After my initial talk with Christian Fennesz I hung around in the green room talking to him and video artist Lillevan about software, the music industry, and alternative revenue streams. Here’s what they had to say.

Peter Dines: Could you tell us about Modul8 for a second?

Lillevan: I don’t want to force anything on you, it’s just that before you think I’m just doing Jitter things…

Fennesz and Lillevan at Mutek 2008 from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Resident sonic maestro Peter Dines spent some quality time with Christian Fennesz and his video artist Lillevan at Mutek, and got so much geeky information on Christian’s techniques that we split it into two stories.

Fennesz shared some of his favorite patches from the modular patching environment Reaktor for our kore.noisepages.com site:
Mutek Interview: Exploring the Reaktor User Library with Fennesz

… and talks more about live performance, composition and sound, and collaboration for CDMusic:
Interview: Geeking Out with Fennesz on Sound and Performance

I had a super, super time talking to Christian Fennesz on Friday, and as a bonus Lillevan from Rechenzentrum was there and talked about his upcoming performance with Fennesz, video software etc.

Though he uses Max-based “lloopp” onstage, Fennesz is a user of Reaktor (and anything / everything else) in the studio and says he browses the user library for new stuff once a month. We namechecked a couple of the great Reaktor builders who make stuff he uses – Martin Brinkmann and Dieter Zobel, among others.

Later I had a great interview with Tim Hecker about software, sampling, source material, composition – he also uses Reaktor – I’m going to email him some followup questions to get more specifics. Tim had a run in with a door earlier that day that left an egg sized bruise swelling up on his cheekbone. As a result I don’t think we were connecting as well as we could have. The poor guy was trying to eat a late lunch and recuperate while a lineup of media people waited to interview him. I think he’s okay – his performance later that night was terrific. Tim performed in near-blackout conditions with nothing to distract from the massive blimps of sound he inflates and releases – that’s his analogy for what he does. More on that when I get the interview transcribed.

Ben Frost kicked off the A/Visions 3 show with processed guitar, stacks of amps, feedback and a command of the stage – the guy knows how to present his music in a visually arresting way. Two old-school cassette recorders sat miked at each end of his performance rig, matched by two stacks of amps and speakers off in back and two the sides. Ben attacks his material physically, working the rig with his whole body. Expect to hear a whole lot more from Ben.