All Are Syllables Of The Great Tongue is out now!
Image: Lekhena Porter.
Narrm-based queer experimental electronic sound and visual artist PAPAPHILIA has released the visual for her latest release, All Are Syllables Of The Great Tongue. To celebrate the release, the artist has shared with MILKY five 'unconventional' tools she uses whilst making music.
This Saturday, PAPAPHILIA will host an exclusive launch In collaboration with Athletica at The Red Rattler. The launch will also feature Papaphilia, Isa, E3p, Bayang (tha Bushranger), Sallvage and Index.
PLAY
When I start making tracks, I never have an idea of what I am making - there’s no beat or melody that I have in mind that drives the process, I just start making by experimenting and playing. Having a sense of ease around what will come to be at the end of my process is wonderful, because you aren’t judging what comes out when you’re just stuffing around. Let stuffing around happen - do weird shit, record it, listen back, and make the most of navigating new terrain without a goal in mind - just see what comes out and where you land.
INHERITED GEAR AND THE ROLE OF CHANCE
Sampling is a key tool in my practice and I extend this concept as far as I can across all elements in my music. One crucial piece of gear I have been using for years is an Electribe EA-1 sequencer that I bought from some guy in London which came loaded with patterns. Rather than erase everything and start from scratch, I figured I’d use what was there as a starting point, so I’ve been deprogramming, rearranging, and sculpting the waveform parameters of what’s there.
Sometimes the end result is far removed from what was on there originally, sometimes the pattern doesn’t need adjusting at all: I’m purely ganking it and putting it into a new context with my other instruments. But I don’t see much of a difference between creating a melody - which is typically an arrangements of notes we already know well - into a pattern, and creating from a body of sounds that are laid out in a pattern and rearranging that. It’s all the same.
TRAWLING - THE BEGINNING OF SAMPLING
Trawling for music through any form of archive is a pastime I love having the time to do. Before the internet, I was hitting up libraries for CDs and tapes that I could find weird snippets of sounds from. When YouTube dropped life changed forever - an endless sound archive managed by communities located all over the world - fuck me up, it’s a wet dream. Now we have Soundcloud for remixes, Spotify has a great recommendation algorithm - there’s now a variety of options for systems and methods that shape the rabbithole you dive down. Listening broadly also influences where my music production goes, and the search for samples goes hand in hand for the search for sound influences.
CREATING SAMPLE HARMONICS
The most delectable part of the process for me is loading my SP404 sampler and sitting down with it, perhaps running the signal through a chain of effects, and just mashing samples together to see what kind of sounds come out of the clash. When I used to play with Gurner this was what we’d spend hours doing: getting stoned and jamming with samples. Every now and then you hit a blend between samples that is just so juicy you feel like you finally understand what God possibly is.
FEEDBACK - AS IN SHARING
The only way you’re going to feel comfortable releasing your music to the world without having a huge panic attack is to share it to mates, get feedback, get insight into how it makes them feel. Detaching from your work is important. You make it, you put it into the world to share it, and people then get to create their attachments to it, the work gathers its own life beyond you… that’s how it goes. Nothing is going to help you develop your work better than having outside eyes on it and getting a new perspective.
All Are Syllables Of The Great Tongue is out now!