A Brief Journey Into Sound With the Norran

So great to catch up with my friend and old band mate Cristian Vogel on the show!

The way I met Cristian was pretty unlikely and pretty fantastic I have to say. Basically back in around 1995 I was making music with Subhead alongside Jason Leach and Phil Wells and thanks to those guys I became aware of so much incredible music mostly from Detroit and Chicago but not exclusively as there were some wildcard artists that always caught my attention more than any others, none more so than the wonky magic conjured by Cristian Vogel.

I had heard that he lived in Brighton.

So I had this great idea to just go to there and meet him!  I hopped on the train and went to an outdoor festival that was happening that day in the city and as I walked around the place I stumbled on a lone Tresor bag lying in the grass. I knew Cristian was signed to Tresor and so I asked the lady that was sat next to it if she was Christian's sister. She was his girlfriend ! I mean WHAT are the chances?

I soon met big C and we formed a fast friendship based on mutual respect (he had played Subhead 002 at the love parade and it was a big moment ! Small world ) and I joined him sharing a space to make music in Brighton where it became immediately obvious to me his approach was something completely new to me. First of all I’d never seen anyone make music with a tracker and I understood quickly that with his experience and skill he wouldn’t second-guess himself and instead would conjure his unique sound in minutes, tapping away wildly on his amiga keyboard.

I realize I was in the presence of a truly unique musician and I owe him so much for all he showed me. He schooled me in the world of subtractive synthesis and taught me that it’s possible to interact with machines on the same level people interact with traditional instruments. His approach was always Orthodox and his choice of equipment unfamiliar to most myself included.

We formed a band called super_collider that really stretched our skills and the technology of the time. Listening back to our first album Head-on it really was quite an achievement considering what we had . By that time we moved into a more robust studio with Orbital as our neighbors but the DAW was still primitive and we would use programs like macromedia deck 2 to complete our songs. I think it was limited to 8 tracks. We pushed that shit to the brink dealing with so many crashes it’s amazing we managed to finish anything.

By 1999 I had moved To Berlin and shortly afterwards Cristian relocated to Barcelona. When we made our second album raw digits it was a tale of two cities and took considerable energy to complete. I had started to devote a lot of time to my solo career and super_collider  sadly came to an end. Not just because of that but you know… things change.

Cristian kept making amazing music of course and he’s released a stack of incredible records and collaborations. At one point he created a band called “night of the brain” and kept making banging records for Tresor, Nova mute and his own Station 55 imprints to name a few. He also remixed Radiohead and Thom Yorke which still blows my mind.

I got pretty heavily into Max MSP for my live shows and Cristian chose to master the Kyma system. He’s now one of the worlds experts in that paradigm and has created a whole host of extensions and applications for it which can be found on his never engine in labs website

His recent album rebirth of wonky sees him Effortlessly weaving his textural skills with that unique funk of his to great effect. He’s never going to stop making music. He’s a true lifer and a searcher. One of the true pioneers of the underground that deserves much more credit than he’s received.

I was very relieved that even after all this time apart, once the zoom call started and we got to talking it was like no time had passed and I hope you will enjoy as much as I did this catchup with my old friend and teacher.

_NITTY

I get into the 1st installment of the Binaural adventure with the Neumann head aka KU100. What an amazing mic it is! Thank you so much to my friend Vicente for letting me have a play with it ! Just incredible !

Alert ! Patreon sample pack gold level when you are part of the soul science crew.

_SHOW MUSIC

Music for the show is from a trio by the name of Sunjacket. Excellent stuff. Made the show such fun to put together as the songs are so well mixed and the skills are strong!

Check them out here !!

OTHER ME NEWS__

I'm singing on a new Mark Hawkins track called "Let it slide"

THANKS_

Kind sponsorship come from

Bitwig - version 4.0 of the software is really really powerful and well worth checking !! Link here

Analog cases - they just made my trip to California an absolute pleasure! I’ve been waiting for these cases for years! Check them HERE and use HOWA15 on check out for 15% off!