The artist and musician KATRIN EULLER has been conquering Vienna’s experimental electronics scene for some time as RENT. The darkly colored sound worlds that she designs resonate in us. They have an immersive effect, spin our bodies, but can also attack. They have something uncanny, evocative, archaic regarding them, they affect our body as well as our imagination. Shilla Strelka spoke to the artist, who will be performing live at the Elevate Festival in Graz.
Let’s start at the beginning – how did you get into music?
Katrin Euller: My father is very musical and I took piano lessons when I was a child. But I didn’t want to practice and even less audition and at some point my piano teacher kicked me out of the class. Later I went to the academy and found my own access to sound and music through video production.
“I’ve always thought in terms of sounds”
You actually studied fine arts. How does this affect your musical production? Can visual concepts also be transferred to sound?
Katrin Euller: I think there are some parallels between my image and sound production. Composition, editing, rhythm, dramaturgy – I deal with that both when I work with moving images and when I compose new tracks. I’ve always thought in terms of sounds when I’m working on videos or films, and vice versa, images keep popping up in my head when I’m making music. But my approach to sound is much more intuitive than my approach to video. Images are so charged that I feel like I’m constantly falling into a trap. I’m very critical and find dealing with images difficult and top-heavy, but also challenging and politically important. Sounds challenge me in a different way, I feel a little freer in them.
Your sounds have a strong physicality, they affect me physically. On the one hand they wrap my body, are immersive, on the other hand they can also attack. What interests you regarding the relationship between body and sound? Which effects and potentials inspire you?
Katrin Euller: For me, music is one of the most individual and one of the most communal aesthetic experiences at the same time. That fascinates and touches me a lot. We feel them in our legs, in the pit of our stomach, right up to the top of our skull. In doing so, I have experienced that sounds help me to feel myself in the here and now, in my body. There’s something very comforting regarding that moment. At the same time I can completely dissolve and forget myself in sounds.
“Certain topics concern me across media.”
I would place your sounds somewhere between dark ambient and industrial noise. At the same time, there is something very cinematic regarding them. They function imaginatively, associatively. They sketch abysmal worlds. You are also active as a video artist and have already done sound design for film. How does your visual work inspire you?
Katrin Euller: For as long as I can remember, music has played an important role in my life. Through the years I was always on the road with headphones and different players. Actually from childhood. That’s why it’s more likely that my visual works are also inspired by sounds, by rhythms, by abstract moods. Conversely, the images I work with and surround myself with also have an influence on my musical work. Certain topics then concern me across media. Dark landscapes, machines, bodies as well as questions of community and solitude occupy me both in my music and in my more visual work.
“A lot of my music is very similar to everyday urban noise.”
What is the relationship between the Hören and seeing for you? How do you feel? In contrast to the visual sense, the acoustic sense is usually treated underprivileged.
Katrin Euller: I believe that the Internet and digitization have made us very much focused on the visual. It is also difficult to escape from this flood of images that we are exposed to all the time. I find it all very exhausting and at the same time I want to inform myself. The acoustic sense is definitely given less attention than the visual one. But that also leaves a lot of room for experiments and new experiences, for example in the perception of our environment and its interaction with our body. A lot of my music is very similar to everyday urban noise.
I think the build-up of tension also plays an important role in your tracks. Even though you work with noisy, atmospheric sounds, you manage to create a dramaturgical arc and introduce a narrative moment. How do you approach the composition? Do you arrange the elements or are they one-take recordings?
Katrin Euller: Most of the time I start with a specific sound that I like. It can be bass or drums or something more abstract. I then try to complement this sound with others, to make them interact with each other and to change them. The whole thing is then a mixture of improvised textures and sounds and a relatively strictly arranged composition.
How can narration and the musical be brought together in the first place? How do they swing into each other?
Katrin Euller: I think the narrative moment is actually, as you mentioned above, an influence from my background in film and video. It comes naturally. At the same time, I find that the sounds that interest me go very well with a narrative, a dramaturgy. After all, it’s their own story: sounds come and go, influence each other, reinforce each other, cancel each other out, change. Music often has something very hierarchical, some instruments are more superficial than others. In my tracks I try to go a different way. The sounds mix into noise, one instrument asserts itself, is pushed away by another, replaced, a new noise appears, sounds like a city, a car alarm for example. Then everything is lost once more in the fog.
“Compositions in which different sounds communicate with each other”
Do you have a preference for certain sounds?
Katrin Euller: I’m interested in complex, challenging sounds that I can’t immediately classify. I like compositions in which different sounds communicate with each other when there is room for interactions and processes such as formation and decay. Often the music or sounds that interest me are somewhere in the noise spectrum. This is also due to my personal taste – noise touches me, it has something calming, very close. Also, I’m drawn to sounds that hit me all over my body while enveloping it.
The moods you evoke are somber. Is that zeitgeist or persöSimilar taste or both you mean?
Katrin Euller: I don’t know if I can separate zeitgeist and personal taste so clearly. I live here and now and a zeitgeist also develops from collective experiences. But yeah, I’m more drawn to the darker moods, they feel more real, closer to my experiences, closer to the world I’m in.
“Live it’s a mixture of control and loss of control.”
How strictly do you keep composition and improvisation apart?
Katrin Euller: Both are very important in my work. The individual tracks are often created through improvisation, through experimentation and trying out. How the individual sounds relate to each other, how they are arranged, is composed and thought through more strictly. Live it’s a mixture of control and loss of control. I don’t always know where which sound is coming from, feedback for example. The machines also take on a life of their own during a live set that I have to respond to. At the same time, it is also important to me to prepare well and to have internalized the settings and different steps during a performance.
You work with a laptop and semi-modular synthesizers. What fascinated you regarding the synthesizer?
Katrin Euller: My setup consists of some analog synths and a laptop. I like the warm, powerful sounds of the analog machines, especially the bass and drums. I like working with analog feedback or making the different synths dependent on each other through mutual modulation. Then there is my interaction with the synths during a recording or a live set: I have to get to know the devices well beforehand, form a musical alliance with them. I find the reduction to a certain set of controls and knobs inspiring and it suits my way of working well. For me, the laptop functions as a control center where all the sounds come together. It gives me the opportunity to work very precisely, to arrange and edit sounds. I’m also interested in digital artifacts and effects as antagonists to analog feedback and distortion. At the moment I also like to use plugins for flatter sounds like strings, but maybe that will change in the future.
“The simultaneously rough and yet very emotional sounds really blew me away.”
When they start, many acts orientate themselves on the work of other musicians. Are there any central reference points for you? Someone who particularly influences you huhtte?
Katrin Euller: There are a few who have accompanied me over the years and still do. The music of Ben Frost and the School of Emotional Engineering was very important to me. The simultaneously rough and nevertheless very emotional sounds really blew me away. I think we always orientate ourselves towards other artists. It’s an exchange, a kind of communication and working through the sounds. In between, we might find something like our own language, which then quickly liquefies once more. I’m currently working on artists like Aho Ssan, Puce Mary or Rachida Nayar, but I also find local acts like Gischt, PLF or Rojin Sharafi very inspiring.
There is tremendous pressure to perform and compete in the fine arts. Does music actually feel freer to you?
Katrin Euller: From my position, I can’t say whether the pressure to perform and compete in music is generally lower. The experimental underground and club scene in Vienna, in which I move, is rather small and familiar. There is a lot of mutual support and good vibes. But living from it is difficult. The question of sustainable funding for the artists remains.
How regarding the community aspect? Do you feel like you’re walking into a scene?örig?
Katrin Euller: I definitely feel like I belong to the sound community in Vienna and I’m happy to have been so well received there. People are happy when something happens and support as much as possible. But I also have a dear network of friends and colleagues in the visual arts. Due to the size of the scene, the many hierarchies and often non-transparent structures in the visual arts, it is not always easy for me to navigate in this field.
Your first release will be out this month as a collaboration between the labels Transformer and Wilhelm Show Me The Major Label. How did that happen?
Katrin Euller: mike from Transformer Music I know through mutual friends. He was very supportive from the start and eventually invited me to release a tape with him. Turbo will be over later Wilhelm Show Me The Major Label entered. The two labels have already released tapes together in the past, for example the split tape by Hylut and Radiator last year.
Thank you very much for the conversation.
Shilla Strelka
Rent can be seen live at the Elevate Festival in Graz on March 2, 2023.
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Links:
Katrin Euller
Katrin Euller (Soundcloud)
