Interview: Pain Jerk
You’re due to play a few shows over here in the UK very soon, including a performance at this year’s Tusk Festival. How do you find playing in the UK?
I will participate in LUFF 2012 held in Switzerland in mid-October, and I was actually going to tour afterwards, but instead the plan is front-loaded and I will participate to TUSK Festival 2012. In fact, I was asked to participate in TUSK Fest last year, too, but couldn’t make it due to my circumstances last year. I will also play as a special guest in EXTREME DUET TAG MESS ATTACK with Russell Haswell in Nottingham. I just began a new project with Russell – we have much in common in our viewpoints about sound.
Your music is often associated with a high level of volume and intensity. Why do these conditions appeal to you?
HIGH-LEVEL (PEAK-LEVEL) OF VOLUME and INTENSITY is important to me because the electronic sound must not be castrated. It has great potential, from super low-frequency to super high-frequency, whether by the tuning of the PA speakers or using a sine wave. Sound is equal to a weapon. Though the sound is very loud, there is no meaning. The sound should so loud that it becomes nonsense. The situation of a sound that is so terribly loud as to abolish all meaning is good.
Is there any particular environment that you find works best for making your music?
Unfortunately there is not the good environment. The equipment to produce is never enough – that is the reason I have to do all my work with old equipment in my small room.
In recent years I’ve used a laptop and some analogue gear, mainly. However, I do not limit the instruments I use. It may be said that trial & error is an experiment too. Many past works were produced in using a live electronic set-up which only I could operate. A little while ago I did a live performance using EMS AKS. I took the voice of a brutal vocalist (as known as Endon) in EMS and I modulated and processed it and turned it into a massive explosion, just using it a as a tool. By the way, I understand the meaning when you say ‘noise’, but I do not think that I make noise. I make sounds and the variations of them. It may be generally a bit too brutal, but energy surely exists there.
Your new collaboration with Anla Courtis is soon to be released. How was the experience of collaborating with Anla?
Anla participated in the same festival as me in Fukuoka City, Feb 2011. He gave a very unique performance on the stage, and was a very nice guy off stage. He sent me various materials (data error, guitar sound, short wave radio and field recording) which I added to afterwards. It is interesting that collaboration works differently when the works goes between partners, because things other than self-will intervene.
What is different about the way you work in collaboration projects, and the way you work when you play solo?
The will of another person does not exist in solo work.
What’s next for your music?
I have already mentioned it in the past, but it’s called POST-MUSIC activity. Concept such as progress and degeneration do not exist there. I do not make compositions using the methods of normal music. All music has already been encoded. Many people make categories and tend to like to stay there, and it is a ridiculous thing. Do not worship made authority. You must not believe the reviews that the music journalists write. It disturbs the sensitivity that you should originally have. I continue live performances frequently because I want you to experience live-sound energy directly. I also get feedback from there, to help me towards the next step.
Tusk Festival website – http://tuskfestival.com
