Carl Craig & Moritz Von Oswald

“NU RAVEL”

Karajan remixed! Who cares? We do! For the third party to join (Universal Jazz & Classics CEO) Christian Kellersmanns „Recomposed“ plot to electronically jazz up the sacrosanct music of the European masters, consists of two masters of their very own kind: Carl Craig, Detroit Techno figurehead since his debut in the late 80s, and Moritz von Oswald, one  half of legendary Berlin technocrat duo Basic Channel. For the first time these semilegendary producers joined forces for a full album. And discussed its production process in a talkative mood.

First question: Why do we need recomposed classics as in this series?
Moritz von Oswald (ponders this deeply): I don’t care (laughs). We just play. I think it’s interesting, and this was our approach, to do a new track, and not to just treat what we already know. And I think that these kind of boundaries do not really exist. The tracks that we used seemed to me to have a special tension, so I thought it was worth trying. We didn’t know if it would work, but after a few sessions we decided that it would.

You were aware of the danger zone involved in this area?
Carl Craig: I thought, well, they let all the other hacks do it, so why not let some people do it that do better than hacky! (laughs)
Moritz von Oswald: I didn’t think about the dangers. That is also one of the things you just have to ignore.

Have you analyzed the other volumes of the “Recomposed” series?
Carl Craig: When the project came up and Moritz and I met in Berlin, we listened to what Jimi Tenor had done. And liked it. But when the time came for us to do it, we had our own agenda and it wasn’t like: let’s do something to beat Jimi. It’s something that is a part of us. And that’s how our approach in music is, do it in our way, and let the piece going to be a part of us instead of comparing it with something else.
Moritz von Oswald: It was interesting to see how (Tenor) treated Varèse, one of my personal favorites, and transformed the music into an orchestra band, a groovy, funky thing. But when I was asked to do the project I thought it would be nicer to stay in one era—the time when Ravel was working. He also orchestrated the „Pictures Of An Exhibition“ which were originally written for piano. I found it interesting to stay in that time where things changed so much… everything changed.

Once you decided for the works of Ravel and Mussorgsky, how did you start to work on the material?
Carl Craig: There were a lot of discussions over the time we worked on it. We had a meeting in his house, listened to music and discussed parts we liked, took some notes, then Moritz came to Detroit, and we picked some more things. It was just a process of slowly moving our way, taking little baby steps towards the point where everything flowed. But the first couple of days we kept on drinking wine and talking shit.

It was the first collaboration.
Carl Craig: The first that actually had a result (laughs). And I think that is because of the different ways that we’ve been able to work together. You might know that Metallica movie (Some Kind of Monster)? These guys hate each other. See, we’ve been friends for a long time and our friendship is very cordial, so our working relationship is pretty much the same, with all the respect that’s in there. Fifteen years from now we maybe punch each other in the face while we’re working, but right now it’s friendship translated to musical partnership.

You were the first one in the series who received multitrack recordings. Which made it easier, and at the same time … harder?
Moritz von Oswald: No, that made it a lot easier. I told the company to get it together, otherwise we could not have done it. For the company it was the main task to get these tapes. And that opened up a whole new set of possibilities to really get new tracks done, which is what we wanted to do. We didn’t want to treat or re-arrange, but do a recomposition.

So what were you interested in, the textures, mixtures of sounds, the instrumental layers?
Moritz von Oswald: If you have an idea of what you like, and if you start to isolate parts and do little mixdowns, it’s possible to do something new and create an atmosphere that you really like. It’s nothing that you can plan in detail. It might be something that you heard in track that wasn’t there, or it might be just messing around with the rhythm, pick another starting point or even change a little bit in the rhythm. And then you have something new, something to play with again and match it with other elements. So it was an open situation all the time, and that was nice.

Was it clear to you that you wanted to use the four to the floor beat as the motor of the music?
Carl Craig: Most of music that we work on is in four, and with a big kickdrum. So it was kind of the way it felt, and that is what it became. I don’t make Hip-Hop records, you don’t do that, not Drum’n’Bass or anything, it’s in the vein of what we do.

You picked the “Bolero” for a special reason: It introduced repetition into European classical music that was based on chord changes.
Moritz von Oswald: The rhythm pattern is so complex on the one hand and so easy on the other. I was attracted to it the first moment I heard it. And the tempo I could imagine was right, all of that and many other things were just perfect for trying out. And also the fact, that it isn’t four-four but three-four and still goes along with the kickdrum.

You also quite self-consciously decided to build your own structure instead of keeping the original.
Moritz von Oswald: Again, otherwise we would not have it done. Maybe it’s hard to imagine something totally independent from the original, but you know, that’s what we wanted.

It contradicts the European tradition of the sacred integrity of the composer’s work.
Carl Craig: Aw, fuck all this shit (laughs) It’s all bullshit. We got so far past that. I don’t want to diss classical players, but some people think that professionalism comes in how good they play somebody else’s shit, but I think professionalism shows in how well you can interpret somebody else’s shit in the way that John Coltrane or Miles Davis did. Miles could play all classical all day, but he chose to do something different, and that shows how great he was as a musician. And by being so touchy about music I think, that’s not a broad enough thinking. I think the intelligence comes in how you find a new way of doing things.

Of what importance was Herbert von Karajan in this equation? Would you have taken somebody others recording?
Moritz von Oswald: I think this original recordings have two things that characterize them. One is really a concert, and you can hear applause, and you can hear a special tension. And for me, classical music is live music, I like recordings, but I love concerts. It’s such a different dimension. Every concert changes the music, and (Karajan) has chosen a really nice one. If it would have been another director … I don’t know.

He might have rotated in his grave!
Moritz von Oswald: But he was also very open for new technology! He kind of invented the CD, he was into recording vinyl, changing to direct metal mastering. The Deutsche Grammophon did a lot of development in new music technology.

Which brings us to the dichotomy of recorded instruments and synthetic sounds. In your record, it is sometimes clearly clashing, sometimes it’s undistinguishable.
Carl Craig (mysteriously): We come down to the magic of the mixer’s ear. And the mixer’s ear, that’s him (points at his partner and laughs). I think the first records that didn’t sound like there was a huge difference between sequenced stuff and live stuff was: early Prince records and Michael Jackson. Everything before that was awkward. But now that we’ve gone through the Public Enemy age of taking samples from everything and adding all that stuff on it, where in music it has become a norm that you use samples and electronics along with instruments and voices, that it’s maybe easier fort he ear to understand that all these follow the same concept, to blend the electric signals coming from electronic instruments versus electric signals as converted through various microphones. Before that it was about how you took room sizes, mic positions and try to mix them in an organic way. Now you use electronic devices to do the same thing, it’s not that much of a stark contrast. We actually mixed things from different pieces. Took a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and made a little paella. We had chicken, put some gambas in it, some rice, beans, and some other shit, and maybe a little bit of rum and put it on top!

Text > Eric Mandel
„Recomposed by Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald“ ist bei Universal erschienen
www.universal-music.de

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