Pete Kelly releases music under various pseudonyms, the best known of which is Igneous Flame whose work tends to be formless ethereal ambience with dark and light elements. The sixth and most recent album under this name is Hydra which was reviewed in the August update to Melliflua. Expressing a very different musical side is Formbank. The releases under this name are quirky and “crazy”; I once described it “psychedelic EM”. Pete was also involved in the Formaria project Eight Shades of Sound based around the vocals of Maria Whitaker. Details of his albums under all guises can be found at his website Chillfactor10 Records Thanks Pete for taking the time to provide us with some interesting answers and food for thought. Q: What's your musical background, and what led you to composing ambient works? I’m primarily a guitarist, I’ve played for 27 years. I was originally into heavy rock and played in that style for a number of years, but my tastes have diversified significantly over time. Whilst studying Music Technology, I became aware of the potential of using computers for ambient music creation, prior to that I’d been using 4-track recorders and the like. The visual representation of sound and being able to place sounds ‘in time’ in multi-tracking programs was quite a revelation to me. I started my ambient work in earnest in 1998, releasing my first album Tolmon five years later in 2003. My earlier albums were somewhat ‘purist’ in terms of the emphasis on sound processing and the lack of instrumentation. Essentially, I was making ambient music using an electroacoustic music methodology – processing field recordings primarily and incorporating sparse use of guitar derived textures. I was inspired to make ambient music by Brian Eno, Harold Budd and David Sylvian. I was particularly inspired by the following albums: The Pearl, Thursday Afternoon, Apollo and Gone to Earth - and I still am. Q: Tell us something about your method of creating music and how you generate those otherworldy sounds One of the primary processes I employ is recycling sounds (and recycling the recycled!). I find it fascinating how a sound can end up sounding so different after multiple processes and manipulations, yet retain some of it’s original properties. A number of my pieces are ‘single source’ works, where only one original sound was used and a number of variants were created. On a technical level, I use some standard processes - time stretching and delays primarily. I do a lot of what I call ‘smoothing’ – using filters to get rid of unwanted peaky resonances, in a sense ‘sculpting’ the sound. I try to create ‘organic’ sounds - I don’t like harsh sounds, it’s easy to make a noise, it’s harder to make a ‘colourful’, interesting texture. I create a lot of textures/drones and I work on the layers or ‘components’ within a drone. What sounds like a single sound may be made up of a number of these component sounds. I also use more esoteric sound processes that I’ve come across/developed. I try to ensure they are transparent, as opposed to being obvious effects. Another technique I use is chaining multiple effects together to get a particular sound – an example of this is the ‘Brushed Steel’ guitar sound that you referred to in your review of ‘Oxana’, which gives an almost vocal quality to the guitar. As well as the conscious approach, there are certainly unconscious elements as well as the active decisions and ideas that I’m exploring. There are a number of unpredictable ‘wild card’ processes that I employ. In general, from what I can gather my approach to creating ambient music and the way I use the guitar in ambient music is somewhat unique. I spend a large amount of time of the ‘sound design’ side of things, I endeavour to create interesting and refreshing sounds and reject a lot on the way. All of my material is created almost entirely on computers, with very little outboard gear. In fact, I couldn’t create my material any other way. Q: Since you mention computers, the kit required to make music these days is so cheap that a lot of people are doing it, with the result that there's a lot of mediocre music out there - especially in the form of free downloads. Do you have a view as to whether this is good or bad for the ambient music scene? One on hand, it’s very empowering that almost anyone can create music exclusively in their home studios and ‘release’ it on the Internet if they wish. However, the material may well be by someone who is at a relatively early stage in their musical career. The artist doesn’t have to go through a label or self release the work, or have to make a CD (pressed or CDR). So, while it’s easier to release on the net, (especially as a free download), quality control is the issue here. I spent many years making music before I felt it was good enough to release, self-editing is essential. Net labels are worthy ventures and they control quality by their existence. However, I choose to sell my music. I’ll stick my neck out here and say that one of the reasons for the mediocrity in ambient music, is that there is so much music out there and ‘quality not quantity’ isn’t the way things are going. Q: What's your artistic vision in the Igneous Flame releases? Is the music intended to be interpreted by the listener in a certain way? The music can be listened to ‘actively’ or ‘passively’. However, there is sufficient depth in the work for concentrated listening and that’s how I judge it. Making music is very important to me - It’s something I feel compelled to do. I find in the world today that the quality of ‘beauty’ is very rare. Beauty is a quality I’m trying to achieve with my work, even the darker material its intended to be beautiful (I don’t like a lot of ‘ugly noise’ ambient) On a personal level, as a very sensitive person, I believe that some of my ‘inner life’ is brought into my music and the work can engage with the listener on different levels. In some ways, my music is an expression of things I can’t express. Q: Would you ever consider making a dark ambient album that is meant to be really scary and unsettling? The nearest I've ever come to hearing something like that is the beginning of Robert Rich's "A Troubled Resting Place". I think my most recent album ‘Hydra’ is very unsettling in parts. I was on holiday in a very remote spot in Lancashire last year and I couldn’t listen to the work-in-progress CD of it – particularly at night, it was just too otherworldly. I didn’t intend to set out to make it a ‘scary’ album as such, it just happened naturally! It was the same with my ‘Intox’ album. There’s a real difference between genuinely unsettling material and the plethora of ‘cod scary’ material that’s out there, where the intention is forced and obvious. An example of very haunting material is the work by the artist ‘Dark Muse’. Q: Your music released under the name Formbank is very different to Igneous Flame. What inspires these different approaches? The Formbank stuff is crazy - IDM for those with a sense of humour. Whilst the Igneous Flame project is beatless, I’m very interested in rhythm and this is where the Formbank project comes in. It’s all sequenced (and takes a long time to do) I used to play bass in quite a few bands and I had a really ‘unusual style’, I’m very much like mad syncopation and ‘oblique’ rhythms. Even though I describe the project as crazy, I still put a lot of work into it. It’s good for developing my compositional side as well, as I use an entirely different approach to the Igneous Flame stuff. It’s a welcome diversion from all those infernal drones! In one sense, it’s something of a technical exercise, particularly in terms of the production. As I write this, I’m finishing off the third Formbank release, which should be completed before the end of 2007. Q: Many people are starting to predict the demise of the CD as a medium for releasing music and expect it to be replaced by downloads in the not too distant future. What's your view on this? I feel that there’s a danger that the myopic stance on the part of the music industry (and the technology industry) regarding download-able music could actually be detrimental. With CDs, there’s a universality regarding playback. With downloads, the ‘tied in’ nature of the various formats to particular players (iTunes being a particularly bad example of this at present) is much more complex. There may be a future issue of obsolescence with outdated players and outdated file formats, technology moving as quickly as it does. Interestingly, I recently noticed one download company (MusicIsHere.com) is offering all the current formats and uncompressed audio files. I recently bought a new CD Discman and found that there were very few models available. There were lots of various mp3 players, but I didn’t want to be ‘forced’ to buy one and convert all my CDs to put on the player. Perhaps one of the most important issues is that of the audio quality of these formats. I find it ironic that the quality of the compressed audio files are considered to be acceptable by most listeners, when the technological advances in soundcards have made it possible to achieve professional results by artists working in ‘bedroom studios’. Regarding the issue of physical ownership, some people want to own the CD and have the artwork as the artist intended, conversely others are happy to have the compressed digital audio file. For myself, whilst all my Igneous Flame albums are up on the download sites. I’m still planning on releasing CD’s, as (for one reason) I personally like to have something physical to document the project by. The artwork side is very important to me too. Q: The value of mp3 players is their convenience (listening on the move etc), but for real listening I find a CD played on a good hi-fi system is the way to go. What hi-fi kit do you own, and do you have a view on how modern technology has affected the listening public? I’ve got a decent quality hi-fi system. However, I tend to listen to music on headphones primarily. I’ve currently got 4 sets that I use: Beyer Dynamic DT250, Sennheiser HD580, Etymotic ER4P and Shure E500. I like the in-the-ear phones for blocking out ambient noise. The Etymotics are very detailed and will pick up any hiss, clicks and distortions, so I use them as part of the mastering stage of my material. I’m fortunate to now live in a detached house, prior to that I used to feel guilty about having the hi-fi on too loud in case I might disturb the neighbours, so I listened to the music on the phones as loud as I wanted. Having heard some very high quality systems, I would say (for me) that the increase in sound quality is not necessarily proportional to the increased cost of very high-end systems over ‘good’ hi-fi. Regarding the listening public, sound quality is not the bottom line, hence the popularity of ‘portable audio’. SACD and DVD-A didn’t take off because there wasn’t the market beyond the audiophiles. I may be going off at a tangent, but there’s so much noise in the environment these days that people use music to drown out noise - creating more noise themselves! Q: What direction do you think your music will take in the future? Good question, I can’t really predict that myself. I don’t like to repeat myself or to be pigeonholed into some sub-genre (‘dark ambient’ comes to mind). I’d like to carry on doing the more melodic material as well as the darker stuff and there will be a more experimental electronica project on the horizon as well. Regarding upcoming projects, I will be releasing a guitar-based album in 2008, which will be more melodic than abstract and will feature the Ebow predominantly. I’m currently working on a collaborative project titled ‘Flicker’ with Michael Stringer AKA ‘Achromus’ which will be finished early 2008, this release will be something of a departure from my previous solo works as I’m working with Mick’s material as the starting point, so I’m producing it effectively. In the longer term, there will be further upcoming collaborations but they are still ‘in the ether’ at present. I’m under no illusions of amassing vast wealth from my ambient work! I’m looking more to the artistic side and what I can potentially achieve in that area. I’m able to do my music full-time at the moment, so I’m trying to create as much as I can. I want to keep progressing, trying out new ideas and improving the compositional element and the production with each release. I’II be frank, I’d like my material to become more known in the ambient world, that’s one of my goals. On a deeper level, I’d like my music to have an effect on people and that it creates ‘something’ for them. It’s subtle stuff and it won’t engage with everyone, but for the people it does, (from what I’m told) it works. Finally, as a kid, someone asked me what I’d really like to do when I grew up (this actually hasn’t happened yet, but I digress) and I said that I wanted to make weird sounds all day. As some kind of ‘mad-scientist’ exploring the sonic world in my audio laboratory, I’ve achieved that!