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Raime interview: Full Text

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I’m intrigued by the music that has shaped you. The mix you did for Exotic Archive Mobile
Pylon was made up of music that comes from an interzone between goth,
Industrial and experimental electronica, all from quite a specific period:
nothing before 1980 and nothing after 1988, and no dance music as such.
Some of it - the Danse Society  for example - is very unfashionable music © 2012–2021 Powered by Tumblr
that I remember liking in my youth; it’s quite surprising to hear this music
exhumed again, especially by people I’m assuming were too young to hear
it at the time. In that sense, the mix almost felt like it was a research
project. I can hear the relationship between that music and what you
produce as Raime, but one of the things that I like about what you do is
that it doesn’t sound like a recapitulation. It’s as if a certain feel, mood or
vision has been abstracted and extrapolated from that music, and you’ve
built your sound out of that.
It’s interesting that you use the word research because that’s kind of what
it was. We first started looking into this period quite a while ago because I
guess we were looking for something that we weren’t finding
in contemporary music. After alot of digging we found that from 79 to 85
roughly seemed to be the most inspiring. I guess we just created these
boundaries because we heard a continuity in there, as a basic rule we found
that after 85 some of the rawness got lost as the niches got defined. 
It was this rawness that really drew us to the material. It seemed to us that
that particular period used textures and atmospheres that we had
experienced the influence of in electronic music (both abstract and dance)
as well as alternative rock over the last 10 years but they were so much
more visceral and direct. They could hit with the same unsettling force but
without needing to be overly abstract, or abstract in a way that was in-
authentic. Unpredictability and abstraction were of course explored in IDM
and electronica for example but these early records seemed to maintain a
simplicity and rhythmical coherence while still being odd in a very different
way.
It’s really great to hear you say that you can hear the atmosphere of those
records in our music without it being a simple replication. Inspiration is
born out of identification a lot of the time and regardless of any
fetishisation we really felt like this period said things that we identified
with.
We are huge fans of dance music such as Detroit Techno and jungle and we
have always loved the combination of rigid cold structures juxtaposed with
emotive melody or atmosphere that these forms produced. however when
we came to produce music ourselves we were looking for a way to do it that
reflected who we were and what we felt. We have grown up in suburban
environments where Jungle and urban music is a part of the landscape but
we felt like our experience wasn’t purely urban as such. A lot of the artists
that produced the early goth/industrial/post-punk were from a
background like ours, we were just blown away with the idea that electronic
music could be dark and vital but still cerebral and dramatic because a lot
of the music that made us feel like that in the last 10 years has been
urban-related.
In his incredible live review, Kodwo Eshun talked of a feeling of
overwhelming fatalism in your music. Is that something you can relate to?
Yeah it certainly was pretty incredible. To be honest it was great to hear
Kodwo pick that out as a thread in our music because the idea of fatalism is
something we talk about a lot. In electronic music the view of the future
has shifted from utopia to dystopia over the last 30 years. These dystopias
have always been strangely cathartic to us. That must be why we keep
producing them and why we listen to other peoples versions of them all the
time. Fatalism can be seen as a negative attitude but it can also be seen as
a necessary and perhaps transformative feeling. By this I mean that by
actively experiencing fatalistic atmosphere’s perhaps you fear the reality of
it a little less. Fatalism within music is just a dramatic representation of
those feelings or attitude so it can be used temporarily. You can submerge
yourself in it and then return to real life.
If we’re to base a model of the future by what we feel in the present, then
the projection is currently more about what we have to lose than what we
stand to gain. I hope people can identify with this sentiment in our records,
which whilst it partly reflects our own disconcertions, is also intended to
portray loss as a cathartic process.
Your track titles are very evocative - where do they come from?
Why the name Raime, incidentally?
Yea they can be a bit of a mouthful eh. They come from a desire to play
with words and meanings. We really like the idea of maintaining that
balance between being sure and unsure about a situation, sound or in this
case title. Constantly alternating between the two. It is the same with the
name ‘Raime’. We wanted something simple but abstract that stood on its
own. Something that seemed clear but slightly difficult to place while not
being unnecessarily awkward. A bit like our hopes for the music really.
What contemporary music influences what Raime do?
We would say the two biggest influences are probably the space created by
dubstep and the power and depth developed in drone and doom metal.
We met when we were 16 in Reading, where we both grew up, and have
continued to grow up together ever since really. We were both always
obsessed with music and naturally that drew us together. We both
investigated music in our own way but as mates do there was always the
constant sharing and discussing of stuff, exploring it both separately and
together I guess. Growing up in a suburban town like Reading, that offers
very little in terms of an overt creative community, makes the relationships
that you form with people that have a common creative impulse really
strong. Abit of solidarity maybe. Basically because you mainly have to
explore this in your own world rather than the immediate world around
you.
There’s is a lot of trust between us because we both know each other so
well. Its probably this trust that meant we could work together. If you talk
about music a lot together then you start to get a real idea of what the
other person means when they describe a feeling or a sensation so when it
comes to talking about what you are trying to achieve it makes it much
more productive and really much more enjoyable. It’s a good feeling when
someone else gets what you’re trying to do.
It took us a long time before we actually decided to write together though.
Maybe because it can take while to relinquish control over what your trying
to do individually. We started working on Raime as it is now about 2 years
ago but it took quite a while of exploring before we came to a point where
we thought we had something worth presenting to the outside world. We
started making very hard, unforgiving material but realised after a while
that we weren’t really saying all we wanted to say. We both really like hard,
aggressive music but we worked out that at that point in time it didn’t
satisfy us personally to make it.
I was just intrigued by how you undertook the ‘research’ into that lost
trajectory? Was it via the internet, or crate digging, or (I’m guessing) both?
Definitely both but it was mainly in shops rather than online, which I guess
is pretty old way of doing it but we are both still ardent collectors and that
experience is always a bit more unpredictable than online, which makes it
abit more exciting. Once we had found an artist or label that was new we
would use discogs and blogs erc to hear/discover the rest of their material
but usually the initial find came from a physical store.

 
I like the limits that it imposes on you. The online world is just never-
ending and I find it a bit overwhelming at times. Its almost glutinous in a
virtual sense and my wish list disconcertingly grows with every new niche I
develop an obsession for.

How did you come to Blackest Ever Black - you seem such a perfect fit for
the label …

Kiran was a friend of a friend and it just seemed like fate really. He was
looking to start a label at the same time we were looking for a willing home
for our first release and luckily a friend had the correct hunch that Kiran
would be interested in the material. Once we met we were both convinced
by each other really, I think he quickly understood our intentions. Kiran has
a great grasp of the conceptual as well as the effective and it was this
understanding and common purpose that meant we immediately felt like
this was the right person to release music with. 

And loss, again - does personal loss play a role here? Or is it a cultural and
political loss you are talking about

Joe: I’m not sure how to separate the cultural, political or personal as really
they seem to all be so intertwined that to define it would seem a little too
dynamic a statement. I guess we are not trying to make overtly politicised
work but simply trying to describe the subconscious feeling that taking part
in all of these things can inspire. 
Tom: Its difficult to clearly define. I can think of significant moments of
personal loss whilst growing up, I dont know if they make me any more
akin to the notion of grief, maybe, they’re certainly not events that I draw
inspiration from. At the same time a cultural loss can be very personal if
it’s something you identify with or that helps define you. I guess I’d hope
that it’s universally personal.

Posted 9 years ago 7 notes