OH NO ... ROBOTNICK! Hot
Elephant Music distribution by AUDIOGLOBE
1 - Talk about your style and your sound evolution.
Good question! I’ve been asking myself the same thing
foryears…fortunately my my fans seem to know better
what my style is ! What I hate is homologation, that’s
why I tend to ride on a side-trackomewhat from mainstream
and market expectation, with obvious ly negative economic
consequences for me. I like making the kind of music that
I have in my mind with the equipment I have at hand because
that’s the only way I know not to miss the original
idea. For some time I’ve worked in expensive studios
to get a more professional sound but results were poor.
2 - Italy dance-electronic culture
scene: now and past!
As to the past, for most of the 80s I couldn’t really
put up with Italian Disco . Except for a few cases, like
Mike Francis, whose music I really admired although it
was so distant from what I was doing, all the rest sounded
like underdeveloped stuff to me. Maybe because the best
of it , the more alternative stuff would hardly be heard
on the national market and therefore wouldn’t always
reach my ears. The Dutch and the British seem to be much
better documented about Italo-Disco which became a real
myth for them. Since the coming of House music many things
have changed and all along the 90s I’ve heard wondedrful
stuff, sometimes quite ironical stuff as well a lot of
crap coming from Italy. At present, world techno is so
standardised that it’s hard to express an opinion
about it. Everything seems to sound alike and little innovative.
I liked Omino Stanco a lot, I hope he’s still around
and kicking.
3 - Tell us your last "Live set" experience.
As soon as I could afford a sufficiently powerful lap-top
I set off to realise an old dream of mine.
A DJ-set where I remix all the tracks I’m playing.
This is something you can’t do with vynil (which,
I’m sorry to say I never quite liked, I prefer tapes).
I always liked remixing famous tracks but I’d never
found any use for that. (I don’t do bootlegs). Now
as a DJ I can do whatever I like with the music I play
as long as I give the credits and require not to be recorded
during live performance to avoid any use as bootleg. So
I’m having a lot of fun. I now have a 4 hour DJ set
of 80s and contemporary tracks, all of them personally
remixed plus my own tracks that I sing live and some basis
I play on. Wherever I did it , it’s been greatly
succesful!
4 - Talk about DJs
That’s a thorny topic as I am myself a DJ now. Let’s
say that I didn’t considered them much for a while.
Now that I am a DJ myself, I understand it’s no easy
job. Anyway, I rarely danced in a club till the end of
the night without getting bored after a while …I
mean good DJs are not many. Years ago I appreciated Farfa
who, at a rave, took me to dance a kind of music I wouldn’t
normally care for. Then there’s the whole issue of
DJs as the new Bosses of the Music system. This is unfortunately
the consequence of the devastation of the record market
operated by digital technologies and the no-copyright movement.
Musicians will most probably go back to being considered
like servants. Their new masters will be the multinationals.
Music will survive only as ads jingle. DJs will run this
new (ancient) system.
5 - How many bootleg/re-edit about "problèmes d'amour" around
the world?
I know about 6 of them but there must be many more..
6 - and version, remix?
There are no real remix. Most people just cut the refrain
out (which is, by the way, the only bit of the track I’m
really proud of) and add a few sounds on the drums and
bass-line. Carl Craig’s remix is ridiculous, somewhat
insulting in the title (problemz) and illegal too as he ‘s
never paid a cent for it. The various “remix” that
are around were made by me in the 80s.
7 - Analog or Bit-Laptop?
Both. I work on the computer but I sometimes import analogic
stuff recorded on tape.
8 - France and your life (lots of
your music-trax french titles...)
It’s a love affair that dates back to my childhood,
when I was crazy for French singers , from Edith Piaf to
Gilbert Becaud but also including Francoise Ardit and Antoine.
Furthermore I’m really hopeless with English and
Italian doesn’t really inspire me. French culture
was fantastic in the 60s and 70s, then it collapsed but
right now it seems to be shyly emerging again.
9 - What do you think about the evolution of sound? Where
do we go?
We shouldn’t forget that human senses are not perfect
and have limited perceptive capacities. For instance, above
a given acoustic pressure (exceeded by practically all
clubs and concerts), the human ear can no longer exactly
detect the pitch of notes. So that music is perceived as
a sort of noise that is quite an advantage to bands wih
poor singers and DJs who can’t mix on the same tonality.
It’s a night when all cows are black. A very boring
night. For instance I feel very frustrated as a DJ when
I hear that often times some amazing effects I got by superimposing
tracks on nearby tonalities are totally lost in clubs beacuse
of too much loudness. As to the future, we need to bear
in mind that all effects based on psycho-acoustics have
been already lavishly used by today’s music. Real
breakthrough in sound is little likely to come. So we can
only go back to deal with music, a rather exciting prospect
for musicians. But, please, turn the volume down by a few
dbs if you really want to enjoy it (the good music!).
10 - Your Motto is ...
The more you go for something , the further away you get
from it
Rare
Robotnick's
THNX:
Maurizio Dami (Alexander
Robotnick)
www.robotnick.it interview
by dax DJ
My interview with Alexander Robotnick 2004
issue
3# Keep
On Magazine
