I remember this morning of last november when, at random of ones wifi wave, we felt on the Odd Flutter Ep from Exoplanet, unknowed to us evolving in the infamous world of progressive house.
With warped synth, gliding riff and deep drums, the Dutchman’s style signed over Proton label is developing a bewitching shamanic universe, halfway between a lexomile massive take and a Peyolt infusion in South America… In other words, the perfect sound to leave for a road trip in the cavernous corners of our neurons with as only luggage the unabridged collection of Lewis Carrol and a machete.
So, after we playlisted one of his track in our November playlist, he comes back on Jekyll et Hyde with this time an exclusive mix of more than 1 hour, beside an interview to know more who is behind the mask.
Get your lemon verbena, and open your chakras, It’s Exoplanet :
How old were you when you started producing ?
I think I was 13 or 14… At that time I was listening to a lot of trance and progressive house, which were very popular back then. I loved the melodies in trance tracks and the atmospheric aspect of progressive. Then i’ve been on the internet where I met people who were producing music, which make me realized that artists weren’t demigods in some ivory tower, but just normal people, using tools I could get my hands on too! So I downloaded my first cracked version of Fruityloops and started making… terrible music! But I kept doing it for fun, somewhat naively.
At the same time, thanks to the interwebz and the dawn of the mp3 age, I started listening to more and more different styles of music, my horizon expanded.
Then I discovered Propellerheads Reason: a true new beginning. My tracks still sucked, but they started sucking a lot less. Reason is stable, super-modular with a lot of depth yet still easy and inviting. And I could still sample my VSTi’s and my Virus C in Cubase or Fruity (I now do this, amongst other things, in Ableton) and import them in Reason.
Why Music ?
I don’t really know… I liked music and I had the tools to make it. But I was naïve in it, because I knew nothing, and still know little, about music theory.
I never played an instrument, and I didn’t know how to use the software, but I was doing it for fun uniquely . Beside that having a creative output is essential for me, I have to give my thoughts and emotions some form. If I wasn’t making music, I’d probably be writing, painting, or making little clay sculptures for that matter….
What are your influences ?
One of my favourite artists and influences is Monolake, he’s the perfect example of a producer who thinks about absolutely every sound he puts into his track. He’s a genius in sound design, yet in a recent interview he said he doubted his musical talent in earlier years – which was unnecessary because he does have a lot of musical talent, he’s just not a melody wizard.
Bluetech/Evan Marc, on the other hand, another one of my favourites, is such a melody wizard and he’s obviously influenced by Monolake, but he focuses less on the technical side of things and blends in emotional melodies.
Both guys are excellent examples of very good producers, who think about every sound they place in their tracks, and of good artists with awesome musical ideas and meaning behind their sounds.
You seem to get interest for the synaesthesia concept can you tell us a bit more about that ?
I think synaesthesia is inherent to the experience of music. You don’t just hear music as sound, you feel it on different senses and different emotional levels. Music might send shivers through your spine, you might feel the weight of a heavy bassdrum as if it were affected by gravity, or you might feel the gentle softness of an airy synth sound and realize it’s yellow… Whatever you experience, almost everybody can relate to this concept of synesthesia.
Everybody experiences it different, with different senses bleding, and this with differing intensity, but the principle is the same: sound is not just heard. It is felt, potentially with all your senses (LSD users will recognize this), and thus making music can be seen as painting on a canvas, cooking with ingredients, or sculpting out of substance. I prefer the latter, I like to view sounds as geometrical objects in space, all with a certain tactile texture.
So when I design and place my sounds in a track, I try to treat them according to their ‘shape’ and ‘texture’. The sounds should fit together according to those properties, as I experience them.
What is your classic work process ?
I open up Record/Reason and start building from an idea I have for a track, or I just start with some sound tweaking not knowing where it will lead. Then I end up with a loop that’s the basic building block of the track.
Most of the time it has a beat, some synths, a pad, which It’s still very basic, so I export the loop and load it in Ableton. There I add more sounds to the loop, using VST’s and messing with drumloops and such, and render these additions solo as audio. Then I go back to Record and import those sounds. When I’m happy with the loop and I really have an idea of what the whole track should be, I start sequencing.
I know it’s a weird way of working, and you might ask why I just don’t do it all in Ableton (also considering me being a Monolake fan, and Monolake being a father of Ableton). There are a few reasons for this:
First is plain inertia. After all these years I know Reason, and with that Record, very well. I have my own presets, templates and modular routing structure all built up. The modular nature is very important to me. I like it to have total control over the routing of all signals. Propellerheads really made this possible with their visual representation of a rack and cables.
Second is: Reason and Record never crashes. That’s the advantage of the self-contained principle. Ableton crashes all the time with VST’s in there. I couldn’t imagine building a whole track in Ableton just because of that.
Third is the sequencer in Record/Reason, I just love it! It allows me to work really fast, see everything going on and understand it at the same time. It’s so smoothly designed.
Now it might sound I’ve got secret Swedish benefactors, so I’ll say that Ableton has a lot of advantages too. The audio warping Is very impressive and much deeper than in Record. I use it a lot to stretch loops into weird sounds. There are great effects and instruments in Ableton, add to that VST’s and Max for Live and the possibilities are even more infinite than in any other software. Ableton Live is great for, well, Live use too of course.
Any futur projects ?
There’s a plan for an album on Proton. Not just a long EP, but a real journey through tracks in the way my favourite albums tell a story. That would be great to do. I don’t know what kind of story I’ll tell, but expect to hear the full spectrum of Exoplanet sounds. I don’t know when this will be ready. First, there’ll be an EP in April, Owl’s Odyssey, which is a bit more of an attempt to tell a story than my previous EP’s were. I’m also working on a live-act in Ableton, cutting my tracks into loops and throwing them into Live’s session view.
Some words about the mix you did for us ?
The opening track, Enter The Archive, was made as an opener for this mix. You can hear some glitchy percussion, there’s Live’s audio warping I talked about. I think this track nicely opens the mix with a dark atmosphere and a feeling of ominous anticipation. Next one, Out Of The Fog Within, also carries a nice strange dark atmosphere. Then comes, Mindfold, with the sample from the movie Human Traffic (used some of that before in Clouds) – will be out on Mistiquemusic in May.
In The People Look Like Flowers At Last (this title refers to a work by writer Charles Bukowski) I had a lot of fun tweaking that 303 (the Audiorealism emulation, alas). I love that old acid sound, I think the 303 is really underrated in progressive house these days. Maybe people think the 303 is overused and old and they don’t dare to use it anymore; I disagree. Just as the piano or the violin can never be overused, neither can the 303. It’s right up there with other timeless instruments. Yes it is.
Explorer is the first track in the mix that’s already released. It was on my first release on Particles, and I still love this track. It captures the sound of the ‘neo-trance’ movement which fused the elements of trance and techno to create not tech-trance but something new – think of pinnacle tracks like Oxia – Domino or Minilogue – The Leopard (Extrawelt remix). This genre was dead as it was born though, somehow it became formulaic very quickly and heaps of this stuff was released, not all good stuff. I like my contribution to this short wave though.
Then there’s my remix for Cid Inc.’s Defrost, The original is a real dancefloor climax track, I made a more atmospheric interpretation. This one will be out on Proton.
The last track is one of my musically best tracks I think. Not as for production – I even had to remaster it to make it sit in this mix better. For me ,the track expresses a lot of melancholic feelings, and it’s a bit of a tribute to Airwave – Alone in the dark.
All in all, this mix is mostly about my more progressive oriented work. Not many breakbeats or IDM here. I could have done differently but this flow just worked best. Mixing my weirder tracks would be more difficult.
J&H.Exlu008_Exoplanet – MEtaphysical archive by 2sheep4coke
Download – Exoplanet – Metaphysical Archive (Mediafire)
Tracklist
1. Enter The Archive
2. Out Of The Fog Within
3. Mindfold
4. Distant Embrace
5. Brickwall Of Love
6. The People Look Like Flowers At Last
7. At Least This Won’t Fade
8. Explorer
9 Cicadenzang
10. Cid Inc. – Defrost (Exoplanet Remix)
11. Last Light In The Dark
Jeu de briques
Snake
Pacman
Bubble