An important source of inspiration for Fedbymachines is the way technology and humanity interact. This also became apparent when we first met him at Freemote festival last December. We interrupted a guy who was surrounded by devices, preparing for his first live performance. He told us he was a little nervous, but when we saw him unified with his equipment on stage, absolutely killing it, we knew we had to ask him for a podcast.
Fedbymachines’ music is characterised as deep ambient garage, a style that developed out of a broad taste in music: “Boards of Canada, LFO (basically all the early Warp stuff), Burial, Massive Attack, Carl Craig, but in more general terms early hiphop, house, techno, dub, jazz, 90s IDM and film music”. He even came close to the source as he attended a lot of acid parties when he was living in Chicago in the mid 90’s. “Recently I have been listening a lot to Sepalcure, Ak0pian, Synkro and fellow producers from the Night Shift Collective I am part of.”
The name Night Shift Collective immediately brings to mind images of gloom, melancholy and solitude. Derelict cities, industrial wastelands, dusty old factories and abandoned railroad tracks going nowhere are the kinds of images Fedbymachines draws his visual inspiration from.
“I think these always leave an impression on me, because they strike me as symbols of the continuous recycling of cities, the rise and fall of technologies, cultural phenomena, architecture and ways of living. The idea of something still there, but lost, severed by the passing of time. For me, these are images of forgotten dreams and moments.”
The man-machine interaction is also an important source of inspiration: “In its most literal form, this manifests itself in interfaces used to control music and sound (for instance Konkreet Performer), but in a more general sense, works and installation by artists like Panamarenko and Studio Roosegaarde.”
“Furthermore, my music and mixes always breathe an atmosphere of night and rain, although in my mixes I often use this as a contrast with the upbeat, ‘light’ side of music. This mix features the many faces of garage and garage-related music and is built up like a dramatic plot with a happy ending. It starts off with a dark, industrial atmosphere with some eastern European cinematics, and moves on to Synkro’s emotional track ‘Viewpoint’ and more upbeat yet melancholic garage tracks. Then the whole thing moves into the realm of the acid techno influenced beats of Blawan (a shout-out to my Chicago days), mixed with more dub-infused tracks, ending in the hyperactivity, glitchyness and euphoria of Julien Mier’s ‘Rainbow Covered Home’.”
Artwork: http://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/dune/info/