Interview: Resonance FM

Interviewed by Benjamin Tassie for his podcast ‘Future Classical’ on Resonance FM. We talked about the internet, postmodernism, PC Music and much more. Aired on 30 November 2021.

Excerpt

Benjamin Tassie: In the paper that you wrote for your Masters but also in your music, it seems like there is a kind of leaning into some of that noise, what you term ‘digital maximalism,’ and exploring that for its own sake rather than a kind of total withdrawal, right?

Ben Nobuto: Yeah, I’m never sure whether my music presents itself as a cure to the problem, but is actually just part of the problem because I’m just adding to the noise. Do you know what I mean?

BT: Yeah, yeah, yeah

BN: So I sometimes think, maybe I’m just being irresponsible, as someone who’s kind of aware of the noise, but then not really doing anything about it. But I like to create spaces in my music where it gradually moves away from the noisy, maximalist chaos to a zone that’s the opposite, you know, very still and supposed to be a retreat from that world. So I guess that’s maybe how I justify it?

. . .

Ben Nobuto: Yeah, I don’t know whether the need to bombard the listener with all this information in my music stems from some kind of . . . I dunno . . . juvenile need to shock. Or, you know, let’s make an effect for the sake of making an effect. Maybe I need to interrogate that more. I don’t know if you’ve read that book The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson?

Benjamin Tassie: No, I haven’t

BN: Ah, okay. It’s really good. So she talks about historically that modernist impulse to shock the audience, and through shocking them, help them transcend beyond their comfortable bourgeois lives and really experience something visceral. She kind of interrogates that idea and says whether it’s necessary or motivated by artistic ego or whether it even works, whether it’s effective. And she contrasts it with someone like John Cage or artists who do the opposite, you know? They see stillness and silence as generative spaces to experience things beyond ourselves, rather than pummelling the listener into submission. So that was really interesting. That kind of made me think, ‘Ah, am I guilty of that in my music?’ I’m not sure, I’m still figuring it out.

. . .

BN: I think sometimes I’m really inspired to create - and this also speaks to an immature thing in me - something grand and totalising. Maybe it’s that postmodern thing of realising that every perspective or attitude on anything is just a fragment and so it can’t ever relay the entire truth. So the way around that is to present everything - all at once - so you kind of cover all bases in a way. And I guess that’s why a lot of the classic postmodern novels like David Foster Wallace are these huge encyclopaedic things that touch on every cultural reference imaginable, and in doing so, try to approximate truth as closely as possible. So I guess that’s what motivates me; if I can kind of present all angles at once then I’m somehow getting closer to truth.

BT: Hmm

BN: But just saying it out loud now I know how silly it sounds. I don’t know, it’s kind of an impossible task.