Freenoise - Interviews

INTERVIEW with Martin Archer

Martin, thanks very much for opening the Freenoise launch night. I didn't quite know what to expect but really enjoyed the set, found it really appropriate, and I've never seen a laptop literally 'played' before, let alone with so much expression, I gather you enjoyed yourself too.

Well, I like to think I'm the only laptop player who actually gets out of breath by the end of the set. I've always believed that no matter how "high art" you consider your music to be, the minute you step on stage you're an entertainer, and I try not to lose sight of that. At first when I started with electronics I thought it was hilarious that you could make so much activity with so little effort - especially in contrast to playing sax - but after a bit I started to feel that disconnecting the music from some sort of human activity wasn't a good idea, and I consciously tried to change that.

I heard you mention Art Blakey and Chris Cutler in the credits...

About 5 years ago I made a record called Angel High Wires for which Chris Cutler made me drum parts. He also made me some rhythms which I didn't use at the time, but I'm using them now on a new project - I played one of those to finish the gig. I'd better not mention the Blakey in case Blue Note sue me, but it was unrecognisable!

You've a fairly prolific output across a number of long standing projects, what would you say is the strongest common factor in all your music?

I'm aware that I hop around genres a bit, but the common factor is always to combine composition, improvisation and accident in equal measures. Plus I think all my music is collaborative in that I don't really tell people what to do - I just use whatever it is they've done.

Can you define improvisational music and is all listening relative?

I don't believe that "improvisation" is anything special or magical. It's just a style you can choose to play in, like bebop or techno, especially the post jazz school usually referred to as "european free improv". There's no conceptual difference between me playing free saxophone as I do than say Lou Donaldson playing soul jazz or something. It's just a choice like any other. The same applies to the other groups who played the Freenoise night. However, improvised music does give the listener a lot of options in that they can get a lot of enjoyment from what their own imagination is telling them about the music, and you don't get that so much in more mainstream musics. The classic example is that you dub an improvisation by one person onto an improvisation by someone else and the listener hears and makes sense of an interaction which never actually happened. But that's nice, it indicates that the listener is aware how that language works. The other part of your question is maybe about the methodology of improvisation. Well, I think it's just like speaking. It's like having a conversation - you don't pre plan every conversation you have, but you know the language so you can just do it. And you need to have the confidence to do it.

Recently a lot of kids have found joy in creating walls of harsh noise with machines as well as instruments, what's your thoughts on the current wave of these underground 'noise artists' who seem to create noise for noise's sake and how does a listener in the audience discern true creativity? Indeed, is creativity the goal?

Well, pure unstructured noise has a lot going for it, as you've set out eloquently yourself on the website. But after all the cheesecake it's nice to have a little sushi sometime....... Also being "harsh and uncompromising" isn't either a particularly novel or indeed difficult aesthetic. Silence and space can be more difficult for the listener sometimes. I guess some of the pure noise stuff strikes me in the same way as a lot of free improv free improv - it's starting to sound old fashioned and it isn't quite enough. True creativity? Not for me to judge.

My exposure to free jazz in the 80's was limited to Gong and Coltrane, but they're not really free jazz are they? The recent gigs with Mick Beck's 'Gated Community' are definitely what I would call free jazz, am I right?

Well, I don't think there's all that much, if any, jazz in Gated Community, even tho some of the players are coming out of that background. I think the definition of free jazz as against free improv is that the former maintains a focus on the concept of a soloist, and I think GC is well away from that.

In the past years you've embraced electronics, any reason why not in the early years?

They didn't exist.

Who were your peers in the Sheffield music scene, in the past and recently?

Thinking back to the early 80s I liked the way what I was doing could exist quite happily on the the same stage as Cabaret Voltaire, ClockDVA etc. In fact, pretty much like the Freenoise night! Whenever there's a good experimental "rock" scene in a town, the interesting fringe stuff gets the benefit too. The jazz scene is irrelevant in that respect. Peers? Well the same then as now - Mick Beck, John Jasnoch, Charlie Collins and me are the 4 who've had the most consistent presence I guess, and we've been doing it for a long time.

What is 'That Sheffield Sound'?

I used that title because that's what Derek Bailey said about his sound when he played with (Sheffield drummer) Tony Oxley, but then I applied it to what I think of as the Sheffield sound from 15 years later, which was the sound of a knackered analogue synth on a rainy night on West Street. Truth is Sheffield has produced a lot of diverse and good sounds over many years. So the answer could be ABC or even the Arctic Monkeys..........

Who are your earliest influences?

Hmm, well these are all people I owned records by before I went to university:

Soft Machine, East of Eden, Henry Cow, Faust, Miles Davis, John Martyn, Captain Beefheart, John Coltrane, Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, Anthony Braxton, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Gentle Giant, Ornette Coleman, Stockhausen, Magma.

The cover of 'Heritage and Ringtones', I imagine all those galloping foxhunters with their mobiles going off....

I'll try to be brief. On the front is an image that all sorts of people get worked up about. Then on the CD is an image of child labour in Victorian times, and you can think how lucky we are that it doesn't happen here any more - cos we've exported it! Then inside the booklet there's a picture of what mught be termed "poor housing stock". The point being let's take a look at what's really unjust and needs urgent intervention from our elected leaders rather than picking on superficial and easy targets.

Have you any philosophical or even religious leanings, within the music or not?

Do unto others as you would have done to yourself........

What is your most memorable gig?

Seeing? Beefheart - Clear Spot tour. Magma - Sheffield City Hall early 70s. Kraftwerk - Computerworld tour. Art Ensemple of Chicago - London late 70s. Playing? The last one I did.

What made you introduce traditional female folk singing into your work, as in your version of 'Let No Man Steal Your Time'?

As you can see from the list of records above, I've always listened to folk music, which didn't in fact start with Current 93 as people seem to think now! And H&R is the first time I've been able to integrate those ideas all the way through an album in various shapes and disguises, tho I've tried for a long time. But using specifically that song ties in with the "child labour" sleeve image. Clever stuff you see, I do actually think about it.........

How do you keep your inspiration flowing and do you have periods of inactivity?

By working with other people rather than on my own. That means dates and deadlines, and it's surprising how creative you can get when it has to be done by tomorrow! Luckily I keep having new ideas, tho often a particular technology or process will spark off a new line of work. For example just having a laptop and being able to do gigs which sound like my records amke the 2 processes feed off each other. No, I never have periods of inactivity!!

What's your favorite instrument and how do you process sounds, hardware or software?

The one thing I do really well is play sopranino saxophone, so that has to be my favourite instrument. To do the laptop thing I use Ableton Live which enables me to have a whole pallette of sounds and realtime processing. That means I can do a gig with a pool of material but make it different every time, and actually play the thing rather than launch wav files. I just bought Cycling 74's Pluggo software which has some nice processors. And I really like the FM7 which is the software version of the DX7.

Favorite own piece of music?

Heritage & Ringtones - Ringtone 3 and 4

Top five (or ten) all time pieces?

In no particular order:
Soft Machine - Teeth (from 4th)
Magma - Mekanik Destructiw Kommandoh
John Martyn - Bless the Weather
Henry Cow - Living in the heart of the beast (In praise of Learning)
Captain Beefheart - I'm gonna booglarise you baby
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Nick Drake - River Man (five leaves left)
Stockhausen - Sternklang
Bob Dylan - Blonde on Blonde (all of it)
Faust - Sunshine Girl (So Far)

Pot and booze has often been associated with free music but you seem more like a healthy hiker...

I'm a clean living citizen.

Do you write scores? If not what's the basic methodolgy for recordings?

I used to write scores but I'm self taught at music so I stopped because it's too time consuming. I might write simple things from time to time. The basic methodology for recording is taking a bunch of stuff then mucking around with it until it sounds good. Then leave it, come back, and edit it down until only the really good stuff is left. Then make sure all the pieces on the reciod fit together as a group.

How do you gather recordings for your sampling, do you use a portable machine?

No, I record myself and others in the studio or they send me stuff.

Whats your plans for performance and recording? Any new ideas in the pipe?

Currently working on a lot of new releases:
A duo with Neil Carver which is basically electronic manipulations of percussion, music boxes, toys, junk and guitar
A new Hornweb CD with Charlie Collins and Derek Saw - jazzier stuff
A CD with Army of Briars, my folk group - I played one of the pieces at the freenoise gig.
A new Combat Astronomy CD
And my own new solo record, "I'm like hello" which follows on from Heritage, and will be out in 2007.
Looking forward to loads of solo shows and more with Gated Community, but not much in the diary at present.

How is the label doing and what reason do you mostly think people buy your music?

I think the label is doing OK - it's not going to go away - I sell around 5 CDs per week which is better than many. And it's not just the recent stuff which sells. It never gets any better or any worse. I'm not sure whether it;'s a problem but I think ore people are making records now than buying them - seriously! People buy thru reading reviews or word of mouth. It's gradually dawning on the world how good I am, and not before fucking time.

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Enquiries / booking for Martin Archer - contact infoatfreenoise.co.uk
tel: 07754 910156