[Interview] die ANGEL
* Pour lire la version française de cette entrevue cliquez ICI!
Sometimes in life, there are challenges that we simply cannot refuse. Conducting an interview with veterans of the electronic music scene such as Dirk Dresselhaus and Ilpo Väisänen is definitely part of this category. Having influenced the music world with their participation in Pan Sonic and Schneider TM, the duo will be in Montreal on June 22 as part of a North American tour for their die ANGEL project. This loud and promising evening will allow the Suoni Per Il Popolo festival to begin its last weekend in a strong way. Until then, why don’t we take a few minutes to learn more about this fascinating project and the lives of both musicians?
Most people know you for your involvement in musical projects such as Pan Sonic or Schneider TM, but you’ve been working together for a very long time as die ANGEL. How did you get to know each other in the first place and how would you describe your music?
Dirk: We first met in 1998 when i was working for the german music tv program Wah Wah on Viva TV and made an interview with Ilpo and Mika Vainio. A couple of months later Pan Sonic and Schneider TM went on a joint tour through Europe because both projects were involved with Mute Records at the time. At the end of that tour in Rome Ilpo & me planned to play one improvised noise concert in the summer of that year in Berlin and didn’t really think it would become a longterm project. From there it started to be an ongoing musical conversation and that is how i would describe our music.
Ilpo: We had a tour with Pan Sonic and Schneider TM in Europe. In Rome, I started to plan a noise project with Dirk. First, the music was more noise-based, but it got more drony later and now it’s more improvisations with a bit of rythm.
After your 20th anniversary concert on June 15th in Berlin, you will leave for a two weeks tour in North America with Xambuca. Is this the first time you are doing a trip of this magnitude across the Atlantic with this project? What can we expect from you in Montreal?
Dirk: We have played Angel shows in Canada a couple of times before; 2004 at MUTEK Montreal, in 2008 at Send & Receive Festival in Winnipeg and also Montreal again. We renamed the project die ANGEL since the last two albums and that is partly because of a modification of our musical style. As in the very beginning, we play now with electronics/modular system and a modified, prepared electric guitar. After a long drone period we drifted a bit towards polyrhythmic, self-generating/semi-cybernetic structures and use a movie for the shows that Ilpo cut from material that was partly shot during a trip we made to Lapland in 2017.
Ilpo: We had some tours with Pan Sonic in North America. For our Montreal show, we’ll do some improvisations with electronics and guitar with effects.
During your stop on June 22 at La Vitrola, as part of the Suoni Per Il Popolo, you will share the stage with a close friend in France Jobin. Could you describe how you met France earlier in your career and what does it mean for you to play with her during the festival?
Dirk: France Jobin is an old friend who we met when we first played Montreal in 2004. We have seen each other every couple of years, also in Berlin… talking, eating, drinking and listening to music. It’s really a pleasure to meet her again and share the stage with her in June!
Ilpo: Exactly, I think we met France in Montreal years ago, it could be during the MUTEK festival. It’s gonna be great to play with her!
Last year you released your 9th album Yön Magneetti Sine on MirrorWorldMusic. When we listen to it, we are facing a strange and original sound range created by musical instruments that you have crafted yourself. Where does your fascination for atypical instruments and your constant search for special sounds come from?
Dirk: I have an acoustic guitar at Ilpo’s cottage since a couple of years that I prepared and processed through a few effects for these recordings. In the last years I developed a style of playing guitar, which is not very typical for that instrument and rather reminds of working with modular system. I developed a customized electric guitar together with guitar builder Frank Deimel called FireSchneiderTM‘, which has features like behind bridge pickup, a leslie or electro acoustic sound chambers that I can fill with sound objects, drum on or sing through. For me a guitar is somehow the perfect interface with endless and surprising possibilities.
Ilpo: I just wanted to build one string resonance instruments. I was listening a lot bukhara music (from Uzbekistan) in that time and wanted to build instruments that sounded a bit like that. I had my grandmothers old weawing loom, which was without use for years and i decided to use parts of that for building these instruments.
Ilpo, in the past years you’ve released a few solo albums on Editions Mego and a strong leaning towards dub music is noticeable. Is this a style of electronic that you prefer to explore alone rather than in a collaborative project? Is it important for you to find some time to create music alone?
That dub section is more my personal impression of dub music. I have been listening to jamaican dub from the 70’s and my purpose was to make my comment of that music, avoiding to use jamaican riddms, I respect too much jamaican dub and I don’t want to make a copy of that. Yes, it’s important to have recording and creating time alone. I was doing a new CD all winter 2018-2019 and I wasn’t playing any shows at that time and not making any collaborations also.
Dirk, you’ll release a new album with Jochen Arbeit titled RA on Erototox Decodings during the die ANGEL tour. Since it’s not the first time you work together in your career, what can we expect from this new record compared to your previous collaboration with him and what’s the story behind it?
You’ve often quoted your influences in the past, but I would like to know if there’s something that motivates you to create art that might surprise us. For example, artists (musical or not), movies or styles of music that we could never imagine being related to what you do?
Dirk: For many years I am quite obsessed with the balafon music of the Lobi people from the area around Gaoua in Burkina Faso, who I actually had the chance to visit in 2014. There will be a LP (including DVD) release of the field recordings and film footage from that trip on Edition Telemark. In general there is a lot of different influences and inspiration from all sides like also the taste of food, for example.
Ilpo: There’s a lot of influences. Movies: Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov films for example. Music: traditional musics, early electronic music, blues, rock, classical composers, various African musics, etc. Also, when I was studying visual arts I took lots of influences from Russian suprematism and constructivism, Marcel Duchamp and still they are an influence.
During your vast musical career, you’ve had the opportunity to do a lot things, but there’s probably still one dream that you’ve never been able to achieve. I’m very curious to know what remains to be done on your wishlists?
Dirk: My next plan is to finish a Schneider TM album, that I started to record in 2008. It will somehow continue the experimental «Pop» stuff that I did years ago on my albums that were released by City Slang/Mute Records.
Ilpo: To sit on the porch of my summer cottage, have a decent beer and listen to nature. That composition is always perfect and I admire that a lot. Not having to do anything is the best thing.
Thanks for your time!