12 questions for TÆT

In the wake of the modular synthesizer revolution of the recent years there is only a handful of artists as productive and prolific as TÆT. The St. Petersburg resident has recently released his second album on ERRORGRID and the label’s first LP, boasting a total of 11 tracks written and produced over the course of a few weeks and each one of them challenging the status quo of live modular experimentation, crossing a broad range of genres, tonalities and speed ranges.

1. What drives you to create music? What do you seek to achieve with it?

It’s really unusual feeling, something between being hungry and having a lot of food at the same time. Have no experience of not making music for a long time but it’s like I’m just living somebody’s else life when it happens occasionally.

2. How would you describe your music to someone who’s never heard music before?

I’m not sure if it’s possible but it is like maybe find yourself in a new unknown and interesting space. Or reading poems and watching Bladerunner.

3. Which album do you wish you had made?

My current one (‘Messages’ out now on Bandcamp)

4. If music is a form of therapy, what is it healing in you?

It’s blindness I think. Music always helps me to see things clearer.

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?

I’m afraid I wouldn’t do it. I think the music is one of those arts which only works together with fantasy and experience of a listener. I don’t really want my music to be interpreted by one way only. 

6. What do you consider your best piece of work yet? And why?

It’s usually my last piece or current one. Perhaps because I usually feel enthusiastic with something new. 

7. What is your sentiment about the current music scene, and how is it helping with the state of the world?

I’m excited with modern modular music. I think we all are invited to participate in a process of forming next big music wave.

8. How would you describe ERRORGRID in your own words? What is it to you?

There must be a kind of root label at any genre of an art. Something that is able to concentrate creative energy and to help spread it in the right directions. I think Errorgrid could be the one. 

9. When do you consider a piece of music finished and ready for others to hear?

It’s like resonance. When your music starts to resonate with you - you can control it to a degree. For example by adding or removing instruments or using different timbres. You can try whatever you want to make that resonance more or less obvious. Sometimes when I forget about it I wonder like: it must work, there are all components. But it just doesn’t. Failure. Search again.

10. How much importance do you put into your tools?

I try to convince myself that they are not important. But they are. 

11. What is the one piece of equipment you will never part with?

I use a recorder all the time. My Sound Devices Mix Pre D has a lot to transmit to my phone every day.

12. What do you have in the works/ what is next for you?

I’m starting some multichannel music experiments. But I’m not sure if it’s still technically possible to share them with people without playing live.

The 10 track LP ‘Messages’ by TÆT is now out on Bandcamp and includes a special bonus track.