Helm
‘Saturnalia’ is live album by London-based sound artist and experimental musician Helm. You can find it on his Helm Bandcamp page.
“My music shifts continuously to reflect my consuming interests and present artistic challenges to myself”
Is ‘Saturnalia’ a ‘real live album’, in the sense of: a recording of a complete live concert, without any editing or layering afterwards?
Yes, more or less. I made one edit to remove a small glitch and the recording has of course been mastered but there are no overdubs or additional processing so what you hear is a 99.9% an accurate representation of what was performed that morning.
I guess you must have many recording of live concerts, so why did you decide to release this one on Bandcamp?
I don’t have that many, though I have released some in the past to function as satellite releases around albums. I haven’t been too interested in recording many of my gigs previously as live performances tend to function as a means to promote the albums through re-imagining the material in a different context. As such I’ve never found them that interesting to listen back to when taken from the physical environment and all that makes witnessing live music appealing.
That said in the past couple of years I have been making more of an attempt to incorporate improvisation into my performances and it makes the gigs a bit different. The performances have become a bit more distinguished and interesting on their own terms and this has got me a bit more interested in documenting them.
Before this global health crisis I thought it could be interesting to build an archive from this point on. In the case of ‘Saturnalia’ specifically though, whilst using a lot of source material from the sessions of ‘Chemical Flowers’, I feel it also functions as an individual recording in its own right aside from being just a recording of a gig. Also lots of good memories associated with that particular gig for me too.
Do you see putting a recording on Bandcamp as a ‘real release’, as something you can add to your discography? Or more as ‘music you share’?
Absolutely, I don’t see much difference between the two anymore. Records are ‘music you share’ too, it’s just that they are shared through the mechanic system of the music industry. I still have romantic notions of physical media as it’s what I grew up with, but in these current times I’m willing to accept that the world is changing, peoples listening habits are changing and as an artist you need to find ways of adapting to that. Bandcamp is one of the biggest platforms for music now and a legitimate part of the music supply chain which works incredibly well to support artists directly. I’m happy to make my music available that way.
You mention that ‘Saturnalia’ was recorded at 9 a.m. That’s a strange time for a concert. Did you get up early for this concert? Or did you play this concert after a night without sleep?
It was part of a festival which ran for 36 hours straight, beginning at 12 a.m. Friday night and ending at 12 p.m. Sunday morning. I played at 9 a.m. Sunday morning in the attic of Macao which is an old abattoir in Milan, now a fantastic music venue with many different spaces for performances and DJs. It was one of the best festivals I’ve ever attended. I slept for about 5 hours before my show and got back to the venue around 7 a.m. with everyone still going.
When I played they had mattresses set up so the audience was laid out on them, everyone in different states of consciousness. A very strange and surreal atmosphere, I’ll never forget it.
Was this concert a laptop set, or am I wrong here?
Wrong, I’ve only performed with a laptop a couple of times and that was many years ago.
Do you feel like you moved away from noise, and more into the direction of ‘electronic baroque’ music?
At one point a few years back I felt I had reached a saturation point, creatively speaking, from many years in the noise scene. In the previous couple of years I’ve felt a bit connected to it again and have been starting to incorporate some of these elements into my music again. My music shifts continuously anyway to reflect my consuming interests and present artistic challenges to myself so a period of time exploring different ideas was inevitable.
I could see this album as a drone album, but also as an experimental electronic album, or even as a dark ambient album. How do you look at it?
I’m reluctant to attach these sort of genre terms to the music as they always end up bringing some baggage associated with them. I guess it could belong to any, but I never write or perform the music with this in mind. As it’s subjective I feel it’s better for the listener to reach their own conclusions, if they wish to do so.
For me the music evokes a pretty lucid memory of a surreal and enjoyable experience, detached from any technical memories of how it was performed, more reminiscent of the environment it was performed in, the company I was with, what I was eating, drinking, etc.
– Joeri Bruyninckx
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