023.5 - The Deep Dive - AUT2M - Muziek Voor Muren Notes and Interview

The deep dive is for readers who want to dig further into the album by reading the notes and pre-review interview that is done with each artist.  It is best read after the review.

Notes

Gekanteld - The song starts off with something akin to a horror movie chord, very eerie but isn’t necessarily indicative of everything that is to come.  Its quickly followed by a simple three note melody.  The chord reprises its role shortly after that.  Just when I thought this was going to be a pattern it gets switched up again.  The melody is expanded on, in almost a playful fashion.  
Despite me being wrong about a pattern happening, what this does establish for the song though is the general structure. The chord will enter and leave the song at various places, followed by another melody.  At least for the first minute 45 of the song.  There is this tension in the way that the music has been created, conflicting elements.  The chord is in stark contrast to the melodic section.  
The choice of instrumentation here is also interesting.  Whatever instruments are being used to create the chords have a very chilling and sharp tone to them.  Not easy to listen to.  However the instrumentation for the melodic portion is warm and very easy to listen to, perfect amount of reverb as well.  
The whole song takes a turn for the darker after the two minute mark.  The melodic section while still maintaining the same production as before now is playing in a minor key and seems to be in harmony with the chords.  Interesting tonal shift and something I will have to ask Mat about.  
Also throughout the track there are hints at either ambient sounds or wind of some kind, nice touch for someone who is using headphones.  Probably would not be heard without them on.  Great opening track.  

Altaarstuk - Chip tunes? This is so different from what I was expecting based on the previous track.  The tonal shift is almost jarring compared to the first track.  First time I heard it I literally laughed out loud because it was so far away from what I was expecting.  
But again, the track takes another shift from what I thought was coming.  At about the 23 second mark some synths come in that are very similar in tone to the chords heard on the first track.  This then falls into somewhat familiar territory of the call and answer style composition, with the eerie cords being followed by a warm melodic synth.  This is all over the chip tune backbone that was established at the start of the song.  
By the 1:30 mark there is comparatively a lot going on here.  There are the chiptune sounds along with something that I can only call percussion, but it's hardly anything traditional.  There is also this call and answer play going on over everything else.  It is all competing for my attention and it's very cool.  
After another minute several more elements are laced in between the melodic synths for the call/answer portion of the song.  Every element is extremely distinct and it is easy to focus in on each one, or if you just sit back you can let them all hit you at once and just soak it all in.  When I focus in, each part really fits, but is slightly out of sync with the background sometimes.  When I don’t pay as close attention to everything, things just sort of fall into place, I really enjoy listening to it both ways.  Really enjoyed this song.

Nuance - Ok so I went into this song with no expectations, the last two tracks threw me for loops early and I was not going to go into this one with any preconceived notions.  The tones used to start the song are produced in a way that they are almost hard to listen to.  It just teeters on the edge of hurting my ears… instead they just demand your attention.  Very similar in structure to the way the chip tunes started out the previous track.
35 seconds in there is a second tone that comes in and has a similar attention demanding placement in the mix.  It has a rhythm very similar to the beginning tones and adds an extra layer to what will become the backbone of this song.
At 1:12 the song blooms.  There are warm synth pads alongside minimal melodies.  Much like the structure of the previous song everything builds into a near cacophony… a minimalist cacophony? I don’t know if I’ve ever used those words together before but it really fits here.  Each element is distinct, yet you can still let everything wash over you if you so desire.  
Right around 3:10 another attention grabbing synth is added in and puts some more tension into the song.  This seems to be a recurring theme at this point.  Very soft, warm, melodic elements in strong contrast to the harsher produced background or backbone portions.  If that is a running theme on this album thats fantastic!

Steen - The start of this song has a very wake up to the dawn sound to it.  The flute really drives it over the top.  Complete tonal shift from everything that has come before this.  This is cohesively warm from top to bottom… everything fits well together, at least to start.  The backbone of this song sounds like someone using glass bottles filled with liquid and gently tapping them with a wooden stick.  Gives the song a very youthful tone.  
By a minute the song has taken in a few additional layers but everything still retains that joyful/youthful tone that was established early.  Much like the other songs to this point everything but is just slightly out of harmony.  I get the sense of watching something through a window or something stationary and just watching how nature interacts with it.  Its all part of the whole picture in nature but there is a chaotic element to nature that cannot be controlled, making things have a random element to them.  I get the same sense in the music, everything fits together very well but there are points where things happen just slightly different than what you would expect.  One of my favorite parts about the album so far.  
To this point in the album this is the song with the least amount of conflicting elements.  Its only really around 3 minutes in that a truly attention grabbing effect is mixed front and center.  Its only there for a few measures and then fades out as quickly as it was introduced.  Interesting choice and another item to ask Mat about.  

Banaal (ft. Jude Frankum) - The guitar is immediately noticeable and gives this song an immediate harkoning to Jude’s album Haunt Lines.  The production on the guitar and as well as the delay/reverb used is extremely reminiscent of that album.  
Unlike Jude’s album this song is not entirely guitar based.  The synths used have a similar delay/reverb on them letting the song have probably the most cohesive feel yet on the album.  Again there are multiple layers added in by the minute mark, though not as many as there have been to this point.  It maintains a very minimal approach, even compared to the previous tracks.  
That said the song is probably the most ‘wall of sound’ type approach found so far in the album.  That's largely due to the delay found on the instruments and it works extremely well.  Great change of pace type song.  There is no real ‘backbone’ to the song structure outside of Jude’s strumming, but that changes throughout the song, so it doesn't have the same effect as the other tracks.  Wonderful track.

Niet-Zijn - This one has a very similar tone to Steen at the start.  Those same bottle effects are used to create a minimalist melody alongside a synthesized pan flute.  The whole feeling of waking up on a morning is there again but this one feels more like a cloudy morning rather than the sunshine found on Steen.  
This song also brings back the conflicting elements that were in the first three tracks.  Just over a minute in there are some obviously artificial tones that don’t have any semblance of sounding organic or even attempt to replicate an organic sound.  They demand attention and really break the spell that the start of the song kind of weaves over the listener.  Just a reminder not to get too comfortable.  
I’m really digging this whole contrasting elements, cold vs warm, organic vs synthetic sounds.  It makes for a very interesting listen and forces the observer to stay on edge because you never know what will come next.  
Towards the end of the song there is kind of a marriage of the contrasting elements.  The inorganic tones get a lot of reverb put on them.  This gives it a much more ethereal tone to it and takes a lot of that ‘harsh’ edge off.  Great effect.

Onwetend - This song threw me for a loop at first, I should have expected it.  There are some sounds in the background that remind me of bubblewrap popping.  I thought my cats were getting into something that they shouldn't have been.  I found myself looking around for them but when I realized that it was coming from the headphones I could only smile.
Besides that, this song almost has a religious or ethereal feel to it.  The tones and notes used on this song almost make me feel like I’m in an empty church or an abandoned building.  As the track progresses the sense of loneliness only increases and builds to a small crescendo that climaxes right at 2:45.  
This song is extremely emotional, at least to my ears.  I found myself tearing up the first time I listened on headphones.  It makes me nostalgic for something that I’m not sure I’ve ever had and at the same time makes me wish I could see my wife and my best friend even though I just saw them a few minutes ago.  That loneliness feeling is real here.  
Everything is crafted so delicately and there are hardly any conflicting parts of the song.  It just flows and lets the listener take it all in.  That is a beautiful effect… possibly the best song on the album.  

Gesmolten Ogen - Picking right up where Onwetend left off this song retains much of the same feel.  Not nearly the crushing sense of nostalgia and loneliness but the production and instrumentation sound very similar.  The instrumentation has large amounts of delay on it, and has a bit of that call/answer type song writing that was in the first few tracks.  
The main instrument here is a piano that has several layers of effects on it.  It sends out the call and is answered by differing instrumentation.  For the first minute that is largely all that happens like someone is searching for something.  After a minute that one thing seems to be found as the call/answer subsides and more of a harmonious melody is established.  I’m not sure if that was the effect that Mat was going for here, but it really is a beautiful effect when taken in that way.  This is why I love ambient music, everything can be interpreted by the individual and two people can walk away with completely different experiences.  
Right at 2:45 the song returns to the piano call/answer ideal but the harmonious section still remains...  this doesn't feel like a search, more like a conversation.  Unlike the first few tracks everything remains very much in synch here and adds to the feeling of the ‘characters’ feeling in lockstep.  Another masterful song, perfect followup to Onwetend.

Herstruterering - Another tonal shift.  This song feels much more playful than anything else before it.  There are short bursts of melody interspersed between the ambient sections.  Like a child playing and its mother looking after them.  I get a picture of green pastures and rolling hills with some waist high walls guiding the way for a mother and her children as they go across the country side.  
Again much like the previous few tracks everything is in perfect lockstep, there are no real conflicting elements… I’ve got this sense that there is a progression in the way that the album is going at this point.  We started out there are some very inorganic nearly horrific tones, they slowly morph over the course of the album into what we have here… totally harmonious music with separate elements that beg to be listened to as a cohesive unit.  Its so hard to do well and Aut2m has done it masterfully here.

Torenvalk - So simple and so carefree, that's the way this song starts out.  Looking into a time where things were simpler, maybe better.  The melody that chimes that serves that major focus of the song is joined by a low tone that could be mistaken for a cello.  The way these two work together is quite endearing, again in perfect harmony.
Around 2 minutes there are some reverbed tones that demand attention at first but they are not harsh compared to some of the other tones throughout the album.  The way that they are placed and built add to the sense of the carefree tone that the song has.  Around 2:30 a permutation of the tone comes in and adds a sense of wonder to the carefree tone.   
At the end everything returns to how it started, the first time in the album that this has occurred.  Reminding us where we came from… never forget it seems to tell us.

Dalend - That sense of nostalgia and remembrance from the past few tracks really takes hold here and wraps up the album with it.  Minimalist tones the whole way through this song is like drinking a cup of tea in a fall afternoon outside.  Leaves slowly falling and were just here reminiscing about what once was.  Perfect ending.

Overall - God I love this album.  The way that it begins with those contrasting tones and slowly morphs into something so cohesive and fulfilling is incredible.  I didn’t get the full sense of just how well that was done until I listened to it actively on headphones.  There is no singular point where you can look at it and say “thats where things changed.”  The album’s metamorphosis is done over the entirety and sneaks up on you.  
This is also the first album in quite some time that has brought me to tears.  I don’t know what it is about Onwetend but the way that everything lined up in there put me over the edge.  Easily one of my favorite songs of the year.
I’m going to have to listen to this some more over the next few months but Mat has created what may be one of my favorite minimalist albums of the past few years.  It's extremely well crafted and nuanced.  He gets so much out of so little.

Interview

1) The title translates directly to Music for Walls.  How did the concept for this album originate and how did that influence the sound that was on the album?
I came up with the concept of the album one night when I was sitting in my bedroom, bored of making music, looking at my wall, and thinking about everything that it's been around. The apartment building I live in was built in the 1950s, so that's about 70 years of "experiences" that the wall has had, if that makes sense. I realised that all walls must have these experiences, after all, walls are basically like flies on a… wall?  I then decided to find some interesting walls around my city, photograph them and build tracks around the feelings those walls give me. Strange concept, but it was a fun exercise and I enjoyed exploring it.

Just building individual tracks around photographs doesn’t make for much of an album though, it’d be more like a compilation. So I ended up trying to build a vague connection between all of the tracks and walls to turn it into one whole, for example by re-using sounds or techniques.

2) Multi part question.  Early on in the album I noted that things seem slightly out of sync and seemingly in conflict with one another.  The album slowly transitions into a state of harmony to my ears.  
The disharmony in the individual tracks at the beginning was on purpose, because I felt it fit with the walls that themed the tracks. But the gradual change in style wasn't intentional. Or at least, maybe it was subconsciously intentional? Haha.
    
When I finished the entire album I spent a while putting everything in the correct order. I don't know how other artists do this, but when I’ve finished an album I generally just listen to it over and over for a few days/weeks, tweaking the order as I go based on how it feels to me. I don't consciously think "Oh, this track should or shouldn't go here because x or y" I just do it and then re-listen and repeat until it feels correct to me. So I suppose my subconscious picked the order of the tracks.
    
Was your songwriting any different on the first few tracks vs the later tracks?
It wasn't. I approached all the tracks on the album with an idea of what kind of sounds I wanted to have and then I just looked at the walls and did whatever came up to me. So if some of them felt more melancholy or happy to me that's because that particular wall was giving me those vibes.

I also listened to a lot of japanese minimal ambient while making the album and there’s definitely some “rules” in the genre that I tried to apply to the album as well. Although I didn’t want to rely on it too much because it still has to be my own thing of course.
    
Is there a deeper narrative you are trying to communicate to the listener over the course of this album?
I personally like not giving out a narrative for my albums when I release them. I definitely build a personal narrative or story around them but I like it when consumers of art come up with their own narrative for it. It makes the music more meaningful and personal to the listeners, in my opinion. So in the case of Muziek Voor Muren I don’t have any narrative that I’m trying to pass on to the listeners. Besides, something as abstract as giving feelings to walls is probably very different between individuals. Although technically, I guess I'm already adding a narrative to the walls by writing music for them.

    
I've only in the past few months started experimenting with publicizing the narrative on my albums that were released on Cosmic Vector, those all have stories that add context to the music, and I do think that's interesting as well, but in the case of Muziek voor Muren I don't really have a narrative that I want to push out there.

3) You stated before that Japanese minimalism was a huge influence for you here.  How did you settle in on this as an influence for the album?  Are there any other artists or styles that influenced you while making this album?

I've always been a fan of minimalism in music. My favourite genre is deep dubstep and minimalism is one of its core components. It’s really impressive to make music that is minimalistic yet doesn’t feel like it’s lacking anything. I've personally always wanted to make more minimalist music, and it’s something I actively try to work towards, but I haven't really been satisfied with it every time I tried. I usually end up adding too many elements. It's one of the hardest things to do in my opinion because there's a fine line between minimalist and boring.
    
When Youtube started recommending Japanese minimalist ambient to me I instantly fell in love with it and it inspired me to try it out for myself. This is usually how I make music, I get inspired by something new that I find and try to give it my own spin. I had this with my russian album and hardvapour. Area and dub techno, Corrupt and experimental/noise dubstep, etc.

4) Another multi part question.  This time for specific parts of songs.

In Steen there is a singular point around 3 minutes where a sharp tone comes in that is in huge contrast to the rest of the track.  It comes and then leaves very quickly.  What were you trying to communicate here?
This may be a disappointing answer, but nothing really. That sound is also in some of the other tracks on the album (although you might not recognise it) and it just adds some variation to the tune while also making the album more cohesive, A lot of the songs on the albums use the same sounds in a similar way.

When I made the album everytime I started working on a tune I added it to a text file with its bpm/key, its wall and the sounds I used in the track. Then I’d pick sounds from the other tracks that I thought would fit well with the new one. Of course I often ended up making changes to it, but it really adds some cohesion to the music I think.
    
In Gekanteld the 'melodic' portion of the music seems to go from a major key into a minor version of the same note progression.  Again, what were you trying to communicate here?
Just look at the wall for that track! It has definitely seen some shit.
    
In Altaarstuk and other tracks you have a call/answer type interplay between different elements of the song.  You were excited that I noticed this.  Why?
I was excited because in Muziek Voor Muren I consciously decided to use the call/answer method. When I make music I usually just do whatever comes up to me, but this time I deliberately thought about doing that so it was cool that someone recognised it.

5) The first album I ever heard from you was Corrupt. Hardvapor is obviously very far removed from your current ambient style.  If you want can you describe your musical journey to what led you here the past few years?

The music I make is often inspired by what I'm listening to at the time. So my first album was vaportrap, then hardvapour (although really that was just dubstep except I was bad at making music so I pretended it was experimental, aka hardvapour), then I did Introspection, which was actually not inspired by music but by a movie I saw at the time about being the last person on earth. After Introspection I did some ambient and techno-dubstep. Then a dub-techno inspired album and Construct, which was inspired by vaportrap and dreampunk. This year was Muziek Voor Muren, Venus Cloud City and Imminent Void, which were all inspired by ambient music. I also made an album for Dream Catalogue that's coming out very soon that's like a combination of everything I've been inspired by before, ambient, dreampunk, vaportrap, dub-techno, I'm really excited about that coming out, it kind of feels like it’s the culmination of everything I’ve previously made.

So, in short the genres I usually hover around are ambient, dubstep, dreampunk and genres that come close to those.

I often get bored when I work on the same genre for a long time so I’ll switch it up a bit. I'll probably work on some dubstep tunes for the next while and then I'll see what I get inspired by after that. I definitely also want to make more music like Muziek Voor Muren though.

6)  What equipment was used to create this album? (you don't have to answer this if you don't want)
    
It’s kind of boring, but just Ableton and a MIDI keyboard. I’m personally not really big on hardware. I don’t see the point in it when I have a computer. Most of the album was made by just jamming on the MIDI keyboard over and over until I was satisfied with it.

7) I noted that Onwetend was the first song in quite some time to bring me to tears.  It has this deep sense of loss and loneliness.  I'm curious what you were trying to communicate with this song and to a lesser extent Gesmolten Ogen.  Was there anything that you were hoping the listener would walk away with from those two songs in particular?

I suppose I just wanted to communicate that wall’s feelings haha. It feels good to hear that the music brings forth so much emotion. I guess those particular walls were just really making me sad when I was making the tunes for them.
If you think about it, being a wall must be terrifying. Yeah, you do have a lot of experiences, but the vast majority of the time there’s probably nothing happening. Not to mention that you can’t even choose what happens to you!

8) Is there anything further you would like to highlight about the album or your musical endeavours?

 
Muziek voor Muren is still available on cassette, and the tape looks amazing. Ryan did a great job on the design and getting it all together. I definitely recommend anyone who likes the album to get it!

I’d also like to plug the label Iona Dream and I started a few months ago: Cosmic Vector: https://cosmicvector.bandcamp.com/. We’ve got great plans for this year.