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AV: When was it that you discovered
music as a means of artistic communication for your
own talents?
RR: It was around age 11 or
12. Oddly, I thought I disliked music as a child.
I remember a time when my grandfather would blast his
favorite Twenties big-band jazz as a way to relax, while
he and my sister tried to cajole me into dancing to
it (I was maybe five?) but I didn't like it and got
grumpy. I told them "I hate music" and stomped
away. A few years later I started growing succulents
as a hobby, and I would leave the radio on to quiet
static to keep my plants happy (I was a weird kid.)
I took some viola lessons in fifth grade, and sung in
choir, but I didn't have a sense of the music that I
heard in my head. I never thought I was a talented musician,
and I didn't want to learn. However, I started improvising
on my parent's piano because I wanted to hear the sound
of the sustaining strings. I just droned on keys that
sounded good together. I began searching out music that
had the intensity that I wanted, the droney sound that
created a mental focus. As time went on, I had to learn
more combinations that sounded good, because the few
that I knew were getting boring. I met some high-school
guys that were playing in a progressive rock band and
I offered my services to provide a laser light show
(another hobby of mine involved building laser projectors.)
I found some synthesizer kits at age 13 and started
building a primitive synth system. At the time I prefered
the abstract sounds that these instruments made. I slowly
discovered a voice that involved drone and cloudy texture,
overlayed with high frequency "critter noises"
like the night sounds I so loved while growing up. It
only started resembling music after quite a few years
of experimenting.
AV: Tell me about some of the
homemade acoustic and electronic instruments that give
voice to your musical talents and why homemade instead
of off the shelf instruments?
RR: The answer to the question
"why homemade" started out financial but ended
up aesthetic. In the beginning, I funded my musical
experiments with paper route and gardening money. Even
$300 seemed unreachable at times. The only synth I could
afford at age 13, I assembled from PAIA kits over two
years. It sounded awful but taught me the essentials
of synthesis. In 1980 I bought an $80 lap steel guitar
from a pawn shop so I could experiment with alternate
tunings (I was a fan of gamelan, Harry Partch and Terry
Riley.) I found a used tape-echo that employed 8-track
cartridges, and I bought a better spring reverb than
the one in my PAIA.
The upside is that I had to invent a synthesis vocabulary
that could hide the fact that my equipment sucked. I
soon realized that I couldn't get the PAIA sequencer
to sound like Klaus Schultz's Moog or Terry Riley's
fingers, because my PAIA wouldn't stay in tune. So,
I found ways to use it for triggering semi-random "critter"
events. I came up with a "theory" of self-determinate
synthesis (inspired by John Cage obviously) trying to
get the modules to interact in chaotic random ways.
The result was a vocabulary of insect noises, "glurps,"
organica and such. By accident I had found my voice.
Now, as time has unwound to the present, I retain
a desire to find the sound that's in my head, and much
of the equipment doesn't guide me to my home-sound.
So I continue to find it easier to build some things
rather than search around for the right sample library
that contains the "thing I heard in my head."
My interest in just intonation has definitely augmented
this quirk, since many of the interesting timbral engines
don't allow control of tuning. It's constantly a source
of frustration for me, and has continuously steered
me away from some of the synthesizers that I would otherwise
love to use. The sound of pure intervals just seduces
me, and I can't work without that sound. So I still
make a lot of acoustic instruments (modified guitar-like
or metal feedback systems and PVC flutes mostly.)
The irony is that my quirky fussiness about what
sonically interests me, has led me into a somewhat lucrative
side-job of sound design for new synth presets. Growing
up with a modular synth vocabulary definitely helps
when I want to create a new sound from scratch, and
some synth makers like my approach to organic synthesis.
I'm good at pushing synths into places where they become
nonlinear, finding the "nice" ways to break
things.
AV: What was it that drew you
to electronic music instead of some other genre?
RR: I grew up with sounds in
my head that didn't fit the orchestral repetoire. Frogs
and wind, ventilation shafts and rubber bands, scratching
leaves and dripping water. That made more sense to me
than violins, oboes, or rock guitar. Then when I heard
other composers working with pure sound (like Annea
Lockwood, Marianne Amocher, and of course John Cage)
I knew that music meant more than just dots on a page
- it spoke a language of pure sound, and I wanted to
make sounds that invited people to listen more deeply.
AV: Did you ever have any formal
training in music and how important is having or not
having this training in the overall scheme of things
for a composer of ambient music? Tell me about the time
that you spent at Stanford's Center for Computer Research
in Music and Acoustic.
RR: I started with formal training
while trying to learn viola in 5th grade, then I realized
that I had been using my ear to memorize the songs (cheating
and looking at the fingering of my neighbor) and that
I still couldn't sight read. Singing in choirs, also,
I memorized. Music notation just didn't click with me.
Maybe I'm "notation dislexic" or something.
I think the most important thing is to have a sound
in your head, an idea, pure music. The training helps
you communicate this to other people if you share their
language. I learned the direct language of tape and
electronics because that's the way my mind worked.
I got into CCRMA through a ruse. CCRMA was a graduate-only
class at Stanford, and everyone was expected to have
some classical training, unless they were computer scientists
or from the Speech Lab (an affiliate.) I scheduled a
meeting with John Chowning, the founder of CCRMA and
inventor of FM - his approval was the only way an undergrad
could get accepted into the class. He asked me about
my background in music, so I gave him copies of the
three albums I had recorded up to that time (Sunyata,
Trances, Drones.) He looked at them, handed them back
to me and said, "Oh, no problem, I didn't realize
you had recordings out. By all means, we would love
to have you." That was all. He didn't even ask
about my training. I will always respect him for that!
Ironically, I didn't make much good music at CCRMA,
only some just-intonation tuning reference tones and
a few cool stochastic rhythms. I couldn't get around
the cumbersome interface of a command-line terminal
(programming in a superset of FORTH called SAIL (Stanford
Artificial Intelligence Language, with endless parentheses
around all the loop commands,) when I could go home
to my dorm room after class and start up my cheesy synth
rig, and record something more satisfying onto my cassette
deck. Actually, by that time I had saved up enough money
to buy a Revox B77 half-track 1/4" reel-to-reel
and a Sequential Prophet 5 (rev 1, one of the flakey
ones returned for upgrade and sold cheap to employees.
I remember the good ones sold for at least $3500 and
I payed $450 for this reject, on the promise that I
would fix it myself and never take it to the factory
for repair.)
AV: Your first CD Sunyata came
out in 1982. Tell me about the music that was on this
CD and where you were at in your musical evolution at
this point in time.
RR: I was a freshman in college.
I was listening a lot to experimental soundscape composers
like Pauline Oliveros, Annea Lockwood, Marianne Amocher
(all women, interestingly) along with John Cage, Terry
Riley, Bill Fontana, and a few other people making music
out of environmental sound. I was interested in shamanism
and altered states of consciousness (although I had
not yet taken psychedelics.) Also I had influences from
German space music (especially Popol Vuh and Cluster)
and early Industrial music like Throbbing Gristle and
Caberet Voltaire. The result was a desire to induce
altered states through pure sound, to create a sort
of energized drone that wasn't exactly music, which
one might forget, but which could permeate the room
and change one's state of mind. I thought of drugs as
a metaphor for this experience even though I hadn't
tried them yet. I knew from personal experience what
altered states of consciousness could do without drugs
(I would journey often in my natural mind) and I thought
that this could be a beautiful form of expression; or
perhaps better stated in retropect: I tried to create
the pure sound that could best express the beauty that
I experienced when journeying inside. So, I tried performing
concerts that lasted all night, inviting people to sleep
while the music played. It made sense to me, to create
an energized space late at night, where people weren't
expecting "entertaininment" but perhaps they
would join my interest in pure sound environment.
AV: Were you happy with the way
this release went as far as sales goes and the feedback
you received from your listeners?
RR: I didn't expect much. I had
very little feedback from listeners at firs. I was extremely
happy that Ethan Edgecombe of Fortuna chose to carry
Sunyata, and sold most of the first pressing. Stephen
Hill played most of the album on Hearts of Space. Ironically,
Trances and Drones didn't get much of a response until
several years later; and then they became retrospective
classics almost a decade later, when I remastered them
and they came out on CD. I find it amusing and somewhat
gratifying that Trances/Drones now defines my "sound"
for many people. Ironically, I didn't feel like anyone
heard them when they came out. Until about 1989 I felt
like I was playing in the dark.
AV: Was the next project that
you decided to release on CD easier than the first since
you now had some experience as to what was going to
happen to draw upon?
RR: Well, perhaps, but I wasn't
thinking about CD's for quite a while. I just kept making
music, although I didn't know if people wanted to hear
what I wanted to hear. The equipment always created
a financial challenge, and my own interests in improving
my skill made everything take a bit longer. I didn't
think in terms of "CD" until around 1988.
I released an LP "Numena" and a cassette "Inner
Landscapes" before ever thinking about CDs. Numena
came about because a fan from Sweden (Hans Fahlberg)
decided he wanted to start a label, and asked me if
I would make some music for him. The first release I
had with him came about almost by accident, called "Live",
with some tapes I didn't plan to release of concerts
from 1983. I felt that he was starting a good thing,
so I recorded "Numena" for him in 1985. It
came out on LP in '87, and again in France on CD in
'89 on Serge LeRoy's Badland label. By that time I had
finished Geometry (which didn't come out until 1990,
when Serge LeRoy worked for Spalax and got it released,
despite the fact that it was a few years old) and I
was presenting the rough mixes of "Rainforest"
to Stephen Hill at Hearts of Space, not knowing that
he would make such a big success with it.
AV: Why were a lot of your recordings
until 1989 released in Europe?
RR: Because not very many people
seemed interested in my music in the USA at the time.
My first reviews came in USA fanzines like OP and Eurock
(and UK's Audion aamong others,) but mostly Europeans
seemed to be reading these. I really felt like I was
working in a vaccuum. When I met new friends in California
like Steve Roach and Michael Stearns during the '80s,
I felt like I met cousins who shared common struggles
finding an original voice in the shadow of '70s Berlin
space rock. They found a larger audience amidst '80's
"new age" marketing, which didn't click with
my post-industrial mentality. I was the younger among
them, but happy to find like-minded family.
AV: Tell me about your relationship
with Fathom/Hearts of Space and the music that you released
while on that label. What was it about your work while
you were there that it gathered such critical acclaim?
RR: The critical acclaim
perhaps came from "right time right place";
but another fact is that for a short time HOS managed
to build a bit of a caché among the press. To put it
straight: I always made the music I heard in my head,
and for a ten year period of time it meshed with what
Stephen Hill wanted to release, and with what a few
of their good employees succeeded in selling to the
retail world. Stephen Hill knew my music since I was
a teenager in 1980, sending him cassettes, which he
played on his radio show. He was immensely supportive.
He started his own label several years after I began
releasing albums in Europe, but for a few more years
he felt my music was not commercial enough for what
he envisioned. Despite our stylistic differences, I
respected him immensely for supporting me and promoting
my carreer. I always felt that he respected me, even
when I created music that we knew he couldn't sell to
the mainstream.
I created "Rainforest" on my own, an expression
of despair and respect for our planet, not knowing if
anyone would want to release it. He loved the album
and promoted it better than I ever would have known
how. That put me on a bigger map than I ever expected.
Later, Steve Roach and I kept trying to convince Stephen
Hill that he should start a sub-label to differentiate
our more intense music from the more melodic side of
HOS (which we didn't like so much, but which probably
made more money than our edgy "tribal" spacemusic.)
Personally, I never felt a need to part company with
HOS. They simply wanted to release music that didn't
mesh with my direction. In the time since Valley Entertainment
bought HOS, our relationship remains cordial, however
I still don't know whether they provide a service that
fits my changing directions. We remain in contact discussing
these things, cordially, but with an awareness of the
changing markets.
AV:
Oftentimes in popular music it is looked upon
as almost obligatory that the artist do a tour to support
a new release. How do feel about touring and taking
your music on the road as an ambient performer and what
are the challenges that you face to be able to put on
a show that faithfully recreates your music but at the
same time injects a live quality to the whole thing?
RR: I enjoy performing, and my
career has always had a performance component. I think
that's the one place where I can communicate some of
the shamanic, energetic qualities of the music. However,
I don't generally think in terms of "touring to
support an album." In fact, I occasionally assemble
tours oround ideas of fresh improvisation, in hopes
of coming up with some new approaches, new material.
Often the new album follows the tour, like "Calling
Down the Sky" did. I find that live performance
can energize me, that it actually reconnects me with
the purpose of making music. I can get a bit dry just
hiding in the studio years on end.
Then there's the problem of how to perform this music.
I think the most successful concerts retrospectively
are those where I totally improvise, when I don't attempt
to perform pieces that I have already recorded. However,
a few of my older pieces do lend themselves to live
playing, using MIDI to assist me with the extra parts.
Those pieces can energize an audience and they communicate
a lot, but I do wonder sometimes about the validity
of the "performance" concept when so much
is pre-arranged. It can feel a bit like kareoke if one
isn't paying attention. I'm not enchanted by the "DJ
approach" - I like things to be as live and played
as possible. So, these aren't trivial concerns.
AV:
You've done your share of joint projects over
the years. What is there that you gain by doing these
collaborations and what are the challenges of working
with another musician on a new music project?
RR: I generally choose to work
only with people whom I like as friends and feel we
would enjoy each other's company during the often intense
time of collaboration, plus to stay friends during the
lifetime of the release - it's a bit like having
children. I really enjoy the collaborative process.
I find it easier than solo work because there's someone
to bounce ideas around with. People tend to steer each
other out of corners when working together. The process
is usually faster, and the albums often have a freshness
that derives from new combinations. Some of my collaborations
count among my favorite releases because I can listen
to them with less ego identification. That's very refreshing
for me.
AV:
You've performed in some pretty interesting places
over the years. Could you tell me what places that you
enjoyed playing in the most and why?
RR: My fondest memories of tours
and concerts center around the people I meet, because
they're what make a place special. For example, the
trip Steve Roach and I took to San Sebastian, Spain
in 1992, was especially memorable for the warm Basque
hospitality moreso even than for the beautiful 500 year
old abby we performed in. We fondly remember being swept
jetlagged from the airport to a cider house for a late
night of eating and drinking in a place that looked
like a scene from a Breughel painting. Most of the concert
organizers start as fans or fellow musicians and become
friends during the hard work of putting on a show: people
like Chuck van Zyl in Philadelphia, the krack.org collective
in Louisville KY, Gianluigi Gasparetti in Umbria Italy,
Allen Bogle in Memphis TN, Paxahau in Detroit, Jim Lanpheer
in Denver - the list is very long! These are the people
that make me look forward to going on tour. Whether
a concert takes place in a black box theatre, a planetarium
or some marvelous old cathedral is just icing on the
cake.
AV:
Tell me about your sleep concerts and what was
the significance of doing them back in 1982 and why
the revival in 1996?
RR: Well, I think I've talked
endlessly already about the basic idea of a sleep concert.
People can read the extensive liner notes in Somnium
or on my website. It's an all-night soft flow of cloudy
abstract ambience that hopefully offers a vague focal
point for the experience of unusual states of consciousness.
I stopped performing these around 1986-7 in part because
I had come down with mononucleosis and it semed to have
eradicated my ability to pull all-nighters. These really
were exhausting for me. Furthermore, I never felt totally
satisfied by the choice of environments available for
40-60 people to spend all night in sleeping bags. The
whole thing just didn't fit the available resources.
Then, in 1995, a radio DJ on KUCI in Irvine CA named
Dan Bremmer contacted me to ask if I would like to try
doing a sleep concert on the radio. It seemed like a
worthwhile experiment. We even had a small live audience
camped out in the studio. I was quite happy with the
results, so I mapped out a tour for the following year,
putting on free radio sleep concerts around the country
while playing normal shows to fund the trip. The radio
concerts worked well because I could take breaks more
easily, and treat it more like a hybrid between DJ and
live. This also was a sort of testing ground for the
long project that would become the 7-hour Somnium DVD.
AV:
You've also done some film work in your career.
What is that experience like in comparison to the work
you normally do on a CD in your studio?
RR: My work on Hollywood films has mostly
just involved sound-design, primarily for Graeme Revelle
on "Pitch Black" and more often for my friend
Paul Haslinger, such as on "Crazy Beautiful"
"The Girl Next Door" and "Behind Enemy
Lines." These are brief and pleasant jobs, usually
where Paul calls me on the phone describing a scene
where he can't find the right sound for the mood. He
explains what's in his head and I try to give him what
he wants. It's perfect work for me, because I don't
have to deal with the politics of Hollywood, just with
people I know and trust.
In the last few years I scored two small independent
films, a documentary and a short art film, both by a
film professor at Santa Clara University named Yahia
Mehamdi. Actually, his documentary "Thanks for
Your Patience" received some attention in California
last year because it makes a direct attack on the workers'
compensation health insurance system, interviewing people
with chronic illness who have slipped through the cracks
and often become homeless. It's powerful stuff. Yahia
is very easy to work with, because he came to me as
a fan and often uses my music for a temp track. I tend
to make the film music more simple, more sparse than
I would for a studio album, because the music has to
subsume itself under the picture.
AV:
Your last project that came out in June of 2004
was called Open Window. Tell me about this project and
why it is that you chose to put out an acoustic piano
CD at this time.
RR: Perhaps it would be more
exact to explain why I didn't release a solo piano CD
earlier. I have been playing piano for 30 years, but
I felt that the genre of solo piano recording had already
become saturated, filled with names that I respected
immensely, like Keith Jarrett and Terry Riley, but also
with saccharine melodic new age piano albums that had
poisoned many people's expectations. I preferred to
keep my piano playing for myself, a sort of refuge from
always recording my music, just relaxing spontaneously
with this instrument that made me feel most at home.
I continued to play piano during concerts when a good
piano was available. On the last few tours, people often
came up afterwards and asked if I had any releases of
my piano music, and I would have to say no. I finally
decided I should make a pure piano album so I could
say yes. I wanted it to be small and intimate, with
the crisp familiar sound of my baby grand rather than
the more intense sound of a concert grand in a big hall.
I also wanted to avoid the effected "ambient piano"
approach that people often use, harkening of course
to Budd and Eno. I just wanted to show the music in
it's purest simplicity.
AV:
What kinds of responses did you get from your
listeners and the reviewers?
RR: The responses have been
really positive among those who hear "Open Window";
but it hasn't gotten as much attention as I had hoped.
People remark along the lines of, "I didn't know
what to expect from a Robert Rich piano album. I didn't
expect it be be this good!" Hopefully more people
will give it a close listen.
AV:
What role has the internet played in spreading
your music to listeners around the world? Do you enjoy
the immediacy of responses via e-mail that allows your
listeners to contact you directly?
RR: I definitely enjoy the direct
contact, although it can take a huge chunk of time.
I seem to spend half my day or more doing email. Like
any technology it can be a blessing and a curse. But
it's a lot more effective than writing letters! The
ability to spread worldwide at the click of a mouse
gives an independent artist like me an unprecedented
reach to the somewhat diffuse fanbase that this music
has. It helps to create a sense of community and makes
direct contact more feasable. Also, as the record-label
business model falters, direct website sales by artist
to listener fills a growing gap, and makes it possible
to survive on reduced sales. That allows me to experiment
more freely with my directions, to take greater risks,
and still maintain my independence.
AV:
Do you enjoy the business end of making your music
available, publicizing it, selling it etc. ?
RR: I think it's important and
healthy for artists to take control of the business
aspects of their own careers. It's the part of the job
that feels like a "job" -- far from the joy
of creation, but I can think of no other way to manage
my life. It gets tedious sometimes, I often get so busy
tying loose ends with people that I don't get enough
new music done; and when I do enter creation mode I
probably allow the business side to fall away a bit
too much. But I see it all as a whole, different facets
of the overall process of creating and trying to disseminate
something that I hope has some substance. The best way
for me to make sure it retains substance is to keep
track of the many facets of the process.
AV:
Sometimes I think that those of us who are non
musicians think that you as an artist do nothing but
create music 24/7. Typically how much time during a
regular day when you are in the middle of a new project
do you spend actually composing, mixing or recording
your music?
RR: Each day is different. If
I'm on a roll I might spend 12 hours in the studio on
a single day, especially in the midst of a project (which
is usual). Other days, I might go in for a few hours
in the late morning, then go for a walk downtown to
do errands, come back and do a few more hours in the
afternoon. Sometimes I avoid the studio entirely, on
days I have to get business done or if I can't think
of what to do musically. I try not to become a workaholic.
AV:
Do you ever have times when nothing seems to come
in regards to your music? What do you do to help break
the log jam of inspiration and get things moving again?
RR: I certainly get into dry
spells. Most artists do from time to time. I tend not
to fight those moments, and just go off to do other
things. I have a long list of projects around here for
off-hours: office work, gardening, winemaking, culinary
projects, writing and such. I spend a lot of time procrastinating.
It's hard for me to start a new project until I form
a model in my head of the effect I want it to have.
(Writing answers to interview questions works well for
this of course!) But then, usually I have a few nascent
ideas bubbling in the background, so I always have something
to work on if feel the urge.
AV:
When you look back on the works that you have
put out there up to this point do you see any milestones
for you musically speaking? Not a which do you like
best but more of a what releases marked major shifts
in your style or direction when compared to your entire
body of work.
RR: Numena felt like a big push
forward back in 1985. I discovered several techniques
during that recording that serve me well to this day.
That album contained the keys to much of my future efforts
trying to merge organic with electronic sound. Troubled
Resting Place also involved some breakthrough experiments
for me, where I found a new vocabulary in chaotic feedback
systems and some interesting ways to warp organic sounds.
That whole period of my work, including Stalker, Below
Zero and Humidity, explore some of those techniques.
I also really like the electronic vocabulary of Bestiary,
which felt like a totally new world for me; but also
a return to the type of sound that pulled me into electronics
in the first place, only with much better equipment
that allowed me to push the sonic vocabulary much further.
I had a lot of fun making that album, and I hope people
hear the humor in it!
AV:
Are there any aspects of ambient music that you
haven't explored yet but would like to in an upcoming
release or project?
RR: I don't really think in terms
of "aspects of ambient music" since I
don't think in terms of categories or styles. I just
have various projects that I want to try, specific textures
or modal ideas in my head that I want to make into sound.
I suppose, though, that my head moves in certain directions.
For example, I would love to do another Amoeba album
with Rick Davies, with a more pulsating heavy electric
sound than our last one. It probably won't sound very
"ambient," but that project's been stewing
for three years now, and we haven't started it because
he lives 1000 miles away and we both get very busy.
I also want to do another extreme analog sound-design
album like Bestiary, with a bigger blend of the dissolved
and melted sound of Below Zero. At the moment though
I've been in a melodic mood.
AV:
Tell me about where ambient music is headed in
the next few years? Do you see it expanding its listener
base in the coming years?
RR: I think it'll always be
a fringe category. It starts out in the underground,
and occasionally overlaps into a slightly larger subculture;
but even still, the really psychoactive juicy slow stuff
rarely crosses over much into other audiences. Occasionally
some artist might manage to slip something good across
to a different audience, whether it's perceived as psychedelic,
new age, industrial, techno, goth, or whatever, but
the slow stuff usually just appeals to a minority. I
think most of us who pursue slow music just make sounds
that please us. I don't think of it as a style or a
movement. I imagine slow music progresses as new people
become attracted to textural sounds, or as us old farts
try new things. It's a sound that some of us get in
our heads that we want to hear, an environment that
suits us when it fills the room. It will keep changing
with new generations, and it will keep cycling back
on itself.
AV:
Do you have any projects in process that you might
want to hint at to the readers of Ambient Visions coming
up in the next year or so?
RR: I'm thick in the middle of
several projects now, recording two CDs at once. The
first is a collaboration with a close friend David Agasi,
a photographer who lives in Tokyo right now. It's called
"Echo of Small Things". He'll provide about
100 each of 10 handmade black and white prints, while
I provide a CD of music to combine into a limited package
that we'll release in a special box. I'll also release
the CD in a standard package with the photos printed
in the booklet. The music is very environmental, with
slowly moving textures and a somewhat detached mood.
The other project is called "Electic Ladder",
a bit like old-school cyclic electronic music, with
a big dose of the minimalist vocabulary that influenced
me a lot when I was younger. It involves a blend of
faster melodic cycles and percolating rhythms, the usual
atmospherics and lots of intricate examples of just
intonation. It's a rather complex project, and I'm also
pondering doing a surround mix for possible DVD release
later on. I'm hoping to be able to perform some of this
new material in 2005 on tour, in the meantime I'm still
writing and recording.
Furthermore, in April, Ian Boddy plans to come out
to visit from England for a couple weeks, and we'll
start work on a new collaboration for his DiN label.
then I'm hoping to tour in Autumn. I also have a concert
coming up in San Francisco on June 11. It's a very busy
year!
AV:
After spending so many years in pursuit of your
music do you ever foresee a time when you will hang
up the ambient music and retire somewhere further down
the road?
RR: I'm already retired. This
is what I'm doing for fun. Some old men turn their garage
into a woodshop and make furniture. I merely anticipated
myself and turned mine into a studio, so I sit here
and make albums. My problem is that my hobbies keep
turning into full time jobs! If I ever do stop making
records, it'll probably just be some other hobby that
demands too much attention and sucks up all my time.
Maybe I'll be writing a book or building sound sculpture
or something.
AV:
During most interviews there are things that an
artist would like to talk about but doesn't get asked.
Is there something that you would like to share with
AV's readers that didn't get covered in the interview
but you'd love to talk about anyway? Now's the time.
RR: I've been thinking a lot
in the last few years about the role of art in
culture, and the strange path pushed by our technological
and info-based materialist culture. I'm attracted to
something very different from the things that our media
tells us we should care about. I am trying very hard
to gain a better understanding of the toxic affects
of materialism, trying to come up with something that's
more life affirming.
Our culture helps determine for us what we think
is important and what we think is trivial, what is large
and what is small. Yet as I reflect upon the things
that make life meaningful, they often appear at the
periphery. Life happens between the cracks, in the soft-hued
colors of the mundane, the accidental: a casual smile,
the cycle of seasons, the view from a window, growing
a garden, the smells and fabrics of home.
Increasingly, as time passes, I value the everyday
moments in life more than the grand statement. As an
artist I try to reflect the beauty and depth of those
small things that we stop seeing. I want to create experiences
that heighten our attention through rarification, to
subtract until I can expose the essence of something.
I don't know how well this translates in terms of music,
so I try to carry this goal through to the other activities
in life, by trying to be kind to the people around me
and to the environment I live in, or through whatever
small action I might be capable of. I don't excel at
the grand gesture, so I try to accomplish things through
small actions.
It's all part of finding meaning in an increasingly
noisy world.
AV:
Thanks Robert for a wonderful interview and for
sharing so much with the readers of Ambient Visions.
I hope that your retirement goes on for quite some time
and that you never get tired of creating the music that
we all enjoy so much. Take care and good luck with what
you currently have on your plate.
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