V.ictor is a multi-disciplinarian who creates an exciting array of electronic sounds alongside installations and more. He also teaches a sound creation course at Cégep du Vieux Montréal and has plenty to say about the nature of music and its broader context. Having just released the brilliant Morpho- for Archipel Musique Canada you can now read our in-depth interview with this important artist at Magazine Sixty.
Welcome to Magazine Sixty, Victor. I’m fascinated to learn about your trajectory from the music you got excited about growing up to the sounds you currently create. Have you always liked more leftfield, forward-thinking music or was there a lightbulb moment hearing something from a particular artist driving you in this direction?
My background is rather unusual since my first decisive musical experiences were in the rave scene in the early 2000s. At the time, I was playing at rave parties mostly acid techno and hard trance (yes, it was trendy at the time!), so underground music has always been very close to me. Otherwise, my first electronic music band (“Orgonique ”, circa 2002) had influences from Herbert, Mr. Scruff and also Tricky, Bjork and Massive Attack, as well as from the Ninja Tunes label… I used to go regularly to HMV on Sainte-Catherine and spend hours in the listening station. But my influences are really very broad, you know, in my youth, I was also into Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or progressive rock! But in the last few years, I’ve become hooked on minimal techno, particularly the precise, clean sounds that form an irresistible groove (hence my first albums). Of course, I’d have to mention Pheek here, who had a big influence on my style. Then my doctoral studies brought me into contact with acousmatic music. For example, I discovered Louis Dufort’s music quite recently, and I don’t understand how I didn’t discover it earlier.
Your latest and rather brilliant album Morpho- for Archipel Musique Canada is a powerful and emotional statement. Can you talk us through your production process? How do you start making a piece of music, do you find things come together quickly or slowly, what effects helped the album to achieve its sound?
I change my mind so quickly and so often in life, that I’ve learned to deal with that in my creative work. If I take too long to create, I end up losing interest, because I’m already not in the same place in my head. So the way that works best for me is an intensive period of a few weeks, in which I set myself objectives. I often have an aesthetic in mind and try to stay on track. For this album, I wanted a glitch-dub-ambient-introspective mood, let’s say. I had these artists in mind, among others: Fennesz, Pole, Aoki Takamasa, Jan Jenilek or Max Richter. During these production times, I spend hours and hours in a row on production, so my mind is focused on production during this period. I often come up with ideas while walking or sleeping. For this album, I wanted a coherent aesthetic, so the same instruments and effects are used in all the pieces: lots of granulation, with grains that are often very, very small (yum!), saturation (I’m tripping over the new Roar effect in Ableton) and also pads that often come from WaveTables. I’ve also been playing around with a new tool, developed by Dominic Thibault, called Mozaïque. Several of the sounds on this album were created with this tool. And finally, one aspect I really enjoyed working on was polyrhythm. It’s really difficult to mix rhythmic structures “off-grid” and still come up with something coherent. I hope it works at least a few times in the album, haha! It’s up to you to judge. I’ve also agreed to do shorter pieces than usual, a bit along the lines of Max Richter’s “postcards”. At least, that’s what I had in mind.
How would you describe what you do as a researcher, sound creation and philosophy professor at Cégep du Vieux Montréal? Do you ever find occasions when you learn as much from students as they do from you?
I love teaching my sound creation course at Cégep. Most of the students have their first production experiences, and sometimes there are sparks and you can tell they’ve just discovered something. We’re learning on Ableton Live, so it’s not like the old days when the learning curve at the beginning was pretty steep. Now we can get to a satisfactory result quite quickly, which is encouraging.
We also do listening exercises in class and it’s a time for the students to share their musical favourites, so I get to know the tastes of the younger generation and I love that. I try to give them a creative space in which they are as free as possible, and there’s little more gratifying than seeing your students’ progress.
Your sound installations are equally amazing. How would you describe the experience of staging them and tell us about the ideas you are seeking to exchange with the audience?
It’s quite new for me to create sound installations, it happened a bit by chance, but it’s taken me down some very stimulating paths, especially because it’s led me to work with other artists, in the visual and media arts or in the interactive arts. What I find fascinating is the context in which these works are presented. When I produce an album, it’s usually people already in the loop who are going to listen to it, so I probably won’t get much attention from the general public, unless perhaps if I’m playing Live at outdoor events. In a sound installation, you put yourself in a place that attracts a different kind of audience, and people put themselves in a listening position mainly because the place and the installation dictate it. These are probably people who wouldn’t have listened to an experimental music album on their own, but in this context, they accept to be destabilised or taken elsewhere.
Trëma, created with Danny Perreaul.
For our installation “Trëma”, created with Danny Perreault, for example, I composed a generative soundtrack that could be controlled by RL (reinforcement learning) through audience interaction. We placed this installation at an outdoor festival for the general public, and it’s fun to see people listening to something they probably wouldn’t have otherwise. The installation “Empreintes Sonores” (developed with Jean-Philippe Côté) also allowed me to encounter another world, very different from the music event scene, but rather around galleries or art events.
Empreintes Sonores developed with Jean-Philippe Côté.
I was also wondering about your thoughts on nostalgia in music and whether it hinders the creative process, or is there a place for sounding like old music?
I think it’s in me subconsciously, even if I may not have in mind the conscious desire to rediscover this or that sound from such and such an era. I love discovering new artists, and I’m mostly influenced by new sounds that inspire and surprise me, rather than by sounds from another era. I imagine that in my music, without me realizing it directly, there must be influences from the music I’ve been listening to all my life, but it’s not something I actively seek out.
How do you see the future for artists in terms of earning a living from streaming and the predominance of festivals rather than encouraging smaller spaces for music to evolve?
I’ve always wondered what “earning a living” from music could mean, and why it would be such a coveted goal. So much the better if it happens, but there are so many external factors beyond our control! For me, one of the most beautiful goals for an artist is to be able to create freely. It doesn’t matter what other activities you’re involved in, which can be just as important in generating inspiration. If you can create the conditions to have the time and space to create freely, then that’s it!
Basically, I think you have to ask yourself why you want to create. If it’s linked to external conditions, then it’s very likely that you’ll stop creating the moment the external conditions are no longer present. But if it’s fuelled by a need for freedom, personal fulfilment, or a desire to share, then there’s no end to it! Then, if we organize ourselves to work with like-minded people, we can generate great things! So I’m confident that small spaces will always exist, bringing together people who love music for music’s sake. I’m an anarchist at heart and believe in self-management, the sharing economy, and structures without hierarchical powers. I work a lot with young people in education, and I’m confident they’ll find a space to create if they want to. The important thing is to pass on our passion and values.
Outside of music can you tell us about any favourite artists, writers, or pieces of cinema that inspire you?
I studied philosophy, so my main influences “outside of music” naturally come from philosophers. My master’s thesis was on a Taoist philosopher (Zhuangzi), and in my work I made a link with the writings of Pierre Hadot, who introduced the notion of “philosophy as a way of life”, inspired by the ancient Greek philosophers. I’d like to say that, to this day, I’m still strongly influenced, in the way I organize my life, by the writings of Zhuangzi. I can’t give a lecture on Taoism here, but essentially, one of the messages, which is very humbling, is to practice what they call “non-action” (wu-wei), i.e. not to force our actions and to let things happen naturally. I think this mental state also follows me when I create music, but even more broadly in guiding my life choices.
Is all Art part of the same thing? Would you describe art/ music as part of a collective endeavour or as individual expression in terms of culture or political thinking?
I find it hard to subscribe to the principle of the “isolated” individual creator, and all the glorification of the ego that goes with it. It’s a total hypocrisy for me to think that it’s a single individual who creates. Moreover, this perspective reinforces a logic of competition rather than collaboration. I prefer to think in terms of a network of agentivity, in which creation is a combination of different agents (human and non-human). This is why I believe that art is collective and that it must also be supported collectively. Creation cannot emerge from a single mind; it comes from a combination of social and political factors, as well as material and temporal conditions.
And finally. Do you have a favourite synthesiser or instrument and why does it appeal so much?
In addition to the various effects I mentioned earlier, which contributed to the production of my Morpho- album, I’m also a fan of modular synthesizers. I’ve been building my system for nearly 10 years, and it’s an endless source of inspiration for me. Every now and then I treat myself and buy a new module, and what I find great is the very slow building of a system that you tame over time and becomes very powerful. I’m not at all one of those people who believe that the sound will be superior in analog modules (in fact, most of my favorite modules are digital), but for me there’s something magical that happens when I sit down in front of my system and each time I discover new paths that take me in different directions and produce new sounds each time. I also like the ephemeral nature of it, when you unplug everything, good luck finding exactly the same sound again. I record a lot of sounds with my system, which I then use in my compositions.
I’ve also played Live a few times with my modular system, and there’s something both exciting and stressful about knowing that you won’t get the same result every time. It was in this context that I gave the name “Éloge de l’incertitude” to my previous album, with the idea of embracing the fact that you’re not in total control during a performance. This is particularly apparent with a modular synthesizer.
You must be logged in to post a comment.