James Holden & Wacław Zimpel: Processing Transcendence
James Holden and Wacław Zimpel share a knack for unruly sonics. Holden is a seasoned producer and DJ, who has immersed himself in everything from spiritual jazz to trance since the ‘90s. As a cutting edge woodwind player, Zimpel has gradually shifted from organic timbres to computerized techniques. The UK dance veteran and Polish clarinetist straddle earthiness and innovation.
The duo’s debut collaboration, The Universe Will Take Care Of You, is both cosmic and earthy. The full-length was shaped by custom software and patches and stylistically draws on both the noisier end of kosmische music and Indian raga, all filtered through inventive digital methods.
We caught up with the pair to discuss granular processing, minimalist influences, and Holden’s own Benny software.
How did you two initially connect? I know the new record came to life in pretty scattered sessions. I’m curious how those played out.
JH: When we met, we were both looking for each other to say, “I really like your music.” It was at Rewire in Holland. Wacław’s record with Kuba Ziołek was my favorite of the whole year. I was looking for him to say that and he turned up and said, “Oh, I really like your album.”
We did an EP together in no time. We thought we’d try a couple days together and it came out really easily. We’d do a few shows and grab the space that we had to do stuff together. It had an ongoing life over that period of time.
WZ: It’s pretty much the way we work — meeting in the studio between shows whenever we have something in England or I’m staying in London. It’s like nature, right?
James, I’m a pretty big fan of your dancier music and work with The Animal Spirits. I know you haven’t always made techno, but this feels like your most ethereal project. I’m curious how you balance both sides of your artistry.
JH: I see it all as one side. This hasn’t got many drums in it, but it’s still the same kind of music. For me, it’s not about balancing sides. It’s just, like, “Oh, I’m interested in this now.” It always seems to connect, it all feels like a refinement of the same idea because I’m still the same brain.
Wacław, I feel like the clarinet, and woodwinds in general, are pretty underutilized in electronic music. I think this is one of the first records I’ve heard where they take on such a modern character. I’m curious how you meld your instrument into more experimental sounds.
WZ: I came to electronic music quite late in my musical life. I was playing acoustic music only for many years — free improvised music. At some point, I started using some simple electronics like loopers. Later on, I was adding different gear and started processing clarinet. The acoustic sound of the clarinet started to be boring to me. I was trying to extend the sound of the instrument that is most familiar to me — to have something in my hands that I really know, but to expand the sound possibilities. I am very inspired by Terry Riley’s experiments from the late ‘60s and ‘70s with looping soprano saxophone. It had to be in my head, for sure.
Despite the absence of vocals, the record feels like it has a lot of weight. I’m curious if there are any themes that impact your music. Do you turn to anything non-musical for inspiration?
JH: We don’t ever discuss anything in the studio. We’re just making music and getting in a trance. We have discussions about music — which areas of it are interesting to us.
WZ: There’s not any particular concept we’re trying to follow. We just started jamming, playing instruments, and figuring out what kinds of colors, sounds, textures, rhythms we can get. That’s how we build our music. Basically, we’re trying to please ourselves with grooves and sounds.
JH: It sort of is a big idea to just please yourself and to try and do something where you’re just following what it feels like. Rather than thinking about, “How are we going to make this a hit?” That’s the big idea, it’s free play. That, in and of itself, is revolutionary.
The liner notes mention the influence of Indian music. Beyond raga, are there any other genres you were hoping to pull from with this one?
WZ: What we're playing is some of all the experiences we’ve had. Definitely, for both of us, Indian music is very important as a concept of trance.
JH: We’re not going for any one thing. When I did the Animal Spirits record, I sat down and thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to make a synthesizer spiritual jazz band?” That was a deliberate effort to mash two ideas together. This record is kind of the opposite. We just try things out. Sessions often started with, like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we put the sax through the modular like this? Or used pitch shifters in this way?” What comes out is the sum of what we’ve experienced.
You use a program called Benny. Could you tell me about it?
JH: Benny is my open source project. It’s not a DAW, but it’s almost a music environment. I started building it ages ago to solve the problem of how to play live with a modular synth and generative style patches. I was making records where the patch is the song. And trying to replicate that in Ableton, as wonderful as it is, felt like I was fighting against the structure of what Live expects a set to be.
I built Benny as a thing that runs on Max/MSP, but it’s a whole separate window that’s rendered in Jitter and OpenGL on top. It abstracts your modular synth inside the software.
“There’s not any particular concept we’re trying to follow. We just started jamming, playing instruments, and figuring out what kinds of colors, sounds, textures, rhythms we can get.”
You can have “song is the patch” things that you load up. Then, it reconfigures for the next song. You can build these generative, chaotic messes, which I like to do. It’s quite flowy in the studio — that was the other design goal of it, that it’s quicker than patching a real modular and it has more melodic and harmonic control. It gets you to wild, chaotic, living system stuff — the computer feeling like an instrument. It’s still very much a work in progress, but it’s an open source project so I’ve got other people joining in, trying to make it better. It’s going off in new directions.
For this record, almost every song started with building a patch in Benny and playing that against seeing what came out of a looper system where there’s weird time changes or dynamic processing in the chain. There was arpeggiator stuff and picking notes from scales in algorithmic fashions. It’s all stuff you can do in other ways, but Benny leads you to a particular conclusion. I don’t think I’d make the same music without having done this.
How did you work with Benny and Ableton? Are there ways they interact?
JH: Benny actually has Ableton Link support built in because Max has that. In theory, you can sync them together.
WZ: We never did that.
JH: The music is in such free time.
WZ: The only things that need to be synchronized are my delays and loopers. It is good enough just to set the BPMs. Even if it’s not perfect, for us it’s probably better. A big part of what we are doing is based on loose rhythms. We don’t need hardcore synchronicity between two computers.
JH: Most of the time, if I’m playing patterns, then it’s a loop or a delay that Wacław’s playing into. Quite often, he’s playing different keyboards or using Granulator.
WZ: Granulator is a big part of what I’m doing, in terms of playing keys. I love that device.
JH: What’s the looper you use?
WZ: (Expert Sleepers) Augustus Loop. That’s another device which is very useful.
And this plugin that we made together a couple years ago, called Pitch Gate. It’s something that basically allows you to gate as many notes as you want. You can build this creepy sounding horn stereo, where every step of the scale has a different effect.
Requires Ableton Live 12 Suite
What is used on the record, in terms of gear?
JH: The sound sources are clarinet through Ableton, sampled and played through Granulator. Quite a lot of it is microphones into Benny. We did one set of overdubs with percussion. And then I mixed back using preamps as processing.
WZ: The speaker system we were using around the room — sending different channels to different speakers — is a big part of this record.
JH: On my studio PC, we use Ableton as the router. It’s usually one sound source per channel. So around the room, like, guitar amps, old hifi speakers from by the bins, the studio monitors, a bass amp. Was there a practice amp? And then in the middle these Coles ribbon mics with the figure eight. You put them in a cross coincident and get a really nice stereo picture, particularly if you use them midside rather than left-right.
That means that when you spacialize the sound, you’re not thinking about fitting your mix into two speakers. You’re just making the room sound really good. That, in itself, changes the process. When I used to write music on the computer, I started writing a tune and adjusting a compressor half an hour later — no other creative activity. Your energy is gone. Making a big, loud noise in a room, you don’t get sucked into fucking around with hacks to get a sound out of two speakers. You make sense of it after.
Follow James Holden on his website and Wacław Zimpel on Instagram
Text and Interview: Ted Davis
Photos by: Justyna Traczyk