■ david wallraf - I want to amplify the marginal and uncanny aspects of the sonic ecology we live in.

■ david wallraf is a noise artist/theorist/researcher from Hamburg

What were your beginnings like?

I started playing and recording in my late teens (back in the 90s) with a Tascam 4 track, guitar, synth and whatever else I could get my hands on (radio, tapes, household aplliances etc.). I was very inspired by early Industrial and Japanese harsh noise, plus a lot of punk/post punk stuff. Then I had a long stretch of playing in various bands, some of them experimental, some of them more oriented towards the rock-formula. Those are all thankfully forgotten by now. In 2012 I was very frustrated with playing in bands and the aesthetic compromises included, plus very annoyed by the logistics of practice rooms, transportation of drums/amps and so on. In that year I also had sort of a noise epiphany. I visited Japan for the first time and attended a noise show in Tokyo that literally blew me away. I immediately started assembling a noise album out of field recordings (https://davidwallraf.bandcamp.com/album/japan-field-recordings - my first proper noise release) and in a way started from scratch back then. Started to release and play shows under my given name. Back then I also became very interested in noise theory - noise as a subject of theory and also theory that is noisy in itself.

What inspires you?

Anything really ('life'). Art, books (novels, philosophy), movies, music I listened to. Everyday experiences, relationships. More specifically: certain ways to look at/listen to the world and dealing with it, like surrealist collage techniques, the theories of the Situationists (quotidian life as political space and artistic playground). Turning acoustic annoyances into music by making field recordings and endlessly processing them. As of late the works of queer theorists Jack Halberstam and McKenzie Wark, especially the concept of low theory - not explaining the world top down from some abstract idealism, but from relationships, the "theorization of alternatives within an undisciplined zone of knowledge production" (J. Halberstam: The Queer Art of Failure, 2011, p. 18 - that also pretty much sums up how I want to make music). Some musical works that seem to inspire me endlessly (probably because I can always only get that close to producing something of similar power): The early pieces that Delia Derbyshire made for the BBC radiophonic workshop in the 60s, the title music for A Clockwork Orange by Wendy Carlos (the melancholic and threatening beauty of it), mid 90s Merzbow (the overwhelmingness of it), some songs by Wolf Eyes (the use of silence and empty spaces in a noise context). I could go on endlessly.

Why do you make music?

It's the only thing that I really want to do, everything else is more or less a necessity. Out of hostility towards the sociopolitical situation we have to inhabit. There's a great quote by Theodor Adorno that sums that up neatly: "Art's asociality is the determinate negation of a determinate society." (Adorno: Aesthetic Theory, 2002, p. 226). Art/music always has an antisocial element, even when it's 'beautiful', because that beauty points to something that we are lacking in reality. Making music as a critique of the world, taking sonic bits and pieces out of their context and reassemble/mutate them. Make the aspects of life that are normally repressed or overheard audible. I want to amplify the marginal and uncanny aspects of the sonic ecology we live in.

Also: the balance between concentrated work in isolation where I basically make up my own rules and procedures and the chaotic and social aspects of playing live, travelling and collaborating. The ability it gives me to tap into the history of art, for example inventing a soundtrack for a silent movie that's 100 years old.

What's the album or track of yours you're most proud of, and why?

Right now I'm kinda proud of the Нет Войне cassette that just got released on Brachliegen Tapes because it's my most recent one and I explored a bit of guitar playing on it which I didn't do in a decade (https://brachliegentapes.bandcamp.com/album/-). And of course because it's a statement against the fucking war that is going on in Ukraine and it will hopefully raise some funds for Nash Svit, an organisation who for more than twenty years has documented violations of LGBTQ people in Ukraine and advocated for the protection of the rights and interests of the Ukrainian LGBTQ community (gay.org.ua/en/donation/).

I'm also very proud of last years release Subsongs (https://econore.bandcamp.com/album/subsongs). It's supposed to function like a soundtrack for a film that never was made, not in a narrative way, more like interlinked mood pieces/tableaus/dream sequences. I recorded it during the lockdowns of 2020 and I think I got very close to let the subconscious dictate the creative processes. I explored techniques that were new to me, like using transducers to turn various objects into loudspeakers and changing electrical audio signals into mechanical movements, rerecording and processing those etc. I was very inspired by the collage novels of Max Ernst from the 1930s at the time and I think I kinda managed to produce something that touches on that aesthetic.

What are your nearest plans?

Hopefully get my first proper vinyl/lathe-cut release ready this year. Finish a new album that, for a change, doesn't contain a single field recording and find a label for it. Helping an artist friend recording/producing her album. Getting another go at playing live scores for the Maya Deren silent films At Land and Meshes Of The Afternoon in August. Getting to play more live shows.

What would you like to say to the world?

Basically that it has to end. Not in an apocalyptic way, but the ways we inhabit it, conceptualize it - the power structures and the economy we live in, the ways in which we are governed etc. The nexus of capitalism, patriarchy, fascism, militarism, ecological catastrophe, white hegemony and hetero-normativity.

What is your favorite drink?

Trying to replace beer with something else. Coffee, ginger tea and Dr Pepper are on top of the list.

***

Grab the music at
https://davidwallraf.bandcamp.com/

∎david wallraf live at MS Stubnitz 05/12/21