JOHN LAKVEET (INTERVIEW)

John Lakveet is an imaginative renovator of Space Sequencer Music that became famous specially thanks to his album "Sequentiagite". Energy, warmth and sensibility would perhaps be the most adequate words to refer to his music.



When did you discover electronic music?

"I cannot precisely pinpoint that because when I started liking music, I couldn't discern whether it was electronic or otherwise, but my oldest memory could go back to the seventies with bands of the time."

How did your vocation as a composer begin?

"There was a piano at home, so that my sisters could study their careers as performers. I used to spend the afternoons playing and enjoying the combination of notes, their repetition, yet I missed the fact of having further elements available to interrelate them, that is to say, I noticed the lack of technology to do what occurred to me, without being really aware of that."

What does electronic music have for you, as a listener and as a composer, that acoustic music does not have?

"The search for different timbres, unreal, in strange shades, and the possibility of experimentation without strictures."

Do you think that the electronic medium offers more freedom to the artist than the acoustic one?

"Undoubtedly. The freedom of sound that electronics offers to the artist is laudable, and the best thing is the fact that you can have it in your studio at home and create there with no need of depending on a person for each instrumental sound."

How do you see the debate between the defenders of analogic sound as opposed to those in favor of digital sound? As a synthesist, do you feel inclined towards either one of these trends? Do you think that both can coexist in a quite complementary form under one same artistic scheme?

"I am not interested in debates. I feel sound as something global. Attending to Plato's ideas, every sound already exists, the difference only depends on the element generating them. I don't particularly care whether a sound is anlogic or digital, provided I can manipulate it according to my needs and use it the moment I choose to do so. Personally, analogic sound awakens in me memories of the great historical moments of the music done with this kind of synthesis, but no more than that. The co-existence is undeniable, and enriching, and it is precisely there where the freedom of the author lies, as he can enhance to a greater or lesser extent each one of these systems of generation of sound. The basic thing for me is the sound and the use I can do of it."

In "Sequentiagite", your first solo album, there appears to be an intense emotional weigh to be perceived by the listener. Do you think that feelings play an important role in your music?



"Certainly! Yet more than feelings, we would rather refer to perceptions."

Or do your creative processes respond to more cerebral approaches?

"Cerebral approaches appear when the language is already shaped, when I can clearly see what I want to outline and how. It is then when the intentional resources appear."

Do you mentally relate your music to stories or images? 

"In some occasions, yes. But what I really am interested in is to surprise myself with the music per se."

When you compose, do you try to describe an idea with music, one that could be translated into a tale, a painting or perhaps even a film?

"It also depends on the kind of style I execute."

Or on the contrary, in your mind. do your compositions always have a strictrly sonic stance?

"I have no strictures in that, therefore the ambivalence of both options is compatible in my sounds and music."

What do you think of the current panorama of electronic music? Do you think that the diversification of the new trends that appeared in the 1960s and the 1970s has become a fake avantgarde thus hindering the progress of the most innovative areas of electronic music, sucha s for instance the one that tends to be labelled as "Space Music"?

"Yes, it is sadly so. Although it also is true that in my quest in search for my own language I am some kind of "anchorite", aside from the newest, or the new trends, so I don't have clear criteria about what happens outside. For me, all sounds and their structure constitute an intimate experience, alien to the outside, which introduces me to a vast world of connotations, at times colossal, at other times intimate."

Tell us about "Epikus", your new album. In it you continue with a line similar to that of "Sequentiagite". Do you think that your solo style is well reflected in these two albums? Or are there any aspects of yours which are little known in your solo work?

"When I started with "Epikus", I didn't know what I was in for. In it I have learned a lot. The result will even appear to be rough in some aspects, yet now, then, after the work, I believe I succeeded in taking the helm and redress the route I was mistakenly taking. In all senses, "Epikus" has been an epic task for me in its composition, in the masterization and in the graphic design: I want to thank Jaume Fuentes from Estudios Parsifal the task of mastering the entire "Epikus" project. As I understand this, he comprehended the sense and the essence of the project, providing it with the ideal sonority: And I also owe a debt of gratitude to Reivax, for the patience and professional skill shown in the graphic design."

"I am already working on what could be defined as the end of a stage, which in broad traits I would define as sequential. My ambitious next project will try to culminate this cycle., which already began with my first works, with Technoayuda or At-Mooss, flirting with various styles that have shaped my musical language."

(Interview conducted by Jorge Munnshe)

More info here (official website):

http://www.johnlakveet.com/





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