Kate Wax on dust and damnation

Kate Wax on dust and damnation

23 November, 2011 | 7.00AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: border community, kate wax

James Holden’s Border Community label releases sparingly. In fact, in the past two years, it’s put out just a handful of records. Not out of laziness, mind you, quite the opposite: it’s clear that Holden and crew are simply becoming more and more diligent about ensuring that every record they sign is unique.

The latest release from the label is particularly distinctive. Dust Collision comes from Kate Wax, a Swiss musician long affiliated with the Mental Groove label. Her first release in several years, the album does away with the punchy, gritty club techniques of her previous records and dives deep into a hazy world of Wax’s own creation. With her voice front and center, the music bears surface similarities to The Knife or Fever Ray, but the more time you spend with the album, the more you realize that Wax is very much doing her own thing. Spooky and sultry in equal measure, the album is a shadowy creature that just keeps drawing you further into its web.

Read on for an interview with the artist, as she discusses the making of the album, her technological preoccupations, and the emotional states that fuel her music.

KATE WAX – HUMAN TWIN

It’s been quite a while since the last time you released anything new; how long have you been working on Dust Collision?

I never stopped doing music since my last release, but I felt unsatisfied with my production for a long time, I had to find my language through a disciplined creation process. So I cut myself off from the world in my tiny Geneva home studio and worked during two years, hidden in the dark, like a pagan monk with cigarettes, a Mac and some machines.

The alibi was the dance and the music was made for that collective damnation.

That minimal surrounding pushed me into a deeper experience. It has been an introspective trip, one that led me to confrontation with my darkest selves. I let all of them talk and express through words and music. I took my time as I wanted my fragmented world to become a coherent universe, where songs were echoing each other and telling a complete story, like a movie divided into 12 canvases.

You used to share a studio in Geneva with the Mental Groove crew; how influential was it for you to work with that group of people? It seems like you all had a really interesting scene going on in the ‘00s.

These days were eternal post after parties, constant raves. That atmosphere was a huge stimulation for dance music production, wild and without any inhibition. In a way, that freedom and experimental atmosphere was very close to the New York loft scene, where the culture was inspired by the nightlife. The alibi was the dance and the music was made for that collective damnation.

In this fertile environment, the underground scene was growing and artists such as Luciano, Kittin, Crowdpleaser, Plastique de Reve, Kalabrese came from that scene. The Swiss scene was teaming up with the German techno scene to make the night fauna alive. As a compulsive dancer I took part in the feasts, but my production was always a bit apart from that scene. I was more an electro-folker than a techno maker. I was also probably too individualistic in my creation process to fit in the stream, but it definitely inspired me and gave me some kind of a faith in the possibility that music could be made and exist in my country.

KATE WAX – ARCHETYPE

Your songs feel quite spontaneous, quite “live.” How much are you improvising, and do you spend much time on the arrangement and post-production?

Yes, this “live” aspect is very important, it is also a postulate about the standardization of pop music, the extremely polished music. I wanted to keep the dust in my music, the mouth noises, the errors and the intimacy of my singing without processing too much. I wanted my voice raw and frontal and the music a reflection of my inner unstable cosmos.

The whole album emerged from my inside battles and is based on collision and accident concepts, like fertile territories. The process is an evolving state voyage: I go through different levels of consciousness, from a certain awareness to a complete chaos blown off by my own hysteria. I start with the lyrics, a controlled poetry where every word has a place, I produce the beat, compose the main melody on my synth, then I end up singing for hours in a trance, an auto-shamanic mass. I generally come back and “organize the chaos” in the following days, add or retrieve some elements, I choose the good vocal takes; the last step is to re-knit it with a bit of rationality.

KATE WAX – DUST COLLISION

I know that you’re quite a gear-head; were there any synths/drum machines etc. that were particularly important in making this album?

During the making I’ve experimented with all kinds of Roland, synths and drum machines, Korgs, also modular synth. I’ve recorded hours of laboratory sound extraction. I’ve built myself a giant soundbank, noises, analog screams, dusty drones… But these data kept a secondary role in this record, as subliminal atmosphere textures. I privileged the melodies and composed them on my computer, via a MIDI keyboard.

After experimenting with all kind of analog, I have chosen software synthesizers to become my privileged instruments. I liked the idea of being expressive with very few default means and try to explode the limits of these tools. I worked my voice with the same idea; as I only have one voice, I pushed it in every possible direction, to incarnate every spectrum of my emotions, and my voice is definitely the main instrument in the album.

KATE WAX – ECHOES AND THE LIGHT

I hear contradictory elements in your music—there’s a sense of both strength and fragility at the same time. What kind of emotional state are you trying to project?

Music is a survival mode. Every breath and every movement is dedicated to the act of writing, singing and producing; it is a resilient way of living, some kind of protection against the world. My music is my essence. It’s a constant questioning book or a disturbing mirror. Music is my escape program but also my link to the world. I hide behind my production but I also say everything about me.

Through these ambivalent states, it can only be multiple, in constantly morphing phases, consecutively fragile or determined, according to the mood. It is an infinite inside dialogue that embodies all of my fears, convictions and dysfunctions. My nights of music production were always a violent battlefield: I was both the victim and the hero.

KATE WAX – HOLY BEAST

When you’re writing lyrics, how much are you writing for characters, and how much are you writing directly about yourself? Also, how is it writing and singing in English? I assume that’s not your native language.

French is my mother tongue and I’ve been singing a lot in Italian, German and French when I was singing classical pieces, but English is my favorite language. Whether rapping or singing opera, English always feels right. Words are the backbone of the album, they are my substance. I’m the subject, it is a perpetual I. I always express through one of my inside voices.

How did you hook up with Border Community? Was James Holden involved in the record in any way, besides the remixes?

In 2006 James put one of my first tracks in a mix compilation called At The Controls. I realized my song was played in between such an eclectic music field—krautrockish Harmonia, voodoorock Trans Am, methodic electrodark Plastikman, etc.—that wide vision of the music embodied exactly what I was expecting from a label. So when I finished the album, I had that hybrid piece of music in my hands, I naturally thought about releasing it on Border Community. We then mixed the album in James’ studio in London; the dust was alive.

In your performances a few years ago, you seemed to be singing more than “playing” the laptop. How has your live show evolved since then? And does your experience on stage influence the record in any way?

It is more my studio experiments that influenced my stage performances. After years of a dialogue with my machines, I became familiar with them. Playing on these machines with such a physicality is an amazing feeling, as if I was a whole band. But I also love that proximity with the audience and I still think my singing remains the centre of my live performance. My voice is my most expressive medium, I push myself out of my shell and try to never stay static behind the machines. I worked a lot on my live show concept and wanted the audience to literarily enter my universe with a sonic and sensorial experiment. I have now a bassist with me on stage and visual drawings that are played live, interacting with the music and our movements.

Get Kate Wax’s Dust Collision on Beatport here.

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