- Do you think music and the heart are connected?- Of course just like the heart and the mind are connected.
An Artist Profile and Exclusive Interview
Artist: e.k.g. (electro-kardo-gram)
Name: Giordan BattaglinLocation: Toronto, Canada.
Birthday: November 30, 1983
Position: DJ/Producer/Audiophile
Genre: Experimental / Minimalist / Techno
Certification: AAS degree in music production + recordingWebsite: http://www.ekg.podomatic.com/
Introduction
We have interviewed an independent local DJ and techno producer in order to give insight and inspiration into the minds of other emerging artists in Toronto. e.k.g. describes himself as "a purveyor of dark yet pleasingly filthy music; a fabricator of genreless soundscaping." His style is complimented by a minimal techno mind trip, blended with a funky yet skanky electro that adds strange fitting rhythms to his delightfully dark melodies. His sporadic and subtle tempos can only be described as unrelenting pulses of the unknown, that takes the audacious listener into unfamiliar territory all together.
What is it about music that inspired you to produce it yourself?
Sound design: Its sounds that are being manufactured or sampled. It has a different control and affects people in a different way. If you’re working with the same sound, the sound can evolve and it can change. You can throw effects on a guitar, but to take a sound and have it morph and still be the same thing, thats sound design. I love playing with sound and getting ideas to tweak something or to get a sound to just keep evolving or changing. There is new ground to be broken all the time.
Artistic creation is being in the moment and questioning that moment.
I always question. For example... writers: Writers write most of the book and go back and they edit. When you go back and edit, you are basically questioning the state of mind that you’re in. Most of it is fine tuning and making it flow, or giving it continuity. Sometimes you edit out your true emotion right? So you’re kind of centering yourself that way. You’ve got to keep the balance. It’s always that state of mind that you’re in at that moment.
Cristina of Green Splat - When I’m really inspired, it’s a psychological thing. It could be a movie I saw. It could be a character. It could be somebody I encountered at work. It can be an idea and I just completely dominoe.
How would you describe your genre?
The best comment I ever got, was that someone told me my music was genreless. That was my proudest moment, because that’s how I try and come across.
Everything has its own artistic merit. Within each Genre, there is something good in that genre. The moment you start defining the genre is the moment you start creating limitations, and boundaries are set, because then it’s not commercially viable. Art should not have to fit within the commercial realm or the marketable realm. Like: It’s a good piece of art, but it’s not marketable? Whatever, its still a good piece of art!
When things come together, it’s all layers, art is always layers. I love music, I love art, and I love photography. There are so many different ways to express myself without words. When a piece of art can be perceived by anyone for whatever they want. Everyone has a different idea, and a different interpretation.
Does your music have a subject? What is it?
Subject is more like emotion in a way, it’s an individual experience.
How does your intellect stimulate your artistic spirit, or do you think they are one in the same?
Yes definitely. What’s connecting my conscious mind and my unconscious mind is the same thing. The body is just the physical. I like pretending I’m connected to the infinite. "Everything is an illusion and life is just how you perceive it”
How does the evolution of your music – the greater experimentation, the fall into minimal, the expansion of music affect you psychologically?
In minimal there is definitely more subtly. There is a lot more focus on 'in-between' space. The slower, the more area there is to work in a song. The more space there is, the more absorption you can get from a song. Music affects me on such a deep level; I don’t want to just absorb it, I want to give it back. I get like mood swings, but it’s how I think, but it’s not really moods though, more like wavelengths. I’m tangents all over the place. A mix, a hyper mix, spastic.
Do you feel your music touches base with the intangible?
Yes. All sound is intangible, and feelings are intangible, and a state of mind is completely intangible. It’s everywhere, emotions, chemical reactions.Hanna - It’s the intangible, it’s what’s there but what’s not.
Cristina - Everything I write, I just feel what I write. Everything I play isn’t by notes because I actually don’t even know notes, so I just memorize. So everything I see is a pattern, like a visual math. It’s inherent math in a sense. Every element within it can be defined, when it’s all combined its indefinable. I think the intangible is like air, you can’t touch it, and you can’t capture it. It’s just everywhere.
e.k.g. - When you say you make music it goes by what you’re feeling, that’s the intangible right there, it’s the emotion. It’s basically the chemical reaction of how you perceive everything. It’s like you can let loose and not have to worry. That’s what makes life living sometimes. It’s kind of a surreal experience. It’s not explainable. Its total physical, spiritual, psychological. It’s like a spiritual high. It’s connecting. It’s the power you can’t buy.
Do you think music provides a potential impact for social change?
There is not THE way but it's YOUR way and EVERYONES way. It’s all contextual. Everything is just energy condensed to a slow vibration, and matter is just all energy essentially. It’s all experienced on a subjective kind of level. I believe in the collective conscious, we are all connected in a sense.
Conclusion
Art thrives off influence and music is art in its pure form. Music is essentially a tool that can demonstrate not only how an art form and the individual can be connected, but how all individuals can be connected through that art form. Music has an enormous capacity for influence; it both grows and expands with time, and can become fixed in that time. It can influence a collective culture, evolving as a connection of our social and instinctual humanity. It involves a creative free flowing intuition where individual limitations and cultural restrictions are let go, allowing for all grounds to be broken. - Altered (i)"Without music, human existence would be a mistake.”- Frederich Nietzsche
Contributing Writer: Chris DeRubeis
Questions and Interview by: Hanna
e.k.g.'s bookings and sound samples
http://www.ekg.podomatic.com/
