Dave Wesley - The Relationship Between Math And Music

The13th AÑO: 4 | NÚMERO 40

UNA R E VISTA IMA GINARIA

DAVE WESLEY THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MATH AND MUSIC

[ Interview with Dave Wesley by Benjamín York ]

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MATH AND MUSIC

It is exciting to get into unknown terrain and discover universes so challenging to everything established. It is interesting to stand in front of an interesting artist who is unknown to me, and sink into the depths of a musician who has been so prolific as. It is disturbing to think that there is a lot of music that is unknown and that can be hidden as pearls in an ocean of new bands and new publications. Luckily we have been introduced to the music of Dave Wesley and didn’t hesitate to interview this musician.

Hi Dave, thank you for giving us the opportunity to do this interview.

To start with the questions ... How did music come into your life and when did you start experimenting with it?

I grew up in an artistic and musical family. My mother is a painter and my father achieved some notoriety (USA) as a jazz musician so music was a big part of my childhood. He had a killer quadraphonic stereo and a diverse record collection. I picked up one of his guitars when I was five years old and never put it down. Starting very young (from grade 6), I was in many cover and original rock bands from the mid-1970s through the early 90s. I began writing and recording music very early and always leaned toward more improvisational, left-field, and experimental music. I built an analog recording studio in the early 90s and produced a lot of my own and other artists’ records. As digital recording and sampling technology evolved, I embraced it and developed a passion for electronic music.

I also built an underground artist cooperative website (hosted in my basement) in 1998 called Sursumcorda. That experience led me to networking with musicians and artists all over the world and exposed me to a lot of DIY experimental music, which greatly influenced me.

In late 2000, the website manifested as a Minneapolis music venue, named “Sursumcorda”.

We had a room for live music and a room for DJs, which was my first real world exposure to DJ culture. I was hooked and began to produce elec-

tronic music almost exclusively from then on…

Sursumcorda has lived on to become a pair of record labels, a software company, and a reboot of the original website.

You have remixed a song for Philip Glass.

Can you tell us about this.

In the mid-2000s, I was sending out my first electronic music demos to European labels. One of the label owners referred me back to a producer (Marcos Romero) in my home city (Minneapolis) who had similar tastes and style. We bonded as were the only guys we knew that were into minimal techno production at that time. We were both influenced by iterative minimal music (Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, etc). He ended up curating a Philip Glass remix compilation for Orange Mountain Music and invited me to submit a remix. We both were invited to the record release party in NYC where I played one of my first DJ sets… which was probably pretty bad, in retrospect.

I have read that you work under different names, including Dave Wesley, Existente, Xerography and The Mayhem Lecture Series.

You've also had time to work with Casey Borchert on The Push, and your guitar features on TV Crush. Each name represents a different experience, How do you write your songs. Do you think first about what project you will write or do you write first and then choose what name to release it under?

A single artist producing under different aliases is common in the DJ/dance music world, with each alias representing a different genre or style of production. Coming from the rock band world, I embraced the freshness and the culture of relative anonymity of the music producers and DJs of the early dance scene, where the focus was on the music more than the personalities producing the music. That, of course, has changed a lot as the mainstream electronic scene has largely regressed back into a personality focused scenario.

But, I’m am rooted in the earlier tradition of great labels such as Basic Channel, Chain Reaction, echospace, ECM, etc. which still inspire my style

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and approach… where a strong and focused label identity, through curation and design, cultivates a committed community of devotees, who engage with all the label’s releases, regardless of the individual artists producing the releases.

As my interests evolve, and with collaboration with others, it makes sense to me to develop aliases. Dave Wesley releases have a certain consistent “post-dub-techno” style, while my other aliases embody my more experimental, political, and ambient genre production.

My writing and production process is always evolving. Sometimes I’ll start with field recordings and found sound and other times I’ll start with a kick drum. I’m constantly working... making something every day. I don’t always know what direction a track will head when starting and often I’ll produce something almost to completion and

change genres during final mixdown or mastering as the moment inspires me. I see creating ideas, mixing, and mastering (all the stages of production) as one process and, for me, each stage is fair game for creative anarchy.

I literally have thousands of tracks started and in various stages of production so part of my process is to sift through archives, thaw out ideas, and find motifs that motivate me in the moment. The tracks that make it to completion have their own agenda and literally demand my time and attention. I let improvisation and synchronicity guide my process (not the album by The Police). Once a track is completed, I often use it as a seed for variations to round out an EP. Process-oriented visual artist are my productivity and process guideposts (i.e.

Gerhard Richter, Steve Keene, etc.).

I have also read that you base your compositions on the principles of Sacred Geometry, which has also been used for sacred buildings such as cathedrals and other holy places. Can you explain how you apply this principle to your compositions?

Through books and translations of ancient texts, etc., I was exposed to the idea of The Flower of Life, The Platonic Solids, sacred geometry, and the relationship between math and music. A bell went off in my head. Mind was blown. It all made intuitive sense to me and I was compelled to use those concepts as a basis for producing art and music.

After some deeper research and studying, I generated a matrix of tempo, key, and tuning combinations that have synchronized and elegant relationships to objective and subjective organic geometric characteristics of our solar system and human form. I’ve been using that matrix (with some enhancement and variation) as a restrictive context for my music production for over a decade now. The concepts of ritual and intentional limitation of creative possibilities are also connected to process-oriented art approaches (i.e. The KLF), which motivate me and have greatly enhanced my artistic productivity.

ple of the above. The track was literally influenced by the African vibes on the streets of Lisbon and the deconstructed tribal beats emanating from Lisbon’s unique and critically appreciated Principe record label. Recordings of street sounds and my love of tribal rhythms acted as the DNA for this single.

You recently released a new single “Laranja Swadhisthana 67_5 - EPv1”, such an epic journey through mantric sounds. Tell us about this job.

My family and I relocated from Minneapolis to Portugal, a few years ago, which has been a great move for us. Setting up my studio in a completely different location/context not only changed the technical sonics of my production space, but it also greatly altered my headspace. That, combined with Portuguese cultural and language immersion, has stimulated a shift in my productions to more of a personal storytelling approach: incorporating daily routine experiences into tracks, using found sound, field recordings, Portuguese language, and intention… an approach not unlike indigenous tribal and vintage American folk music.

Laranja Swadhisthana 67_5 is a great exam-

In regards to your live performances, how do you produce your shows? I imagine visual elements play an important role? Also please tell us about your live streaming events.

We have recently launched an experimental live performance concept named Arctic Dub Continuum Live, which is, oddly enough, a sort of improvisational variety show concept. Live electronic music is typically either a DJ with some visuals, a live PA set with laptops, or artists using modular electronics for a noise set. We are developing a performance structure that combines elements of each of the above along with live music, field recordings, sound art, visual art, and vocal performances (experiences atypical of the electronic scene) all mixed together like one continuous DJ set. We invite at least one special guest performance for each installment. Visuals are an integral part of this concept and we include gra-

Arctic Dub (Sursumcorda) is the label that releases your works and we know that you run this and another label Sursumcorda Records.

Which artists are on your labels?

Arctic Dub is exclusively focused on our unique brand of post-dub-techno, experimental, and electronic music. We have several releases from producers (beyond me and my aliases) from all over the world (and now more from Portugal) including DeepWoods, The Positronics, Augen, ocp, Subset, Fragoso, Echonaut, and more.

Sursumcorda Recordings is the recent reboot of the late 1990s artist coop website and venue.

The label currently has releases by the totally unique band Tulipomania (Philadelphia, PA) and is planning vinyl compilation EPs and releases from underground global discoveries. We are working with the great Vaughan Oliver (4AD) for our graphic design for the label and releases.

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phic designers and artists.

We have debuted Arctic Dub Continuum Live on Facebook Live. We have produced several installments and are planning frequent (weekly) live video streaming shows. We are also rehearsing and setting up to bring this concept to live venues and art spaces. Casey Borchert and I (as The Push) performed this concept last weekend as part of an art gallery event, in Porto, Portugal,

and it resonated with attendees.

What plans do you have for the rest of 2017?

The rest of 2017 has us releasing at least one EP per month and refining our Arctic Dub Continuum Live performance concept. We are also curating tracks for version 4 of our compilation series. V4 will be focused a bit more on left-field and experimental selections.

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