A short talk with Bogdan Raczynski on traveling the world, the power of humility, and... quirking.
Diogo: Bogdan, first of all, you've told me that you've just moved to Portugal's capital city, Lisbon. What are your first impressions of my lovely city? Even though we're still living under a pandemic, did you already have the chance to visit some remarkable places or to experience a bit of our culture?
Bogdan: Ironically, traveling always makes me turn very much inward and I become hyper contemplative about life and meaning. I feel I could write at length about Lisbon, but really to be brief is more useful.
Having only arrived a few weeks ago, my experience is incredibly limited. I haven't been to many touristic places or any cultural events, but I feel that this city, perhaps more than most I've been to, offers so much to feel outside of any official events or places.
It is hard for me to understand quite fully why. Is it the beautiful pastel facades? The crumbling buildings? The sing-song pronunciations? The maniacal hills and valleys and cobbled streets? I enjoy my new routine of having a milk coffee and sit each morning. Each street I turn to feels more fresh and vibrant than the last. I am enjoying my time here greatly just simply partaking in a simple day-to-day life without any special events or monuments, museums, etc.
Diogo: I can actually understand the routine of drinking a coffee and sitting down each morning. The simple exercise of contemplating the surroundings without directly interfering with them teaches us a lot about life and the nature of social interactions.
Bogdan: Yes, but I meant mainly for the fun of it! :) But it's also nice not to get too wrapped up in routines. It's good to be flexible and decide to do qigong one day to better your life, for example.
Diogo: Now, about music: What can you tell us regarding the record that you're planning to release on the 18th of March of 2021, /ADDLE/?
Bogdan: [...] I could write a book about this album, it's incredibly personal. This album was written over the course of 7 years, with most of the tracks being from around 2015. And yet, I am of the opinion that my intention is secondary. When I listen to an album I don't really care why or when or how someone wrote it. What's important is what, if anything, the music does to you. And I am completely ok with it not having any impact on you at all.
Diogo: Where did this urge to create, in 2015, originate from?
Bogdan: Great question. I don't know the answer. Ideas just started popping into my head; certain textures and sounds. The first 3 tracks are a triptych, made very closely to each other. I think perhaps I felt I was getting old and wanted to prove to myself that I could still kick it with the young kids. Just one theory... I try not to overthink creativity too much, it ruins the vibe.
Diogo: DLEDA" and "LADDE" are your most recent singles. While they still sound IDM, there's a very modern, refreshing feeling to them. What I'm trying to say is that these cerebral, morphing-nature tracks, would fit just fine with genres that share the same characteristics and are trending these days on online communities, such as Deconstructed Club and Glitch.
Bogdan: I'll have to take your word for it. I listen to some people that I follow on social media, but do not keep my ear to the ground in terms of the categories that people place me in (IDM, Braindance, etc). I hesitate to say this because it sounds really pretentious, but the fact is that I actually listen to very little music. Sound in general is very distracting to me. So when I'm working on my day job music slows me down and completely breaks my focus.
Diogo: That's curious. I tend to feel uncomfortable if I'm working in the absence of noise. This is something that I often reflect on. What do you enjoy in silence?
Bogdan: In silence, I enjoy not being distracted! :) Sound, for whatever reason, is just incredibly engaging, to the point of distraction. I think personaly there is some issue with attention, or lack thereof, that I have yet to adequately explore.
Diogo: If we travel back to Boku Mo Wakaran, the fondness for sampling, transforming, and just plain quirking, is already present. If we take a trip down memory lane, what has really changed since 1999? Do you recognize an evolution; both in yourself, as a human being, and the sound that you create?
Bogdan: This is a great word - quirking. Is this in use? It should be.
What has changed about me is that I have been working on being less of a privileged white asshole and a better listener with more empathy. That is not the same as saying I have had much success. But at the very least I am more aware of my faults than in the past.
During my earlier years I was quite careless about my music, and perhaps life in general, on account of being ignorant with low emotional intelligence, and quite frankly simply being spoiled. Interestingly, in recent years I have come to possess a similar creative bravado as in the past, but the source is different. I now realize that the majority of people in this world are also just fumbling along, figuring life out as they go. There are no masters who know the best ways to do things, just people who THINK they know. All it takes to topple the king is a better line of poetry.
Diogo: Even the idea of naming every single track included in this 71-minute-long record "[untitled]" is an interesting decision. We can't really discuss a single track on a mundane situation, because we hold on to labels, and here they've been erased.
Bogdan: I very much like to use these kinds of avenues for prodding people playfully, but also just to loosen up a bit about creativity. As soon as you strip away this power of holding onto a song based on its track title you give the listener an opportunity to hear it in a more subjective way. Looking at music objectively is directly the opposite of where sound holds its greatest power, in my humble opinion. It should be pushed away as far as humanly possible from the tangible.
Diogo: The Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa invented heteronyms (Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, Bernardo Soares), giving each of them a life: dates of birth, unique personalities, and a writing style. They were purposely alienated from Pessoa himself, in order to acquire their own /independence/. In '96 Drum 'n' Bass Classixxx, you signed all the tracks under different pseudonyms. The album is so insane and skewed that I could argue that "Suburban Fox" or "4-Cillinda" do have different personalities and mindsets regarding music. On the other hand, your ironic persona is pretty well-known at this point and I can identify what I would call anti-consumerism strategies.
Bogdan: Yes, all of that, but really it was just about having a laugh with Rephlex daddy Grant Wilson Claridge.
Diogo: You've traveled the world, experienced distinct cultures, met singular human beings. Looking back now, what were the most peculiar episodes in your life; the ones that you still remember vividly to this day? A quirky man must've gotten himself into some quirky peripeties, I believe.
Bogdan: I believe in the power of humility, and think it's a particularly transformative quality that more men should partake in. One day I'll write a really embarrassing book about all of my mistakes and regrets.
What comes to mind is how naive I was and how little I valued my worth, in the personal and financial sense. Sometimes I played for so little money, sometimes for nothing, other times I'd finish my set and then be taken back to the promoters' house with some big dog who wouldn't let me sleep (I do not like pets), or a squat with no shower or toilet.
If you laugh, good, the world needs more laughter. But whatever you do don't think that these are useful and character-building experiences.
Most of the time these transactions with people who seem well-meaning are actually just plain exploitation. Even when it seems benign, like a promoter who says they are "just doing it for the music," it is actually code for "I want to use your popularity to enrich my clout and local stature at your expense because I can't be bothered to try and promote the party properly so that you can get payed an ok fee."
Diogo: This is something that we've been trying to develop during our latest set of interviews: please select a picture (anything, really) from the Internet and explain the reasons behind your choice.
Bogdan: This canvas bag by Goombawave creator, P. Morris appeals to me greatly:
Canvas bags and grocery bags worn by men are a fairly common thing in Europe. But I remember when I first came back to Europe about 10 years it felt out of the norm coming from North America. It made me realize how tightly gender-stereotyped North America is (or was at least back then). Men are still so largely locked up in our roles.
I enjoy having a canvas bag with me when I go out now, just like I enjoy seeing men, friends or otherwise, with their arms around each other while they talk, pat each other on the back affectionately, smile at each other freely, and all sorts of other things that should be normalized among men but are not in many parts of the world.
Men are missing out on so much affection, it is such a shame.
Really though, even that viewpoint is a bit dated. Men, women, it shouldn't matter. But in the sense that we aren't at a point yet where it doesn't matter, men in many parts of the world have serious boundaries with each other that are really quite innocent that we would benefit from doing away with.
So this canvas bag with a man has a lot of meaning to me. I don't have one, but I do admire it.
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