[Interview] Hiro Kone
* Pour lire la version française de cette entrevue cliquez ICI!
Luckily, we had the opportunity to discover the incredible musician Nicky Mao last summer. Her overflowing talent blew away the sold-out crowd she was facing at the time. This magical moment gave us no other choice than doing a review of her new album Love Is The Capital on the website. A few months later, the time has come to do an interview to help spread the word about her upcoming show in Montreal on December 15 with Wetware at La Plante. By respect for the artist, we will put the original english version first in the article, a french translation is available at the bottom, thank you for your understanding.
Click HERE to buy the album.
You visited us last summer in Montreal during the Suoni Per Il Popolo. Personally, you were my highlight of the night and probably the whole festival. Have you enjoyed the city and the show as much as I did?
Montreal was a highlight for me as well. What an incredible month of shows put on for Suoni Per Il Popolo. For me that show with Drew McDowall and Pharmakon, was really significant. A lot of the new stuff that I was working on found some solid ground that night and the response from the crowd was so enthusiastic and affirming. I always tell people that I make music because I can’t imagine living not doing so, but shows like that one remind you that it can be a shared experience and how that transference can push you even further in your work. When I had started my set my hands were shaking pretty badly, but somehow I got ahold of my nerves and by the end I felt like I’d transported through something so much bigger than that stage. There was such a charge, an electricity if you will, pulsing through that room the entire night.
After I finished, I couldn’t really talk but I stood in the crowd for Margaret’s set and actually cried. Her performance just pulled a lot of feelings to the surface. I’m really grateful for Daniel Pelissier’s invitation, I think that show is still having some ripple effects, because people still mention it to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see much of Montreal that time around but hopefully I don’t have to rush back next week. What I did experience from the city from that night was a genuine warmness and openness that really put me at ease. I am so impressed by the tight knit community behind Suoni Per Il Popolo and those who participate in their events.
You are just coming back from an ambitious 21 dates tour all over Europe. You played some shows with amazing artists like Algiers and Puce Mary. I would really like to know how was the overall experience and if it was the first time you were touring this long?
Playing in Europe was incredible. My booker Karolina Bartczak, introduced to me by Daniel, really nailed it in putting together a wide breadth of shows, from squats to larger venues. With Algiers I was playing 300+ venues, some of which were sold out. On that leg of the tour I rode along with the band and we really bonded in our shared experience, which is an aspect of tour and being in a band that I miss as a solo artist. At the smaller DIY spaces, I was on my own, so that meant I had a real opportunity to meet and converse with the people running these spaces and promoting the shows. It was really inspiring to sit down, eat meals together and listen to them talk about the ethos behind what they are doing.
I’ve been on longer European tours before, for months at a time where I had very few days off in-between, but never have I done it overseas as Hiro Kone. After releasing several records and laying a foundation here at home in New York, it’s really exciting to tour abroad on the terms I set for myself. I had so much adrenaline coming off of tour last week that I put my studio back together the next morning and started recording the next album.
Travelling seems to take an important place in your life, I’ve read that you were moving a lot between countries when you were young. How did this influence you on a personal level and in the way you create music nowadays?
Traveling feels very natural to me, the way that music does. It’s a huge part of who I am and if I don’t do it – I feel static and become unhappy. As a child I bounced between San Francisco and Hong Kong. At age five I traveled by myself to Hong Kong to go stay with my Grandparents for the first time. By age seven, I’d already been to Japan and Thailand. I always felt like I lived between many worlds and I found a freedom in that. As strange and lonely as it was, it is an experience that I’m so grateful for. I think it gave me a more holistic view of the world. I didn’t see the USA as exceptional and in fact it fostered a deep sense of responsibility to criticize my native country’s attitudes towards others.
Musically, it had an influence as well, I listen to music from all around the world, and feel a kinship to non-western song structures and scales. I love Sufi music and flamenco, stuff which works to either this crescendo, the “duende”, or a trance. Often times those attitudes make their way into the songs I write.
Earlier this year you released Love Is The Capital, a complex and powerful album, on the excellent label Geographic North. Despite being mostly instrumental, there is a strong statement against our actual society behind every notes. Can you explain exactly what is the concept of this fantastic album?
I’m really concerned about how human beings have lost their ability to imagine a world outside of their own subjectivity. There is a great imbalance between the individual and the collective because of capital. I wanted to emphasize that for those like myself that feel weary and frustrated by this, for those who may lack the capital to fight the Corporations that legislate our bodies and our livelihoods, that our love for one and another, to strive to see each other as one, rather than the Other, is the essence for which we can fight. It’s the poor people’s Capital. From this we find the power to no longer turn away and remain silent, we find fortitude to make better decisions and break from the narratives that keep us confined.
You invited some friends, more precisely Roxy Farman and Drew McDowall, to collaborate on a few songs of your new record. I’ve heard that the vocal recording of Roxy took place in a really special location, I’m curious to learn more about it and if creating in an unorthodox way is something important for you?
Almost everything I do regarding music is probably unorthodox because I’m for the most part self taught. Although I had a classical training in violin, I rejected it when I was a teenager, and this leads me to question my tendencies as a composer a lot. I’m really attracted to dissonance and like a level of discomfort. Which, is why my sets are always a little unhinged and I’m constantly deconstructing songs.
At the time that I recorded Love is the Capital, I was sharing a house upstate in the tiny hamlet of Palenville with some friends, including Drew. We bought a PA and together recorded an album The Ghost of Georges Bataille* up there in a tiny shed with a pretty terrible mouse infestation. Somehow I convinced Roxy of Wetware to come up there with me when it was getting really cold. I nailed sound blankets all over the shed, cocooning ourselves with some space heaters. It actually did very little good and I’m kind of surprised that she humored me on this. The alternative would’ve been to record the vocals for Infinite Regress in some studio in Brooklyn, but honestly I didn’t even consider this at the time and I think the sterility of such a situation would have harmed the process. The experience lends itself to the song, and the song is a prickly and confrontational one.
* Record out early 2018 on Bank Records NYC.
We will have the opportunity to see you again in Montreal on December 15 with an unbelievable line-up. You will share the stage with Wetware, E-Saggila, Jaclyn Kendall and Lacedetail. Since the electronic music scene is still largely occupied by men, I’m really happy to see that almost all the performers will be women. Equality and diversity is important for me and I would like to know what you think about the actual situation, do you feel that there is any kind of progress in the industry?
There’s progress, but we have a long way to go. I really look forward to the day where it’s not noticeable, you know? Where honestly, I don’t even have to address questions like this, and I don’t at all mean it as an offense, it’s just that there’s so much more that I want to focus on and talk about – and obviously more to me than my gender or ethnicity. It’s extremely exhausting to live in a world where you’re constantly the Other.
Recently there was an incident where this rich white kid was promoting a dance party in the back of some Japanese restaurant in Chinatown NYC, and he made a really thoughtless flier with random Chinese hot pot items, Korean kimchi, and a dragon. This party attracts mainly downtown hipster types who are flooding Chinatown and destroying it as we speak – this is not about integration like the promoter suggested it was. It was beyond stupid, but I felt compelled to call it out on social media because it’s so indicative of how far we have not come. It’s really tiring to have these white males imposing themselves on our culture and thinking they’re in the clear because their Chinese friend said it was ok. Just because you vacation in Japan doesn’t mean you are an ally, nor that you understand a thing of what it’s like to walk around your whole life having people say whatever they want to you – to fetishize you, size you up, talk to you a certain way. Not to mention to have next to no representation in mainstream culture that isn’t some caricature.
In our small musical community we should be supporting each other, not alienating one another. It made me really sad, because one of the secondary organizers of that event was a friend of mine and his response was, “Thanks for letting us know, we will take it into account next time.”. How long is “next time” gonna be, because me and my ancestors been waiting fucking hundreds of years for you guys to get it? Needless to say, I’m not going to be some yes man and I refuse to work with people who respond this way – as harmless as it may all seem. I think we are at a point where people in the community need to pick a side, and stop being so ambiguous about where they stand. If I’d been on that bill, I would have stepped out immediately, but then I don’t have the luxury of being a white male and I have no interest in playing the game, either for social approval or monetary gain.
You have been based in Brooklyn for a while, the scene over there is literally blooming. I still have in mind the incredible set that your friend Ciarra Black played here last March. Can you tell us a little more about the vitality of the scene in New York, is there any hidden gems we absolutely need to listen to?
Ciarra is absolutely amazing and tearing it up in Europe right now. The scene in Brooklyn is something special for sure. The last few years have just been unbelievable and diverse. The music coming out of NY is so of the future, for lack of a better term. I don’t know how to describe it really, but there’s so much cross pollination and openness, and it’s really exciting.
Without a doubt Wetware are the best band in NYC and I’m a big fan of anything Matt Morandi does (Jahiliyyah Fields and Inhalants). Horoscope just released his new record on Ascetic House, definitely check his last two releases out. Obviously the entire Bank Records family, Cienfuegos, Bookworms, Via App are on my list of favorites. Performances I really enjoyed this year and look forward to hearing/seeing more of in 2018 are New Castrati and Chicklette.
To conclude the interview, I’m sure that our readers would like to know what they can expect from your set on December 15. Will it be a lot different from what we had the chance to experience this summer?
Oh, I’m sure it’ll be different and I’m really looking forward to this show. I’ve written quite a bit since the last time I was in Montreal and performed the new material over 20 shows this last month. Even if I play the same set night after night, it’s never identical because of the modular and how I gauge things with the audience. If I feel comfortable, then I tend to take my time and the set is more dynamic and complex. If all I hear is people talking, then that’s a whole other thing and I’m still figuring out the best approach to overcoming those more challenging rooms. In Bordeaux, I just stopped my set and asked the audience who was too inebriated to care if they wanted me to continue. That was one way to hit the reset button.
Thank you for your time, we can’t wait to welcome you again in Montreal!