Monologue Intérieur
The music I never wanted to make... a.k.a. my breakup album.
Earlier this year I unexpectedly went through a very intense breakup when my marriage ended. It really knocked the wind out of me. And it took me a while to even think about making music again. Being susceptible to depression and mood swings, and having just decided to get sober, there was a darkness lurking around every corner. A darkness that makes a rather prominent appearance in this music.
Sparse, dissonant, raw, claustrophobic. These are words that might best describe this music. The jolt of pain when touching an open ended nerve. Of that crushing feeling of isolation: being alone in a house that used be filled with laughter, late night conversations, lovemaking, but is now deafeningly quiet. In that silence everyday sounds seem to be more amplified, more present and more intense in a way: the sound of dishes being washed and put in the closet, a ventilator in the bathroom, the torrential rain on a skylight or early morning coffee being made in a percolator.
The title of the album is layered in meaning. Monologue Intérieur refers to me being alone with my thoughts and emotions. Sitting at home by myself, forced to confront a new reality of being alone. It also symbolizes the fact that all of the domestic sounds you hear, are recorded in my house. And lastly, the ‘official’ meaning is the method of stream of consciousness writing. Something that would fittingly describe the way I played the piano, just letting the emotions pour out without any preconceived plan or compositional ideas.
Musically I limited myself to using real instruments. I needed that feeling of directness, of having the music come straight out of my hands. So I recorded everything on an upright piano, an old, prepared acoustic guitar, my kid’s bass guitar and a Squier Jazzmaster.
Playing the piano was especially cathartic. There is something about the directness of just hitting those keys and feeling the mechanics of the hammers hitting the snares, that helped me get out some of the demons that were haunting me. Listening back it immediately evokes all those different emotions for me: sadness, frustration, anger, desperation, and maybe a glimmer of hope.
The John Cage-like piano improvisations move from melodic to manic in mere seconds. And paired with the very sparse production, work really well in combination with the field recordings I made in and around my house. The feeling of missing someone you loved so much is almost palpable. The end result is kind of like a musical Rothko, simple at first glance but when you open yourself up to it, it becomes deceptively layered and complex. And a bit depressing, probably...
This is me at my most vulnerable and it’s by far the most personal music I have ever made.
Much love, Michel
Tracklisting:
- ventilator
- snaar
- balkon
- afwas
- wasmachine
- aansteker
- dakraam
- percolator
- sleutels
Nobuka
Putting the punk back in ambient: by continuously challenging conventions and making music from a DIY mentality. nobuka’s work pulls you in for a warm hug, while punching you in the face at the same time. Always looking to experiment, and to unsettle both themselves and the audience.
Creating a new reality out of breaking things down and putting them back together again, nobuka moves in the crevices between experimentalism, modern composition, minimalism, noise and ambient music. They are non-conforming in all sorts of ways: in music, life and gender.
nobuka works with anything that they can get their hands on: electric guitar, modular samplers and effects, piano, taperecorders, field recordings, household objects, random things they found in the street... And collages all these elements into captivating soundscapes.
In January 2024 nobuka presented a new live concept ‘Stranger’ at the WeSa Festival in Seoul, South Korea. A work that is based on the much heralded ‘l’etranger’ by Albert Camus, as well as the Dada movement and early avantgarde cinema.
Reviews
Medium.com / MUSICAlive!
When first we spoke with the artist nobuka about his latest release, Monologues Int´rieur, we asked him if we should use his pseudonym for our interview. He confirmed that different musical agendas were released under that name and his own, Michel van COLLENBURG, so we might as well go with “Michel”.
This question matters because some musical personas are literally an artistic technique to allow the musician to have some personal survival space, which becomes more important as their public life takes up more of their private life. Given that this sparse musical exploration is about the internal conversations he’s having after the departure of his emotional partner . . . Michel it is!
This time, thankfully, it’s not us but the interviewee who is thrown by the first question (see Hendrika’s All Music Is Good Music)!
“Oh wow. What type of piano (was used on the album) in the sense of brand? I don’t know!”
Given that the pieces include sounds from all around Michel’s home, MUSICAlive! is suddenly confused: “You don’t know the name of your own piano?”
“It was recorded in a studio here in Nijmegen . . . called De Basis. It used to be an old concert venue. And because a new venue was built, the old building is being used as a place for studios, but also to create a network for local artists.”
At which point we suddenly remember that nobuka (and Michel) both incorporate found sounds and samples in their work, so the piano was NOT sitting under the “ventilator” (1st track on the album) in Michel’s bathroom, which is literally the picture that had formed after reading his liner notes.
“It’s a brilliant picture!” Michel laughs. “It kind of speaks to the way I work, in that collaging is the relevant term for me when I talk about my process. So it’s not playing the piano in the bathroom and recording the piano and the ventilator at the same time: (now MUSICAlive! is laughing too) but it’s just that I made those recordings mostly in my house. And on the balcony (3rd track “balkon”) was right in front of my house.
“I have those field recordings, and I use them to create songs and music. And usually combine them with piano I recorded; not at home because I don’t have a piano at home, but I record it at the studio. All the other instruments I recorded at home here. So I play guitar on a couple of songs, but I also use objects that I have here that I use to make percussive sounds or clicking sounds or anything that I feel fits the music.
“I don’t play guitar in a very traditional way: I do know some chords, but it’s not like I‘m John Maier or anything! And the thing is the acoustic guitar was in it’s bag for, I don’t know how many years . . . It was the first time I took it out of it’s bag in many, many years. And I found one of the (strings) was broken, so I just started to see if that would make a noise (2nd track “snaar”), or started wrapping (it) around the other ones. And it kind of produced a fascinating resonating sound.”
MUSICAlive! comments on a previous life of shooting videos of things “that other people haven’t noticed”, and ask if that’s part of his approach to the sounds he’s recording.
“I think it’s 2 things: first of all, I like what you say about seeking out the small things in the ordinary, (and the ordinary) That was amplified. Because I found myself living alone again after I separated from my partner, and it was a lot quieter in the house. Because there’s no conversation: there’s just me.
“And of course I put on music, or sometimes the movie, but there was a lot more time and space for silence. And in that silence I started noticing sounds that were always there, faded into the background because there was conversation, there was laughter, there was . . . And now that was gone, the sound of that ventilator was much more in the foreground. Or the sound of the washing machine beeping, Or the rain on the window . . .
“That’s one of the central ideas of the album, is that those sounds that were almost hidden or neglected, became much more prominent.”
MUSICAlive! asks if this attention to small sounds is normally how nobuka/Michel works.
“ I do a lot of field recordings also, outside of the house. And because you’re in a different place, or (especially) in a new place where you’ve never been, then every sound is interesting, and every sound is new. So there is a difference (in that approach). I do use a lot of field recordings.
“I try to avoid field recordings of nature, although there ARE birds on one of the tracks, but I want to stay away from the cliche ambience of bird sounds & streaming water and stuff like that. Which CAN be really beautiful: there’s somme Japanese ambient musicians that make beautiful music with that, but I’m much more interested in when things are not smooth: when they are rough; when they seemingly don’t go well together. And when there’s friction.”
“The first (album concept is) a bit more about the field recordings: the other one goes more to . . . how I play instruments, or how I make sounds. And purely out of just playing in the sense of kids playing, not knowing what you’re doing: experimenting, trying things out. stuff like that.”
We ask Michel, given the mix of field recordings and music performance: what exactly he does in live performance; does he recreate the things he’s released in his albums?
“I’ve let go of the idea of recreating the music live. because it also feels kind of limiting. I have a big element of improvisation live, but I do have elements with me from the music I’ve released. Mosly that’s either on iPad or 4-track Tascam tape machine, with short phrases or loops I can put on there and which I can play over live. So there ARE elements from the music I’ve made that are present.
“It doesn’t feel right for me to try and reproduce the music that I’ve made: it feels boring to me.
“And I also use an electric guitar with pedals and loops . . . And (about) a year and a half ago I started using contact microphones: I attach it to stuff, like rocks or these very cool windup toys. They’re like a cross between a kid’s toy and a design object. I took it a step further and attached a contact microphone to a metal tray, so that the whole tray becomes a microphone. And on that tray I can put those windup toys and they (we start laughing) dance around onthe the metal. And when I loop that it creates a sample which I can further manipulate with pedals and stuff! (still laughing)
“Also, when I play in a smaller venue with the audience close to me it’s a nice visual element as well!”
MUSICAlive! describes the “Dancing With A Piano” concept of Myra Melford and asks Michel how he would describe what he does: is it music or sound art?
“(Her description of the physical nature of the music performance) is pretty close to how I would describe it, or how I experience it. Because I’m not a classically trained pianist: not by a long shot! But I feel such a strong need to use an instrument where it would be very direct. Because sometimes when I work I manipulate sounds again and again and again, and it feels like I take a lot of steps to get an end result. I don’t know what the (original) feeling was based on, but it’s of course rooted in how I felt at the time. I just wanted to try and see what would happen if I sat at a piano and just channelled my emotions through that instrument and through my fingers directly, and directly have the response of sound.
“When I was doing that it felt very cathartic, And it also . . . comes close to what (Myra) said: it felt almost like a choreography of the hands and fingers as they were moving against the keyboard of the piano. And it became much more about the movement than about the sound. The Monologue recordings are where I just sat at the piano and poured out my emotions, and it made me feel really . . . it consoled me, in a way. I really felt the emotions going through my fingers, and it was really an emotional experience.”
An just like his album, this text ends unexpectedly!
Original article > HERE