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15 Questions
Hi! How are you? Where are you?
Crude. Aarhus, a city in Denmark.
What’s on your schedule right now?
Keeping up appearances through these questions.
What or who was your biggest influence as an artist? Do you see yourself as part of a certain tradition or as part of a movement?
All the lonely raves in confused attempts to escape adolescent realities was probably in a negative sense my biggest incitement to devote time on musicmaking. As such, stuff like the early ep's on Thinner could be me trying to put some distance to the transient euphoria of the rave culture.
These days I've found alot of new playmates and can't pinpoint myself to any single tradition or movement, eventhough I'm primarily associated with the noise scene in the Danish media because of my work for the Noisejihad organization.
What’s your view on the music scene at present? Is there a crisis?
Even if Earth suffered a nuclear holocaust, there'd still be cancer-infected musicians running around banging on stuff they could find in the ruins. I'm not even sure I would call that situation a crisis for the music scene, so a few changes in economical dynamics and modernist concepts like copyright don't bother me much.
A few years ago I was concerned with overproduction of poor music flooding all distribution channels, but these days it seems most of the crappy stuff stays on Myspace or Mtv so it's possible for me to avoid it if I try hard enough. Thank you Philippe Dauman and Rupert Murdoch.
What does the term „new“ mean to you in connection with music?
A buzzword used by someone who hasn't done the proper homework. It's usually just used to refer to something different instead of something profound. I personally don't think there's been anything profound going on since the dawn of the electronic basedrum or early japanese noise.
How do you see the relationship between sound and composition?
Huge question, but to sum it up in a few mediocre catchphrases: Sound is an everpresent phenomena. Composition is someone fiddling with a narrow representation of sound. Together they form a strange symbiosis called music. Sound is material in it's ontology. Composition is metaphorical in it's epistemology. Both things somehow makes all the difference when we listen to music because we have bodies.
How strictly do you separate improvising and composing?
Each mouse click or knob turn could be me either improvising or composing and I have no idea how to tell the difference when they happen.
What constitutes a good live performance in your opinion? What’s your approach to performing on stage?
As audience I like most things that fuck me up in some way. Loud, hard and strange music with lots of pathos usually makes my day if my mood or expectations doesn't interfere.
As a performer I've usually placed myself as an easy target for the laptop-haters as most of the concerts from 2003 to 2006 were just me clicking away on the laptop whilst headnodding. The last year or so I've tried to make my performances with my Periskop-project even more boring, as I just stand besides my laptop drinking beer while it plays the concert in Winamp without me touching it. It also runs a pretty boring slideshow that repeats itself after a few minutes. Encores are rare.
I've also performed with Lars Hansen from Wäldchengarten in our duo Leonid Kulik a few times this year. We use mics, guitar and effects aswell as laptops and I'm somewhat excited about exploring the possibilities this complex setup has for changing me as a performer. There's still hope I guess.
A lot of people feel that some of the radical experiments of modern compositions can no longer be qualified as “music”. Would you draw a border - and if so, where?
Sure I would, but it's drawn in each specific case of doubt and I wont try to push my experience of a specific work onto others. Cage's 4:33 has never been music to me, but a lesson in the everpresence of sound. If somebody would rather call it music, he obviously experiences things differently than me and it shouldn't really come as a shock people do that. Genre discussions are easily one of the most annoying aspects of socializing with musicians.
Are “serious” and “popular” really two different types of music or just empty words without a meaning?
I have a hard time giving much meaning to “serious” music, but I really envy people who get loads of dopamine and endorphins racing around their body when they hear a silly girl moaning in tune to whatever her producer tells her to. Most of my music acquaintances and I don't really function like that, so I experience it as if there is a huge difference between what is “popular” and what is not, and that we're the handicapped ones missing out on a lot of good biochemistry.
Do you feel an artist has a certain duty towards anyone but himself? Or o put it differently: Should art have a political/social or any other spect apart from a personal sensation?
The Ethics of art? I don't see it happening.
True or false: People need to be educated about music, before they can really appreciate it.
If education is what happens when you subject yourself to different music I'd say it's true.
You are given the position of artistic director of a festival. What would be on your program?
The two small festivals we've done in Noisejihad during the last year or so were all with local projects and bands, and I thought they were both very nice ways to spend a weekend. I wouldn't mind bringing Nadja over the Atlantic for headlining though.
Imagine a situation in which there’d be no such thing as copyright and everybody were free to use musical material as a basis for their own compositions – would that be an improvement to the current situation?
No, for the simple reason that I don't think the current situation is very different from the situation you're asking me to imagine.
Many artists dream of a “magnum opus”. Do you have a vision of what yours ould sound like?
No, and if I did it would be easier to just make it rather than try to describe it in words.
Discography:
numberground (practising nature) 2007
livstegn (dataobscura) 2006
chrono (databloem) 2006
closelands (practising nature) 2006
atrum (stadtgruen) 2006
aarhus city harshcore (8k mob) 2005
no morchestra (thinner) 2005
fremtiden (dataobscura) 2005
vebra (databloem) 2004
noiseworks 1-(mirakelmusik) 2004
counterperipheral (databloem) 2004
mikro (aabtek.tsch) 2003
danny kreutzfeldt & thinner allstars-recore (thinner) 2003
Homepage:
Danny Kreutzfeldt
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