Having been through the history you've been through do you feel like your approach to making music has changed drastically since when you began?
Well, I don't know notes or scores and I don't write songs by chords, I do all writing by ear. In this respect, it's all the same. I really have some more knowledge now about instrumentation, and I can play more than two chords for sure on the guitar! But generally I think I approach music the same as always, I approach each song as a blank slate.
So how do you usually write?
I start with something in my head... could be a sound, like my guitar falling down and making a cool noise. Then I tape it and play it back many times, trying out loops, until the noise starts to form a song. Sometimes it's by accident like this, and sometimes even I've had songs form in dreams. I've woken in the night with songs in my head, and then I get up and try to remember the notes. Sometimes I'll start with the sequencer or bass, it depends.
The sounds on In Dust Three, you kind of hear a sound like an "outer space" quality to the music.
I don't think there is anything sci-fi involved, but we really like the sounds. Don't know why, since when we started I played on guitar. As soon as I had some money I was buying effects and I really like these sounds. Our sound is not because we're obsessed with the new century or anything or that we want to have our bedrooms on the orbital, but that's not really going to happen anyway.
Speaking of these sounds, you've got a very distinctive sound as a producer. I mean, you can really just tell immediately if you've produced it — I heard a song by HERE on the radio, a remix that I didn't recognize at first but I knew that it was your work.
Every time somebody tells me that I'm shocked. I never want to sound the same in the work that I do. If I'm producing other people, I approach each individually, like first asking what is the best thing about this, and how can I bring that out? I never want to get stuck on, say, some bass sound so that I would use it on a Naceva album and also on HERE. I even don't like other peoples' records when theysound the same from the start to the end. I do as much different stuff on one record as I can. I guess it comes up somewhere from the subconscious to the EQing... anyhow, that always surprises me.
I think it's a positive thing, when a producer can find a voice, a clever signature in music.
Yeah, but not if it's overdone, like you have to say, "Oh, not again!"
Sure, there are bands who get stuck. Going back to the studio stuff, this studio that we are in now, it's yours?
Yes, my friend and I share it — he's a sound engineer. His name is Michal. He was studying trombone and then got into sound at film school, went on to engineer. We had made records together, he knows all of the theoretical musical stuff, which helps. We work together sometimes, and we also work individually. He actually has just produced this big Czech pop band, Chinaski.
So where did you start learning about studio work?
By the time we were in the studio with EoST, I had to know. I mean, there weren't any technical engineers at that time, and if there were they certainly didn't understand what we wanted. So, we ended up being really hands-on, standing right behind them at the desk and taking a look to see what we could do better in the mix. In '94 I was asked for the first time by a band to help them in the studio. I guess I felt by that time, "Yeah, I must know something about this by now." I learned just by doing it, by being a producer. There just weren't many or any people in the Czech Republic to learn from.
