Ad.ver.sary - I did download it, and that's why I bought it

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19 May, 2008

Ad·ver·sary - I did download it, and that's why I bought it
Hailing from the Canadian electronic music underground after a decade of Techno and Industrial DJ and promotional work, Jairus Khan aka Ad·ver·sary, now presents his debut album "Bone Music". Featuring remixes by Antigen Shift, Tonikom, and Synapscape and mastered by Yann Faussurier of Iszoloscope, the album has been 3 years in the making. It didn't prevent Khan to provide North American tour support for such acts as Terrorfakt, Antigen Shift, Cyanotic, Adam X, Iszoloscope and others. With his debut album out since May 13th on Tympanik Audio, Side-Line hopped over to Canada to check out the man behind Ad·ver·sary. More info at www.ad-ver-sary.com and myspace.com/adversary . (By Bernard Van Isacker)

SL. Tell us how the band got started, what was the first material you worked on, and how did you reach where you are now.

A. Ad·ver·sary is, at its heart, a project about conflict. Five or six years ago when I was considering if I wanted to start trying to write music, I had to ask myself if there was really anything that I could contribute that hasn't been said before. It'd be easy to write another Shock Front today (or another Unacceptable Face of Freedom, or another Homes & Gardens...), because Converter's already done all the work. So I asked myself what experiences I would be bringing that were unique, that were mine and no-one else's -- and the answer was conflict. That's the experience I have above and beyond any others.

I started out by doing a remix for Iszoloscope, because with a remix I didn't have to worry about the actual sound design. Not counting a lot of really terrible demo scene tracker music from fifteen years ago, that remix is the first track that that I took seriously, and managed to finish.

SL. Tympanik Audio is quickly growing and now you are a member of the label as well, how did this go?

A. I spent years talking with different labels who said they wanted to release an Ad·ver·sary album. Labels I love, from Ant-Zen to Fich-Art. For one reason after another after another, it never ended up happening with any of them. Last winter, I heard a new release from an artist that I really respected (and that I had given my demo to the year before at Maschinenfest), and the first 45 seconds or so of one of the tracks on the album was almost exactly the same as the first 45 seconds of one of my tracks. I contacted the artist, who denied having ever listened to my demo, and didn't have anything else to say about it.

I was really upset over the whole thing (especially after being so frustrated trying to get a release out), and I said fuck it - I'm done looking for labels, I'm done giving out demos, I'm done with the whole fucking thing. I'll just put up mp3s on my website. Or not. Or whatever. Rachel (from Tonikom) then recommended that I check out Tympanik, and I brushed it off. I wasn't interested in spending any more time mailing out CDs and writing self-aggrandizing introduction letters, regardless of what the label might be like.

But, after a week or so (and after realizing that the compilation I had been listening to non-stop was a Tympanik release), I sent them an email. Honestly, I still wasn't interested at all in a label, it was more of a "better to regret the things you have done..." gesture. They replied right away, and said that not only did they love Ad·ver·sary, but they had actually sent me an email (which I hadn't received) a few months earlier, asking if I wanted to work on a release with them.

That had a huge impact on me. Not only did they want to release an Ad·ver·sary album, but they were fans of the music -before- we were talking about releases, and that hadn't been the case with any of the other labels. I couldn't be happier, honestly. They understood exactly what I wanted to do with the album, and they supported it every step of the way. Bone Music is a much better release on Tympanik than it would've been if it had been on Ant-Zen, or anywhere else.

SL. What were your expectations?

A. I didn't have any expectations that weren't met and surpassed long ago.

SL. By the way what kind of gear do you have in your studio, please also briefly explain why you like working with that particular tool.

A. Everything I do is done in software. I have a PC, a MOTU Ultralite, and a lot of MIDI controllers.

Before I started Ad·ver·sary, I was helping run sound for a Mono No Aware show, and he had a catastrophic hardware failure during sound check. (We ended up having to use crazy glue and gaff tape to reattach a snapped daughter board to an old Atari that he used for sequencing.) He had an incredible amount of gear - fantastic gear - and I asked him what he'd buy if he was just starting out as a musician today. He said he wouldn't buy anything, he'd do it all in software. It was a shock, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

I drool over massive analog rigs (like Vromb's) the same as everyone else does, but I haven't been using music hardware every day for half my life. I have been using software every day for half my life, and I'm much more comfortable working with it.

SL. On your debut album "Bone Music" you bring hard industrial rhythms with organic soundscapes, what have been your main influences for this release?

A. Honestly, when I'm writing, I try pretty hard to isolate myself from music that might influence it. I won't listen to Gridlock if I'm working on a new track, I'll listen to something like R.L. Burnside or Talk Talk instead. There's a lot of music that DJ Leslie (who I spin with at her weekly club night in Ottawa) has introduced me to that I put on when I need to escape from industrial.

With that said, when I listen to the finished product, I can hear a lot of the artists I grew up listening to; Coil, The KLF, Nobuo Uematsu, Xorcist, Trent Reznor.

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SL. You were able securing remixes by Antigen Shift, Tonikom and especially by Synapscape. A friend service or how did this mix come about?

A. I've known Nick (Antigen Shift) for at least ten years, probably more. He was the first friend I had who started writing music, and he would play these early demo tapes for me - they didn't sound anything like Antigen Shift does today, they were like Velvet Acid Christ or Skinny Puppy - and it was really, really inspiring. Last year he asked Synkro and I if we'd play electronics with him (as Antigen Shift) before he left for a few years of military service, and he broke out that "Bone Music" remix in the middle of the set. It was easily the best show I'd ever played, and I wanted to be reminded of it every time I listened to the album.

As for the Tonikom and Synapscape mixes, I was helping with merch for an Ant-Zen show in NYC, and I gave them both my demo. To my genuine surprise, they both liked it, and offered to do the remixes.

SL. Did it really take you 3 years to complete this album? How come?

A. It really did, and I'm not really sure why. Here's hoping it won't take as long for the next one.

SL. Why did you choose Yann (Iszoloscope, Memmaker) to mix down the album?

A. I think there are only three people who do killer mastering in this type of music. Yann, C-drk (Ammo), and Mike Wells (Gridlock). Yann and I are friends (we lived together during the recording of Au Seuil Du Néant) and it just made the most sense that he would be the person to take care of it.

SL. "International Dark Skies" was your first demo. How much of a difference is there with this final release?

A. It's a pretty big difference. Most of the tracks on Bone Music are new, and the ones from International Dark Skies were torn apart and really cleaned up by Yann. IDS is a collection of songs that happened to be finished at the time that I needed a demo, it was never meant to be a proper release.

SL. You decided to mix the album to an average RMS level of about -14 dBFS, rather than the much louder -8 to -5 dBFS that's currently standard for most electronic albums. Why this choice?

A. It didn't make any sense to try to give it a loud mix. It's not a club album or a radio album. When we were mastering the album, I listened to a lot of the artists who have what I think is outstanding production - Coil, Synaesthesia, Stendeck - and they were all much 'quieter' than most of what's coming out today.

SL. There's also a remix EP coming in the fall with contributions planned by Cyanotic, Imminent, Stendeck, Asche, Iszoloscope, Synkro, JF Coleman (of Cop Shoot Cop and Phylr), Mo (of Zykotik K9), Totakeke, Shane Whitbread and more. Will each band work on a track or will it be featurings as well? What will exactly be the content?

A. It'll likely be pretty straightforward, one artist to a track. I'd like to try some tighter collaboration with a few of the artists involved, but the music I write is pretty personal, and I'm not sure that I'd play well with others.

SL. You mentioned a tour in the fall, how far has that idea developed?

A. Not terribly far. I'm hoping to confirm the other artists involved in the tour soon, so that we can start booking dates. Economic worries make it much more difficult to organize now than three years ago, a lot of musicians are terrified about losing their day job if they tour for a few weeks.

SL. The music on your site is released under a Creative Commons license. Any particular reason?

A. I download a lot of music. A lot. I'll go through gigs and gigs of it, and buy the albums I like - and it really frustrates me when I open the cd and there's some snarky message in the liner notes saying "thank you for not downloading this like those other scumbags". Well, I did download it, and that's why I bought it. I want people who buy "Bone Music" to open it up and see not only is it ok if they downloaded it, but they can share it with anyone they want.

There's a real disconnect between artists/fans who've been making and/or buying music for a long time, and artists/fans who discovered all their favourite acts post-napster. The reality of the situation is that no one is actually selling music. Music is free. Even if a band spent five years on an album and they don't want it to be free, it still is. Anyone can download it, any time, anywhere, at zero cost.

People buy albums for any number of personal reasons; they want to support the artist, or it's more convenient than installing Azureus, or they prefer the ritual of vinyl. They're not buying it because there's some intrinsic value to the music that the artist demands compensation for, they're buying it because they want to buy it -- and the way to get people to want to buy music is not to call them thieves because they took enough of an interest in your work to download and listen to it.

This isn't to say that downloading isn't creating a problem for a lot of artists who're working hard to just try to keep their heads above water - labels everywhere are shutting down, and getting records into stores around the world is more difficult than ever - but the problem isn't that there exists this massively connected zero-cost music distribution network that hundreds of millions of people are using, the problem is that there exists this massively connected zero-cost distribution network that the music industry -isn't- using.

If it wasn't for the influence of MySpace, Last.fm and Russian MP3 sites that sell everyone's songs for a penny a pop, this album would never have been made .

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52360

Posted by: mimic on May 19, 08 | 8:42 pm

and it is indeed a sweet album :) nice work.

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