0. name of the band
Be the Hammer, B_T_H in abbreviated form.
1. where are you from?
Belgium.
2. what kind of instruments/equipment do you use?
To answer this question I first need to explain a few things about how the project works. B_T_H started as a collaborative effort between Brussels-based musician Dominique Van Cappellen-Waldock, and myself. When I first met Dominique at a gig of our common friends JOHN 3:16 aka Philippe Gerber and Insect Ark aka Dana Schechter in Brussels, I became aware of some of her bands (Baby Fire, Von Stroheim) in which she sometimes plays the Theremin. Not as a prominent instrument though, more in addition to some rock-oriented instrumentations. I've always been fascinated with this instrument, so primitive in a way but full of possibilities at the same time,and I suggested to her the idea of recording an entire album using only the Theremin. Surprisingly enough, she agreed. We started recording improvised sessions in her home studio, she was playing the Theremin while I was using a looper to obtain very dense, multi-layered sounds, and a variety of effect pedals which made most of our takes sound very noisy, drone-like, soundscapes based. This was when the overall aesthetic of what was to become the first album, Tangled Mass, took shape. Then I got started with the next phase of our work: selecting, editing, processing and overdubbing extensively the raw material we acquired so far. None of the album's tracks is structured in any conventional way, nor is beat-driven by any mean, but they all do have some sort of constructed, consciously assembled approach to them, and that aspect of the music was defined at that moment. It was just me and my computer for the most part, using a DAW software and plug-ins. Afterwards I wrote lyrics and we recorded Dominique voice's on three of the six tracks, which were then mixed by my pal Nicolas Surra Spadea and mastered by another pal, Samuel Cloet.
More recently I started recording new material alongside a guitarist, Jean-Marc Nicoletti (aka Unidentified Sonic Attack), and B_T_H is now taking a whole new direction. This time I'm in charge of the electronics (synths [a Korg Minilogue for the most part],sampler), lyrics and vocals, Jean-Marc plays his guitar, then we process his riffs and drones through various effects (I'm currently experimenting with granular synthesis plug-ins among other tools) and as Jean-Marc is a gifted sound engineer as well, we handle the production together.
3. what do you think about the music context nowadays and how do you place yourself in? do you feel a part of any scene?
First of all I think the current state of the music world is endlessly fascinating and challenging, with the incredible number of new artists emerging, and of new records being put out everyday. The ability these artists have to cut the middlemen and share their music with an audience directly through platforms such as Bandcamp among others, is also great. As long as such a vivid, adventurous indie scene will exist, I won't consider the music world to be undergoing some kind of crisis, just because it became harder to sell records. Wake up,people: it has ALWAYS been hard to be a professional musician and to make a decent living out of it, and this goes way back before the invention of recorded music. Enough said.
More specifically, the noise scene has fragmented itself into many hybrids nowadays,some of which I think are extremely exciting, some of which aren't at all. For example, artists such as Shapednoise are building bridges between noise and beat-driven electronic music,hopefully making it a bit less impenetrable for a broader audience. L.A.'s Crowhurst are also creating a fusion of their own, something fresh and exciting which combines noise, metal and other influences. In Berlin you have Slow Slow Loris and their one of a kind lyrical/melodic approach to noise/experimental music. Then there's this branch of noise music that's more related to electro-acoustic and tape music, that might be seen as coming from a more intellectual approach but can also deliver very visceral, well crafted noise pieces, from artists such as Benjamin Thigpen among others. All of these hybrid, innovative sounds are a constant inspiration to me. These artists don't seem to care about labeling their own music or fitting into a scene, they mostly care about creating something personal and sincere. This is what I'd like to achieve with B_T_H. On the other hand, some of the noise sub-genres that emerged lately, such as 'harsh noise wall' among others, are quite boring, and seem to be comprised of people caring more about fitting into a genre and repeating the same clichés over and over, than making something of their own. I have no interest in that at all.
4. which is your method of composition?
As opposed to the improvisational approach used for the first album that I explained above, for our current recordings we adopted a much more structured workflow. Every time we enter the studio we bring in ideas for composition, sounds and lyrics. These might not be fully developed ideas yet, but they give us a sense of direction and allow us to obtain a concrete result much faster, something that might not need a whole lot of further manipulations to resemble a final track. I believe it's a more dynamic and fulfilling way to write music and we intend to keep working that way in the future.
5. how is your recording approach? do you use some particular record technique?
When I record sketches at my place I just plug my synth and/or mic in my laptop through a small portable audio interface. It's a very rudimentary setup and I don't need much more. When we work on complete tracks with Jean-Marc though, we do it at his studio, which is much more heavily equipped. He has been a sound engineer for twenty years and acquired a lot of gear during that time: full racks of analog processors, effect pedals, synths, good microphones, and so on. Using all these machines is another source of inspiration in itself.Manipulating audio hardware fits our approach to what a cyberpunk author might call 'the man-machine interface', much more than any kind of software-based tools. We do use ProTools though, but mainly as if it was a big, powerful, flexible tape machine, only for recording and editing.
6. do you play live? how does the public react to your music?
B_T_H in its first incarnation, comprised of Dominique and myself, never performed live for a simple reason: it was always meant as a studio-based project, basically consisting of a 'virtual Theremin orchestra', and it would have been quite difficult to recreate it in a live environment. Besides, our first album often leans towards ambient compositions, and as passionate as I am about ambient, I often find it quite boring in the context of a live show, at least when it isn't combined to other elements, such as video projections for example, and I wouldn't want to ask people to pay to see something that would bore the crap out of me if I was in the audience.
For B_T_H in its current incarnation, comprised of Jean-Marc and myself, it's another story. The material we've been writing/recording lately already sounds/feels like it would be much more interesting to recreate in a live environment. We won't rush anything though: we'll only hit the stage when we feel ready to offer the audience something exciting.
7. Genesis P-Orridge said "Our records were documents of attitudes and experiences and observations by us and other determinedly individual outsiders. Fashion was an enemy, style irrelevant." What do your records represent to you?
As always, Gen spoke the truth. To me, recorded music is a way to freeze time and keep a trace of how you feel, how you see yourself and the world at that exact moment.Listening to these recordings again in the future might not feel as vital and relevant as when they were made, but it will still feel relevant to keep them with you and to share them with others on occasions, just like some people keep photographs of themselves in an album (something I could never relate to; I assume the way my memory works is more focused on sounds and impressions than on pictures). As a listener (which is how I define myself, more than anything), it's essential to be able to play the same record at different times of your life, in different moods, and see how it impacts you on a different way each time. And nowadays digital technology allows us to keep these recordings forever in an unaltered form, so we should take advantage of that privilege.
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