Frescher-Southern Electronic Music

Interviews

A Conversation with Eustachian

Posted October 15th, 2004

During October 2004 Frescher-Southern conducted an e-mail interview with Tony Welter of the IDM/glitch/mash-up trio Eustachian. Eustachian will perform at Oscillate Night 5 and they can be found on the web at the Eustachian webisite..

And here we go:

Frescher-Southern: There are three of you in Eustachian, correct? And you all live in different parts of the country. How do you go about collaborating or performing together live?

Tony Welter: yes there is 3 in eustachian...........first originally it was me and john roche.......we met in greenville, south carolina....worked at a record store called manifest together for like a year ...and i was writing weird drum n bass.......and john was writing more minimal glitchy stuff.....and we just more or less started wondering why don't we get together on some things.....and did that in sc for like 2 years and i decided to go to fullsail in orlando fl and we kept writing together ...passing reason files over aim and then i met masaki at fullsail....he was in one of my classes....and i met him threw a friend....so he came over to jam on day on the keys....and we wrote a track together that night and it was sounding really intresting......it was giving the eustachian sound more of a classical feel.......and we liked that!.....so we asked him to join our cult and he did! Now i still live in Orlando....masaki went back to NY and john is in SC so we more or less do the same thing by passing cubase and reason files over aim and writing tracks like that....um yes we have peformed live with all three of us.....more than a couple of times.....it's just harder these days cause masaki is going to school in NY and he only gets to come out to play shows when he's got the days off but he's still rockin it......

F-S: Do you have a particular process you use to construct tracks or does each track sort of grow uniquely? Do you find samples that get your attention and then build tracks around those -- or work on tracks and then fit samples into your existing sounds?

Tony: um yeah we all have the same process of building our tracks more or less.....it consists of removal of all clothes and maski taping pictures of me to his computer screen and me doing the same with john's picture and john taping a picture of walter matheu and masaki to his aswell then we begin......oh yeah and all three of us draw pictures of sharks on our chest's.......yes there are live instruments in our traks.......masaki is the grand wizard on the keys and i've been playing drums for 14 years now so i do a little pitter patter in there and john is the master of his word spittin............

F-S: You attended Full Sail in Orlando: Did you find that rewarding and did that affect your compositional technique?

Tony: um i guess full sail didn't really help with the composition part but....the mastering and post production of our tracks full sail definitly helped....with just more knowledge of outboard gear and shit........

F-S: The super-syncopated/complex drum patterns have always been difficult for me to create on my own. Do you build them in Logic or using some tool like that? Or do you have a certain process? Would you mind detailing some of your beat technique?

Tony: well like i said i've been drumming for a while so thats kinda of a strong backbone to fall on when it comes to drum programming ....but really nothing to out of the ordinary all three of us use combination's of all the same softwares like...Cubase sx....reason 2.5...abelton live......sponge fork.....a little of the new fruity loops....super collider....sound hack......and sampling most of the shit ourselves..... to us it's not what software your using....it's the quality of your samples and the source your getting them from.......i've seen stuff come from a guy who would sample house hold appliences and just arange them in acid 2.0 and it sounded really rad!...... but really no standard way to program drums......just make em quirky and kindergarten sounding.......

F-S: The last I saw you, you had been exploring Ableton Live for live performance. What did you use before Ableton? Has it worked its way into your live set? Do you use other pieces of software or hardware instruments, as well?

Tony: um before we started using abelton....we would do kinda of a dj set w/ our tracks back and forth with reason and cubase....while tweeking the tracks so they sounded different everytime live and adding different sounds and elements to them..........we use to sample the audience before we play and put heavy effects on it and use that as an intro for the set were doing so the intro is different everytime.....but now we incorporate alot of vocals in our sets and we have more toys to run our laptops through for live shows........i'll say the new Korg Legacy is my new prize right now......that is really helpful and convineint for live shows.......

F-S: When I came down to Orlando a couple months ago the scene seemed very loose and friendly -- and so many digital musicians I listen to come from around Orlando and the Maimi areas of Florida. Do you enjoy that scene? Are Merck and Schematic sort of the IDM-hubs in that area? Any good stuff around there that may not have made it out to other parts of the country/world?

Tony: um well yeah i would have to say that merck and schematic kinda have florida locked down.....all the shows we play in florida are mostly with the schematic guys cause there so close to orlando and there so good to us and such a lovley gaggle of strapping young men!

F-S: What music have you been listening to lately? Anything that we may not yet be familiar with or any recommendations of new sounds that have influenced you recently?

Tony: well latley we have been listening to fucking AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED! and the usual tigerbeat releases and the new bjork is rad.....um....dat politics is a plus.....the curtis chip on ZOD is really nice.......cuti sadda.....the new dino felipe is really impressive.......easy-e.....the faint....flexe...Grupo N Sexso is turbo!.....ilkae....le crebiz is a good 8-bit punk group out of atlanta......Macho Man Randy Savage's rap album is on fire!!!!....Megadebt is awesome.....the soundtrack to "A Mighty Wind" is definitly my top 5 right now!.......otto's new one is really freakin good......ween....ying yang twins ......my cousin does airbrushing is rockin......and alot of TWISTA!.......if you play all these artists in a bunch of different boomboxes at once it's a good time!...

F-S: How do you think IDM as a wide genre has been evolving recently?

Tony: Not sure when experimental is going right now.......i could talk on and on where it could progress in the next ten years but i just hope it get's worse so more people will listen to it!!.........

F-S: You perform often with Machine Drum and now he lives with you. Does he clean his dishes and pay his part of the rent on time?

Tony: um yes i will have to say travis is a great roomate and we both put on our aprons and we hold dishes together and scrub like the wind......and travis doesn't pay me real U.S american dollars for rent........well 3 months ago it was a gorgous day out so normally like me and travis do i run around the sub-division giving travis a piggy-back ride and one time a kid threw a stick in my eye and i dropped travis on a rock so now his thinking is a little impaired and now he has developed his own kind of money which he thinks is real money.....he calls it "Gergalbloxy".....which is really just bark from outside with scotch tape wrapped around it and crude unrecognizable symbols drawn on the bark.......i feel so bad for him that i just take what he calls "real money" and let him sleep in the shed.....

Discuss this interview in the Forums and get more Eustachian at the Eustachian website.

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