more into the background. Or rather, it operates on a different level now. In recent years, we’ve developed a somewhat freer, more playful way of working, where many improvisational approaches—especially during the production process—come into play, with Martin Siewert contributing a lot of new ideas. The material that emerges is sometimes reviewed by me on my own, sometimes together in Martin’s studio, and then condensed into a few snippets that actually get used. I find that there’s more contrast today between little and a lot, between loudly distorted and microscopically detailed, between something created in the moment and something meticulously constructed. I believe we’re dynamically exploring a much wider range now. In the past, it was much more about the sound material itself—almost like material studies in the very beginning. For instance, how can I produce something like the white noise of a synthesizer on a drum kit? I liked the idea of treating the drum kit sonically as if it were a synthesizer and thinking of it formally as a sequencer—deciding how much of the sound is tonal, how much is noise; the swish of a drum brush, the sound of a tub, with or without a rattling chain—that is, with or without a “noise generator.” I wasn’t playing the sounds in the traditional sense, but rather “placing” them on the timeline of an imagined sequencer. That was a self-imposed mode of thought or play. Sound production on a drum kit, as opposed to a synthesizer, always has something inherently physical about it—a tension that I’ve been exploring intensely for years. It’s very interesting to reflect on this now, because my approach to both the instrument and composing has changed so much. Playing with folks from the improv and free jazz scenes has greatly influenced me. In my early years as a musician, I saw a divide between improvisation on the one hand and constructing/composing music on the other—they were two poles for me. Today, one gently plays around the other, and these two seemingly opposing positions have merged into one vast field of play. I received a lot of initial impulses from Franz Hautzinger, who led an improvisation ensemble at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, during my studies and later in various projects. The experience of improvising with Christof Kurzmann, Ken Vandermark, John Tilbury, Otomo Yoshihide, Mats Gustafsson, Sachiko M, Dieb 13, Elisabeth Harnik, Axel Dörner, Erik M, and many others has enriched and shaped me tremendously. I developed play methods and techniques that involve allowing things to happen that I don’t plan in advance, things that happen, that arise from a spontaneous impulse. I am currently particularly interested in processes that are semi-controllable or beyond my control. For example, a marble that runs over a snare drum. I decide when and in which direction I send it off. So that’s the planned part, the part that I want to shape musically, but the process of the marble running out, where and how exactly it makes its way, I can only control to a limited extent, it’s like water running over the stones into a stream. This process is self-organized; the elements develop a life of their own, creating a complexity that I find incredibly exciting—a balance between what’s made and what’s happening. Especially in solo pieces, I play with these processes because they surprise me, constantly putting me into new situations and giving me the chance to react to ever-changing circumstances. I explore these aspects in solo compositions or, for instance, with the ensemble Polwechsel, with whom I’ve been researching the space between composition and improvisation for many years.

MG: I’ve always wondered how you get that down on paper. Is it like what we know from Stockhausen, where there are often no traditional notes at all, but rather notations and drawings? Have you developed your own language for that, or do you basically work within the conventional sheet music system?

MB: Notation is a very interesting topic. Depending on the context, I approach it differently. The example of Polwechsel is a good one. I’m currently writing a piece for this quartet, which in its current line-up consists of the double bass player Werner Dafeldecker, the cellist Michael Moser and two percussionists, Burkhard Beins and myself. Within the group, there are very different approaches. Some musicians come from the tradition of notated contemporary music, so they are used to working with complex notation, while others have no interest in traditional notation or its contemporary extensions. I find it very exciting to respond to these individual approaches and preferences and to write a piece tailored to the ensemble and its members.

MG: Making the concept playable with the help of the strengths of the individual musicians so that it also works in the group?

MB: Exactly. There are those who play precisely formulated material, and others who can orient themselves in the resulting, clearly structured sound flow and sometimes move in an improvisational way. What I described earlier – these two seemingly distant poles, the precisely composed and the improvised within a piece – come together. Precision in notation can mean many things. John Cage’s works that use chance operations are also precisely formulated, but the arrangement of sounds is different each time the piece is played. By precisely composed, I mean that the notes always sound in the same sequence. It’s about the repeatability of a precise sequence. I actually write this using an expanded traditional notation system. The challenge is usually to fix sounds in a way that they can be reproducible. And often these are sounds that are created with the help of preparations on the instrument and/or special playing techniques. There are often descriptions or symbols that are described in more detail in an appendix.

MG: When it comes to music, I always think of Søren Kierkegaard, who in his main work Either/Or claimed that the highest of all arts is music because it moves in the intangible, metaphorical space. I really like that idea, because, of course, music can fill space, but in a completely different way than visual art. In the visual arts, you quickly deal with the material. How do you see that as a musician?

MB: This raises the question of materiality – music consists of sound, which is hard to grasp since it’s a vibration of air particles in space. I remember concerts, even as a listener, where it felt like I could touch the sound in the room. That often goes hand in hand with a feeling that everything is right in that moment. Here and now, at this exact moment. And that doesn’t even mean that the conditions on site are perfect. It’s about accepting the things in the space and reacting to them vibrantly. Then something arises that can only be created in the present moment, and for that, the necessary openness must be brought. This applies in a concert situation to both the audience and the musicians. Music is created anew with every performance. These can be individual aspects that are fixed in notated material or other methods and reproduced, but it will always be something different, something that sounds different, when the music comes to life. I have learned to embrace that, because overly rigid ideas of how music should be rob it of its breath, its liveliness, and many opportunities for development. Improvised music makes this particularly clear. It is largely formed and content-wise created in the moment and reacts to the circumstances on site. Factors such as room acoustics, light, temperature etc. but also things that are difficult to grasp such as the chemistry between the musicians and the mood of the audience, everything influences each other and the music doesn’t stop before or after the concert, everything is interaction. I remember how surprised I was as a young musician when I realized how important it was in the context of improvised music to hang out together before the concert, often already days before, in rehearsal phases, where sometimes more non-musical interaction took place than actual rehearsing. Eating and drinking together, walking and discussing, going part of the way together and getting in tune with each other. So it’s not just about tuning the instruments, but also about tuning into the others, the space, the audience, the breathing of the atmosphere, and the community that is formed for that moment.

MG: In Vive les fantômes you abandon the relationships classically attributed to music, such as stage, auditorium and rehearsal room, and mix these otherwise separate levels.

MB: I realized this radio play for SWR in 2018. It’s a collage of sound snippets that appear repeatedly. It contains short samples of jazz performances and rehearsal room recordings where the momentary aspect is the focus. In these recordings, not only the musicians are audible, but also the audience, background noise in the rehearsal room, things that happen beside the point, unnoticed, and by chance – in other words, everything that makes the complexity of a moment. These moments are irretrievably past, but the document that captured that moment acoustically appears again and again in varied forms in the piece, thus bringing it into the here and now. These are sound spaces that are repeatedly viewed and illuminated from different perspectives. This year I will perform Vive les fantômes live in a few European cities, including in September at the Echoraum in Vienna. Unfortunately, it has been postponed several times due to the pandemic.

MG: In the visual arts, I always find it problematic when political art is co-opted by market-driven interests. How was it with your collaboration with Christof Kurzmann for the 2018 Nickelsdorf festival? I am referring specifically to the first part with a recording about the politics of Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orbán. This work is aimed at the EU as an economic union that prioritizes economic interests while failing completely in social issues like refugee policy.

MB: What you mean was a speech in the European Parliament that was played in the first part.

MG: As I remember it, the voice tends to be below it rather than above it. It talks about refugees being shuffled around and the promise that everything humanly possible will be done, yet in the end, nothing happens. Do you often collaborate with Kurzmann, or how did this come about?

MB: Christof has been a companion from the beginning. He released the first album of Radian on the then newly founded Rhiz label. It was recorded during our first concert, back in the old Porgy & Bess. Christof is an incredibly important figure in the Viennese scene – politically, as a musician, and as an organizer. But not just limited to the local music scene, but internationally. He regularly puts together interesting bands, such as the 33 1/3 orchestra or later bands with Ken Vandermark and many others. He also started Disquiet. Sophia Jernberg is a fantastic vocalist from Stockholm, who sings in Mats Gustafsson’s Fire Orchestra, among others. Joe Williamson, who now lives in London, has been a long-time collaborator, especially in the trio Trapist (with Martin Siewert). Disquiet premiered at the 2019 Konfrontationen Nickelsdorf. Christof rehearsed the material with us on the day of the performance. That’s when we first heard this passage you mentioned. It’s from a speech by Guy Verhofstadt in the European Parliament, where he points out the absurdity and cynicism of the refugee policies of some European countries, sadly including Austria. He makes it clear that the so-called „refugee crisis“ is actually a political crisis. I think it was a very unusual and brave decision by Christof to include such a concrete political statement in our concert. Of course, it had a significant impact on the rest of the concert. When I think back now, I see that the interaction, the attentive listening, and responding in musical collaboration took on a new meaning in this context. Regarding the market and the political in art: I think in music, at least in the field we’re working in with this project, it functions somewhat differently than in some areas of visual art. Market-driven strategies aren’t as present at our level, it’s much more self-organized and therefore egalitarian. Of course, there are market-driven aspects in music, but more so where more money is involved. We operate within an international network of small to medium-sized clubs and festivals, and a network of musicians who are also internationally connected. Many of them are also organizers. One of these festivals is Konfrontationen Nickelsdorf, which takes place every year at Gasthaus Falb in the small Burgenland border town. That’s where we prepared and loosely agreed on a formal structure for the concert. I remember that hot summer day near the Hungarian border. Not least because of the political agenda of this set, it was already quite charged. The concert was recorded and released in the fall of 2020 in an almost uncut version on Trost Records.

MG: You and your brother Peter Brandlmayr have created a joint project, Die relative Kunst der Unfuge for Musikprotokoll. Could you tell me more about this collaboration?

MB: Peter and I have always exchanged ideas about music, art, philosophy, and many other things. Peter has, especially in recent years, dealt with a “hantological” theory of knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics, and I’ve always felt that we were working on similar themes with different means. We knew we wanted to create something together musically at some point. We had a band together during our studies, and by the way, John Norman was already playing bass back then. So John has been a companion of mine for a very long time. After our father died and the string quartet in which he played the violin, which met once a month in our parents‘ house, fell silent, Peter and I decided to deal with it musically. Back then, a fugue from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Kunst der Fuge was always played as the first piece and was therefore part of the family’s musical inventory. Those were our earliest musical memories, and the theme of fugue has kept coming back to me ever since. Here, too, it is a matter of interlacing themes that repeatedly emerge, are permuted and thus appear in ever new forms and contexts. We decided to go into seclusion for two days with a bunch of instruments, a Revox tape machine, a modular synthesizer system, and many effects and microphones. We recorded about 10 hours of material, feeding the tape machine and synthesizers with material we found online, played ourselves, recorded our voices, or had Peter’s computer speak. We proceeded freely associating, hopping from Duchamp to Stockhausen, Morton Feldman to Thomas Bernhard, Billie Holiday to John Carpenter, and Gena Rowlands to Keiji Haino. Everything was chopped up wildly and – with the tape machine as the central effects device – put through the wringer. We then edited this material and created the sound piece titled Die relative Kunst der Unfuge, which premiered in 2020 on SWR and was later rebroadcast on ORF Kunstradio. At the same time, we were working on another related project. We were invited by Musikprotokoll during the Steirischer Herbst to create a sound installation with the same title, which was then presented in October 2020 at the Academy Graz. Using body-borne sound transducers, sound was projected onto the instruments of a string quartet, flanked by three percussion instruments, which were also played by transducers. Transducers are special speakers that don’t make sound on their own but transfer sound via body vibration to objects. Audible sound is only produced when they are placed or screwed onto a resonating body. For example, if I project a violin sound onto the violin, it plays as if by ghostly hands. But, of course, all sorts of different sounds were used, so sometimes a fragmented voice would come from the cello, or the rattle of a construction site would come from the bass drum. The sound is always filtered and colored by the resonating qualities of the respective instrument. It’s something completely different from sound coming from a speaker. The result is something strangely animated and physical.

MG: Finally, I’d like to talk about your new Radian album, which is supposed to come out next year. What direction is it taking, and what material are you working on?

MB: We are working intensely on it and are slowly approaching the final curve, at least in terms of content. In our last session, Martin and I ran drums through guitar effects into a guitar amp and recorded it. Again, it’s about translating sound into another state. The drum sound comes from the guitar amp. It creates a kind of double physicality. The direction – it’s hard to say, but surprisingly, and despite the isolated way we’ve had to work due to the pandemic this time, the album will be very groovy and, in my perception, has a very lively, organic feel to it. By the way, there’s again a piece related to film. We created a piece for the film Toutes Directions (2017) by Dieter Kovacic (aka Dieb 13) and Billy Roisz, which we performed live with them in 2018 at the A l’ARME Festival in Berlin and the Film Festival in Torun. Toutes Directions is a sort of abstract, nocturnal road movie. The film is about atmosphere and, at the same time, the exploration of materials. The camera glides very close to the street, along the grain of the asphalt, until it’s almost just the hum, with surreal projections of light illuminating the passing objects. Not much happens in terms of action, but everything is constantly in a strange form of tension, suspense, that never quite releases. From parts of the recording sessions for this film music, we’ve made a piece that will appear on the new album.