The electronic music world has discovered Fizzarum last year, after their first and successful 7″ on City Center Offices. Some people had a chance to discover them even earlier on Fizzarum’s mp3.com page. Recently they’ve been signed on the British label Domino Records, which also deals with Mouse on Mars, Max
Tundra and others. In November of 2000, Domino released Fizzarum’s Microphorus E.P and recently they released the debut album of the Russian trio called Monochrome Plural.
The three lads (Dmitry Dubov, Vlad Linder and Dmitry Letakhovsky) that make up Fizzarum hail from Russia,
and have up until now had releases on City Centre Offices
(Ursa Majoris/Phut of Plex 7″), Domino (Microphorus EP & Monochrome Plural LP),
and have appeared on various compilations including Toytronics’ Neurokinetic, Merck’s Squadron, Art-Tek’s Artefacts, and the forthcoming Surgery compilation Initial Release. The Fizzarum chaps took some time out from live preparations and press for their new LP to answer a few questions that Tim Koch fired at them.
Tim Koch investigates the inner workings of the Fizzarum machine by using his Therapy Session technique while Alexander Rozet drops his questions shortly afterwards (part of the interview within was taken during and after Fizzarum’s promotional tour in the UK in November of 2000).
Igloo: At what point in the process of recording music and then releasing it do you gain the most satisfaction ? [eg. making sounds / hearing that someone bought it for their mother’s birthday / reading reviews etc.]
Fizzarum: Enormous enjoyment comes at the moment when, having searched for ages, you get the feeling that the combination found is what we see as a melody.
Igloo: Do you think that the practice of MP3 bootlegging
in the electronica genre has an impact on smaller labels? Have you experienced this with any of your releases?
Fizzarum: It is hard for us to answer this question, because it is only now that our first album is released. Anyway, the mp3
technology has always helped us. We find it very helpful for
new artists; and it has spread to such a massive level that now no one is able to stop it anyway.
Igloo: As a trio, how do you all handle the process of writing tracks?
Fizzarum: Each one of us brings his own unique thoughts. We find that working alone implies subjectivity of perception and stops creativity. Only in unity, people with different types of thinking can create something unusual and new a lot faster than one person would have done.
Igloo: Do you think that Melody is slowly becoming a
more prominent and acceptable ingredient in electronic music today?
Fizzarum: No doubt about that. Music first of all is a melody. For the last ten years there has been a tendency for new music to contain practically no melodies. It seems to us that this cannot go on any longer, and if this tendency stays on the people will get bored very soon. From the very beginning we decided that melodies are the basis for our music.
Igloo: If Fizzarum’s music was used as the score to a Hollywood movie, what would the plot be?
Fizzarum: It will be a science fiction movie about something that no one has ever heard of before, but that does exist.
Igloo: How did Fizzarum come together?
Dmitry Doubov: I met Vlad on Russian mailing list, where people discuss breakbeat. The third member Dmitry Letakhovsky we’ve met because of having we the same interests of synthesizers programming, new sounds creation, etc.
Igloo: How do you work together? Is there a chemistry between the band members
The chemistry has evolved with our progression in work. At the moment we feel each other very well, we can even predict the next move of everyone.
Igloo: This question goes to the new and the third member Dmitry Letachovsky: How do you feel about being in Fizzarum and to work with 2 other members? How did you become the third member of the band?
Dmitry: I feel absolutely great. When some people meet up there is some kind of factor, which gives an unusual result. One person can’t do that. And about becoming the third member…Well, I know Dmitry and Vlad for a long time. At the beginning we were just talking, I was trying to understand the music they were listening to. Then I felt in love with the melodies of Autechre, Biosphere and Board of Canada, the love for rhythms came later. Then we had a live performance in some apartment in St. Petersburg, but that’s another funny story.
Igloo: Do you remember your first experience with music creation?
Dmitry Dubov: I’ve received my first keyboard in 1987 and I was surprised by the fact that I could record all the instruments like guitar, drums, piano. I was amazed by the possibility of one person being a whole band! Also I used to program on my old ZX Spectrum computer. At that time I realized that writing music on computer could be interesting and fascinating.
Igloo: And why you’ve decided to create music?
Dmitry Dubov: Back in early 90’s, when we were into breakbeat, we wanted to find something with beautiful melodies, and not only breakbeat rhythms. So, we decided to create a combination of breakbeat and beautiful/spacey melodies.
Igloo: What were your influences? And what you’ve been listening to since you remember your love to music?
Dmitry Dubov & Vlad: In 80’s we’ve been listening to Jean Michel Jarre (Magnetic Fields was our favorite piece), Herbie Hancock’s Rock It and we loved Depeche Mode. Then, at the beginning of 90’s we’ve been listening to breakbeat tunes and a bit later we’ve been listening a lot to the British Electronica scene. Today we’re more into sort of Easy Listening stuff. We like bands like Air, Vangelis and an old electronic project from Russia called Zodiak. And also we really like Super_Collider. On our visit to London we had a chance to listen to the new Tortoise album (out next February on Warp Records), which sounds very good! A great combination of post-rock, live drums and electronica.
Igloo: There is no doubt that the main thing for Fizzarum is melody. You always talk about beautiful melodies and positive emotions. For some reason the tracks “Vesat” and “Torsion” are a bit dark and melodies less, why’s that?
Fizzarum: “Vesat” has a very beautiful, but hidden melody. And “Torsion” has an intriguing bassline. It’s just someone can hear straight away and someone else after a few listenings, and someone will never hear it. In these tracks we’ve created labyrinths and hidden obvious things. We are very happy about the fact that we could combine simple and complicated things.
Igloo: How did you feel about going to the UK for promotion? Were the feelings similar to those in your visit to Denmark on November 1999?
Fizzarum: It is fantastic! We didn’t give so many interviews before. On this promotional tour we had a lot of interesting and unexpected questions and the feedback about our music is very good. The thing is that most of our time we spend in our studio in St. Petersburg, so every trip is very pleasant for us. When we came to England, the difference with our trip to Denmark was that we didn’t have to bring tones of equipment, which we had to take to Denmark. We think that both Britain and Denmark are great and unique countries. The main feeling about those trips was the expectation for the things that wait for us there.
Igloo: What have you felt when you’ve seen your record on the shelves of London’s best music shops?
Fizzarum: It was a great feeling, we also could feel that we still have a lot of ideas and hidden possibilities, that we’re going to realize in our next releases.
Igloo: Do you get creative freedom from Domino Records? Do they limit you somehow?
Fizzarum: Yes, we’re totally free and we’re very thankful to Domino Records for this freedom. There’s no control on our music and they don’t limit us at all. It is very important for us and it gives us the power for future works.
Igloo: What, in your opinion, is the situation with electronic scene in the world? Do you like other electronic projects?
Fizzarum: The thing is that we’re deep in our own projects, though there is definitely some interesting music. Unfortunately we haven’t got much of this music for objective view on the situation.
Igloo: Your track “Izoterica” was written with the inspiration of the Russian cartoon movie The Secret of The 3rd Planet. The track has also got some samples from that cartoon. Are you planning to create something similar in future? Maybe you’d like to create a soundtrack for a movie?
Fizzarum: Yes, we really love this cartoon and there is a possibility that we’ll be working on it again. And about soundtracks…Yes! We’d like to create a soundtrack for some futuristic, sci-fi movie. Also we’d like to create a short track for a TV commercial of some new technology products. We think it could be cool to show a good musical idea in 20-30 seconds of a movie.
Igloo: What are you doing these days, except for promoting your releases?
Fizzarum: We’re writing some new material. Already have finished a few tracks for the next album. All the new tracks include very beautiful melodies and kind of trip-hop rhythms. Also we had a live performance on December 9th at the chill-out area of DJ Parade in St. Petersburg (along with another electronic project –EU from St. Petersburg and Moscow’s Ambidextrous and Novel23).
Igloo: What are your visions about electronic music and music equipment in the next few years? And what’s going to happen to you?
Fizzarum: We really hope that in future people won’t think about electronic music as something that based only on rhythms and effects. That electronica will be a normal thing and not something exotic. Lately there was a huge development with micro processing technology, which caused a revolution in the industry of musical instruments. But that’s not the limit yet, and in our opinion the development is going to happen with interface field, e.g. options for the interaction between humans and machines. We don’t know what’s going happen to us, but we’ll be using our knowledge and skills for producing totally new music.
Monochrome Plural is now out on Domino Records. See full synopsis in Igloo Mag’s Reviews section!
-Two part interview session conducted by Tim Koch & Alexander Rozet.
