Music goes in every direction simultaneously

The Berlin musicians Perera Elsewhere, Air Max '97 and Ziúr will be playing live at the SCHIRN on the 22nd of April. For a preview of what's to come, check out their interview with SCHIRN MAGAZINE

SCHIRN MAG: When and why did you become a musician or when did you start making music?

Ziúr: I don’t think it is something I consciously decided, it just happened. I always have been a musician, somehow. The interest of music simply took over from an early age on. I've been playing and organising music for a long time. I was mostly singing when I was younger, but didn't have the urge to learn an instrument until I joined a punk band at the age of 17. That was when I figured out that I actually have a big amount of talent! I always had a guitar and took drum lessons when I was young, but I never really wanted to learn it – I don't know what a note is for example and I don't think it's important. So I can play everything, but not really; I can, however, get a sound out of everything. It's more about rhythm and repetition.

Air Max '97: I can relate quite a lot to Ziúr's story! My very first exposure to music was with experimental noise. I never learned an instrument as a kid and still haven't, but I tried to teach myself guitar as a teenager. I was really bad at it, though, and very self-conscious in my first attempts at making music. Then I started studying at art school and moved into this artist's collective house where they had collective studios and a gallery and where they would jam every week. When they asked me to join in, I said that I wasn't good at music, but they told me to join them anyway. That was incredibly liberating for me! It allowed me to feel like I could actually contribute something. I think I still have that experimental and intuitive relationship with sound. Though I don't make free noise music anymore but music for dancefloors, and have learned a lot of technical skills since then. My work with music has been relatively recent, however.

Perera Elsewhere: Through luck, man! When I was a kid my mum told me to play the piano, but I gave up. I then played a bit of guitar, indian violin and trumpet and gave up. But I never made my own stuff. When I moved to Berlin in 2000, there was a lot of DIY-culture in this city back then, which encouraged me to do my own stuff without being great at it.

SCHIRN MAG: All your artist's names are quite extraordinary. Are there any anecdotes about choosing them?

Air Max '97: There is no profound story, I chose it more or less on a whim. But I have always been interested in sneakers and I think it is kind of a rebellious or iconoclastic gesture to take the name of this consumer product and misusing or recontextualising it. It's interesting, because this name really haunts me! I learned that so many people are really invested in those sneakers and start projecting the idea behind it onto my music. Some people also think ’97 refers to my age, but it does not!

Ziúr: I guess my name leaves all the space in the world for other people to think what they want to think! I didn't choose it, it came to me.

Perera Elsewhere: My name means that Perera – that's my surname – is not absent, but not where she's supposed to be either. To me it's the freedom of different dimensions, musically, politically, mentally, etc. A lot of non-English speakers have a problem with pronouncing it, though. I was looking for a name that you couldn't abbreviate and which is not very cutesy.

SCHIRN MAG: How would you describe your music to somebody who doesn't know it?

Perera Elsewhere: I don't usually think about what the music I make is called. But people on the internet put a hashtag on my music, called “doom folk”. Well, I generally think we're doomed, so I was fine with it. It would be very boring actually to call it “avantgarde-experimental-electro-acoustic-music”, but probably some people would. Some are surprised that I make quiet music, because I have another band called “Jahcoozi” where the music is really loud and I’m seen running across the stage. My lyrics used to be more political. Today most of the club music I play doesn't have a lot of vocals.

Air Max '97: Noisy, emotional music for dancefloors. As a music listener I am searching for that kind of affective moment, where the music draws me out of myself, turns me inside out. Maybe that's what I am always working towards. I have very diverse inspirations but cannot really concretely say what they are. I make an effort to tell my own story.

Ziúr: I really suck at describing my own stuff, and I don't like to do it either. My music is like a different language, a form of expression that I cannot and don't want to translate into words. For me music is not linear, it goes in every direction simultaneously. At least this is how I use it. I try to throw in as many things as I can to achieve that. And I am bored easily as well, so I try to find new ways to make it interesting for me. It is an ever-changing process, even never-ending I hope. If there is no room for improvement anymore I'm gonna quit.

Perere Elsewhere: It's important to not borepeople. No one at this table makes indifferent tech house!

SCHIRN MAG: What's your relationship to fine arts?

Perera Elsewhere: I just saw an exhibition by the “Guerilla Girls” in London; they have been around for ages and been doing their stuff in museums and galleries to highlight the lack of diversity. This topic is actually becoming pop mainstream, which I think is very interesting. I can remember so much about music, but with art it's different: I don't have any need to remember names or to converse about it like a name dropper. When we started with Jahcoozi people were telling me “that's so DADA” and I had to look it up in a dictionary because I didn't know anything about it.

Ziúr: I like going to art openings and look at all the fancy people struggling over the meatballs at the buffet! Air Max '97 and I bonded over Ryan Trecartin, a great video artist from the U.S. who makes wild, free-wheeling videos that have an excess of personality and language. But then art for me has the problem that if you don't know the background you don't know what's going on. If I'm interested in something, I do some research about it. But most of the time either art appeals to me or it doesn't.

Air Max '97: I was in an art context for a long time myself, but I was very anxious and definitely have a healthier relationship with myself as a musician. But art is really amazing.

SCHIRN MAG: What are you currently working on?

Air Max '97: I have a new record coming out at the end of April on my own label DECISIONS, it's a 5-track-EP called “Vessel”. I'll be playing some shows around Europe and in Kuala Lumpur and am trying to collaborate with different vocalists this year to do some instrumental producing.

Perera Elsewhere: I just finished my album, which is coming out in June, some singles will come out as well. Basically traveling and promoting the album, which took three years to make.

Ziúr: I'm in the process of making a new album! I will be playing in Europe and Mexico City in May, maybe some more in South America as well. Then I willtry to work on a performance with a London artist and on the music for a dance piece at Sophiensæle in Berlin at the end of the year. My year is booked, I would say!

Thank you for your time!