Just in time for the upcoming Halloween the master of the spooky sound Kish Kollektiv returns with a new music video that could almost be seen as a short horror movie in its own right. Derived from KK’s 2018 debut release “Children of the Cambion”, this is a visual and sonic voyage through a rhythmically choreographed assemblage of original and fundamentally altered “objet trouvé” images culled from the World Wide Web, accompanied by a continuous epic-length musical sequence that could have escaped from someone’s nightmares.
Get ready for a real thriller!
Inspired by the “black-eyed children” urban legend, the “B.E.K.s Suite” is a 38 minute journey through the main musical cues from the “Children of the Cambion” faux soundtrack. Familiar elements are remixed, reinterpreted and combined in some cases while previously unreleased material that never made it into the original compositions are also interwoven, including the entire song ‘Dark Eyes’….”The music video is on YouTube and the “B.E.K.s Suite” itself will soon be available for free download from Bandcamp! https://kishkollektiv.bandcamp.com
We thought we would take a look into the mind and process of the master of the scare!
- What drew you to the music industry?
The boring, obvious answer is a love of music and desire to make my own. We live in an era where recording equipment and software is much more affordable, it’s small enough to fit in your house and online shopping options make it far easier to source used instruments if your budget is tight. On top of that, putting your own music out has never been easier thanks to operations like CD Baby and Bandcamp and via the World Wide Web, you can potentially reach a global audience. I believe it was these favourable conditions which drew me to the industry in recent years, as well as a nagging urge to satisfy my musical muse which wouldn’t go away.
- Who are you inspired by?
Mostly by the main movers and shakers of the 1970s/80 “Golden Age” of synthesizer scores, John Carpenter, John Harrison, Goblin and Fabio Frizzi are the most obvious examples. I could also list electronica artists like Gary Numan, Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre as well as guitar gods like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Al Di Meola and Stanley Clarke. I also more subtly draw upon a ludicrously wide variety of genres for inspiration, stretching from hip-hop to industrial, power pop to baroque.
In terms of non-musical inspiration, I suppose it would be cinematic masters of horror like Romero, Carpenter, Fulci and Argento who created the films that necessitated the soundtrack scores. I must also give an honourable mention to the literary giants of the horror genre, King, Barker, Masterton and Laymon who must have played their part in fashioning my macabre leanings and in particular, the late Karl Edward Wagner, whose infamous 1970s short story “Sticks” was the clear and direct inspiration for the second Kish Kollektiv release, “Dwellers in the Earth” and the more recent “Hidden Places Suite” video, now on YouTube.
- Please explain your creative process
When I was a teenager messing about with my electric guitar in my bedroom, I came up with a lot of musical ideas that never came close to being fully realised; you could call them embryonic music cues. Thankfully, I never truly forgot most of them and those that were forgotten were preserved on cassettes that I re-discovered a few years ago. Since I returned to composing, I began to mine those old ideas, developing them and merging them with newer ones. Some of them ended up very different from how my teenage self might have imagined…but some are scarily close to their original forms.
As I’m primarily a guitarist, a lot of my ideas start there, although they often become transformed into synthesizer elements as the piece in question takes form. At other times, I began with the drum and percussion tracks (before adding in synth and guitar parts), which can seriously influence the character of the composition or even the whole project, like the somewhat “dirty” sounding syncopated MCP500 drum tracks on “Children of the Cambion” or the looser, more free form percussion mostly from my old G-1000 featured on “Dwellers in the Earth”. In fact, on the latter, the only programmed drum tracks are metronomic kick drum sequences that crop up here and there.
One thing that always amazes me is how you can sometimes sit down to work without any particular solid idea in mind, start messing about aimlessly…and then you happen upon something, experience a “breakthrough” and it can lead very quickly to not only one complete idea but several. That is a great feeling, although it doesn’t always happen that way of course.
- Is there a hidden meaning in any of your music?
Not really, the intention is fairly “front and centre”. However, I’m of the belief that any art – whatever it may be – can be anything to anyone once it’s out there and sometimes people can divine all sorts of meanings that were never consciously intended.
- Do you collaborate with others? What is that process?
The voice actor Alyssa Penchanski played the part of paranormal investigator Ruscara Laudanski on the “Children of the Cambion” faux soundtrack, contributing an “in character” monologue to two of the tracks and she sang on the song “Dark Eyes” on our third release “Elevator Game”. Alyssa also gave voice to the “Temponauta” time traveller on two tracks on the South Central Positronics electronica side-project. I daresay I’ll be bothering her again in the future.
- Please discuss how you interact with and respond to fans
I still find it extraordinarily novel to consider myself – or rather Kish Kollektiv as a musical project strictly speaking – as having “fans”, although some people I’ve encountered in the last couple of years have made my day by describing themselves as such. I always try to be deferential, courteous and responsive in such situations…but I still feel somewhat like a “fraud” and probably always will haha.
I mostly interact with the online world as Kish Kollektiv through Twitter and while I’ve always held a negative view of social media, the individuals I’ve met through this medium are all thoroughly decent people and my experiences have been entirely positive…it’s how you choose to play the game I suppose.
- What is your favourite part about this line of work? Your least favourite? Why?
Although now I’m “officially” operating as an independent composer and I always seek to conduct myself as professionally as possible, I still struggle to think of my musical endeavours as “work” exactly. The rewards lie in satisfying my creative muse and my positive interactions with those who tell me they like what I come up with. My least favourite part of the whole thing is never being entirely happy with my own work to the point where sometimes I can’t listen to it I find so many faults. Thankfully I have my more lenient moments where I can temporarily forget it’s me and not only critique and assess the work but (almost!) enjoy it.
- What advice would you have for someone wanting to follow in your footsteps?
As it’s so much easier to set up as an independent musician these days without selling a kidney to raise the money, I’d say “go for it”. Make sure you have a steady income of some sort or at least money behind you and try to keep your overheads down wherever possible (I always try to acquire used or reconditioned equipment for example); it might be a very long time before you recoup your investment…if at all. If you’re serious about making your passion into a full time career one day (or at least increasing the possibility) and if you can spare the money, you might want to enlist the services of a professional publicist. The downside of the accessibility of the music industry is that there are now so very many acts out there, all screaming to be heard as well; hiring an expert might give you an edge. The other thing I’d say is to be patient; some of the biggest bands and artists on the planet only reached that level through dogged persistence and determination, although I think we all get frustrated and dispirited sometimes. You could liken it to competition winners perhaps – they all have the same thing in common…they actually entered the competition. We have no right to feel cheated if we didn’t play the game.
Follow him on social media