name: Psilodump

homepage : www.x-dump.com

occupation: Sweden's underground celebrity (Swedish stallion) and also man behind the microdisko project

Intro: Weird beeps over bouncing rhythms... That's the first thing that pops into my mind when I read or hear his name. My first contact with him was after his release on Kahvi collective. As you'll read, he's cool person who claims to be well spoken... Which he is, when he gets going he can't stop (chit-chat about live gigs, musical influences, releases and eating/drinking habits). The underlying message from this interview could be interpreted like this: accept no dogmas, always walk around with question mark and never compose anything drunk. It doesn't sound nice the following day. :) From far away... From the North of Europe... Near the place where Vikings were... I present you, ladies and gents, the amazing Psilodump!

Hi, Psilodump... A short introduction, if you don't mind? ;)

Right... umm... I'm Psilodump :) I make music! mostly of electronic nature, but not exclusively :P

You're well spoken, man... Really. :)

I am, but I just need to get started ;)

Can you tell us something about your musical background? Equipment you use, influenced and stuff like that.

Well... This is tricky for me to tell, since I've been through so many stages of developement in my music, and still going, and been both consciously and subconsciously influenced by music and sound whereever I go... I did watch very much tv when I was a kid, and I was very keen on the music played in cartoons and other shows, that I recorded on tapes and stuff, I used to do some mixes of tiny bits of different tunes, both from tv and radio and other tapes. Also recording my own voice and warping it by different methods on my tapedeck. then in 1991, I inherited an Amiga 500 from my oldest brother, which enabled me to start tracking - not that I had any plans or anything, just driven by curiosity. Then it became so fun to sequence and track tunes, that I did it quite much, and then I realized that the Amiga could be complemented with a sampler, which basically could be used as a tapedeck, and my dream was to record different sounds and mix them together on the Amiga. So finally I bough a sampler. Before 1994 I had totally against electronic music (since I was into hardrock and metal basically ;P) but then in december 1994 I bought a single by Members of Mayday, called "We Are Different", and I was very thrilled by the kind of odd sounds and the way the tune was build, and studied it alot - and realized, that the techniques of the sequences were not that different from the stuff that I had tracked - so I bought a couple of more singles, and tried making the same kind of tricks, and I succeeded in making bashing tunes eventually :))) With this as my base, I started experimenting away then parallell to this I had taken some piano lessons, but failed miserably, and my oldest brother taught me the basics of playing the drums...

Well, anyways, the idea was that I could mix everything with everything, but the system resources were limited and the program didn't allow more channels than 4 and more than 31 samples, which lengths also were limited, the sound quality was only 8bit, and I always dreamed about having the ability to create something in high quality sound (which is kinda sad today, cause the demand is the opposite) - later I bought an Amiga1200 with turbo-expansion and lots of memory, which enabled me to use more advanced programs and use midi with an external soundmodule, and several audio-channels, also, I started using a harddrive instead of floppies - this developement was very exciting and opened a totally new ways of doing things - meanwhile, the new music output of the artists that I used to listen to and enjoy, were getting very crappy, really, so I started looking for other kinds of music - this was around the time a friend of mine showed me something called mp3's - that one could download tunes in CD-quality without buying the actual records - and he had found a website that included the whole (I think) discography of an artist called Aphex Twin. The stuff of Aphex Twin that I stuck for was the "I care because you do"-album, with total depth of pads and kinda dreamish, nostalgic, "sad" tunes... It totally hit me. I started doing more "non-happy" melodies, and went totally down in a period of depressing, and dark, scary music. I discovered this was a way of calibrating emotions, to discover and get familiar with different aspects of oneself, how one can respond to different types of music and sounds

But, today you prefer happier sound?

No ;D

More childish flavour in your tunes?

Todays happy psilodump-music is in fact not happy at all :D The happiness is a kind of expression of extreme confusion, mania and madness, if you will ;)

The latest EP I've hear from you is called You Sick Little Monkey. Tt's released under your online community/label. Tell us more about it.

Well, in 2003 I assembled this musical "collective" of five people (incl myself) - not because of the fact that they were my friends and happened to make music, because I have plenty of friends, even closer ones, who make different kind of music, but by the fact that these four made a certain kind of music that I could not categorize, yet they had something in common, a certain mood kinda, and most of all kept my attention to it ;) But unfortunetly I had some experience with "crews", like for example The Art of Realistix (1995-97), when evertbody decides and wants to do everything, then there becomes many fights and people tend to displace their responsibility etc etc etc, so I hade it very clear from the beginning to everybody, that The X-Dump was (unfortunetly) NOT a democratic project, and that I always would have to last say-so and other horrible dictatorish structures ;P hahaha Oh well, but at the same time, I don't have to get too involved in the process of the artist to creating his/her own art, because I know that if you premeditate and plan too much, you might ruin the atmosphere and spirit of the creation. Well anyways, we did a few gigs together, and my plan has always been to be able to create a label based on this collective. and this netlabel thing we started this year is kind of promotion, if you will, for the future forthcoming "real" label. :) We need support, and people to discover what we have here.

My favourite track from that EP is "Follow the Leaders".... Any future plans? Some new releases you can announce?

Well, I just need to point out here that "Follow the Leaders" is a sarcastic remark, and is also based on a sample in the beginning of the tune ;) haha....

New releases? Well, there is a label in finland that have been waiting to release my "Sell Your Brains EP" vinyl for over a year, and which I haven't delivered the material to, which is kinda shameful, and I don't know if they are interested anymore. Then there are going to be some MP3-releases naturally, by me and the other X-Dumpians, a The Korvstoppers (Sbindon vs Psilodump) release on Monotonik, and a solo-one aswell (?), and a The X-Dump compilation on 8bitpeoples, aaand, a Psilodump release on candymind.com, and a new Pushiro release on The Art of Realistix (realistix.x-dump.com) with 3 tracks made by me in 1997. Then the (hopefully) most interesting release will be my debut CD-album "Psilodumputer - Psilodumputer" on the Ninjani Diskus label (ninjanidiskus.net), in a couple of months! The rest I have forgotten :/

Also, I do point out that I'm NOT satisfied, I DO want to release things on other offline formats, not just MP3 :) I just can't get bothered to send demos to labels who don't have time and interest to listen to it anyhow ;)

You've been a busy lad over the year! :) Some time ago, you mentioned me that you had you fingers in microdisko project in your hometown. What's that?

Yeaah microdisko yes - it's basically a montly club in stockholm, were we book chiptune-artists, aswell as other electronic artists, from sweden and other countries. The project originally started when I contacted Johan (Role Model) to present the idea of making a Microfestival in Stockholm some day, like micromusic were doing in several other countries in Europe at that time. I believed that Johan would be more organierd and could get things started better than me, on this matter, and we were thinking of many way to fund the project and stuff. But eventually we got nowhere with this. Then Johan suggested that we could not do this just him and me, so he posted on some list (maybe the LSDJ-list?) and advertised people to join to help create a microfestival in Stockholm, and a handful of people joined the project, and finally after some meetings, we decided to do a club!

Today, we are one of stockholms most popular monthly clubs, and have received fine feedback from both audience and press =)

Give us 5 of yours favourite netlabels.

Ouch, now that is not a fair question, since I don't know that many netlabels, and unfortunetly haven't had the time and patience (nor attention span) to sit down and discover new netlabel music. But besides The X-Dump (which would be number 1;P haha) I'd vote for Candymind.com, and I know that Kahvi collective has released some good stuff. But then again, my approach to music has almost always been that one cannot expect *everything* from a certain label, a certain artist or a certain style to be good or interesting whatsoever, just because it's that exact certain label/artist/style. For me it's useless to categorize music. Some stuff are good and some not - then one can certainly run some statics of whatever, but I cannot be bothered ;)

And what about favourite artists?

This is also very very tricky, since I enjoy very much music, in different styles, different contexts and different whatever :) but the majority of music I like is about 10-30 years old, and I very rarely find new music that interesting. and believe it or not, the music I enjoy listening to is not always that complex of difficult, quite the opposite. Then there is the fact that I enjoy listening to music that is not always that good either, just as long it's inspirational, and complex music does not inspire me, not at all really. But one of my favourite bands, for the last couple of years, is Pink Floyd (1970-79 period) - other bands i enjoy are NIN, Orbital, Hardfloor, Awex, Yello, Kraftwerk, System of a Down, Laibach and favourite artists include David Bowie, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Westbam (early-mid 90s), Björk, Sbindon, Paza (not the chip stuff as much), Hallucinogen, Moby, Din Stalker, Lithis, Skruvmejsel, Dorothy's Magic Bag, Frank Zappa, James Brown....... aaaaaaaaaand I'm sure the list can be made much longer :DDD

Then there are some single tunes by some artists, just like one hit, that I really really like, more than the most of my favourite artists, but then the rest of that same artist is not as good at all :) hehe

Whoaa, right The Beatles!!! Cannot f*cking forget the beatles!!!

How many releases you have so far? Can you even count them? It seems to me that your one hyperactive bugger, aren't you? :)

Well, official releases offline is only 3 solo vinyls, a few remixes and compilations, but I have have missed maaaany chances of both CD and vinyl since 1997, mostly because of me, but also because of empty promises and requests of changes in the material which I haven't been bothered to make. Online, on the Internet, I have been able to release much more things, obviously. Problem is not that I ack inspiration to send demos or that my material totally sucks, the problem is that not many labels know I excist, and I don't know they do either, so I don't have a clue were to send my stuff. The thing more hard to count is my tunes that I have produced over the past years, allthough I have kept a register of every one, and have aimed to retain every single on of them - if I loose an original to a tune I've made, tears are not far away - I would go crazy.... ehm.. crazier ;)) But approximetly I have produced over 800 solo tracks, numerous tracks for collaborations and other projects, unofficial remixes and have thousands of unfinished tunes. I have "learned" to produce tunes extreamly quickly and at the same time maintaining the quality. I need to do everything quick in order to keep me interested, and I rather finish a complete tune in just a few hours, but sometimes I leave tunes be, and not finish then until years later, this happends often to tunes that are extreamly emotionally delicate, which I don't want to ruin the feeling of. The making of music has been "built-in" into my brain, that mostly when I do music I sink into another world, and don't think about anything, and the tune kinda paints itself - and afterwars I tend to go "whoaaa, how did I DO that???", and sadly I cannot help when people ask me that question. I simply just can't remember each small think in one single tune out of a thousand ;)))

I haven't released that much, and actually since the end of the 90's people have always told me "I can't believe you haven't released anything yet"... but I guess that those people who do release stuff do it by co-incident and because they happend to know the right people, and be at the right place at the right time. also, I don't believe the music itself is enough. Music is always put secondary or third. Both by the industry and the audience. Sad or not, I don't know. Call me naive, but for me music always goes first hand.

But as long as nobody knows who Psilodump is, or misunderstands what Psilodump is about, I guess I won't be releasing stuff :)

Good or bad, I guess my music is not "marketing"-friendly ;) Not only to the fact that I blend styles, but I also do different stuff and unexpected turns. People won't know what to expect from me next = bad sales, I'm sure.

Apart from producing, you also play at parties... Any favourite gigs?

Ah yes, since 1996, so far, I've now done 71 gigs (2 of them cancelled due to certain circumstances, but I was present). It's been festivals, underground rave-parties, huge commercial rave-parties, demo-parties, concerts, clubs, cafés, you name it. In several countries aswell: ) Favourtie gigs, as everything else, is hard for me to tell, since i haven't found any algoritms / external parameters that makes me feel the gig being great. Mostly I totally HATE doing gigs - it's fun to get gigs, and it's fun when one gets people going, but generally it's totally embarrassing to stand and play ones music, because, it's ME on display for people, when people should be focusing on the music. There is something strange, which I haven't quite figured out that some (most?) people often require a SHOW at gigs. Seems like, here again, the music is highly secondary in most cases. Well, Psilodump is no Show. There is no Psilodump show. I'm very greatful that there are people who understand music, and is not stuck to the dependance of mearly shallow appearence of muscians. But this is something I've been dreaming of doing - a sensational big quasi-theathrical concert for big audiences! But all based on the concept of the music, not focusing of me creating music at that time, real-time. Fact is: Psilodump sux real-time! There is no real-time Psilodump ;) Buuut to answer the question..... I actually don't remember.... but I'm sure it was good and both me and the audience were having a great time! ;)

You use turntables or have live act?

I use a laptop =) I don't know how to DJ :O I wish to learn but I hear it needs lots of practice, and I totally suck in practicing ;)

Do you think that the usage of some specific software like Ableton is killing the turntables? And that playing like that isn't the proper thing to do?

I am not in such position, or have any bussiness in judging or moralizing over how other people perform their acts or sets. I feel everybody may and SHOULD use any solution or means possible in the pursuit of their ideal output, which they are satisfied and confortable with. External factors, like trends, subcultures or other DJ's/acts should not "sabotage" this. Then again, I'm not the right person to ask about DJ-culture, since I never understood it. All I know is that there is no improper way of displaying a piece of music... Well at last as long as one doesn't claim somebody elses work is ones own ;P Accept no dogmas. As long as it sounds good, anything goes.

For the end, I have some quick questions... Ready?

Sure, shoot :)

Software or hardware for producing?

No specific, all I can get hold of and use :)

Stay underground producer or to be a sellout and produce MTV kind of music? :)

I don't recognize either underground nor mainstream - both are equal illusions.

Mainstreamers tend to get some nice upcoming girls under their hands... for producing purporses, of course... What is gabberhouse?

Gabberhouse? I don't know? Depends on who one asks :)

Junk food or real food?

Whatever keeps me on my feet, but real food tastes often much better and is, I believe, much healthier :) Real food for me.

If one gets hammered like Keith Richards and then gets inspiration and starts to produce track(s)... Is the result always satisfying? :)

I'm sure producing music under the influence of something might be catastrophic. I tried making a tune together with a friend once while being drunk - it sounded good at the time, but next day, when sobered up, we realized it totally sucked ;) hahaha

Speaking of booze... Hard stuff or beer?

Bailey's or white russian plez ;) haha

And what about the usage of exotic instruments in your tracks, i.e. flutes, didgeridoo, sitar etc.?

I use any instruments available and that I come up something with :D I do use flute in some tunes, and I own a digeridoo myself, but unfortunetly I fail in playing both myself, so when I need some "real" instrument in my tunes, I involve somebody else to play it for me, with me giving instructions and notes ;)

I don't think music should be limited to anything, anything that sounds great, goes basically ;)

What music is playing at your place during this interview?

Well before nothing but the television on low volume, until about two minutes when I put "Pushiro - Collecting Shit 1997" in winamp ;) haha

Some words of wisdom for the end? Spread the Psilodump vibe and stuff like that...

Accept no dogma, expect and believe nothing - constantly question everything, most of all yourself. Support and spread the word about The X-Dump collective! :P I bet I would have more and better words of wisdom, but ah, I forget ;P hahaha

DraCo