home > browse > featured > interviews > view article

Interview with Pimmon

  Tobias Fischer

Do you play any traditional musical instruments?
Yes, when I was seven or eight years old I took up guitar playing. We all tried to play songs that were hits back then, like so many kids and young people do. It was the first time that I felt how wonderful it is to play and create sounds. It was also the first time I found a new way to express myself through music. This was very important to me, because it opened new views and possibilities I had not known before.


And this made you want to create and compose your own music, I presume?
Interestingly enough, it didn't come through my guitar playing. It really happened when my mother bought a tape recorder. This was a really fascinating machine for me. Early on, I experimented with it, having tapes running backwards and so on. In fact, the possibility to create sounds nobody had heard of before was very intriguing. It opened a door for me into a new field that, in the beginning, I had to wrestle with it to find all the possibilities to create musical expressions. But the more I worked with it, the more it intrigued me. It was something I really wanted to do, and I did.


Producing, composing and performing – are these demanding process?
This comes with doing it. You listen and all of a sudden, you find something that you love. It is right there. Some sounds suddenly open up and there is this view, this insight. You keep to it, develop it and keep on working. It grows and gets bigger, as you do it. And of course, once you complete a theme that you love, it is very satisfying. That is the best thing: You feel you've composed something that is true and says what you want to say.


Now you are using a laptop with special software on it. Would you call it a musical instrument as well?
Absolutely, yes. Everything that allows you to manipulate sound lines, in whatever way, is in fact a musical instrument. And the laptop is designed to do that, of course next to other things. I love to work with it, constantly finding new ways, new sounds, newly created material, and it never seems to end. I just love to do that.


Do you need to practise as much as you would have to do on a traditional instrument, like a piano or a guitar?
Yes, that is very true. There is something I try to do a lot: If I play a gig like I did tonight I want to at least reproduce some sounds that I have recorded. That is not easy, since it is almost impossible to play exactly the sounds that have been recorded. But I want at least have some basic elements being recognizable and that requires practice. Of course, when playing a gig, I'm there with my equipment and laptop. The audience can't really see what I'm doing, and it would be very boring to show it with a camera. Although the effect can be pretty extraordinary in a musical sense. But my gigs are all about sound. I'm there, but the sounds are all that matters.


They're experiments.
Well, really, I don't want to categorize my music in any way. Experimental music can mean a lot of different things. It was maybe more relevant in times when the people manipulated sound for the first time and moved out of the known musical categories. But no, I don't think my music should be pressed into any genre, for that matter. It has much more to do with self-actualization than anything else. I do what I do, and it is true for me. All that counts is my vision, my ideas. That is what I want to express. Experimental or not, the pure genre is absolutely not important during this process. It's really very personal.


On this personal level, then, what are you seeing yourself doing in say, ten years from now?
Good question. I just wonder what I would have said if you would have asked me this question ten years ago. Probably the same as I will say today: As long as I experience this kind of self-actualization that I have experienced for quite some time now, Pimmon will probably still be around. At least I have no plans to change anything.


Will sound art one day will be followed by an entirely new genre, one that we not even know of today?
This is very difficult to answer, especially for me. Music as I and many other musicians are creating is pretty psychedelic and abstract. It is just a personal expression. As I said before, I can't imagine to be bound and limited by a certain genre. Freedom is very important, freedom of what I want to do and produce. I don't write from my head but from my heart.

By Fred Wheeler

Picture by Dappler Effect

Pimmon Discography:
Waves And Particles (Meme) 1999
Pola Pola (Cromim) 1999   
Kinetica (K-RAA-K³) 1999   
Afternoon Tea/ w. Ambarchi/ Fennesz/ Rehberg/ Rowe (Ritornell) 2000   
I Left My Heart (Cromim) 2000   
Assembler (Fällt) 2000   
Secret Sleeping Birds (Sirr) 2001   
Have An Egg (Alienation) 2001   
P-Waves (Cromim) 2002   
Thong Of Naif/ w. Lempk (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) 2002   
Zesde Mixer/ w. Köhn (Stichting Mixer) 2002   
Mort Aux Vaches (Mort Aux Vaches) 2003   
Snaps * Crackles * Pops (Tigerbeat6) 2003   
Still Important Somekind Not Normally Seen (Always Not Unfinished) / w. Björgúlfsson/ Thorsson (Crónica) 2004 
Decoration: Underline (Cromim) 2007   
Curse You, Evil Clown (Meupe) 2008   
Steered In Smash Ascent (Stunned) 2009   
Smudge Another Yesterday (Preservation) 2009   
The Oansome Orbit (Room40) 2011   
Lay Down Real Slow (Stunned) 2011   
Just Becasue You're Spatial (Cromim) 2011

Recommended Pimmon interviews & articles on the web:
In-depth interview with Pimmon on the history of the project and his approach at angbase.
Extensive and personal piece at Cyclic Defrost.
Podcast interview with Pimmon at New Weird Australia.

Homepage:
Pimmon