aaamusic | On 10, Jun 2012

AAAmusic chats with Forss, here’s what we discovered!

AAAmusic: How did you get involved with doing an App for the ipad?

I first met Leonhard and Marcel a couple of years ago at a festival/ convention/ art forum called Schmiede with a lot of interesting artists, graphic designers and musicians in one place. After meeting them it turned out that Leonhard was really into my old album, Soulhack. We started talking about this project I was working on, Ecclesia, which did not have a name at that time. I played one of the few tracks I had. I think both of them really liked it and could relate to it. We connected there on audiovisual level and started thinking about how to package and release the music.

It wasn’t until the iPad came out on the market that we realized it was the perfect medium for Ecclesia, and so we set out to create the app…

 

AAAmusic: You take influences from church music, but how do you make it your own?

 

The sampler is my instrument and my way of working is rather unusual in that I fragment all my sounds quite heavily and then puzzle them back together. In this process I can achieve exactly what I want, which is a blend or synthesis of old and new – in this case the ambience of the ‘ancient‘ church mixed with the rather controlled, clean feel of modern electronic music.

 

AAAmusic:  What genres do you think most describe the music you make?

 

I don’t know that there’s any genre that can fully describe the music, to be honest. It borrows beats from the London garage/dubstep/broken beats scene, but at the end of the day it doesn’t quite sound like any of those genres.

 

AAAmusic: Do you think there is a new market for music apps?

 

Definitely. I think we’ll see a lot of interesting experimentation with music apps in the coming years. Pretty exciting times!

 

AAAmusic: What computer software do you use to create your tracks?

 

I mainly use Ableton Live and various wave editors. For organizing my samples I use Audiofinder.

 

AAAmusic:  How do you think graphic design relates to your music?

 

I’ve always loved graphic & motion design and I’ve always wanted to bring it closer to my music. I’d say my music is pretty cinematic, and I can easily imagine visuals when listening to it. With Ecclesia I’ve finally been able to bring the two together in a bigger way which feels great.

 

AAAmusic: How would you produce your music to a live Audience?

 

Ecclesia is primarily a sort of installation. The idea is that the iPad app can also run in a physical space. We have constructed a special projection surface and physical interface for this purpose; and the plan is to bring it to various media arts festivals and gallery spaces throughout the year. So there isn’t really a ‘live‘ version of the project…

 

AAAmusic: Who would you most like to work with on a Track?

I’ve done the music all by myself. The visual part came later, and there was a collaboration to bring the music, visuals and ambient sounds together in the end. Aside from that, I love working with my mixing engineer Mark Bihler and mastering engineer Bo Kondren on finalizing the tracks.

 

AAAmusic: Have you thought about branching out into film music?

 

Although I’d say my music is very cinematic and I wouldn’t mind if it got used in a film production I’ve never considered actually doing music for a film, at least not yet!

 

Daniel Cairns