published by SAF Ltd., 1987 ISBN 0946719020
METANOIA
The urge to capture and preserve pieces of our experience has run through
much of man's development. From the earliest communicative efforts, right
through to current developments in communication and entertainment
technology, attempts have been made to snatch moments from time and hold
them in a state which might enable another to experience the event for
themselves. In other words, a vain attempt to render the experience repeatable -
to bring "it" out of time. Anything that is not it can move quite easily, free of any
restrictions or impositions.
Recent work in Egypt and Japan has revealed the existence of possible
primitive forays into the recording of sound. At the present time, no conclusive
evidence as to the function of the "supposed" equipment has emerged, but it is
clear that at least an awareness of the possibility existed. What is also
abundantly apparent is that the attempt to squeeze the "apparatus" into this
mould that we have only in the last hundred years discovered ourselves, is an
unbelievably convincing demonstration of the above.
Coincidentally, the first "recordings", both visual and aural, that did not rely
on the intervention of the human hand - as writing, painting, sketching, the
transcription of music, etc. do - arrived at just before the turn of the century. It
is impossible to re-experience the impact these inventions must have had at
first hand - paradoxically the reason for their invention. So, from the outset,
their original purpose was forgotten or lost.
If it is thought on reading these words that this is not the case, it should be
remembered that most people are aware on ANY exposure to any MEDIA (which
for the purpose of "handling" we may easily view as a conglomeration of devices
for recording and then disseminating experience, events and information) that
the whole picture is never present. Most people, of whatever nationality, social
status, religion, etc, whilst reading a newspaper or watching the news on
television, are apt to disbelieve what they hear and/or see AT LEAST once in the
course of a sitting.
This is not to condemn the devices out of hand. It is not the fault of the
builder when a drunkard smashes a brick into someones head.
Dating from the very early 1930's (and possibly) before this - history has a
nasty way of catching us with our trousers down) when French radio broadcast
"Musique concreté" manufactured from the live manipulation of wax discs, and
soon after, when Varése started to introduce some of the first pre-recorded
(taped) machine sounds into the standard classical orchestra ("Desérts", etc),
realisation had gradually dawned as to the other possibilities of the recording of
events - in this case, events in the sound world, although the rest of this theory
holds true for the visual images also.
In other words, the realisation came that "snapshots" of the world, i.e.,
epresentations lifelike enough to jolt the memory could be altered, juxtaposed
with others, repeated endlessly, and subjected to as many perversions as the
operator of the tape recording mechanism desired. It offered the unnerving
feeling of playing a kind of lesser God, manipulating common, everyday sounds
into the mould that the whim of the "creator" happened to alight upon.
And with few - very few - exceptions, this is the way it has remained. This is
the way every more strongly pushed into the limelight as the "only way forward".
Recent developments enable theft by "sampling" another's composition, which in
turn may well have been sampled from someone or something else, and so on, ad
infinitum. And just when was any kind of recording system NOT a sample?
The initial results of this process must have been very disturbing, with their
strange mixture of calling to that which was not yet completed, and the yearning
for fulfillment not possible within the context of the idea of a "final product",
which most data suggests. We cannot freeze a moment in quite the way we
thought we could. Again, we cannot recapture this effect, due to a familiar
process; namely "assimilation". What was once regarded as daring, provocative,
groundbreaking, now occupies the supermarket shelves, the most conservative of
broadcast networks, and finally even brings forth tired glances and long yawns
from the very people who originally generated this material. Because it no longer
belongs to them.
But the point is, surely, that it never belonged to them in the first place! The
sounds were not theirs - they attempted, and are still attempting, to knit with
fog, to cage the sky. Unfortunately they have mistaken the act of pointing with
the object pointed at.
At this point, it is our contention and suggestion that the reason that this has
happened is because of the overconcentration on the "entertainment" factor. Or
rather, aesthetics over meaning, function and content.
Indeed, we would go further and state that our work addresses the problem,
by treating the "raw" material as fragments from life - to be treated with the
respect that all life deserves. Although not the experience in itself, a well made
sound recording of a place (or person, or thing) nevertheless contains a fragment
of the "soul" of that place (or person or thing). By examination of auditory
phenomenae, psychological and physiological use of certain frequencies, careful
testing and construction of "situations","environments","programmes" - which
might be any number of tactics used in combination - an artificially induced
"place" can be created which can, under the right circumstances, produce true
communication between people on the three levels of human perception... head,
heart, and hands. Or if you prefer, body, mind and spirit.
We see this as infinitely worthly of our support, judging by the almost
complete lack of others investigating this, to us, quite crucially important area.
The possibilities afforded by such a chance to speak directly TO one another are
breathtaking.
In this way, we are returning experience to itself, returning machines to their
rightful places as servants, and hopefully, people back to each other instead of
the prevalent tendency to compartmentalise, fragment and separate one
another.
So we prefer to state our position as being concerned with research into
sound, and to a lesser extent visual material, etc., in order that communication
may be made between people - rather than against the present system of
reciprocal vampirism. This may of course INCLUDE the study of music, and has
in the past, during our fruitful examinations of the ritual, religious and other
forms of encoding information is search of just such a form of "direct"
,"experiential" communication, as outlined above. As we have stated before and
elsewhere, we have forgotten - almost wilfully in some cases - these important
and extremely efficient methods.
Our "problem" then, is to make these methods both new and old available for
the utilisation of all. In fact, to positively ENCOURAGE their assimilation (but
not their dilution or corruption).
Rather the REVERSE of all efforts noted hitherto.
But what makes some of these attempts so interesting is their accidental and
unwitting use of just these devices. The framework has been miraculously
constructed in the name of an entertainment, and this is all it carried. Rather
like getting an African elephant to carry a golf ball on its back, whilst you walk
alongside it through the jungle, dropping with fatigue and heat exhaustion.
As with ourselves, it is the same with all that we create, our capabilities are
so underused that it now takes more and more people to accomplish less and
less. We are devoting our precious time (although it does not seem to be such to
many) to the creation of objects, ideas and processes that pass directly into our
refuse system. We try to escape the one thing that can be truly called our own -
our possibilities for growth... which is all that we are. We create diversion
beyond enumeration - it screams at us every second along streets, in our houses,
and most dangerous of all, inside our minds.
Although we are always beginning the first few steps along a long road, we
believe that the processes offered by research into areas of our work and those
connected with it, make possible contact with OURSELVES - AND our
environment. The truth may be painful, but at least it is the truth. Pain is only
the refusal to let go of old inapplicable and inappropriate ideas or structures.
So, the "capturing" of sound does not imply that we can or should create
"Another" world which we can then inhabit, leaving behind the wreckage of the
present one. By the intelligent use of this tool (and tool it should remain) a
mirror can be cast up, which, apart from casting up without the use or need of
symbols, which are open to many differing interpretations, it brings us HERE, to
come to NOW. Because this is where we are, and by dealing with this we form
the basis of where we MIGHT go. At present it lamentably seems as if we are
trying to run before we can walk. The fact of the "forgotten" knowledge and
understanding only makes our position more criminal.
And if we do not address ourselves to this question, namely that of how better to
speak and communicate with others, so that real creation may occur on this planet
as the result of effort and intention, objective will, then all we will be doing
is making desperate sign language from the funeral pyre.
Watson had first become interested in sound recording whilst a member of a
chapter of Hell's Angels, enthused by the psychological effect caused by the
'beating' and 'phasing' of motorbike engines revving up. His main interest since
has been in the field of natural history recordings. McKenzie - the most
frequently seen face of The Hafler Trio - had released his first record at the
age of fourteen and was involved in the setting up of a now well-known sound
magazine. His contact with many religions and schools of philosophy would bring
an authority to the work of The Hafler Trio gained through direct experience.
Part Moolenbeek 's intention in contacting McKenzie and Watson was to make
available information and equipment that had resulted from his past association
with Spridgeon - work that had often been subject to censorship and denial. The
first LP "BANG" - An Open Letter, made full use of Robol's facilities, referring
the listener to "the limitations of silence" and "the non-medical use of
microphones" - subject matter that was to ensure that The Hafler Trio's work
would be received with both admiration and scepticisme.
With subsequent material on the Belgian-based label L.A.Y.L.A.H., the group
concentrated more upon their own research into sound and visual media -
Alternation, Perception and Resistance, Seven Hours Sleep being widely acclaimed
everywhere but in Britain. In early 1986, The Hafler Trio presented a series of
'lectures' in Europe titled Three Ways of Saying Nothing (made available on LP by
Charrm). This was followed by The Sea Org, an 'introductory' guide released by
Touch that included examples of Moolenbeek's 'Sound Painting'- a technique
whereby selected frequencies are directed at carrier materials to give an optical
definition to various research patterns.
The group does not restrict itself to commercially available recordings - work
bas been undertaken on behalf of medical specialists, geologists and
meteorologists amongst others. Present projects with Touch include A Thirsty
Fish and Ignotum Per Ignotius, the latter to be the outcome of
many years of study
into alchemical processes.
When Cabaret Voltaire started, what were you trying to do?
CW: Upset people basically. In any way possible. To infuriate them, to annoy
them generally and to stimulate people. It was such a low period and we just felt
forced to actually go and provoke people as much as possible.
Was there anything in particular that you wanted them to do?
CW: Just get off their arses basically and do something for themselves and listen
to what we were doing. It was a very aggressive time, sort of the pre-punk era
really, when we were helped by enormously. There was a lot of sympathy between
us and a lot of the early punk groups, if not in style and content, then in
feeling behind it - to stimulate people as much as possible - which was the prime
intention of Cabaret Voltaire initially.
Did you set out to do it just through music?
CW: No. Recorded sound was a very immediate thing which was easy to achieve and
relatively easy to get out to people. But, although we had very limited
facilities then, we also used film and literature to a certain extent. We
published one or two things, but we concentrated more and more on sound because
it was a way we all felt comfortable in working. We were also stimulated by a
number of things around us, not necessarily music but the general environment.
We thought it would be nice to involve some things that we were interested in.
Did you find what you started to do at the beginning was direct enough?
CW: Yeah. We could go out and confront people a bit. That was direct enough, it
was very direct and very physical at times.
Did you find it worked better live, or as well on record?
CW: Well, we didn't actually release a record for about four years. And the
reaction between what we put out as a recorded piece as opposed to live was
different. We used the two in totally different contexts really. Live
performance was more of a basic stimulus because of the very basic facilities we
had. And the techniques that we were employing were perhaps more subtle
applications in a controlled environment - of a small recording studio, and it
allowed us to experiment both ways.
Since you didn't have any records out, did you find that your output was confined
to the Sheffield area where you were working?
CW: It was, but it was also the start of the rise in this country of the fanzine
which rapidly spread across the whole country. A distribution of non-commercial
publications which helped a lot and gave a lot of feel to the whole thing.
Through that we discovered other people and we were able to communicate ourselves
through the printed word, which was quite exciting. I mean it was a discovery
for us, it was not a new discovery, but it was something that we were able to
use.
What was your function in the band?
CW: At that stage we were all interested in virtually the same thing, and so
there were no strictly defined roles. It was a corporate purpose - "We the final
product". We just got together and did it basically, by the best means we could.
What instrumentation were you using?
CW: Tape recorders and various bits of home-made, borrowed and stolen equipment
that we sort of scraped together. But initially it was through tape recorders as it was
an interesting medium to work in, and still is. I mean that's as relevant today in
what Andrew and myself are doing with The Hafler Trio as it was ten years ago.
More so, to a greater extent, because we now have better facilities, we realise
more what we want to do and put a far stricter control over it. We were quite
naive obviously in the early days.
Did you view yourselves more as musicians or artists?
CW: Neither. It was just something that we had to do. We never set out to be a
group, or film-makers, or experimentalists, and we certainly weren't interested
in being musicians. By definition we were; I mean I don't know how much you know
about the original Cabaret Voltaire, in the early period of the group going back
to the Dada roots of it. In Zurich in the early part of this century, there were
a group of artists who got together around the time of the First World War with a
specific hatred of the established art forms of die time. They formed
themselves into groups who had various functions. And one of the groups of
people, which varied in numbers at different times, used to have a small room at
the back of a cafe in Zurich which they used for their various forms of
performance art and putting on things in a very anti-establishment way. They
called themselves The Cabaret Voltaire. And we round a certain sympathy with a
lot of their initial ideas and an affinity with their techniques. So strongly,
in fact, that we used the name. It was as much of a tribute as a term of
reference for US.
When did you decide to use a more structured approach in terms of songs?
CW: It was something that we round ourselves moving towards as we refined and
honed down the initial experiments. We round that we were sufficiently interested
to pursue it when the thing started to sell records and we realised we could
communicate to a large number of people. It was just a case of growing up and
refining some of the ideas we had. And some of them actually turned out in
conventional song structures, although we used non-musical techniques and
instruments to achieve that result.
Why did you decide to leave Cabaret Voltaire?
CW: Ah, it's a difficult question. There are a lot of reasons, some of which are
very personal and not really relevant to decisions that are made. But I wanted to
do something else, I wanted to broaden what I was doing in recorded sound. The
framework of Cabaret Voltaire was becoming more and more refined to a particular
area and I wanted to explore areas outside of that. Eventually I decided after a
lot of heart searching that the best way I could do it would be to leave. And
that's one of the reasons, but I mean there were a lot of.. it was very... I mean
I still don't know if I made the right decision or whatever. I still argue about
it within myself and think about it a lot, but I felt at the time I had to do it.
When you left did you think that Cabaret Voltaire were going into a more
song-orientated direction?
CW: I didn't feel as if we were going in any particular direction. I saw other
things which interested me and it wouldn't have been right at the time to try and
move the whole group towards them. At that time they were just ideas and I
didn't know if they would work or not, but I felt a strong desire and compulsion
to explore them. So the direction that they were going was irrelevant really. I
mean I enjoyed what I was doing at the time with them - largely so. There was
never any true direction to Cabaret Voltaire, it was very much the possibilities
of exploring various avenues. It just so happened there were one or two avenues
I wanted to go further up.
Have you talked about working with Richard and Mal again in Cabaret Voltaire?
CW: No, we haven't, no, but I would - that's something that I did express. I
mean I have no argument with them at all and so - yes I would. I mean obviously
things would have to be sorted out, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility at all.
Did you refer to some of the earlier things that you did with tape recorders as
"music" or was it something case that you termed it?
CW: I mean yes and no. I don't think it would benefit or be detrimental to give
it the term "music". Call it what you will really, I wasn't interested in
defining it as anything at the time. It was irrelevant if it was music or not to
me, and still is. They're other people's definitions and pigeonholes which they
will apply no matter what you say.
Do you have a definition yourself of what music is?
CW: Organised sound... I mean I don't really know, what's music to me is not
music to somebody else. It's a definition, it depends on which part of the world
you're in and what you are doing at the time. I wouldn't know what it needs.
You mention organised sound. Would you consider the noise of the car that just
drove by to be music or would it have to be put together in a composition?
CW: I wouldn't know if it was music or not, but it is set in a composition. The
sounds surrounding us at the moment of the car going past, whether they're
deliberate, random, or organised - exist, and that's all they need to do really.
It could well be music, yeah. If it is interesting to you, then yes.
With Cabaret Voltaire how did you want an audience to react or view you when you
played live?
CW: That changed depending on the situation we were in and the actual time slot
we were in. It gradually evolved in that we were trying to interest people in
different aspects of the sounds. It also varied from performance to performance.
I mean sometimes we used films and created a soundtrack to a film as we were
actually playing. So at that point we obviously wanted people to listen and
watch. Other times we wanted to physically move people, actually try and make them
dance.
Why did you decide to use tape recorders instead of conventional instruments?
CW: That goes back to the very early days when it was just tape recorders. It
was such a powerful instrument to me and it was the instrument I learned on.
It's such an immensely powerful and creative instrument. And it was one of the ones that I knew best, and
I'm still exploring the possibilities and the
influences it has. So it was a conventional instrument to me. I mean I have
dabbled with playing a keyboard, but only in a very crude sense. I was simply
interested in the sounds that it could generate, more so than using it as an
instrument. Something I've certainly, with Andrew, got more interested in the use
of in the past two or three years is the actual manipulation of live recordings.
But at that time I was very interested in actually taking set pieces off the TV
and manipulating them in a very traditional sense, in the Burroughs cut-up sense
almost, to reveal various hidden sides of things and to reveal the pure aspects
of things. So, round sound played an important part. I think the emphasis has
changed now, I'm more interested in live, natural sounds and the ambiences
associated with those - acoustics in particular.
How important is it for you to have your music heard by other people?
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I did my first tape recording in 1964, I'm trying right now to remember the exact circumstances of what I made my first tape recording of. I remember who it was of, but I can't remember why I was carrying a tape recorder around with me that day or even why I had gone out and bought one. I think it all started because I was trying to do a book. A friend had written me a note saying that everybody we knew was writing a book, so that made me want to keep up and do one too. So I bought that tape recorder and I taped the most interesting person I knew at the time, Ondine, for a whole day. I was curious about all these new people I was meeting who could stay up for weeks at a time without ever going to sleep. I thought, 'These people are so imaginative. I just want to know what they do, why they're so imaginative and creative, talking all the time, always busy, full.' |
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CW: Well, that's one of the primary fonctions, to actually make it available to as wide a cross section as possible. It's vital to the survival of it. Again, with particular regard to The Hafler Trio, a lot of the results of what we do depends on feedback from people, and we use that as an intrinsic part of the recordings as well. But it bas always been important. There's no point in making records unless people are going to hear them. How important is something like radio airplay to get that across? CW: Well, obviously very important, but there are so many forms. It comes in the form of a national radio station, local stations, independent ones and pirate ones - which are the most interesting because of the attraction of anything that's of a clandestine nature. I think radio is a grossly overlooked medium in general and is abused so much simply for music. I think principally it takes more imagination to listen to the radio than it does to watch TV. I'm certainly interested in what the imagination does to recorded sound and how people perceive it and construct their own images to go along with the radio pictures. I find it more stimulating generally than television in that respect. What effects can frequencies have on a person ? CW: They have an effect every second of your life. Different frequencies used in combinafion with each other have a varicty of effects; the basic level of use for suppression - sonic cannons and actual use in physical aggression - to creating quite pleasant effects on people. I mean there are obvious examples of usage of different frequencies just to create an effect. Like in Vietnam, the use of loudspeakers and things, a sort of general, physical control. Through the power of broadcasting as well. Andrew McKenzie enters. Are all these consciously heard by a person? CW: Well, no, that's the point of some of them. You can feel sound just as much as you can hear it. There's a girl who bas just joined one of the London orchestras as a timpani player who is stone deaf. There was a London radio programme on which she described the effect of how she can actually play. She feels the different frequencies through different parts of her body. The high frequencies actually resonate through the bones of the lower forearms, the lower frequencies resonate in the legs and the tibia and fabula. She's using the whole body as an acoustic receptacle, as an acoustic lens. Andrew: It's part of what we are concerned with now, it's a perfect illustration of the way that sound can be used and the way that sound is all around everybody. And there's no escaping from it. It's not something you dissect in a laboratory because it's part of you. CW: It's affecting us now, it's affecting the reactions you make to certain things. Again, back to the car. Chris Watson exits. Could you explain the relationship between The Hafler Trio and Robol Sound Recordings? Andrew: Well, Chris and I re-met about six months after he left Cabaret Voltaire. I had actually met him a long time ago when Cabaret Voltaire was still a relatively obscure group. When Chris left Sheffield he was out of the habit of recording stuff but it was still something that be wanted to do. So we started mucking about and doing experiments but not with the idea of releasing it at all. We eventually did two radio programmes which subsequently went to quite a number of countries all over the world. Through this we came into contact with Dr. Edward Moolenbeek - the third member of The Hafler Trio. He's a professor of acoustics who writes papers and gives lectures, and is basically a complete 'no compromise' person which attracted us immediately. He said that he had heard some of the stuff that we were doing and said, "You might be interested in these..." and sent us over photocopies of some fragments of Spridgeon's work. It was amazing. Somebody had been doing the same sort of things that we do, but thirty or forty years ago. And Robol, through Edward, provided equipment and encouragement and it grew from there. We are phasing out being involved with Robol because they are asking us to do things that would take up too much time. It wouldn't be worth our while to cut down our field research to the point where it became too specialised. Robol is a non-profit making organisation, but they do research for the Swedish government which is an area best left to them - as there's too much pressure from the party sponsoring the research for there to be necessary objectivity. But it bas been quite good, a very fluid situation. They've never leaned on us and we've never really demanded anything from them. We've always been fairly independent of them. They've supplied things and we've publicly acknowledged that we are grateful to them. Who was Robert Spridgeon? Andrew: I haven't read all the things that he's done or know all that much about the man himself because his writings are so hard to get hold of. But he was a crucial figure in the field of sound research who did mainly theoretical explorations in the area. He always insisted that sound should have a practical application and never be taken passively. People are always influenced by sound, but in very subtle ways. Spridgeon recognised that it was possible to measure and control these influences and that many other cultures had recognised this in the past. But he would be provocative in a very obvious way. He'd turn up to do a lecture and then slag off all the people who came to it just for coming. But he would still give them the germ of his ideas, so at the end there would be a handful of people who were genuinely interested. He was a very forthright person who didn't suffer fools gladly. He enjoyed being called an elitist. So we have been influenced by him, used ideas that we've come into contact with and developed them from there. We've gone into the practical aspects of the things that would've been impossible in Spridgeon's lifetime. He died in 1963, but his son - also called Robert, still runs Robol. We still have sporadic contact with him but I can't help feeling sometimes that his approach to the whole idea is a little different to what his father would have wanted. He seems a little too ready to take on projects and think about their implications later. What is Edward Moolenbeek's relationship with the group? Andrew: He comes over to England every now and then and we work on things together. Also, he sends us a lot of things by post that he's round. So he is an integral part of the unit. Vital. We hope to be able to use his considerable artistic powers in the near future. What have been the most interesting projects in research that you've worked on recently? Andrew: Probably the most interesting is a recent development in audio processing which involves a very sophisticated form of equalisation expansion and harmonic / temporal placement. This machine can give you any acoustic you like merely by telling it the co-ordinates of the room. So you can have the acoustics of the Taj Mahal inside a matchbox or wineglass. It's a completely new dimension. But the revolutionary part of it comes with the output - which is ambisonic. Inside this is a special circuitry extra to the ambisonic which gives height information. The human brain is incapable of perceiving height, so this is a very clever perceptual illusion. If you have a noise coming from above you, you must turn your head upwards to 'read' where it is coming from, but this machine will actually give you this information. Of course, this is very much in its infancy, but I think we're only the fourth people to use it in this country. If that gets into a lot of recording studios, you'll actually hear a giant leap in terms of the way people approach thinking about sound. It means that you don't have to think about how it sounds, you can actually control it. You don't have to get a studio with a live area and a dead area. Also, we have been working on some recording linked with public application which should see the light of day very soon. They concern something called 'feedback loop impression traits'. These make use of the seven second delay between experience and memory. A sound is generated and followed by 'physical' noise - not necessarily very loud mind you - which travels through the nervous system and coincides with the previous information. Therefore, this can lead to information being intelligible only at the specific point in time and no other. There is no gap between thinking about and 'understanding' - in the fullest sense of the word. Another aspect of this is the negative and positive aspects of temporary threshold shift utilisation. In this, you make the listener temporarily deaf to one or more of the frequencies depending on playback volume and speaker elasticity and position. The positive effect means that the frequencies are retained after they stop on the recording, thereby being superimposed over the proceeding and subsequent sounds. This effect varies with the variable I mentioned before so that different listeners receive different information entirely. What are some of the differences between sound and acoustics? Andrew: Acoustics are the whole effect of sound, whereas sound can be in any acoustic. Acoustics are the study of environmental factors as well, whereas sound is what comes out of the instrument, synthesizer, processor or whatever. Would you consider your first record "'Bang" - an open letter', to be a "music" record? Andrew: We are far more interested in dealing with the mind's aspect of things rather than just the entertainment value. You can be entertained by information in the same way that you can be entertained by anything else, the entertainment is like a side issue. We are far more interested in providing information that they can perhaps pick up on and use for entertainment purposes or scientific purposes or whatever. It's a much wider field than just putting on a record and being able to dance to it. The difference between us and experimental musicians is that we can actually take that record and tell you exactly why each and every single sound was in such an order and how it was treated. Whereas somebody who is an experimental musician might say, "Well, it was complete chance, it was a nice coincidence". With us, coincidence comes into it a lot but we actually use it, edit it and take out all the uninteresting bits. It's not a stream of consciousness thing, it's a very controlled product. Some of the things happening within 'experimental music' are involved in the same sort of areas. Stockhausen dabbled in some of the areas we've done, but we investigate it as a pure phenomenon - not a side issue. We're not trying to make a round point in terms of political, social or ideological issues. We're more interested in pure ideas; actually making somebody get off their arse and say, "My God, this record I've been listening to for ages and ages can be used", or, "There's a practical aspect to sound and I'll be much more careful what I listen to in the future", or, "Ultra-sound might not be a good idea", or, "Sticking my head in a bin and getting deaf might not be a good idea". I would hope people would be much more selective. Why is that? Andrew: Because there is so much sound. It's continual bombardment. In restaurants, in stores, however inconsequential it might seem at the time, sound is actually having some influence on what we are doing. And it's a question of saying, "I'm actually going to listen to it now, I'm not going to sit and accept everything that people throw at me", which is much more of a direct continuation of what Cabaret Voltaire was about in the early days anyway. It was just basically to get underneath people's skin and make them think, even if it was just for a second. Have you studied the use of subliminals very much? Andrew: We did go into that in a very technical way and actually tried to see if it would work, but it's not as effective as people might think. A lot of the sting has been out of their usage because you can now go and buy subliminal cassettes for stopping smoking or something like that. People know that the sound is going to influence them but they don't know that everything else is doing it as well. Subliminals are much more effective when presented with an image, the linking of sound with image. The image can distract from the sound, so the sound goes in, or it can be the other way round. You can show a really gripping film sequence and have a subliminal soundtrack which nobody will notice at the time, or you can have very dramatic music and very opaque visual. Do people actually recall and remember subliminal messages? Andrew: It's not as specific as people think. It's very powerful, but not in a direct sense. You can encourage people to do things, but you can't bring them to the pool and make them drink. You can't say, "You will buy an ice cream" - that won't work. But you can say "Perhaps it would be a good idea if you went and bought some ice cream". You can insinuate in much the same way as most of the media does anyway. They did try something a long time ago in America where every fourteenth frame was a single frame of "You will buy an ice cream", and at the interval quite a few people did actually buy ice cream. But the reason we abandones it was because basically there was not much creative use for it other than for stopping smoking and that kind of thing. Is there any way to gauge how well subliminals have worked? Andrew: You can do various experiment and that is why it comes back to feedback -just seeing and checking people's reactions which can be an interesting little project to do. But you actually create subliminals unconsciously which is probably a more interesting area. They are very hard to define because you have no control at the time with what's happening. Have you done much experimentation with ultra-sound? Andrew: Ultra-sound is a very well researched field. It's something that hasn't progressed to the stage where it could actually be encoded properly on to a record, so there's no immediate danger of anyone putting out a record that can kill people, for instance. The French developed a sound cannon in the 1930's which was an ultra-sound cannon, literally a tank with a bloody great big speaker on it. But they round they couldn't direct the ultra-sound. The frequency that's most dangerous to life is 7 Hertz, and the man who first round out about this died finding out about it. He was in the studio and generated 7 Hertz and it literally curdled his insides. The dangerous thing about increasing public transport and reliance on any kind of motor appliance is they generate ultra-sound at very low levels which is why people get travel sick - it curdles their insides to a very slight degree. Obviously it's not a constant tone, as a bus or car speeds up and down it varies the level. Travel sickness is the thin end of the wedge. It could conceivably, with a country that were prepared to put enough money into it, turn into a formidable weapon. But they're not really interested in that, they're more interested in jamming signals that you get on shortwave radio - like 'The Woodpecker' that the Russians are generating at the moment. It's really loud because it's such a strong signal. That's where all the energy of the military response is going at the moment - micro-sounds as weapons. There are thousands of radio waves just flying around and it's only now that people are realising that these can actually hurt people. Do you think people will stars using them in negative ways? Andrew: It's inevitable. Whatever anybody comes up with, there will always be people that will use things in negative ways. You can't have one without the other really. It's a known fact that you can cure cancer with ultra-sound, but the people in power are just using it for harmful purposes. If you cured cancer, all the nursing homes would go out of business overnight. If somebody is doing something, you have to see who that benefits. If somebody is letting old people die in nursing homes, to whose use is that? Obviously it generates a lot of money, so why not keep the patients there? Like the old thing about vitamin C curing colds, I mean it's complete rubbish. It's vitamin A that does it. But they're not going to say that because they want people to have colds so they will keep buying vitamin C and other cold medicines. How does The Hafler Trio relate with most music groups? Andrew: I would like to think that we are in some way quite different to most of the other people in groups because we are not really interested in the sort of things that most other people are interested in. Most of their influences lie in very musical fields even though most of the people would probably deny it. Whereas we are involved in sound - which only includes a little bit of music. I think that there is a wider application and a greater fortune in that kind of research. Do you have a set of standards for what music should contain? Andrew: My definition of music is just organised sound. The word music has just been used so many times that no-one really knows what it means anymore anyway. Sound and music were originally used for ritual purposes - it had a function. And that's what we are trying to get back to. The fact of actually using sound and doing something with it, rather than just sitting back and going, "This is really cosmic man, pass the joint", and just accepting it. So that you can actually do something with it. People tend to be subjecting their lives to music, whereas they should be subjecting music to their lives. It's very depressing once you get into it that people can't see the wider aspect of it. Why can't they? Andrew: Because it requires effort. People are very lazy. I think intrinsically people have been trained to be lazy. They can sit in front of the television and vegetate all afternoon if they want to, as many people now do. When television first came out, it was a really amazing thing that somebody had a television, somehow it was more special and somehow people were far more alive to the possibilities of it. Whereas now there's this complete barrage of information on all levels. And it's a big step to say, "Right, well I'm not going to listen to all that, I'm actually going to pursue this". Or, "This is interesting, this isn't". Rather than just watching the music channel and saying, "That was a good video, that wasn't". Do you feel The Hafler Trio is responsible for the interpretation that other people might have of your work? Andrew: A very interesting question because when we finally decided to release some material to the general public, Chris was worried about this - and this was one of the areas that depressed him during his time with Cabaret Voltaire - control over the product. So we decided to look at this problem with an eye to solving it to our advantage. We did the necessary research and found, or should I say realised, that there are a lot of parameters which can be controlled, if only the effort is made to use this at the outset. The fact that playback situations are inevitably different from one another is one very good example. This is called the acoustic reflex. This name is given to the total time taken for a sound generated to return to it's original point in space by means of reflection from whatever surfaces are in the room. We make use of this in certain experiments by treating the sounds with override analogue directors, so that depending on the type of room and the relation of the speakers, each person can hear almost a totally different recording due to the delicately balanced phase relationships of the sounds which cancel various elements out at different points. This, of course, makes something like installation or soundtrack work so appealing as the variables can be controlled to a much larger extent and many more interesting effects unique to that situation can be created. All these reasons make it possible and absolutely necessary for us to collect as much information about the place, situation etc. of playback as possible. So the uses and interpretations can be narrowed down to such an extent that what is put out always contains an 'x' you wish to have communicated - you can depend on that, but the shades of meaning end up being altered to suit each individual recipient. We have not as yet in all our work and research encountered any completely wrong interpretation of our work. |