Martin Yam Møller

Kevin Paul Cahay – EuroGuitaRacker

1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why?

My favorite knob is the volume knob on my old Teisco delay rack, you can be really precise with a knob of that size.

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

With years spent playing music I never felt the feeling of perfection, I always change and so does my instruments/gear. Yesterday was my lovely Fender Jaguar, today is my modular synthesizer, tomorrow… I don’t know yet. It’s difficult for me to focus on one genre/project, I want to know and to do everything. And my modular synthesizer is the proof, at the beginning I wanted a sort of a west coast synthesizer, after focusing on textures and now a little bit of everything. But now I’m more confident, so I’ll say my modular synthesizer, because I can change a little thing to do utterly beautiful things.

3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc. ?

Either I go on holiday or for a walk (even at work, but don’t tell anyone) I always bring a tape recorder with me.

Also my iPad, with some granular devices, Quanta or the new emulation of the Buchla 700.

I like compact gear, recording sounds in the daytime and processing them at night time.

4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

I’d really like the Music Mouse from Laurie Spiegel in a hardware form for sure, it’s easy enough to program something lovely and yet complex enough to explore a lot of different paths.

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

« Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention »

I don’t regret any purchase or sale, it was the right time for every separation or acquisition. But who knows ?

There is an adaptation time for everything, especially electronic devices, you see a video or test it for fifteen minutes, and then at home it’s not the same. So you have to delve into it and learn it better to find out if you really like it. Not taking enough time is a common mistake that I made several times…

But don’t feel ashamed or guilty, it’s the right path. Once you know, what you don’t like, it gets easier.

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

I think it’s my newly acquired Akai tape recorder, I’ve been messing around with cassettes for quite a long time, but to have a bigger tape to work with, cutting, editing, staring at, is absolutely marvelous.

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

I think a kaossilator and a cassette tape recorder. You can do plenty of things with the kaossilator. Also if you fool your tape recorder to do it, it’s possible to overdub without erasing anything. So yes, with these two you have a lot of different sounds in your pocket.

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

I think it’s my MicroKorg, it was my second synth (the first one was a Yamaha CS15 that broke). It has a peculiar sound, not the best keys, but I love it anyway.

9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

A very long tape loop, I saw someone doing those kind of things on Instagram (hello, @robotmammal) and I tried for several days. After a lot of effort and moaning, I finally managed to do it ! And… it broke.

Artist or Band name?

Kevin Paul Cahay.

Genre?

Free jazz ? I always wanted to say free jazz.

Selfie?

Where are you from?

I’m from Paris/France.

How did you get into music?

Since I was born, my parents were listening to music loudly, and I remember dancing and jumping everywhere to Rage Against The Machine and Weezer.

But at the age of ten I told myself that rather than listening to music I could play it ! So I asked for an electric guitar on my birthday and began to compose some songs and record them with my phone or on Audacity (via the computer microphone…) After that I created my artist name « tomorrow massacre » (tomorrow because one of my favorite song is called tomorrow by The Human Instinct, and massacre because of the Brian Jonestown Massacre) and had a band for a couple of years going on tour, recording albums.

After we broke up, I was alone and wanted to do something else, so I began to have an urge to play modular synthesizer, explore new sounds and embrace experimentation without the intro/verse/chorus thing.

I did my first EP at the beginning of 2021 and I’m planning to have another one out this year as well.

What still drives you to make music?

Everything.

How do you most often start a new track?

Nothing is really planned, I always want to try a lot of things (like a video I did with 5 delay pedals) and then something that I like appears (and sometimes not).

How do you know when a track is finished?

When I want to add something, but it doesn’t sound good at all.

Show us your current studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

My French teacher in high school always told me « when there are three words there are two too many » , and I apply this to my music.

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

For the moment it’s my EP called « Ruina Sequenti » : https://music-is-kevinpaulcahay.bandcamp.com/album/ruina-sequenti

… but check my personal Bandcamp soon enough:

https://kevinpaulcahay.bandcamp.com

[Hey YOU my dear Reader, it’s Martin the Editor here: I gotta ask, coz it’s been bothering me for a while… how would you suggest that I could encourage more commenting on the this blog? There’s like zilch happening and it’s kinda bumming me, as well as the google search algorithm, out 😉 ]

Joseph Willem Ricci-Anima&Ennui

1. Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?

Fender Ramparte goes all the way up to 16!

My amp goes up not to 10, not to 11, but all the way up to the hilariously arbitrary number of 16. It’s a Fender Ramparte, and although it looks like it belongs on the stage of a hushed, smoky, late-night show at an upscale 1950’s jazz club, it—well… as Music Radar puts it—”requires anti-social volume levels to avoid intrusive hum”. Honestly, it’s a bit of a gimmicky amp which I’m not particularly proud of, but I do genuinely love that its two volume knobs are its only knobs. No tone, no drive, no reverb. Keep it simple.

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

The Walrus Audio Slö reverb pedal is my baby. It’s whole thing is that it pitch-modulates the wet signal. I plug my acoustic guitar into it when playing live, and when subtly mixed in, it creates the subconscious sensation that everything is slightly moving, like a boat in an easy current. It’s a really musical pedal, and I like to adjust the mix while I’m playing to give the guitar an element of changing depth, but holy hell do I wish you could plug an expression pedal into it, because turning the tiny mix knob with my right foot while playing a difficult guitar part and singing requires way more concentration than is actually reasonable.

3. What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?

I’m one for bringing a guitar with me just about everywhere I go.

4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

Well, the hardware of this software does already exist, but I don’t own one and sure, I wouldn’t mind if I did. That’d be the hardware version of the Minimoog iOS app.

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

In October I had a really remarkable week in which I broke my Martin (like, I mean smashed it), computer, phone, bike (twice) and rain jacket. I panicked and sold my classical guitar, a really nice Takamine TH90. I wish I would have just taken a couple extra days to breathe before letting it go, because the world always has a way of coming through for you when you need it to.

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Lately, my newest toy, a Korg Minilogue XD has been opening up a whole new world for me. I don’t know how to play anything on the keys except for the intro to “Roses” by Outkast, so it’s been an amazing exercise to sit down and write with no focus on melody, chords or structure, and instead get my head deep into exclusively texture, color, tone, and movement. And it’s been interesting to discover that, after years of writing songs only on guitar, a piece can feel complete without any of the former qualities, as long as it meaningfully explores the latter ones.

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

One good microphone. I recorded most of my band’s album on one of those cheap Audio Technica mics. There’s a lot that I would do differently if starting over, but at the very least I wish I knew that as soon as that precious frequency spectrum enters that black hole of a microphone, much of it is never coming back.

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

My Martin 00-15. Although I had already been playing guitar for almost fifteen years before getting it, it was my first ever really nice guitar. It’s warm, responsive, has subtle, nuanced overtones and overall is just a joy to play. But, what I didn’t expect when I got it, is that it shows me how much better I could play. On a shitty guitar, the difference in sound between playing something well and playing something poorly isn’t really that big. But on this one, a perfectly played chord or passage—with just the right fretting pressure and position, just the right picking contact point between fingernail and fingertip, just the right balance in emphasis of the bass, middle and treble lines, just the right transition between chords while the resonance from the last one lingers in the body for a moment… you get the idea—sounds and feels SO good that, while it has taught me to become a more sensitive player, it has also made it abundantly clear how much subtlety there is to the instrument, and how far there is to go.

9. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

If you have a guitar, buy a gig bag and go for a bike ride. At some point during the ride, fall off your bike directly onto your back so your guitar catches your fall and smashes under your weight. Then find a luthier or repair person to fix it, and voila: your guitar will sound even better.

Jk. Def don’t do that. Maybe a more useful tip: I always wanted to play the sounds of nature on my analog instruments. This little set up gets pretty close to that. I take a cassette with the sound of running water, birds chirping, or wind in the trees, and merge the signal together with the signal of my guitar or synth. Then I run the merged signal into my Walrus Slö reverb pedal on auto-swell and with 100% wet mix. Since the auto-swell reverb tail is triggered by change of amplitude, it acts as a gate for the soft, ambient nature sounds. But when you play your instrument, it triggers the auto-swell, letting through the merged signal of the instrument plus the sound of running water.