electronic music world

interview quendus 1° & 2° english

Geeky UK-based weirdo. Likes to eat books and kick sheets of metal. Mostly he makes intolerable noise, sometimes he plays the piano instead.

ffunnels:- Artist name? Yes, no, maybe, when how and why?

quendus:- Quendus. It's just my internet pseudonym (since 2004), but it works well and is pretty much uncontested in google results. It's a really really unfunny Latin/Elvish pun. There is no reason (but you should read The Silmarillion).

ffunnels:- Creative process, how do you arrange?

quendus:- Any way I like. Mostly I record (or plunder) something, then destroy it.
The choice of what to record is generally what inspires a piece - everything has different qualities when put together with itself
If I'm playing the piano, I'll often forgo the destruction. Destruction of a sample often involves dense echoes of increasing volume, playing it through my speakers and rerecording it along with the background noise of my computer, cutting and reordering, phasing, drastic changes in speed/pitch, etc. Basically anything that I can do with http://audacity.sf.net .

funnels:- Independent music, independent artist, pros and cons?

quendus:- Independent of what? Independent of major record labels? Most people I know, upon hearing "Indie", think of artists that are very definitely affiliated with a very rich record label.
Independent of mainstream aesthetics? Not a chance.
Still, if you mean independent from large record labels then the pros would be:
Slightly more freedom to make music without engineering it to maximise profits; less pressure to conform to the expectations of a large fanbase; ability to claim that one's music is not tainted by market forces, etc.
Cons: may distract people who are looking for "independent music" from what they *should* be doing, which is looking for music that no record label would consider publishing.

ffunnels:- Art and politics, do you match them? How do you match them?

quendus:- After discovering Dada aged 16, art became permanently politicised in my thoughts. I try to make my art absurd and (for the most part) ugly in order to reflect the absurdity and ugliness of a world in which allegedly rational people allow war, poverty, and boring music to exist. There is certainly more cause to be Dada now than there ever was in the 1900s.