Issue 25 features an interview with Ezekiel Honig, who recently issued Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band. Here’s a transcript of our chat with Honig.

From Technology Is Lonely through to your most recent release, Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band, you’ve tweaked and refined your sound. You’ve obviously moved towards a more ambient sound, but how do you see yourself developing as an artist?

Ezekiel Honig: I suppose what I’m trying to do more of over time is gradually keep approaching the idea I have in my head of where I want my music to go and it is naturally moving further along this continuum, though I hope that it also shifts direction here and there and doesn’t stick to a completely straight line. I think I’ve come closer to what I’ve been trying to achieve, and have come closest on the new album, but every time I finish a piece of work what that goal was changes.

I have been consistently moving towards incorporating more of this “using only sounds I recorded myself and processed acoustic instruments,” approach (versus using samples or electronic instruments) and each album becomes more strict about that than the previous one. In this odd roundabout manner I’m actually coming closer and closer to how I would imagine people start in music, in a band scenario, or by playing guitar or piano or something, and then beginning to experiment with electronics and processing and editing sound. I am going in the opposite direction, having no formal training and not knowing how to play any instruments, and arriving at this place where it’s all about acoustic instruments and coaxing sounds and melodies out of them using electronics. To me, messing around with an instrument that one is supposed to know how to play is experimental because it’s more about the sonic characteristics and what it would allow me to do once I get the material into the computer. You could say that a piano is a piano is a piano, but by processing it and putting it in the context of other random sound sources, it becomes something new.

Aside from the mere use of different sound sources, I want to keep moving further away from the techno/dub place where I started making music, without losing that influence and sensibility. I want to keep evolving arrangements and textures and instruments towards someplace in between ambient and pop (in the loosest sense of the term). I want to keep moving away from the loop as the mainstay compositional tool and look at things from a wider perspective, one that is not new to the music world, but simply newer to me, as I move further away from the DJ music which was my initial gateway and helped to guide me to the place I am now. I suppose I find that happening gradually with each album, and I don’t see that trend reversing anytime soon.

“In hindsight, I’m glad that I had large blocks of time observing and learning more about several kinds of electronic music, initially just going to events for years, and then DJing for years before making the jump into producing. I think it allowed me to get more of a sense of things and I think/hope that it lets me acknowledge different styles of music in what I make—not necessarily in an overt sense, but in a filtered way of making certain choices because of influences that are trickling towards me from years ago, in a subconscious way.”

What initially drew you to electronic music? What sort of aesthetic influences have shaped your artistic approach?

I initially started listening to electronic music at rave parties in New York, when I was in high school. It was a new thing for me and I gradually got more interested and looked into it more, learning about different styles, etc. It was great to be exposed to so many different types of music at once, and at a time (1993) when everything seemed so fresh, not just to me, but seemingly to everyone around me. It was a couple years after the initial development of that scene in New York, so it was still smallish, but had a serious following. It was a time when DJs would play a variety of music which made sense together, not a mishmash, but less segregated than it seems to be for the last 12 years or so. It wasn’t a situation where listening to hip-hop made me discover drum ‘n’ bass and then I only listened to drum ‘n’ bass. It was more about the spectrum of electronic music at that time, whether it was dance music or sleeping music, and all the crevices in between genres.
I didn’t start delving much further in until I began DJing in late 1996, and then beginning producing in late 2000 or so. In hindsight, I’m glad that I had large blocks of time observing and learning more about several kinds of electronic music, initially just going to events for years, and then DJing for years before making the jump into producing. I think it allowed me to get more of a sense of things and I think/hope that it lets me acknowledge different styles of music in what I make—not necessarily in an overt sense, but in a filtered way of making certain choices because of influences that are trickling towards me from years ago, in a subconscious way. It doesn’t have to be a specific decision, but I think anyone who makes any kind of art does so based on a range of influence, most of which is a matter of degrees. You are where you are because of A leading to B, which led to C, etc. There’s an initiation, which you can’t get a sense of by jumping in full force without allowing this process to take place over time.

I think the DIY nature of the whole culture really drew me in early on as well. I like being involved in things that I’m interested in—not just being a spectator—and this culture encourages and allows one to become involved without years of musical training or tons of resources. I don’t mean to say that one doesn’t need to learn their craft, but the initial jump into producing an event or DJing or learning how to make music with electronics is perhaps less daunting than picking up a violin for the first time, even though it does require a lot of work in order to make something that is both original and good regardless of what tools you’re using.

Much has been made of your use of field recordings as a compositional tool. How did you come to adopt these techniques?

The first time I heard of such a thing was on early Matthew Herbert records, where I was made aware of the fact that he was making rhythms with sounds that one doesn’t initially think of as percussion for music. I was still in the stages of thinking about wanting to make music, but not too close to having the right computer and software and knowledge. This just fascinated me and seemed like the exact approach I wanted to take at some point. The sound design aspect has always been something that drew me into the electronic music I loved. It wasn’t necessarily about how a groove felt (although that helps) but the sounds within the groove, and this sound design is a major difference between this music world and the music world of pop and rock and the like. Having interesting sounds for their own sake rather than instruments that everyone can recognize is what grabbed me, even if it was a processed sample of something. So the idea of making my own “samples” was just what I wanted and added an extra layer of depth to music that is based on space.

I eventually learned about the pioneers of this technique, musique concrete and similar thought, and it’s just been a gradual development down that path since. On Technology is Lonely I think I made two tracks using only sounds I recorded, for the percussion and random effects (but not for melodic and bass sounds), and by People Places & Things I was doing that exclusively. I love the concept that if you record a certain sound and then change it or find that two-second moment that works really well in a song, than no one else in history has that sound (unless they sample you) and that sound can’t ever happen again in the exact same way, but you caught it on tape. There’s something about this aspect of it, this ability to design sounds based in real physical life that works for me. Though a lot of sounds may be based in mundane circumstances, and seemingly have nothing inherently intriguing about them, one can unlock a whole other potential from the right sounds. It’s a different universe than getting a sound out of a box. It just is more interesting for me to work that way.

Do you envision your work as a sort of response to the sounds in your environment? Perhaps an ongoing dialog with the world around you?

It’s funny because I never think of it in that way explicitly, but it sort of has to be I suppose. I use the sounds around me both in songs and to give me ideas for songs, so there is a direct interaction and relationship there. I would think of it as more of a dialog than a response, depending on how you really define the words. That interaction can’t be necessarily narrowed down or completely captured or explained but it must be there. I get inspired by what I hear and sometimes these mundane sounds conjure something much, much larger for me. A concept for a song can start by overhearing something in the street that has certain harmonics that just feel right, and it can move forward from there.

The press release for Surfaces Of A Broken Marching Band refers to the release as “a statement on the label (Anticipate Recordings, obviously) as a whole.” What is meant by this?

This is more of a hindsight idea than a planned strategy with the album, but as the label owner/manager I feel like my music is a specific statement on what I want the label to sound like, whether I mean to look at it that way or not. This isn’t to say that my work encompasses everything I want the label to express—far from it in fact. It’s more about the idea that I have a small smattering of tracks that could each break off and develop on a specific path towards a larger project with a greater sense of homogeneity, but instead I wanted to have tracks which worked well together as a whole, and did, in hindsight, touch on some different types of music which could all fit on the label: the overt ambiance, the electro-acoustic processing, the muted, broken-up techno rhythms. I think these are areas that could develop into individual albums, yet the combination of them is what the label is aiming for, whether that’s within a single release or as a larger statement.

“Scattered Practices” was inspired by the philosophies of Michel de Certeau. Was there anything in specific that provided a conceptual framework for the new album?

For me, conceptual frames usually congeal while I’m working on an album and become clearer retroactively. For this album I knew that I wanted to keep going further with the idea of processed acoustic instruments and I wanted there to be a stronger visual sense, a stronger sense of place, adding an occasional geographic context, to at least attempt to take it outside the strict context of music and closer to sound that could relate to film or something with a picture. Once the album was done I was connecting the dots about the whole and realized that I was always thinking of an imaginary band with a bunch of broken makeshift instruments. This idea or image was the driving force behind the album and what I wanted it to be.

With your sound comfortably nestled between the dance floor and the living room, where do you see yourself really fitting into the overall electronic music scene? Do you ever feel like a man without a country?

This is something I think about quite a bit, as I’ve had a foot in the techno world in the past and I feel that is definitely less so now, but I don’t think I’m quite in the ambient/electro-acoustic world either. I do feel like I’m bridging those groups, but I am also trying to bridge those groups. I am personally interested in music that works on a dance floor but has more to say than the function of dancing, and I love music that is more about mood and space and warmth. My music is in the most basic sense an amalgam of different ideas, sounds, moods that interest me, while trying to add my own voice and perspective and personality. You could say that I’m trying to make music that I myself would want to listen to if someone else made it.

Over the past few years especially, I feel like the popularity of minimal techno has absorbed a lot of people in that direction and helped to create a divide where one almost has to pick a side, either dance music or not dance music, and there isn’t a lot of stuff that works with the idea of a dance music foundation, without being that thing exactly. It’s something I want to embrace with Anticipate as a label. It might not be a smart choice in terms of the marketplace, but it’s where I’m at artistically. I’ve always been interested in working off of a genre as something that exists that you can take from what you will and then add to or twist. It’s almost like there’s a canvas laid out for you to start from, a base coat of a solid color of paint, and then whatever you add to it is still working off the negative space you create by making these changes, always showing that solid color that was already there and benefiting from it even if it’s the base coat layer. It allows you to create something that could only exist because that first idea was laid out by years of other people’s work. This is one of the great benefits of genres that stick to their constraints. It lets one leave those constraints while acknowledging something else, which can ground the work in that history.

“So far the label is what I want it to be, but there is always more to do and more to expose people to and further to go stylistically.”

Have you been surprised by how well the releases on Anticipate have been received so far? Has the label met your expectations, or are you still working toward some sort of “vision”?

There’s kind of no way to really know how anything will be received, but I’ve always felt super confident about the releases, which is to say that I knew I loved them and they were what I wanted them to be, both individually and in terms of how they complemented the catalog. In that sense, it’s nice to know that there are a lot of people who listen to tons of music and are critical, who think similarly about the releases in such a positive way. That is extremely encouraging, and helps to get the word out of course.

So far the label is what I want it to be, but there is always more to do and more to expose people to and further to go stylistically. I want to definitely do more audio-visual releases in the future, and would love to incorporate that as a steady part of the label, producing experimental films even and releasing DVDs without the CD album counterpart. If the label as a project ever stops growing or evolving, then that’s when it should stop.

What’s next for Anticipate?

The next release, which may be out as this issue appears, is a CD/DVD release by M. Templeton and aA. Munson, entitled Acre Loss, which is a collection of ten short, experimental films, and a CD album of the music from the films. It’s not really an album that has videos and it’s not really films which were scored, but more a collaboration where both sound and visual were worked on simultaneously by both artists, sharing the music experience of Mark Templeton and the film experience of aAron Munson.

Following that are solo albums from Mark Templeton, Morgan Packard and Klimek. There will be a Klimek EP prefacing the full-length album, and there will likely be a series of limited edition vinyl releases, including some new EPs, which only come out in that format.
Overall, I want to keep the label progressing musically, trying some new things which fill out the cumulative sound. I want to continue building a larger audience while challenging both the listeners and the artists (including myself), and always be working on what the idea of a record label means and the best way to express that.

What’s the future of Microcosm Music? I’ve heard rumors that the imprint is being retired, is there any truth to this?

Well, that is pretty much true, yes. There is one more release slated for Microcosm, a digital exclusive EP by Thomas Hildebrand, and then that’s it. There’s just no time for me to run two labels and Anticipate is where my heart’s at, and really closer to the label I always wanted to have.

What’s next for you as an individual artist? More collaborations, perhaps another release with Morgan Packard? More emphasis on performance and installation works?

I have a couple possible collaborations in the works which could potentially turn into releases, and am looking to do more live collaboration as well. I want to concentrate on solo performance still, but am excited about working with friends in a live setting, where we can complement each other in an improvisational way. The other night I played a show in Montreal with Mark Templeton, Morgan Packard, and Joshue Ott (doing visuals), and we ended the night by jamming together and it was really fun. I am pretty sure that my next solo album will involve way more collaboration, where I’m at the helm of several instrumental contributions, sort of combining the roles of artist and producer.

I am interested in realizing some installation ideas, but the opportunity may need to present itself before I have time to work more on creating those possibilities. Sort of in line with that, I want to make instruments or some type of objects which produce interesting sounds I couldn’t get any other way. That will be an ongoing project that could take several turns and I can’t be sure where it will go until I’m deeper into it.

Words: Carl Ritger

Read more about Ezekiel Honing in Issue 25.