Rival Consoles first appeared two years ago with a first EP released on London-based Erased Tapes. Since, Ryan Lee West he has delivered two more EPs spanning quite a wide sound world, from Aphex-like abstract drum’n’bass to razor-sharp techno. His debut album, released on Erased Tapes once again, expands greatly on the latter by collecting eleven thumping techno cuts with enough edges to last a lifetime. We took this opportunity to talk to the man about how the album came together, how he uses beats against melody, what it feels like to have his album out in the open and which console is the one. Continue Reading »

Ewan Mackenzie first appeared in 2004 with a first EP released on Border Community. Followed another one that same year on Jumblefunk, and his debut album, Consequence Music, was issued two years later, initially on his own imprint, 16K, then on Grönland a few months later. With a second album, Winded, now under his belt, we caught up with the man to talk about making the transition from band to solo act, how his live persona differs from his studio one, and how releasing his own music ensure he can release it exactly as he wants it to be heard. Continue Reading »

New York based audio visual artist Fredo Viola released his first EP, The Sad Song, to critical acclaim last year. The EP, including the video accompanying the title track, shot and directed by Viola, generated a lot of interest, especially from film directors and authors. Viola even received an offer to collaborate with Massive Attack. A few months later, he launched theturn.tv, a website collating more videos and new songs. The Turn is now being released as a full length album, and the CD also comes with a DVD featuring the videos showcased on the web. Here, Fredo discusses his artistic background, how he developed his particular blend of work and how the internet is a key part of his work. Continue Reading »

Guitarist and electronic manipulator Chris Willits is a pioneer and a teacher, exploring new methodologies for signal processing, while publicly sharing his techniques through the video series What You Talkin’ ‘Bout Willits? for XLR8R. The latest EP from Willits’ side project, Flossin, with Zach Hill from Hella, features a who’s who of experimental musicians, from Matmos to Strategy to Wobbly. Willits sat down with themilkfactory’s David Abravanel after a solo show at John Zorn’s New York performance space, The Stone, to discuss advances in music technology, what exactly ‘folding’ is, and whether or not ‘Flossin’ should have umlauts over the ‘o’. Continue Reading »

Twenty five years in the music industry is a long time, but that’s exactly how long Philippe Petit, head of French imprint BiP_HOp Records, has been involved with music-related projects. Journalist, record label owner, musician, it all comes under the umbrella of music activism for him. As he celebrates the first ten years of BiP_HOp and his twenty five years of musical activism, Philippe Petit talks to us about the political aspect of his work, how meeting with some of the biggest alternative acts of the early nineties shaped up his vision of what music should be,  giving his artists complete freedom while being available for guidance and help,  and sexual piercings.

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Three years ago, the duo formed of Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp delivered their second album as Mountains, following a very promising debut published the year before. Since, the pair have focused on various solo endeavours and taken some time off. Now, following a very limited live LP released last year, Mountains are back with their third album, Choral, and will be spending part of the year on the road. We caught up with them a few weeks before the new album is out to discuss the new album and the process leading to it, how their respective musical projects inform their common work and Italian music of the seventies.

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French-Canadian artist Charles-Emile Beullac has been recording as Galerie Stratique for some time. Having made his first appearance on Worm Interface’s Alt Frequencies series, he went on to release his debut album, Nothing Down-To-Earth, on the now-defunct Law & Auder imprint in the early 00s. His warm and organic blend of electronic sounds was developed further on his sophomore effort, Horizzzons. His most recent album, Faux World, released recently, denotes a radical change of direction. Based around sound samples recorded during a series of improv sessions and with instruments collected during a trip to Indonesia, the new album was partly inspired by the random memories Beullac had of this trip as he fell victim of the side effects of anti-malaria tablets. Here, he talks about his musical education, from learning classical music to discovering electronic music through Jean-Michel Jarre, how changing direction became important and what the future has in store for him.

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PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3

DD: You said you were going to get really geeky, but then you never did.

MS: Yeah, bring on the geek!  I see the word ‘IRCAM’ written in your notes.

Oh, we’ll get to that, but first, some other words.  You took this vow of synthesizer-chastity for Supreme Balloon – not even vocoders.  I came up with a bunch of cool ways to cheat – what about FFT? [FFT, a Fast Fourier Transform, is a synthesis which can deconstruct any sampled sound into a complex series of sine waves]

MS: Honestly, it wasn’t a synthesizer thing, really, the only rule was ‘no microphones’.  We were allowed to use any kind of signal generation, as long as it didn’t involve microphones.  Of course, the trick is the slip between what is a microphone, any kind of transducer?  Is a guitar pickup a microphone or not? Continue Reading »

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3

So, as a side note, you’re both on ratemyprofessor.com [a site where students can anonymously weigh in on their professors].  Have you checked your hotness ratings lately?

DD:  I haven’t.  Last time I looked, Martin was ‘hot’, but I don’t think I’ve been rated at Hopkins yet.

MS:  Do you remember what he’s [Drew’s] rated as?

I don’t remember, I just remember there was a really eerie post for you, Martin, which just said in all caps, ‘MARTIN WILL HELP.  MARTIN WILL HELP’.

MS:  [laughs] I always said to my students that it was a lifetime contract, and that they could call me any time and I would help them.  And sure enough, two weeks ago, the phone rang in Slovenia or some place, in the middle of the night.  It was a student of mine from five years ago asking, ‘I need to make a DVD, and I don’t have DVD Studio Pro.  What should I do?’  The answer was, sorry to her for saying so, but the answer was idiotically simple.  I asked, ‘are you using a Mac?  Use iDVD!’   She was like, ‘oh.  Thanks Martin!’  And I went back to sleep!

DD:  So she probably wrote that ‘MARTIN WILL HELP’ immediately. Continue Reading »

PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3

Before meeting with Matmos, Martin Schmidt called me to dispense some words of warning: ‘just so you know, we tend to go on’.  This would certainly be the case, as Schmidt, along with Drew Daniel, kept me thinking on my toes for the better part of an hour, traversing such topics as aestheticism, synthesizers, and, well, Zac Efron.  Presently on tour supporting their latest release, Supreme Balloon, Schmidt and Daniel, joined intermittently by tour mate (and longtime friend and collaborator) Wobbly, gave themilkfactory an engrossing earful, which is shared with you now, with great pleasure.  Do read on… Continue Reading »

Maurizio Bianchi is one of the leader of the Italian noise and experimental scene. He first appeared in 1979, and in the first five years of his career, he released a considerable amount of work on a variety of labels before retiring from the music scene completely. For the next thirteen years, he remained silent, but he resumed his relentless work pace. His latest project is a collaboration with Emanuela De Angelis Twenty years his junior, De Angelis has nevertheless an already impressive body of work behind her, as a member of various formations and, in recent years, as a solo artist. As MD+EDA, the pair have, for a moment, left behind their respective noise remit to investigate a much quieter realm, developed over the whole length of their first album together. Robert Rowlands caught up with the pair to discuss age difference, the pros and cons of working on a collaborative project and how their calm soundscapes are much noisier than it seems. Continue Reading »

Over ten years after their last studio was released, fourteen since the seminal Dummy, Portishead have produced one of the most spellbinding records of decade with the soberly entitled Third. Sobriety is very much the line with this new album, as the spacious and haunting soundtracks of the past have been replaced with much darker and arid soundscapes infused with elements of krautrock, psychedelic rock and hypnotic electronics, all combined to back up Beth Gibbons’s pure voice and harrowing lyrics. Having just put the finishing touch to a full European tour, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley talked to themilkman about the long process, doubts and countless steps back leading to the release of the album, the joy of touring, how leaking roofs and illegal downloads are intimately linked, and much more. Continue Reading »