JARED VANMATRE: recently my attitude towards everything has gone from being conservative and cynical/oppositional to fluid and excited and giddy. i'm not sure what started this transition but i've been very hyper creative and full of admiration for things I previously had distaste for and it's been fantastic. like I truly think everything is enjoyable on a certain level when you are driven by creative energy. i've just been in like discovery/exploration mode and it's been really manic and fun
I've definitely noticed what you mean with that last point. Some of your recent output like "Jack My Swag" has taken interesting perspectives on genres that may people don't consider artistically, such as dubstep or bubblegum pop.
yeah recently I've been into EDM textures because I think it's amazing that for a little bit something as avant garde as dubstep was popular and that a large group of people at one point identified with wild amelodic digital fm sounds. i'm so ready for that kind of thing to become an object of nostalgia. it'll be weird and fun.
also my move to EDMish stuff also has a lot to do with the fact that I got a little bored with striving for historical depth and instead wanted to make really in your face in the present type stuff. music that makes you feel accelerated. i think getting into ryan trecartin had a lot to do with that lol.
oh and getting into trecartin was also important to me in the way that it made me realize that it's possible to make significant things without being oppositional and critical. that's huge for me and i'm glad that happened to my personality.
i just felt sick of being like cynical and listening to music that was mad at something you know? 80% of the time i'm making something i'm just having fun and exploring what i can do and what i can make myself feel and remind myself of.
i want to be everything.
I'm also a very goofy person and i've been embracing that with my music and art and it's been liberating.
Where does the creative process begin when working on a new track? I've definitely felt a goofiness in the samples you use, what do you look for in a good sample?
i kinda start with anything like sometimes it will be a rhythm i've been tapping out all day, a melody that's been in my head, an idea of a style i want to achieve, a space i want to sculpt, a situation, a feeling, whatever. Like earlier today I was making a song with the idea in my head that I wanted to make music that you would hear Halloween themed midi library page with like lighting bolt/cobweb graphics
as far as samples it's just stuff that i enjoy the sound of lol. usually it's clips of music/audio from a youtube video/recordings i've made that have little melodic/textural moments that sorta arouse my ears or whatever. like that little einsteins trap remix the singing in that is amazing and it sounds kinda half autotuned/half untouched and it's really pretty sounding and i used that in my roller coaster tycoon 3 beat
lately i've noticed that a lot of good moments in music have sounds that imitate animal cries or some shit like that. i love thinking about the psychoacoustic side of things i think that's super cool. like the other day at school it hit me that the reason boards of canada's wobbly pitch sound is so sad is that it sounds like whining/crying
oh wait this is kind of off topic but something i want to say about my music is that recently i've been very influenced by my gradual coming-to-terms-with my homosexuality and unmasculine-ness and also thinking a lot about love and having boyfriend lol
and friendship! and cute things.
I really feel that on "Call Me Up" and "Can I Borrow Your Pencil".
yeah lol! i want to do that more it was very engaging and felt natural. i'll be unnatural with my creativity sometimes but that's not a bad thing to me it's just a way of transporting to differrent areas of context/style or whatever. different points of view
Do you find PC Music as an aesthetic influence on tracks like those? There are a few similar motifs.
yeah! when i found pc music i was so ecstatic because it was like unlocking something that's been inside of me this whole time that i forgot about!
i really identify with their aesthetics and their way of functioning
i mean that's kind of how it feels every time I find something i like a lot
like i remember when i first heard boards of canada, when i first listened to Replica, when I first watched I-Be Area, when I first saw the artwork for james ferraro's releases, when I first listened to government plates, etc. it all felt like that
it's like finding things i strongly identify with to a certain degree or things that make me realize there's more untouched areas to explore
like i said earlier, my main motivation as an artist is i want to be everything
That being said, what sort of sounds do you hope to explore in the near future?
recently i've been wanting to work more with performance and the idea that certain sound elements, especially ones that convey "depth" or like specific context/intensiveness, exist when you aren't trying to get them deliberately and are results of outside variables. like some of my favorite albums sound a certain way because that's the equipment the artist had or that's the place the artist recorded or that's the time of the year the artist produced it or something
you know what i mean? i'm kinda having trouble wording it but i want to try to work with that
cause i spend a lot of time focusing on how i can sculpt my sound with software tweaks and i'm getting bored with that
i want to like play some intruments and use obscure daws or something. i also want to make music in different places instead of my bedroom because my environment has a huge influence on me. oh and recently i've kinda got back into Celer and artists like celer and i'll probably make some stuff like that. I actually did, i'll link you https://soundcloud.com/jrdvnmtr/the-moment-the-stem-is-pulled
That last thing you said is really interesting. What sort of effect does environment have?
environment can like change the way I function and look at things. like my internal point of view/attitude is often a reflection of wherever i'm at at the moment and i usually don't realize it.
like the other day i played with toys for the first time in like years and i made some sculptures and it was amazing because creatively i felt so un-me and fresh i need to do that kind of stuff more often. I kind of unwittingly limit myself by just sitting at my computer and making things
I've noticed some people on soundcloud have rapped over your beats.
yeah i think that's amazing. listening to them blows my mind. i'm really ecstatic that i'm at a level where artists want to collab like that
Who would you most like to collab with someday?
i want to be in a ryan trecartin film lol! looks like buckets of fun
also i want to collab with a dog or a cool wild animal
or like I want to collab with someone and make a garden with them and idk take pictures of the garden and use it as album art
"Kinesthetiac's Garden Album" coming to theaters summer 2020
