There are actually many individual recordings from each of the past four years intertwined in that short segment. The birds in particular were recorded in Dubai while I was visiting my sister who lives there.
Funny you mention ASMR. Since I was a kid I would get that brain tingling sensation from random sounds (ranging from the ruffling of papers and plastic bags to certain people’s voices). I used to think there was something wrong with me. It wasn’t until recently I realised there’s a name for it and loads of people get it. None of those ASMR videos trigger it for me though. It has to be completely unintentional, rather than on-demand.

Yes! As I mentioned I recorded those birds far from home, yet those sounds might as well have been coming from my own bedroom window. I think when you’re not in your element you become way more sensitive to the surrounding soundscape. While unfamiliar sounds can be deeply affecting and exciting, sometimes even disorienting, familiar ones in a foreign setting can ground you, serving as a comforting reminder that we’re all cut from the same cloth.
I’ve been working on ITSAME sporadically for the past four years. During the last two, I produced on bits of my studio sprawled across our living room area and often kept mics open. Listening back to the recordings I was surprised at the variety of daily-life sounds that we don’t pay any attention to, despite their often musical qualities. Unlike our eyes which we can close at any moment and must do so in order to sleep, our ears are not biologically equipped with the ability to mute the sound. Instead, our brain is wired to phase sounds in and out. This means that unlike vision, where for the most part what you see is what you get, there are complex conscious and subconscious processes mixing what we hear and dictating how we hear it. I find this notion fascinating and it was a major inspiration for the making of this record.

This is almost a Nardwuar level question, except the track that fits this exact description is Duel TM off an earlier EP. I recorded that on a train with a piece of gear I had bought moments before boarding - a nifty compact synth/sampler by a Swedish company called Teenage Engineering.
I actually love trains. Apparently not as much as Francis Bourgeois, but I wish I could spend more time on them.
As for Fwd: Re: late (Ref.:Karoshi), you spotted the reference to (metaphorical) death from overwork. Music is not my work, so this track refers to and was made during a 6-month phase when I was working from home almost 16 hour days, weekends included. It was a very intense time, yet I felt the need to get on my gear and harness the madness of this period in order to transform it into something other, which turned out to be this track. I think if you make music, it’s always interesting to do so during the very moments when you’re being stretched to your limits in other aspects of your life. You may find you have a heightened or off-kilter sense of melody and rhythm or even go down a path you may otherwise have considered a dead end.

When I listen back to my music I tend to ponder on how I made individual sounds. Any sound that came easy haunts me later on, triggering something akin to imposter syndrome.
The guitar theremin, however, was a chance discovery. I was holding an e-cigarette while playing the bass and the magnets picked up the interference so I went with it. I ended up playing the e-cig/bass guitar theremin on Reptikon 7.

This makes me think of a graduation speech that was semi-viral a while back. It was about how one of the biggest issues of our time is that we’re spoiled for choice, something that has led to an inability to commit to a decision, even one with low stakes. The speaker compared this phenomenon to being stuck in infinite browsing mode on Netflix. I think this decision paralysis applies to nearly all creative endeavours these days. While there are certainly countless positive aspects to the democratisation of technology, it is now perhaps more difficult than ever before to make creative decisions and see them through. Given the abundance of choices, creative decisions are now more about setting boundaries and limitations, rather than trying to overcome them, as was the case not too long ago.

In the early 90s, I was living in Kenya where there wasn’t much access to electronic music at the time, yet I was always in Europe during the summers. One summer, I was gifted a mixtape from a cousin of mine with all sorts of techno, gabber and jungle tracks that completely and permanently changed my perspective on music. I had nothing else of the sort to listen to for almost a year, yet my obsession over this tape only grew and it was rarely ejected from my walkman. I remember going on safari and listening to it incessantly throughout, despite the cognitive dissonance of observing herds of zebra and wildebeest frolicking peacefully in the Serengeti while listening to gabber … though when the lions started hunting them it made more sense. I had no idea who made this music, how it was made and what its purpose was (though my cousin accompanied the gift with enthusiastic descriptions of the parties he was going to). No one else around me seemed to understand it or appreciate it either. In any case, starved for more and without any possibility of obtaining it, the only alternative was to try to find ways to create it on my own.

Interesting that you find a religious quality to this track. See this is what I love about electronic music and also why I think it’s tricky to provide context. This track is very much about toxic relationships. Yet it took you somewhere completely different. I hope I didn’t ruin it for you and you can continue listening to it the way you interpreted it.

Like I mentioned earlier unless you’re on earphones, there’s a lot going on around you in terms of sounds that your brain phases in and out. While making this record I tried to weave these elements into the music, either repurposing them or giving them centre stage. This is what helped make ITSAME a personal musical journal of my past four years.

Yes very much so. I also got a hold of a whacky drone synth when I started making this album and it features all over it. I also discovered drones in the buzzing of household appliances that I incorporated into the music in various ways. I’m fascinated by your comments on the drone, especially since most tend to emphasise the obvious primordial nature of rhythm, originating from our exposure to our mother’s heartbeat. This was a very subtle observation and I thank you for listening so attentively!

I’m not programmed to elaborate. But anyone who didn’t skip these tracks failed to prove they’re not bots.

Just a day one fanboy.

If the audience has to wear a mask so will I. It’s the responsible thing to do.

A while back I read that vinyl sales exceeded those of CDs for the first time since the advent of the latter. Even more recently, I read that CD sales are up again. This is amidst an unrelated NFT craze. Ownership of media, be it physical or digital, and how it affects the way we experience it is a huge discussion. It also involves generational factors and trend or nostalgia traps. Personally, I use every format, each for different purposes. I only recently subscribed to a streaming service and have yet to listen to an entire album that way. Yet it’s also been some time since I’ve chosen to listen to a single track that I randomly wanted to hear on physical media.

The closing tracks on this and the previous record are both very close to my heart. This one was composed a little after a very close friend of mine passed away suddenly and while I was trying to come to terms with the loss. Due to the circumstances of his passing and the incredibly magnanimous decision of his family, his death saved the lives of many others through multiple organ donations. It was a lot to process.