Interview with Prahlad

Interview with Prahlad

16 August, 2007 | 11.34AM

• Section: Music News
• Written by: chaisam

It might be in the nature of artists that they usually have a lot of interesting things to say about their work, their inspirations on what made them become an artist in the first place. But you know that you’ve met someone special when an artist talks about things that go far beyond the scope of their actual artistic working processes. DJ Prahlad is definitely one such person. Sam invited him to the sunny balcony of Chaishop headquarters and had an interview with him.

Sam: “So you’ve just released your debut album.”

Prahlad: “That’s right, the album is called ‘Movements of Consciousness’ and is out on Millennium/YSE Records.”

Sam: “You always DJ around here in Hamburg, but just recently you started work on that album. How did you find the transition from DJ to producer?”

Prahlad: “I guess I felt at some point that it was hard to get enough of the music that I felt wanted to play from what was being released.”

“Making music is something that I have been into since my childhood, and electronic music of course is also something that I have been fooling around with for a few years, so they were more parallel processes.

“It’s also something which I just do to express more of myself, things that I find difficult to put in words.”

Sam: “So your album is called ‘Movements of Consciousness’. Why did you choose this title?”

Prahlad: “I was inspired by an interview with an Indian physicist, Dr. Amit Goswami, who specializes in quantum physics, but also writes a lot on the aspects of quantum physics which can be applied to daily life.

“He helps you to see the world in a different light, and after hearing what he had to say on the subject it became very clear that there is a lot of similarities between quantum physics and eastern philosophies such as Buddhism and Hinduism.

“There are a lot of connections on the subject of the illusionary nature of the world, and how we interact with it.”

Sam: “Ok, and what has this got to do with the title?

Prahlad: “As far as I have come to understand it is that everything around us is not actually made of any physical sort of substance so that you can say “this is definitely a solid table”.

“They’ve come to see that there is actually a lot more space, vacuum in between things, or I should say more than there is a dense matter.

“Something like 99 percent of everything around us, although it may feel and look solid, is actually a lot of space and gaps within which particles move as waveforms.

“And they’re moving all the time!

“Beyond that, quantum physics has come to see a stunning phenomenon in some experiments.

“They were measuring, I suppose, some sort of characteristic of particles on a subatomic level, and they realized that the results were different depending on if people were watching the experiments as they were taken place, or if they were just taking place in a room without anyone present.

“Since quantum physics has come around, also scientists are realizing that we interact with things, whether we touch them or not, just by being present and focusing our energy on it.

“And now what quantum physics is saying, as far as I have understood it, is that we actually interact not only with experiments but with the whole world all around us.

“Be that a wall, a tree or another person.

“Our thoughts, our perception and of course also our words, actually do affect everything around us.

“To me it became very interesting to see that actually now modern science is also coming to a point where some old ideas and philosophies were a few thousand years ago, saying that everything around us is not actually solid and it’s not something that you can put your finger on, but that everything is influenced by how you perceive it, or what you think of it.

“I have a lot of samples in the album and I sort of snapped out the bits which I found were the basic corners that really blew my mind when I first heard them.

“I found the phrase ‘Movements of Consciousness’ a very elegant way to describe this process, and eventually adopted it as the album title.”

Sam: “Very interesting! You studied at SAE in Amsterdam. What do you think of that? Is it worth doing that?”

Prahlad: “SAE? It depends what you want to do with it.

“I would say for young people who have good hearing and who are fascinated by music and who are really willing to put in the long hours that being a professional sound engineer demands it’s definitely worth it.

“If you see yourself working in the studio and putting yourself at the service of artists so that they can get their ideas on record, then it’s a great thing to do, and SAE gives you a solid foundation.

“However if you wanna make music and if your goal is not to be an engineer, but to be a musician, I would definitely say to take maybe one of the shorter courses like just the EMP course and invest the rest of the money into equipment.”

Sam: “You’ve lived in many countries. You were born in Ecuador and you lived in Peru and Chile and in The Netherlands and now you are based in Hamburg. So what keeps you in Hamburg?

Prahlad: “I have to say that it’s really grown on me.

“A few months ago I was in Holland again visiting, and I realized that Holland actually didn’t feel like home any more, but Germany did.

“There are many things that I love about Germany and Hamburg.

“Of course there are things which are difficult as anyone who lives here will also tell you, but what I like a lot about the German mentality is that a lot gets said, a lot of plans are made, but almost always they’re actually also done.

“They’re actually put into action, and I’ve lived in a lot of countries where people have a lot of ideas, and a lot of plans and goals and missions, but a lot of it somehow doesn’t happen.

“For me it’s been a very good balance to be around people in a culture which is very much oriented on achieving things, on doing things and getting the job done.”

Sam: “So are you gonna stay longer in Hamburg then?”

Prahlad: “Yeah, for sure.

“I reckon there are still a few more things I would like to do here both work wise and music wise, but I do miss the sunshine and the weather.

“I also miss nature and beach life, and I do miss the joy of life that people have in South America, where everything is a little bit more easy-going.

“I figure if I can get my things done that I really want to achieve and do here, and make myself a solid base, then it will be very nice to move about and enjoy life somewhere for half the year, somewhere sunny of course, and come back here to work the other half.”

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