Interview: CFCF on New Age, Japanese Music and the Almighty Panpipe

So, you have your new release Music for Objects out this month – can you talk about the inspiration behind it?

After I finished my last EP, Exercises, I was still in that kind of headspace, working on a similar vibe but looking to take a bit of a new direction. I was watching this documentary called Notebook on Cities and Clothes about Yohji Yamamoto, and it’s shot and narrated in a way that places a lot of importance on the naturalistic weight of his clothes, and his worldview. I began looking at the little things – cups on my coffee table and the like – and thinking there was something interesting in that. There is a romantic simplicity that is comforting, in a sense. My intent became to express how the form of the object has an impact on the way that I approach the world, and have that become the flipside of what Exercises was, which explored enormous spaces and the manner in which that affects our worldview.

“Keys” on Music for Objects interests me, because it stands out as fairly beat-heavy, certainly in comparison to any of the material on Exercises. Did you have any direct influences on that as opposed to the minimalist touchstones of Glass, Reich and Sakamoto? That seems to be more indebted to current club music, almost.

I was trying to mix elements of the weirder aspects of techno that are happening right now with fourth world sounds like Jon Hassell and this Japanese saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu. Part of the reason that I did go in that direction is because of one track that got left off. I originally conceived the record as a mixtape, not so formally released, and there was one that comprised of samples from an ambient record Sakamoto put out last year, and then one from Steve “Silk” Hurley. I was channelling those two different elements and building on that – it was interesting to see how it came together, it had a demure and almost romantic aspect that was both comforting and quite weird at the same time. “Keys” came from that, even though the first demo never got used.

The other thing that struck me is “Bowl” is faintly reminiscent of the airy panpipes used on “Letters Home” [from 2009’s Continent]. Was that intentional?

It seems that since “Letters Home” those panpipe sounds have become part of my sonic arsenal. I have another record that will come out at some point soon, and it’s all over that. On “Bowl” it’s actually a synthesised version, but I have a real set too. There’s something real nice and expressive about the way it conveys itself.

One of the things that seems to be consistent throughout your work is a predilection for drawing inspiration from sources that most people would find seemingly inconsequential. I was wondering if there was anything in particular in your musical development that has informed the way you look at things slightly differently from other producers?

That’s a good question. I can’t think of anything specific that happened to me that would affect that. I think part of it comes from compiling all the music that I do listen to, and gradually taking away the little parts that I find engaging. A lot of the time it’s the references to tiny, minute parts of life that can really express a lot. You hear a lot in Arthur Russell’s music, in his lyrics too. There are always lines about really silly, hyper-specific activities that tend to happen. There’s a line in one of the songs about an orange birthday cake, which has a colourful quality that speaks to the predictability and banality of life, but that how remains a good thing. It’s not like I’m actively striving to be different, but maybe it’s more that I love subtracting stuff. If I did want to make a “club track,” it would be to transport you somewhere else than that. I think that’s what initially drove me when I was making a lot more dance-orientated music, and then as my listening habits have developed, there have been other styles that I want to work within, but that same instinct carries through.

One of the stop-offs in between your early stuff and what you’re doing now was the Do U Like Night Bus mix – you inadvertently wound up pushing the genre name to much wider prominence. In a similar vein, there are elements on the new EP which have an almost vaporwave feel. Do you see these kinds of difficult-to-place genres as an update of New Age music created with different tools and sensibilities?

Yeah, well, I think it’s definitely an outgrowth of it. With Night Bus, it’s funny to see it grow and take a life of its own outside of the message board from whence it originated and the mixes I’ve done. The way I see it is a really open thing that could be perceived as so many different things. But I’ve seen the press try to pin it as being a very specific London, kind of post-Burial style, which I felt was reductive of what I thought the term was. For me it was always a mix of that and a million other things: Julee Cruise and David Lynch soundtracks, chopped ‘n screwed stuff, Sunn O))) plus plenty of other things from the past 20 or 30 years. There’s a lot of variety, and that’s what exciting about it. It feels like a really fun, cool way to approach all this music that’s been around for so long.

To some degree the stuff happening now termed vaporwave or whatever comes out of a certain amount of satire, a bit of parody of the silliness of what was New Age in the ’90s – y’know, deep relaxation tapes and what have you. I use New Age to describe some music I put out because I have a genuine appreciation for some of that stuff from the late ’80s and mid-’90s. It’s a strange thing to talk about. On my EP The River and Continent, plus the last two and forthcoming material as well, it’s a direction I always tend to fall back on. I like using those soft sounds as a way to express things that are less commonly associated with that kind of music. For other people doing it now, the idea seems to be to take these samples or create new sounds and reposition it to express different ideas than were originally intended – not purely music for the purposes of relaxation, but to imbue it with intellectual ideas and very strong emotional connections as well.

I find it interesting that since Continent you’ve put out perhaps half a dozen EPs. Why is it a medium you gravitate towards?

It allows me more freedom to explore ideas that are very specific. When you make a capital-A album, it’s a definitive statement of your artistic approach. It’s how Continent was, and how the next record will be; the idea is to bring many things together and create my own universe. If I have a more specific, conceptual idea, placing it on an EP affords it a little bit of a side project-y feel than my “album for the year” or whatever, and people are often more receptive. It’s funny to think back to when Continent came out, because I had a day job and was just attempting to get this off the ground. It was comprised of a bunch of tracks that I had made without thinking it was going to be an album, and then I did have that opportunity to release it as such, so it came together and was quite cohesive. But everything since has been preconceived as a record, to begin with at least.

Over the past few years I’ve grown more and more conscious about the materials and the artwork, having a strong input into how it will be perceived visually. I feel I have a duty to myself to express these things not just in the music. I’ve been lucky enough to work with really good people who truly understand what I want to do. For example, when Pitchfork streamed Music For Objects recently, they gave us the opportunity to have an extra visual element with really beautiful slides that the record’s graphic designers Josh Clancy and Travis Stearns made specifically for the stream. To some degree it’s totally out of my hands as far as how and when people hear it for the first time, but I was happy to have that avenue, because it gave me more control and add a bit more character. Otherwise it just would have leaked, and that would have been that.

You’ve talk about reading Japanese books and films, immersing yourself in that art, and you put out a recent mix called Belongings, Possessions, which was full of modern classical composers from the country. In a similar vein to the aforementioned panpipes on Continent, there are a few Eastern motifs on that record as well as on Music for Objects. Has this interest has always been prominent?

It’s a very good question, but hard to express. It’s not so much that it’s an obsession with Japan per se, but more discovering a wealth of great art from there that has a tangibly Japanese character. When I started to learn about music and started to develop my own tastes, a lot of it tended to be obviously English language and of American, Canadian or English origin – effectively Western contemporary culture. There’s a whole other world making music, film and art that was not easily accessible a while ago. Well, perhaps not film, as that stuff has always been relatively available in US stores. But for music especially there’s so much I wouldn’t have known to listen to or seek out until very recently, with the resurged interest on the Internet. Perhaps it had made it over here before now, but never made a splash.

It feeds into an impulse to go and rediscover underappreciated stuff from the past. So for people like me, there is that idea of building a new body of influences to draw from – or to combine those with different elements that were not present in my learning experience. There’s a distinct character that is missing from Western music, specific tones that are very interesting to me and other people. It’s peculiar to put it into words that Japanese culture has become “a thing,” I guess. There have been times in the ’80s and ’90s when similar occurrences happened, but it feels now like less a fascination and more a reverence and respect of their tradition and also modern pop and art forms.

That strikes me as quite cyclical: what you’ve mentioned about taking influence outside of one’s naturally assumed frame of reference boils straight back down to your worldview when creating music. That appears to be your mindset, culturally and artistically.

That’s right. It’s all part of the same process. It’s exciting to discover artists that I’ve never heard before, that did – or are indeed doing – compelling work. To bring it back to why it’s a Japanese interest... In that country there are all these artists that are amazing, but not at all appreciated over here. It’s good to have a whole new set of ideas, people expressing completely different things. It’s just cool to have... more, I guess! [laughs]