Sampling Stories Vol. 11: Zavoloka

Interview

The EP Volya (Kvitnu 2014) is an exception in the work of Ukraine and now Vienna-based electronic experimentalist Kateryna Zavoloka. It is the only record so far in which she has used sampling material with a strong political connotation: field recordings from 2013 and 2014 Maidan winter revolutions in Kiev. Below is a background talk about the soundscape of the Maidan.

[Hannes Liechti]: What is your general understanding of sampling?

[Zavoloka]: Basically, sampling is recording. The term triggers two further dimensions: The first is making field recordings and processing them by using samplers. The second one would be recording instruments and different voices and preparing all these recordings as samples for my live set.

[HL]: How important are semiotics when it comes to sampling? Do you also use samples in order to express a certain message?

[ZV]: First of all, if I start to compose, I already have some concept in mind. I then choose the samples to work with. The samples I am going to choose completely depend on my theme.

[HL]: When did you decide to work on the topic of the Ukrainian revolution?

[ZV]: With the Volya EP the process was actually the other way round. I didn't know at first time that I was going to produce an EP out of these sounds. We just more went to the revolution almost every night. Of course we were helping those people, bringing them food, and so on. But we were asking ourselves: what could we do as artists?

[HL]: You wanted to participate more actively.

[ZV]: It was such a strong atmosphere that I felt that I had to do something out of it. I really had to process it. But I didn’t want to play concerts for people. So I decided to record. I recorded everything, everything that was happening, every night.

[HL]: Can you describe the soundscape?

[ZV]: In the first two months there were just people gathering but then the real fighting with the police began. You could hear exploding fireworks and gas grenades. Furthermore, people started to take huge metal sticks and beat them onto burned busses. That sound was very strong, kind of march-like. Suddenly someone whistled and everything stopped and there was silence. Then someone screamed «Glory to Ukraine» and the people started to sing the Ukrainian anthem. The soundscape was kind of a symphony sometimes. You have to imagine yourself in the middle of this huge square: you hear these sounds all around yourself, constant but moving from one side to another. That was very impressive and strong.

Music Video «Славлення / Slavlennya»

The video was recorded in January 2014 during active combat clashes with special police units on Hrushevs’kogo street in Kiev. Audio and video documented by Kotra and Zavoloka.

[HL]: What kind of equipment did you take with you?

[ZV]: I only used a small zoom recorder. You cannot take huge equipment with you in that situation. You have to be able to run – if the police come.

[HL]: Did you already know which samples you were going to cut out of this massive footage?

[ZV]: I still did not have the intention to release something. It was more that anthropological kind of interest to do these recordings. I mean that was the most powerful event I ever attended in my life. It was just for me personally.

[HL]: When did you decide to work on these tracks then?

[ZV]: Some weeks later Russia started the war with Ukraine. That was the moment when I thought that I, as a Ukrainian, have to say something. I then simply called this EP «freedom» (English for Volya). In a way this was like a meditation for me, kind of my personal fight. Usually I never do this kind of political art.

[HL]: But that is political art.

[ZV]: Some could say yes. But for me, conceptually, it was more a ritual to protect the Ukraine. I just wanted freedom, I don't want war with Russia. And these samples were fitting amazingly for my concept.

[HL]: Is there anything else beyond this message of freedom you want to transport with these tracks?

[ZV]: What is very important for me is that people get this powerful feeling that we had when taking part in these events.

EP Volya (Kvitnu 2014)

Volya by Zavoloka

[HL]: Do you think it is important to be physically at the place of the events if you use these kinds of sounds. Or it doesn’t matter?

[ZV]: For me it is very important. Of course you can take these sounds just from YouTube. But I really have goosebumps when listening to these sounds. Because I was there. I really know what it means.

[HL]: I think the war in the Ukraine was one of the first wars that could be followed on live streams at home, everywhere on the planet.

[ZV]: That's true. And it was also the case on the Maidan square in Kiev. The police actually even shot at some of them, even those with «press» written on their helmets. But the content they recorded remained on the Internet because it was streamed.

[HL]: Did you also follow these streams when you were not on the square?

[ZV]: Yes we did. When we came home in the early mornings for catching some sleep, we used to open our laptops with all the streams from Maidan. We could only fall asleep when hearing the ongoing sound. Because when it stopped it meant that the police were coming and started to shoot. So for me these samples also represent the sound of when I could fall asleep these times.

The interview was conducted at Bad Bonn, Düdingen, Switzerland, 8.9.2017. This article has been published in the context of the PhD research on sampling in experimental electronic music by Hannes Liechti. For more info click here.

Biography

Hannes Liechti lives in Bern, Switzerland, as a popular music scholar/lecturer, curator, cultural producer, and content editor. He is the head of KULT Student Agency at Bern Academy of the Arts HKB. Since 2021, he is part of the executive board of the concert organizer bee-flat and in 2024 he was elected as a member of the Cultural Commission of the City of Bern. Liechti teaches history of popular music at Paderborn University, Germany. From 2013–2024 he worked as a producing manager and as a curator/editor for Norient. He co-published «Seismographic Sounds: Visions of a New World» (2015) and co-curated the corresponding exhibition on global pop. He edited the digital publication «Sampling Politics Today» (2020) and published his PhD on the culture of sampling in experimental electronica with Norient Books (2022). Follow him on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Published on October 09, 2017

Last updated on July 13, 2020

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Sampling Stories Vol. 12: Ratkiller

Commentary

by Hannes Liechti

In this review comment on the latest release by Mihkel Kleis aka Ratkiller our author argued that the artist serves as a perfect example for musical intertextuality. I would now claim that the sampling practices of experimental electronic artists such as Kleis show the total disembodiment of the samples from their sources. This – quite widely used – approach becomes apparent when both listening to the tracks but also looking behind the scenes of its production.

Sampling does not always mean quotation, to intentionally refer to someone or something. Accordingly, not all sample-based music is intertextual. Within the tracks of Estonian producer Mihkel Kleis, aka Ratkiller, it is the sheer presence of a vast number of (randomly) sampled sounds that makes the referentiality of a single sample secondary if not even unrecognizable. What we can experience here is the almost complete disembodiment of the samples from their source, a process soundscape artist R. Murray Schafer has called «schizophonia».

Intertextuality, as it is defined by French literary theorist Gérard Genette, describes «a relationship of copresence between two texts or among several texts: that is to say eidetically and typically as the actual presence of one text within another» (after Lacasse 2000: 148). Sure, to achieve such a «copresence» it might be enough for a text to simply appear within the other text, albeit the actual perceptibility or – in other words – its character as a quote is not really given. It was Richard Dyer, professor of film studies, who introduced the distinction between «textually signaled» and «textually unsignaled» forms of intertextuality (Dyer 2007: 24) as a means to deal with this problem.

However, I would argue that speaking of «intertextuality» in such cases as Ratkiller could be misleading. It is not really about quoting something, it is much more about being influenced and working with a certain stock of audio material. This becomes especially obvious when looking behind the scenes. I have emailed with Mihkel and asked him about his sampling strategies and this is what came out: a vivid picture of his sampling approach, grouped into topical quotes.

«Using samples is quite irrelevant»

Mihkel Kleis aka Ratkiller talks about his strategies of sampling.

#listening

I assume sampling is used by people who constantly listen to a lot of new music (not all the artists do), so whatever I choose to sample basically relies on what I have been listening.

#software

Around 2010 I began to record and mix music on my own using the sound editor Audacity. The first things I did – just to try out different possibilities of the program – were a couple of mashups. At that point I started to collect samples.

#learning

I've tried other software a couple of times (I can't even remember which ones), but they just didn't make sense to me and I don't really have much interest in learning anything only because it could maybe be useful. Actually I have no interest in learning anything at all. Someone who doesn't know anything about music recommended Audacity for me and it was really easy to understand. I had absolutely no clue how to edit music before that and it just went on from there step by step.

#fragments

At first I was focused on rhythm loops, but at one point this approach began to seem too limited and simplistic. So now I mostly use short non-repeating samples, which are often just tiny fragmentary sounds stripped out of context.

#sampling 1

Here is one of many possible ways of how I sample. I sometimes randomly pick some samples from my sample folders and throw them into a new playlist in a media player. I then play around with these samples, just with the possibilities of the media player (play, pause, volume) as long as some sort of a sensible pattern appears. While doing this I record everything in Audacity. The recording then may become the foundation for building the narrative of a new composition.

#sampling 2

This track actually is one of the rare cases where my sample wasn't an accidental find. I took this spoken word part from the end of the song «Beptized in Decadence» by French death/thrash metal band Massacra as a foundation. I have had this tape since the mid 1990s and this interlude always amused me a lot. There is some kind of dead serious straight to the face misanthropic naivety in it and it is perfectly in rhyme like a children’s poem. Finally I am very glad that decades later I found a weird and unexpected way to reuse it.

Odor Orienting by Ratkiller

#fanboyism

It does not make your music cooler if you are using samples that are part of the general cultural consciousness such as a cool dialogue from some cult film or a groovy loop from a well known jazz album. There is no retro charm in using these kinds of samples - it is just lame fanboyism. It is like trying to tell a common joke as your own - what could be more embarrassing? Of course it can be done, but it takes extra wit to make it work.

#curiosities

Basically I am constantly attracted to everything unusual and curious, but I use a sample only if I find a way to reinterpret it. At that point, extremely bizarre curiosities such as The Sounds of the Junk Yard, released by Folkways Records in 1964 (probably the world's first industrial noise album) and sound clips from some random Hollywood blockbuster comedy have equal importance.

#culturalmeaning

Indeed, a lot of material that I am sampling happens to have strong cultural meaning.

#samplingpolitics

In the beginning of 2017, I spent a month listening to avant-garde jazz of a certain period that emphasized spiritual jazz which is very politically charged. From there on I got interested in black academic composers – I have sampled Samuel Coleridge-Taylor more than once.

#recognition

I do not think that it is important for a listener to recognize the sample source. Actually, it would be better if they do not, because making a tribute or homage to something specific is not my point. These samples are there just as brief glimpses to the wide field of inspiration.

#intuition

It is quite hard to articulate the meaning behind my samples. There is no theory or ideology, it is all based on intuition and the procession of a sample is ready when I consider it as aesthetically pleasing enough.

#failure 1

At first I may get excited about a groovy loop taken from old library music album, but when I have had enough time to look into it critically and objectively, there is nothing I can do to make it work better. The sample appears perfect just the way it is and only in the original context. This happens all the time.

#missingthethrill

An example: Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning. Originally a piece of aleatory music: a group of people in a room plucking different instruments and whatnot in random order and it is sparsely scattered over three hours. I found dozens of samples there, short loops, and they basically sounded good enough on their own. But then I thought why would I do something like that? Why would I reduce this bold experimental musical statement into some sort of accessible no-brainer club format? I mean almost everything sounds good when you are looping it. It was just way too easy, there was no thrill at all in making something like that.

#failure 2

When something does not work at all I usually delete the sample file and eventually forget what it was. There are a lot of samples that I have kept after trying and not succeeding though. It is because I have not been able to realize what I had in mind. Often those ideas are very vague and fall apart right at the moment when I start working.

#improvisation

Whatever music I am working on, I approach it as I would play jazz improvisation. Well, it is just my imagination, I know nothing about jazz in the academic sense. I understand improvisation as being open to changes in rhythm and harmony, building rhythm as narrative, etc. And if I can not use that approach, I feel very insecure. That is why I usually fail when I try to compose something in a style with strict rules. This ruling out of what can and can not be used applies to my way of creating music in general.

#feelings

I am trying to evoke certain feelings with music. My tracks usually turn out as abrupt, tense, and restless. I want them to be driven all through by the feeling of surprise, resulting in a cathartic confusion. I am especially talking about my recent yet-unpublished works where it is all about the right order and length of samples, how to arrange them to get that feeling.

#ethics

I do not know of any rules about what should not be sampled. I think that reusing and modifying has been one of the core elements of music since the beginning of time. In that light I have no ethical issues about taking something done by other artists as long as I can add a new angle to it. It is not important what one uses, but what can be made of it.

#originality

Originality is one of my most important artist dogmas, although I do not quite know why. I read somewhere that it first became an issue during the movement of Romanticism. Suddenly the artist became a rebel, an innovator. I do not really know how this may reflect in sampling.

#soundcollage

Using samples is quite irrelevant. I do it because it is just a sound, an available audio source which can be processed. There is no extra meaning in it for me. The samples are like separate notes, a whole lot of them, and I combine them as a puzzle, trying to fit them together and in the end there is a picture. That kind of sound collage is my preferred method at this point.

#alternatives 1

My music does not have to be made with samples. At the moment I am also working on another material, recorded in a studio on drums, piano and bass. I am about to cut the tracks into tiny pieces in order to reconstruct it in a similar way to my sampling practices.

#alternatives 2

Just a few days ago I tried another sampling alternative. I was recording the final synthesizer parts to a new work. It was mostly based on samples found while watching movies: dripping water, footsteps, heavy breathing, and that kind of stuff. In the end, I took all of it out and kept only those synth parts. They sounded good enough on their own. It was like around-the-corner solution for doing ambient.

List of References

Dyer, Richard. 2007. Pastiche. London: Routledge.

Lacasse, Serge. 2007. «Intertextuality and Hypertextuality in Recorded Popular Music». In Critical Essays in Popular Musicology, edited by Allan F. Moore. 147–170. Aldershot: Ashgate.

The email conversation took place between 10.11.2017 and 15.12.2017. This article has been published in the context of the PhD research on sampling in experimental electronic music by Hannes Liechti. For more info click here.