Hier ist es endlich. Das Interview mit Starcadian. Bereits letzte Woche habe ich einen kleinen Artikel über den New Yorker Elektro-Musiker veröffentlicht, der übrigens jedem empfohlen wird, der nicht wirklich weiß, wer denn hier interviewt wird.
You actually have a tattoo on your arm with the sign that is on the floppy disc as well. Can you maybe explain where you got the inspiration for it?
My left arm is my accomplishment arm. Any art-piece of mine that has succeeded, I’ve commemorated with a tattoo. Starcadian was such an important piece of me and I had invested so much into it that I jumped the gun and got the tattoo before the album release just as a way to force me to make it happen.
You said that a crysis helped you to find out what you really love. Was there one special moment that triggered this crysis and how long did it take you then to find your actual real love?
I think it was years ago, at the cusp of looking for a full time job (which in computer graphics means 12 hour days and no free time for side projects) and the thought of never taking a week off to write a couple of awesome songs really depressed me, so I decided to dedicate as much time to my day job as to my side projects, and staying freelance to accomodate that.
I was born in the 90s so i have absolutely no connection to the 80s but I really like the style of your video and I am getting more and more interested in Movies like “The last Starfighter“. Is that what you intended, like showing someone who hasn‘t experienced this time how great it was or do you more wanted to help those who remember this time how great it was?
Absolutely! I have no idea if it’s selective memory or nostalgia winning out over logic, but there was something about the movies from mid to late 80s that I believe has been lost these days. No shaky cam, no filler dialogue, no banging drum soundtracks, everything was thought out and carefully placed. Yeah, the Last Starfighter is cheesy, but it’s written like a theatrical play and the narrative development is perfect, unlike a really loud mtv-edited non sensical sci-fi movie you’d see these days. It’s as if people are too concerned with shock and awe to even think about making a great timeless movie.
What do you want to archieve with your music?
To make people feel more than they have before.
You describe your work as “ear movies“. How did you come up with that definition?
You know I’m not sure haha! Same as the name Starcadian and almost 90% of the things associated with it, it just came to me instantly. I’ve always been torn between a directorial life and a musical life and I reached a point where I just said to myself, screw it, I’ll do both and combine them! The cheapest way to do that would be with songs, so I started figuring out what would make an ear movie.
I would like to ask you a bit about your song He^rt. I had a discussion with a friend about the meaning of the song and we still are not quite sure about it, but we agree that it is most probably about leaving home for the first time and leaving some loved one behind. Maybe you can help out here a little and tell us a bit about the meaning of the song and how you came up with the idea.
It’s funny that you ask that, I spent some time on the lyrics to make sure that HE^RT has multiple interpretations, so even my own personal isn’t necessarily the most canon. I mostly wanted to capture that feeling of not quite depressed, but not detached either, just a very nebulous emotional state where you don’t really know how to react and you feel like a feather floating in vacuum. For me personal, it’s about a bad situation that reached such a point that the two people involved became entangled like Binary Stars. Even though now they are apart, they are always connected in some strange quantum way.
How long did it take to create the song He^rt from the first idea to the final version?
Not too long, but the album took a while (2 years, maybe 3 including learning how to make electronic music?), I needed to make sure that I got it right. I have a type of quality control built into my brain, if I listen to a mix and get chills, it’s on the right track!
You made the video for He^rt together with Rob O‘Neil who lives in Los Angeles. How and when did you actually met?
Rob is my mentor, he was my teacher in school, then my employer, and now collaborator and a really really solid friend all throughout. He’s been the most supportive fan of Starcadian since the first days of me playing with synths and electronic sounds and we’re completely parallel in our vision of what Starcadian is and could be.
You talk about Sunset Blood like it is the essentiel piece to represant your love for the 80‘s. When you are once done with musicvideos for every song do think you still have enough good 80s memories for a “Sunset Blood 2“ album or do you think your next album is most likely about something else?
Well, I don’t want people to think of Starcadian as the 80s guy, I just make electronic music that is inspired by specific things from different eras. I’m working on more than enough material right now for the second album, so it’s sounding like Sunset Blood 2, or whatever it may be called, is going to be a step up!!
When you start making a song how clear is the sound already in your head and how much is improvisation?
Barely any improvisation at all. I can spend months on a single song. I stay up regularly just thinking about chord progressions. It’s a science and a pretty damn hard one at that. Finding the most effective emotional chord progression while still keeping a style of a song is harder than any 3D simulation or math problem I’ve ever encountered!
In an interview you said as an advice to a 10 year old “when it fells right it is right“. When I hear this advice it is hard to imagine, that you have moments of self-doubt. Do you have such moments and if so how do you handle them?
Haha, of course I do, all the time! It’s funny I was talking about that the other day with a friend, it’s a constant struggle, but validation and support from friends helps you become more and more confident and once you acknowledge that you’re capable of great art, the next hurdle to overcome is following up great art. If you can get part those two hurdles, you will become completely and utterly unstoppable. You just need patience and a loooot of work to get there, nothing else. I remember someone saying „write songs all the time, so you get all the shit songs out of your system first“, which I thought was genius and very true!
Let us talk about your relationship with live-Shows. As much as I know about you, you are aware of the fact that live-Shows of Electronic-Musicians often look a bit pathetic, because of the non existing effort, that they put in the show. I heard, that you want to make it better and that you have Plans for how are real live-perfomance should be like. Maybe you can tell us a bit about what you have in mind so far.
Yeah I mean, like I’ve mentioned before, I’m pretty no-budget right now, the album was produced in my bedroom so I don’t have the capacity to make a crazy light show with animatronic monsters just yet, but the shows i’ve played so far have had great reactions and I’m hoping to add even more people to them, like a live drummer, guest musicians etc.
For the last question I would like to now who the one artist is that you would love to collaborate with.
I would kill to collaborate with Mike Patton or SebastiAn, they’re stone cold geniuses in my book and I can only aspire to be like them one day.
Ihr könnt Starcadian hier finden:
Alex Kingstone 