by Bert Dhondt

After leaving Tussle – where I'd been in for nearly five years – I was ready to try something new. Something different. And something alone. Initially, Matthew Higgs, the curator of White Columns in Manhattan asked if I'd do an installation for an exhibit he was putting together. When I learned it was a collaboration with an architect, I realized the music I'd just started making with analog synthesizers might work really well. So the first public Arp project, “Cloud”, was a modular room on wheels set up with a featherbed just large enough for two people to lie down on or three to sit, two speakers and a few of my musical pieces on infinite repeat. I took the gallerists' sanity into consideration by picking pieces that I hoped could be heard again and again without driving them crazy.

As rewarding/agonizing as it can be to do something alone, however, I crave collaboration. I'm also in The Alps. We're all doing other things so we get together when we can, every few months usually. We've just released our first studio recording, “III", on Type after putting out a few CDRs with Root Strata and Digitalis. Having said all that, Arp is becoming increasingly collaborative as well. I hope to have a rotating group of friends/musicians join me in the coming year.

The switch to analog synthesizers is what has defined Arp. So far, in any case. When people have accused me of being retro in my approach, I can understand that to a degree. Then again, do you accuse a farmer for being retro/outdated for ditching industrial farming techniques for sustainable methods capable of yielding crops with flavor?

I was just interested in learning how to use an analog synth from the ground up, to synthesize – using filters, envelopes, wave forms, attack, decay, et cetera – to get away from all the lazy habits I'd formed playing guitar and bass and drums. And the process of discovering how to synthesize is what was documented on my debut “In Light". “Odyssey (for Bas Jan Ader)", in particular. That recording is a document of a single live, improvised performance. And though I might have edited things down a bit, I decided – in the spirit of a real, unadulterated document – to leave it, warts and all, as they say. I believe it conveys what I'd hoped to convey so I left it. Needless to say, the second album will incorporate more live instruments. I have no interest in being “The Kosmische Guy". And if limiting myself to analog synths and flute leads to such pigeonholing, I have no interest.

Playing with Joachim and Dieter (Roedelius and Moebius from Cluster, Kluster, Neu! and Harmonia) was a great honor, and great fun. Not least because the show took place outside at dusk on the California coast at Big Sur. And because the people in attendance and the performers (which also included Wooden Shjips) all had an amazing attitude. It just felt like a very special night for everyone involved.

Point blank, Cluster and the “Ralf & Florian" LP were the impetus for Arp when I began. It was quite simple really. I just felt that I wasn't hearing contemporary music that was approaching things in a way I still felt was relevant. If people were in any way cosmic, there was always an over-reliance on Tangerine Dream or John Carpenter – which felt very easy to me. And dark. Just sinister chords sequenced forever really. Similarly, though I had come of age with electronic music with Mille Plateaux and Raster-Noton, I felt that the clinical MAX/MSP approach had also run its course.

I think I've been inclined towards a lot that my influences were also attracted to (at one point anyway): modal pieces that draw on Classical Indian forms even if they don't show an overt influence, reflective pieces that hopefully don't go over a certain New Age threshold (though certainly there are some amazing New Age albums to be found if one is discriminating), a primitive understanding of analog synths that is more in line with a Punk ethos, repetitive strains that draw on LaMonte Young and Terry Riley ...

Dramatically. I don't know that I would've made “In Light" had I lived anywhere but in California. Aside from the south of France, perhaps – I have an uncle who lives there – from which I took much inspiration based on my summers there. But yes, “In Light" was very much inspired by states of mind inspired by locale. It became clear early on that I wanted “In Light" to create a distinct feeling. A feeling I associated with the coast, the ocean, the air, the smell of Eucalyptus and Cypress and Pine trees, the feeling of longing for something passing or Eric Rohmer films like “La Collectioneuse"... Coastal imagery is so often associated with leisure and hedonism. I wanted to imbue that psychological environment with something more reflective. The moments one has alone in such places. When one feels the summer ending and autumn beginning...