WARMDESKTOP:
AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM SELMAN BY JEREMY TURNER
(Conducted by email November 02-05, 2001)

JEREMY: When I think of the title "Warmdesk" my laptop comes to mind as
it gets quite warm on my lap after spending much time on it processing
audio files. As you have probably also noticed, the desk gets warm too
if one was playing live. Is this the inspiration behind the project's
name?

WARMDESK: This is part of it certainly. I do most of my work around
computers, but also use hardware synthesizers and samplers as well. It
does warm up… The name Warmdesk is also a track on a rather obscure
early 90s cologne record by a group called 4 squared logos that included
Jan Werner (of Mouse on Mars), fx randomiz and the amazing guitarist
Joseph Suchy. This was the music I was listening to at the time I
started seriously thinking about producing music (circa 1997) and it
inspired me to do so…releases on labels like Gefriem, Erfolg, quiet
art works, etc. It is intended to be an homage of sorts to this
inspiration.

JEREMY: Ahhh. I thought I have heard this name somewhere before from
around the late nineties. So, you were very actively listening to the
German and Austrian scenes around you at that time. I guess the "Third
Viennese School" (Mego records) must be a major influence on your work
as well. Your bio mentions that you live in Vienna as well as Chicago.
What prompted you to live in Vienna?

WARMDESK: I do like many of the Mego artists, but I have tried to limit
their influence on me. I have been listening to their music for a long
time. I think that many of them have their own distinct sound and I
don't wish to replicate it - esp. someone like Fennesz or Peter Rehberg
who have worked very hard and for years to develop very personal
languages of sound. Also, as I said, I have been moving in a much more
dance direction for the last two years or so.

However, that is not necessarily incongruent because Rehberg is an
amazing DJ and listens/plays lots of dance music, so that is not
irrelevant to Mego per se. Also, they distribute mostly dance music
through their mail-order arm. It has a lot to do with marketing.

It's funny that you call it the "third viennese school". I wonder how
they would respond to that appellation. To be honest, in the city
itself, they are not especially famous. The cognoscenti know what Mego
is, but I think they are probably better known outside of Vienna.

I think I probably feel most akin to one of their recent signings, Uli
Troyer. We played a concert together at the Rhiz with Massimo (he also
did an invalidObject) and actually did an improv set with together that
was really successful. Uli has a similar approach to me. He is attracted
to concrete sounds as well and is also interested in doing something
more akin to dance music with them, but with a sense of humor. He is
doing a mix of the Guero Variations for me. Also, he has agreed to do a
12" for my label, A Posteriori, some time in the next year. I lived in
Vienna because my girlfriend got a Fulbright grant to do research there
on Austrian-Jewish history and the Austrian empire in the late 19th
century.

I quit my job here in Chicago and managed to scrape by on odd jobs and
savings there for about six months. I also took German classes to brush
up my college-level German. However, it's pretty tough because Austrian
German is very different from the German you are taught in college…at
first, until I figured out the accent and the different words, it was
hard to understand much of what people were saying. It is difficult as a
foreigner to find work in the EU unless you have a specific field, so I
had to leave. However, I'm working on a master's degree in Computer
Science right now at the University of Chicago and I would like to
return to live there soon.

JEREMY: Have you ever found the rich musical history surrounding Vienna
to be a detriment or a burden to your creativity or do you find this
legacy inspirational?

WARMDESK: I found Vienna and Europe in general very inspirational. There
is much more of a supported "scene" and people are more accepting of
music as music. All of these issues you hear in the States (and perhaps
in Canada) about the lack of a performance aspect in "laptop" music is
not really important. When you play a show, people actually LISTEN to
the music and don't demand showmanship–at least on the continent. I
don't always play with just a laptop, but it is nice to simply play the
music without the demand for a visual component. This was simply my
observation, but it may be wrong.

Also, it is possible simply to hear some much more music. The radio
plays interesting shows, there are always concerts going on and they are
relatively cheap. I did also hear some great chamber music there by some
younger Austrian composers. I do listen to some chamber music
(contemporary and classical) and you don't get the impression that
people are overburdened by the legacy of the past.

People are aware of the past, but a city like Vienna is focused very
much on the present, esp. with new construction like the
Museumsquartier. The past is often marketed toward tourists really.

JEREMY: Do you recall any names of the younger Austrian composers? Also,
I was curious to know the kinds of classical music you like and why? Can
you give specific examples where listening to a piece of classical music
(in any century) has directly inspired your general aesthetic taste and
working processes? I understand that there are probably zillions of
composers and styles that you listen to so maybe you can just list off
some of the more recent ones on your mind.

WARMDESK: No, unfortunately, I don't recall the names of the Austrian
composers. Sorry. I remember seeing a couple of pieces of organ music
and some piano compositions.

I think the last piece that inspired me was "guero" which led to the
desire to do some variations on it. I picked up a copy of a CD of
Lachenmann's piano works in a cut-out bin in Germany and wasn't familiar
with those pieces. I heard "guero" and was astounded by it. I loved the
emphasis on texture with such a simple means and saw how it was similar
to some ideas I had. However, I wanted to translate some of the ideas
there into repetitive, grid-based structures with beats to see if I
could make it work.

I think I started listening to classical music in the late 80s/early
90s. I went to an arts high school and knew lots of young composition
students, although I studied painting. They introduced me to lots of
composers andI heard many concerts then, even though I was probably more
into noisy rock, stuff like Sonic Youth and later Talk-Talk. I remember
one night listening to the radio and hearing a retrospective of
Penderecki and learned that he was in town for some concerts. We went to
go see those performances and I loved them.

One of my friends always sent me packages of mix cassettes with musique
concrete and serialist composers. He studied with Herbert Brun for
awhile and I really loved his stuff in particular. Pieces like
"Futility" are still a big inspiration for me. Also, Varese's "Poeme
Electronique" and Tod Dockstaedter which my friend introduced me to.

Later, I began listening to other composers like Pierre Schaeffer,
Pierre Henry, Parmeghiani and Luc Ferrari, etc. I still listen to these
people, but my goals have begun to shift toward more and more rhythmic,
almost pop music. In fact, composers like Brun have an almost idolatrous
(is that a word?) relationship to the idea of composition. I'm certainly
not working along those lines in which I am constantly shifting ideas
around and improvising with parameters and arrangements. However, I
still hear a bit of the solemnity of their work in mine sometimes.
However, I hope my work doesn't come across as so serious.

To be honest though, lately I have been listening almost exclusively to
dance music and soul records, so it's hard to say.

JEREMY: Why do you find the compositions of Herbert Brun to be "almost
idolatrous"? Would one not argue that dance-based music or those that
appropriate source material via sampling technologies is in fact a form
of idolatry?

WARMDESK: Mmmm…maybe "idolatrous" was the wrong word. I think maybe
"reverent" is probably better. Brun, if you read interviews with him,
saw the role of composer as being one that had a very political
component. He himself was a Marxist and saw composition through that
lens. I think that he viewed jazz and rock and popular musics probably
not too far off from Adorno and Horkheimer's account of the culture
industry (although not exactly in terms of Adorno's troubling and I
think wrong view of jazz). He remarks that it is entertainment and that
it is a distraction from the political tasks at hand that the serious
composer is somehow equipped to confront.

Now, this is of course facing down the old question of the role of the
composer and his relationship to the political. I do not intend to make
political music. Of course, one can argue that aesthetics and formalism
are political statements, but I am not engaged in that from a conscious
perspective so that it does become merely an academic question and
probably one for criticism.

I think that this is really a very 60s sort of question. I think music
is an extremely inarticulate medium of expression for a discourse that
requires a much more articulate means of expression. You can dress up a
recording with all sorts of liner notes and explanations, but it really
is not so capable in and of itself of explaining much of anything beyond
emotional or direct experience or its relationship to other music.
Music of course is not a closed system, it has a social function, but I
just don't think it's equipped to bring about radical social or
political change. Politics by its very nature requires a leap beyond
that. This is walking dangerously close to solipsism though…so you
have to think about music's social function, esp. a medium like dance
music.

I do use recordings of everyday life, but those are really only
aesthetic reflections of my life. For instance, I live in the flight
path of ohare, so there is a constant drone of air traffic whether I am
conscious of it or not. How could that not in one way or another affect
my work? I try not to fetishize them, but rather to bring disparate
elements together.

To answer your second question, it is idolatrous, but it's all about
context and use, so these samples can be used well. Musicians also
listen to music and it becomes part of their music. There are good uses
and bad uses of sampling technology. However, you can only discern the
difference when you actually hear it and writing about it or describing
it doesn't make it work. It only works within its own context that it
creates for itself and how it might expand beyond the source material or
bring a new perspective on it.

Dance music is really ephemeral and it's a matter of changing tastes.
For instance, (this is an old example) there is somewhat of a ban on
using samples of James Brown. Not that James Brown is bad (in fact, "hot
pants" is probably one of the best records ever made), but I think
people just got bored with hearing James Brown samples and it became
uninteresting and uncreative. I think it may still be possible to use
those samples, but one would have to think of another means to approach
them. Art despite its desire for the eternal can never break away from
the present.

JEREMY: Where do you spend more of your time? Are you also influenced by
your regional climate(S) and personal upbringing? Has living in Chicago
affected how you view digital signal processing?

WARMDESK: This is actually a very astute question. I live in Chicago
full time again. I actually didn't grow up here, but rather in Houston,
Texas. Despite what people think, Houston is a coastal city and it's
very humid and essentially built on top of a swamp. Even though I don't
live in Texas anymore, I will say that the sounds and climate of the
region do influence my attraction to certain sounds. I can remember the
thickness of the air there and also the drone of cicadas and insects at
night. I think this does influence my desire to create dense spaces in
my mixing and also droning tones in the background. The last set of
tracks on the invalidObject release is called "Bolivar" which is the
name of a peninsula on the Texas coast where my grandfather and great-
grandfather lived. I wanted to capture the feeling and the sounds of the
air there which I think are very unique. Also, I do use place names
often as titles because afterward the track may evoke it somehow for me.
Place is very important for me. Chicago isn't too much of an influence
on me. I don't feel so connected to the city as I have only lived here
for a few years. I don't plan on staying. It's not that I don't like
it…I've grown to appreciate it, but I find the winters difficult and
the city itself is often difficult to negotiate and not so inspiring for
me. I have met some interesting people here and there are often good
concerts worth seeing though.

JEREMY: I have not heard Warmdesk's entire repetoire yet but judging
from the "Invalid Objects" compilation, your short pieces seem more
timbrally focused than rhythmically driven. As I am a drummer like
yourself, I have noticed that my compositions have drifted further away
from pulse and meter and have gravitated towards timbral complexity and
detail. Do you think that this may be a natural progression for
percussion-based composers to experience? Or, is it more likely that the
general zeitgeist has changed as the 20th century was the age of
percussion and therefore the 21st century is being hyped as the new age
of timbre?

WARMDESK: Well, the short pieces are meant to be more about breaking
away from rhythm. In fact, a lot of the pieces on the invalidObject
release were attempts to break through "writers block" and frustration
that I had started before the Fallt project. However, my other work is
very rhythmic and I am definitely working in the vein of dance music…I
think (where) you can get a hint of this is the later pieces on the
invalidObject. In fact, the most recent tracks I have been working on
are almost house music. I am doing a release based on a piece by Helmut
Lachenmann called "Guero" that is more or less Musique Concrete with
traditional instruments (in this case, a piano). I am taking samples of
recordings and my own samples of piano manipulations and basically
putting it into loops and using extended improvisations all to a strict
4/4 beat.

I haven't actually touched a drum kit in about four years. I just don't
have access to one any more, so I can't say that the physical act of
playing drums affects me very much these days. From a listening
perspective, I learned early on that despite my first impulsive belief
that percussion was solely about rhythm, it should be used to carry
tonal aspects of a piece of music also. If you listen to some jazz
drummers, like Ed Blackwell for instance, you can hear this clearly. I
try to incorporate this into my current work. The second part of your
question…I think the 20th century was absolutely about timbre. The
rise of electronic music and the break away from 18th cent. approaches
to composition and playing were all about timbre. I guess you could
argue that the first part of the 20th century, in western music, it was
about harmony and its discontents. But after the 50s, timbre strikes me
as primary. I don't know what the 21st century is about. I think it may
be more about rhythm actually. That's just a hunch however.
Nevertheless, with the saturation of electronics in every aspect of
music-making, I think the primacy of timbre is still there.

JEREMY: Given the above, how important is harmony and melody in your
work? Do you ever think in terms of line or counterpoint?

WARMDESK: I wouldn't say that harmony and melody are that important to
me. I think about them, but I was never really trained formally apart
from percussion and so they aren't really my strong suits or of strong
interest to me, it is more about timbre and how certain sounds fit
together. So, harmony is more about the harmonious coexistence of
timbres rather than of tones. I do use chords and notes of course, esp.
bass which is very important to me, but these seem to be tertiary
elements in my music. They are used mostly in a skeletal sense.
Counterpoint is also not essential in the classical sense to me either.
I tend to think of counterpoint in the relationship of sounds to one
another both in how and when they happen both simultaneously and also in
terms of rhythm. It isn't about tone or melodic or narrative
development. Really, since I have been listening to a lot of dance music
lately, I am trying to move away from anything that might seem like
"narrative"; or a song. I think other people can pull this off well, but
when I listen to it in my own music, I tend to toss it out because it
never seems to work. You can hear it on the first track of my single for
"static caravan", but that would be the sole exception and I'm not so
satisfied with it looking back.

JEREMY: The last few movements from your contribution to the
"invalidObjects" compilation that were posted on www.fallt.com (the
rhythmic ones) remind me a little of Commodore-64 era video-game music.
I am now sure why that is because the timbres are not the same as the
kind I used to hear in 1983. Maybe it just has the same playful attitude
and edge. As you are around the same age I am, I was wondering if you
might have some insight into how our generation has been appropriating
our influences into our compositions. Did you also grow up with home-
computers and video-game music? If so, can you also hear that influence
in your rhythmic music?

WARMDESK: That is not intentional. A lot of those sounds are from things
lying around my desk where my studio sits (pencil sharpeners, coins,
boards, etc.), guitar and also synthesizers. I wanted those tracks to be
fun and playful, but I didn't have video games in mind.

I was a computer geek when I was a kid and aspire to be one now and I
did spend way too much time playing video games then. They did have
those somewhat irritating and extremely repetitive soundtracks which I
heard over and over again. They aren't all annoying though. I still like
the soundtrack to "Super Mario Bros." a lot. I'm sure it is floating
around inside my head unconsciously.

I think the influence of computers has more to do for me with the
comfort level as a tool. I simply feel more comfortable working with a
computer than I do working with traditional musical tools like
keyboards. That is likely because I was never trained on a keyboard and
only now am I an extremely bad player! I've been playing with computers
since I first got an Apple IIe in 1982, although I did go through
periods in which I hated them and found them to be dehumanizing. Now, I
realize they are simply just tools. Nevertheless, I feel more
comfortable working with a computer-based sequencer than a hardware-
based one, although my mpc2000 is a bit like a video game controller.

I like the idea of seeing things laid out and often compose with the
mouse. It probably isn't much of stretch for most people between a
Nintendo and a program like Logic. The visual elements and functions are
all there, limited by our capacity to interact with them.

I will say that I probably never would have become more serious about
music without the aid of a computer. However, I'm not trying to
implicate the tool or criticize it with my work. I realize that it can
impose limits in the thinking of the user by their design, but I try to
think past that. A program like Max is nice for this, but on the other
hand, I do sometimes feel paralysed by how open-ended it can be. The
tools themselves are like sound and synthesis itself in the sound-making
tools we have at present…

When most any sound is possible, it is sometimes easier to work within
self-defined limits. Otherwise, I think I would be making music that was
all over the place. In some ways, it is, but I am in a constant battle
to quash that and focus my work. In that way, I try to stick with
certain strategies using the limits of the tools at hand until they
become hindering or I get bored with them.

+ + +

Warmdesk is the project of Chicago-based producer, William Selman.
Warmdesk uses concrete elements to compose rhythmically-based music that
includes dense, humid atmospheres grounded by droning backgrounds.
Warmdesk has released singles on Fallt, A Posteriori and Static Caravan
and appeared on one of the well-known "Bip-Hop" compilation/magazines.
Currently, Warmdesk is planning on releasing the "Guero Variations" 12"
which is based on a piece by Helmut Lachenmann. This single will include
additional mixes by Twine and Uli Troyer. Also in the works are other
singles. Warmdesk has performed in the US and in Europe live and on the
radio with such artists as Uli Troyer, Designer (Casey Rice), Twine,
Marumari, Massimo, Tennis and Kevin Drumm.

Jeremy Turner is an inter-disciplinary artist and music composer. He is
currently exploring the creative possibilities within the pre-existing
software architectures of OnLive Traveler and ActiveWorlds. He is the co-
founder of an international artist collective, 536
(www.fivethreesix.com). Turner used to be a regular Arts/Entertainment
critic for AOL Canada and website reviewer for Intelligentagent.com in
New York. He has recently written interviews and articles for
www.ctheory.net www.shift.com and www.extropy.org