Even the most knowledgeable bird experts cannot really distinguish why a bird sings exactly: there are many reasons why, and the chirping can come in many complex variants. What we know for sure, is that birds like to sing – a lot. Which is exactly the phenomenon Thomas Aziers performance at Birds of Paradise is based on: the urge to speak, without being clear or distinguishable in tones or words. Azier has proven to be a multi-talent, interdisciplinary artist, and renowned performer. Also the many rooms in TivoliVredenburg aren’t unfamiliar to him: during the pandemic, Thomas has performed many out-of-the-box shows, exploring unknown territory in Utrecht. Together with Finnish experimental guitarist/producer Obi Blanche, saxophone player Maarten Hogenhuis (BRUUT!), drummer Simon Segers (De Beren Gieren) and a vocal ensemble, Thomas Azier will perform the interactive Glossolalia, a show that will blind you with its many new feathers and is unlike any other thing Azier’s done before.
Vocal ensemble: Fanny Alofs, Rianne Wilbers, Kadri Tegelman, Bianca Sallons, Laura Polence, Jorien Zeevaart, Michaela Riener and Nina Rompa
Frank Veenstra: “The Glossolalia performance seems like a new step in your artistic development. What was the immediate reason for this and do you see it as a turning point in your career? In recent years you have lost interest in fiction, mythology and narrative forms of pop music. More than the narrative as a singer songwriter, you want to take everyday reality as the starting point for your work. How did this get a place in Glossolalia?”
Thomas Azier: “During the confinement we saw many artists giving live concerts on the internet. The illusion of reality is of little interest to me. Giving a concert on the internet is, in my opinion, contrary to the principle of the concert, namely coming together, having a direct interaction with the artists, the danger. I can say that I make music for the almost religious and meditative feeling that performing gives me. It’s one of those rare moments where I’m fully involved in the present. I therefore started to think about alternative ‘shared experience’. Of course also a bit tired of the age-old concept of ‘standing on stage’ while both the audience and the artist know exactly what is to be expected of them. I’ve actually been convinced from the start of the pandemic that we should use this time to test these alternative ‘shared experiences’. Glossolalia is a research project in which I will look at how to create an experience that is more than a two-dimensional show.”
Frank Veenstra: “Glossolalia means as much as ‘Speaking in tongues’. Speaking in tongues is mentioned in the Bible as one of the ‘gifts of the spirit’. Does a kind of non-language also appear in the performance?”
Thomas Azier: “Speaking in tongues; the use of a non-language, is also called ‘Yaourt’ in French. Children use it when they try to sing an English song but don’t know the lyrics. I made my song Hold On Tight based on an improvisation in which I used my voice as an instrument, without words. I have been doing this since my first compositions. The final vocal was the very first recording I made. It led to an inner conflict about professionalism and amateurism. It took a year to accept that this first take had the right emotion. This improvisation, and the idea of Glossolalia in itself, composing in the now, I want to further investigate and use in choral compositions. In addition, there is also an interesting crossover if you mix different languages. By living in different cities in Europe I learned to speak French and German, with all the manners that go with it. I always picked up on that quickly, and enjoyed learning the nuances in a new language. By mixing proverbs, puns and sayings in French, German, English and Dutch you get an interesting sound palette. Perhaps that has made it easy for me to come up with a new language that resembles anything. Some of my Glossolalia lyrics are written out on some lyric website, but that can’t be right, because I just improvise. I find that intriguing.”
Frank Veenstra: “For Glossolalia, you were also largely inspired by (modern) classical music such as that of Morton Feldman and Gavin Bryars. How has this affected your composing process?”
Thomas Azier: “In recent years my interest has naturally shifted to freer forms of music. In classical and experimental contemporary music there is more room for individual interpretation. I slowly started to get frustrated with the format and the symmetry of western pop music. I myself had a need for music in breadth, length, and I used the confinement time, after my Love, Disorderly album, to explore this further in A Collection Of Broken Ideas. Of course I can only speak for myself, but especially at that time I had a great need for ‘healing’ music. In 3 minutes I didn’t have the time to create my own universe in which you just can wander in many directions.
“For me Glossolalia is a modular project, we are able to improvise, do it small but also grow to a bigger performance. The show we are presenting at Birds of Paradise is a new step, as we only did one performance before in which we worked with 4 singers.
To be able to improve our work as we go along, we decided to document as much as we can of the process. We are collaborating with filmmaker Matthijs Vuijk who joins us during the performance, capturing the audience and performer so that we are able to work with the material after and improve. Here is a short sequence from our pilot that we presented at Worm Rotterdam in 2021 during the O-festival.”
Thomas Azier
Thomas Azier: You’ve always looked for ways to ‘get off the computer’ with regards to making music; The Rake (Obi’s self-build guitar, red) has been an important step for you to get some kind of freedom back, that our generation was lost in dragging midi notes around on a PC.
Obi Blanche: My electronic roots are in the Tracker world, MOD scene. This is how I learned electronic music in the 90s. We were not dragging midi notes, we were banging/coding notes into the grid with a mechanical keyboard. We never needed a mouse. The keyboard was still a tangible object and we customized them with spray paint and markers. They took a proper beating. Mine was completely cracked open on the edges, drenched in liquids, and still worked like a charm. After that came the mouse phase, which I didn’t dislike at the time much, but didn’t know better either. The way to hear music changes when you work visually or you’re staring at the music while it plays. It’s about what you concentrate on. Are you seeing the view or the stain on the window? Can the thing you’re doing elevate yourself or the moment and how does it make you feel while on it? Personally, this is important to me and I don’t reach that with a mouse and a monitor.
Thomas Azier: When I met you in 2007 on Craigslist in Berlin, we were both looking for collaboration. To get out of this lonely world of laptop music production. It still took us 10 years to get together and write music together.
Obi Blanche: I was quite closed those days, I was running with the blinkers on, just looking in one direction. I was searching for collaboration or community, but was really picky about it and didn’t yet have the tools to be a good collaborator. Didn’t see the potential to enjoy playing and see what comes out of it. This is really important to me, enjoy playing. So simple and so hard at the same time. Through enjoyment comes lightness and light that I’m looking for. Nihilists now sing in a choir that meaningful art comes through pain, but you can also enjoy pain.
When we started to work together it was fairly easy, we complemented each other and we had that 10+ years of experience to share. That was necessary for this collaboration to happen. To appreciate the other’s talent and to witness and learn from the skills of the other. I think community and sharing are crucial to elevating the output.
Thomas Azier: We always talk about Berlin -> next week Thursday saying, when we try to meet someone. Hey man, you wanna play? Yes? When do you have time? Next week Thursday. Which is a synonym for NEVER, It never happens basically. Why do you think it’s so hard for people to actually meet up these days and just play music?
Obi Blanche: We are so consumed by these machines on our hands and by making the ends meet. Should musicians and artists be paid fair for their streamed work, yes! It’s hard to experiment within this setting. Other than that, when was the last time that you felt free in the city, flanneuring around with no purpose, getting inspired, seeing strangers, feeling the asphalt, having strange conversations with the man of the streets in micro shorts? Not many people do that, there’s no time, there’s no value. Most of the time value is measured only by numbers. If there’s no value in playing together, then it’s not happening. Why not just get together and play music? Sensory overload, too much music, and too much going on already. So much waste. It’s extremely hard to get good people together sharing the same wavelength. If we wouldn’t be going down the highway way too fast with everything, people would get bored and have time to enjoy and have space to feel.
Thomas Azier: Some quick technical questions: When and why did you decide to build this guitar?
Obi Blanche: I’ve played a lot of different guitars throughout my life. Intuitively I purchased and collected guitars that at that given time I didn’t like, put them aside for over 10 years, and now lately I’ve learned a lot from these guitars, how they play, weight, balance, the form of the neck, materials used. I had wishes for my own model, I wanted it to be huge and light. This idea has been marinating in me for a long time. When I had the chance to build one with Yuri Landman at the Amplify residency in Berlin things locked in place. Yuris octave upper harmonix Jaguar styled behind the bridge, multiple outputs, kill-switches, microphonic body, all of this was spot on in my ballpark. I drew the body shape by hand and cut it out with a hand saw in 15minutes and it was perfect.
Thomas Azier: How is it tuned? What is RAKE made of?
Obi Blanche: One of the beautiful things about the medium of the guitar is that it can be tuned whichever way one desires. RAKE is a baritone with a long string length, that long, that it’s hard to find fitting strings and it’s atm tuned to normal guitar intervals starting from bottom string A. For some songs, I can easily drop tune it. I had a 7th tuner for a double the hi-string to get a sitar type of sound, but wasn’t the biggest fan of that with this particular model. We got to use the discarded pieces of wood at the Amplify shed and I went through that pile looking for the lightest piece. Little did I know that the piece I decided to use is actually really good wood for guitar body building and I was surprised how well it resonated, felt and played after the guitar was done. I asked a woodworker which wood it is and he said it’s spruce. Such a common wood for a Fin.
Thomas Azier: Is there something you want people to see or feel when they see you working that guitar live? Or is it a more about your own expression, and anyone can take away from it whatever they want?
Obi Blanche: It’s both. I want to encourage people to do what they want to do, to be brave, to sing with their own tone. But at the same time, I do this work as much for me. I do research on the topic, but at the same time, I don’t want to force words to describe it yet. I want to have stronger knowledge about the body based playing through my own practice and knowledge and then let the written word lock in to place naturally. I do have a certain urge to rationalize it, but at the same time, I do enjoy the magic and mysticism of letting go.
Sometimes after the gigs people come to me and tell me how the things I’ve published have influenced them to work on something that they have an interest in, this is humbling and rewarding to inspire.
“A playlist where I collected my favourite work that inspired me to create the Glossolalia show. Songs are picked by me and Obi Blanche.”
Thomas Azier
The idea of a music video is a concept that has been around since the 1950s and has barely changed. In a world where people listen to music with their eyes, visual language used is often linked to advertising: all about optics and less about content. Our music industry and particularly the way we create visuals, is commercial in a sense that most budgets for music videos are often linked to production companies who develop advertising campaigns. Directors make commercials to be able to survive. Music videos are often a way to sell directors to clients. This makes it difficult to question the visual language that is being used, as there is an underlying different goal of a music/director collaboration.
I find it important to look for a different visual language, that isn’t rooted in advertising, in the form of collaborations with other artists outside of this production-making-system. Where there is a freedom and space to experiment with each other, the budgets are smaller, so that there is a greater chance that the work takes on a new dimension. I like to work with young people who are interested in making art films and are able to create work independently, not relying on bigger companies.
I want the work to make sense as much in their form as in what they mean. Engagements (collaborations) or beliefs have to resonate with my final product and how I work, hence the importance of the people I choose to work with. The collaboration relies not necessarily on the result but on the way we work and how we think, it is therefore based on a shared philosophy.
The short film was shot by Taiwanese director Ayoto Ataraxia, who drove through the streets of Myanmar for this filming. Thomas says: “Hold On Tight was shot after exchanging Taiwanese films with Ayoto (e.g. ‘Tsai Ming Liang’s The River’, ‘I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone’ or ‘Rebels Of The Neon God’). My original vocals on this track, which were really only meant for the demo, inadvertently created the right emotion that I wanted to convey. It was a process but in the end I chose to keep these vocals. With this music and vocals in his pocket, Ayoto Ataraxia traveled to Myanmar with a small film crew and intuitively shot Hold On Tight at 16mm.”
The idea of a music video is a concept that has been around since the 1950s and has barely changed. In a world where people listen to music with their eyes, visual language used is often linked to advertising: all about optics and less about content. Our music industry and particularly the way we create visuals, is commercial in a sense that most budgets for music videos are often linked to production companies who develop advertising campaigns. Directors make commercials to be able to survive. Music videos are often a way to sell directors to clients. This makes it difficult to question the visual language that is being used, as there is an underlying different goal of a music/director collaboration.
I find it important to look for a different visual language, that isn’t rooted in advertising, in the form of collaborations with other artists outside of this production-making-system. Where there is a freedom and space to experiment with each other, the budgets are smaller, so that there is a greater chance that the work takes on a new dimension. I like to work with young people who are interested in making art films and are able to create work independently, not relying on bigger companies.
I want the work to make sense as much in their form as in what they mean. Engagements (collaborations) or beliefs have to resonate with my final product and how I work, hence the importance of the people I choose to work with. The collaboration relies not necessarily on the result but on the way we work and how we think, it is therefore based on a shared philosophy. If I would produce this in a classic way (which I have done in the beginning of my career) I wouldn’t have the same process. The three videos Hold on tight, Love, disorderly and Entertainment form a trilogy and are a result of this way of thinking.
The idea of a music video is a concept that has been around since the 1950s and has barely changed. In a world where people listen to music with their eyes, visual language used is often linked to advertising: all about optics and less about content. Our music industry and particularly the way we create visuals, is commercial in a sense that most budgets for music videos are often linked to production companies who develop advertising campaigns. Directors make commercials to be able to survive. Music videos are often a way to sell directors to clients. This makes it difficult to question the visual language that is being used, as there is an underlying different goal of a music/director collaboration.
I find it important to look for a different visual language, that isn’t rooted in advertising, in the form of collaborations with other artists outside of this production-making-system. Where there is a freedom and space to experiment with each other, the budgets are smaller, so that there is a greater chance that the work takes on a new dimension. I like to work with young people who are interested in making art films and are able to create work independently, not relying on bigger companies.
I want the work to make sense as much in their form as in what they mean. Engagements (collaborations) or beliefs have to resonate with my final product and how I work, hence the importance of the people I choose to work with. The collaboration relies not necessarily on the result but on the way we work and how we think, it is therefore based on a shared philosophy. If I would produce this in a classic way (which I have done in the beginning of my career) I wouldn’t have the same process. The three videos Hold on tight, Love, disorderly and Entertainment form a trilogy and are a result of this way of thinking.
Thomas Azier is more than just a musician; he approaches music in a unique way, more like a visual artist or painter would approach his or her art form. For ‘Love, Disorderly’ he was inspired by media such as photography and film in order to try to influence the structures of the song and create a new experience.