12 questions for SOMATIC RESPONSES
The Welsh brothers Paul and John Healy have a history producing and releasing electronic music that spans decades and crosses genres. Their latest master piece is the 6 track EP ‘The Dogma of Function’ and is yet another celebration of their hard edged and uncompromising style which balances somewhere between somber IDM and uplifting break core. We asked them our famous 12 questions.
1. What drives you to create music? What do you seek to achieve with it?
It’s the search for new sounds and to discover those elusive “Sounds Never Seen” along with the desire to break those dogmatic sequences. We never set out to be different or create our own sound but this has grown from day one and something that we are really proud of. We don’t wish to achieve anything except making ourselves happy, it’s an added bonus if anyone also enjoys what we do, we’ve always had that philosophy and it’s what drives us.
2. How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard music before?
A total racket with way too much going on… OR it’s how we wish to be heard. I’ve never sat down and analyzed our sound that much to be honest. But we do try to push sonic boundaries as much as possible as we are useless at producing repetitive music, as we must both have short attention spans.
3. Which album do you wish you had made?
None as we don’t think in that way, there are MANY LPs that we enjoy but as an artist we feel it’s unhealthy to think in such a way. We’re happy to focus and what we do and appreciate the music that we listen to.
4. If music is a form of therapy, what is it healing in you?
We’re sure that it’s an escapism of sorts, a connection to our sub conscious rather than a cognitive and preset process – our best material is written when we’re not thinking and “in the zone” if you like. That in itself is it’s own therapy, unsure if it’s healing us but it’s certainly a living part of us that we must take care of, like any other part of our physical or mental well being.
5. If you could use one image to represent the intention of your work and burn it into your audience’s heads, what would this image be?
That image would be some sort of shape-shifting non descript mass, as our intention is always developing and moving forward. We’d let the listener decide…
6. What do you consider your best piece of work yet? And why?
We’ve released so much material it’s impossible to say. We’re always really proud of EACH release, however, once a project is complete we move on… we love them all (as if each were a child). We’re always happy with the last release as it showcases what we feel & think at that point in time as well as new gear, composition techniques or even a new plug-in.
7. What is your sentiment about the current music scene, and how is it helping with the state of the world?
In a word, fractured and being more and more commercialized as time progresses. It seems that more stock is placed in the production quality of a track over its content, ideas and sounds which to be frank is the polar opposite of our music. As for commercialization / capitalism, this is hardly helping the world is it, quite the opposite really. However, if ANY music makes you happy or helps you emotional then we’re all for it.
8. How would you describe ERRORGRID in your own words? What is it to you?
ERRORGRID is relatively new to us but we love its content, each release is it’s own entity which deserves it’s own space and respect. ERRORGRID to us is: Intense / Detailed / Passionate / Focused.
9. When do you consider a piece of music finished and ready for others to hear?
Once we’ve bounced the final composition it’s done, we don’t revisit projects or spend DAYS over producing / mastering them. It’s part of our workflow and we’ve pretty much always worked this way - it’s probably out of fashion these days but we’re happy with that.
10. How much importance do you put into your tools?
There is a very high degree of importance mainly due to the creative influence they can bring, without them then we’d be banging on tins and no one really wants to hear that. However, having the right tools is more important than have a vast array of modular / poly-synth / drum machines, etc..
11. What is the one piece of equipment you will never part with?
That’s a hard one to answer, so it’ll have to be broken down into 3 parts:
1 – DAW: Logic Pro, it’s our backbone and without it we couldn’t write anything that sounds like SR, we’ve tried Abelton which is fun but lacks the complexity and flexibility that Logic provides. Although we’d love to give Max a bash one day.
2 – Modular rig: the flexibility and total tactile nature of modular synths is addictive and highly rewarding.
3 – Hardware synth: It’s a split between the ASM Hydrasynth coupled with an Elektron Model:Cycles. The Hydra is so deep and a really creative sound design tool and a true joy to patch and it sounds Sexy AF, whilst Cycles is instant FM fun which sounds very heavy and clean in a mix. The Elektron Digitone would be a close send as P loves this little beauty.
12. What do you have in the works/ what is next for you?
We’ve 2 pieces of vinyl coming out in the very near future:
Interlinked EP on HC Records (Spain), Hidden Target EP on We Make Music (Belgium), plus there will be more releases on our own label Photon Emissions https://somaticresponses.bandcamp.com/ as we’ve probably got 6 LPs worth of new material waiting to be released, plus a few more that are too early in the pipeline to shout out at this point.
The brand new EP ‘The Dogma of Function’ is now available on Bandcamp.