Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 05:01:52 Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia INTERVIEW by Julian Bonequi In September Audition Records released Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia. This promotional compilation gives us an insight into the stock of a database, which is collecting experimental and noise music from Africa and Asia since more than ten years. The aim of the database, run by a label called Syrphe, is to let people know that alternative electronic, experimental and noise music also exist in underrated continents. Read the interview with C-Drík Fermont, curator and producer of the Syrphe-database and listen to the tracks of the compilation. https://norient.com/index.php/blog/syrphe Page 1 of 16 Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 05:01:52 [Julian Bonequi]: C-drík, who are you? [C-drík Fermont]: I'm a musician, composer, sound engineer, event organiser, dj, label manager and so on. [JB]: How do you get started in music? [CF]: I started to learn orchestral drums and percussion at the age of 13, together with oratory, music theory, choir chant and later theatrical improvisation. About ten years later, after going to different schools (art academy and other stuff) but finishing almost none of them, I studied a bit electro-acoustic music in Belgium under the direction of Annette vande Gorne. I set up my first band in 1989, I was 17 back then and decided to play some noise and industrial music, simply because I liked those styles way more than punk, I was full of rage (beating metal scrap and screaming in microphones mostly). I'm happy I didn't start to play with a computer. I had to experiment with cassettes, walkie-talkie, metal sheets and pipes and other objects. I was forced to use my mind, to be creative, even if when I listen to some of our old tracks, I think that not all of them were good pieces of music. I regret nothing, I learned a lot. I quickly started some other https://norient.com/index.php/blog/syrphe Page 2 of 16 Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 05:01:52 projects, solo or bands, playing different styles from noise to dark ambient, industrial or minimal music and later breakcore, electronica, drum and bass, digital hardcore and so on. [JB]: Which kind of projects are you running? [CF]: Some of the projects I can mention are Axiome, Crno Klank, Ambre, Dead Holywood Stars, Moonsanto, Tasjiil Moujahed, Elekore, Tetra Plok, Kirdec. But there are many more. Those were published (and are still for some) on labels such as Ant-Zen, Ad Noiseam, Hushush, Hymen, Puzzling Records, Mad Monkey Records, Independenza Records, Klanggalerie, etc. I also run a tape label called Sépulkrales Katakombes, between 1991 and 1996, on which I published my music and some other artists and compilations including musicians like De Fabriek, Deleted, Simbolo, M. Nomized, DSIP, Wejdas, Schistosoma, Notstandskomitee, Yximalloo, Sphinx, etc. In 2002 I created another label called Syrphe to publish cd's and its sublabel Textolux on which we released two minimal wave/electro vinyls composed by Tetra Plok. Nowadays I'm still running Syrphe, publishing some of my works and collaborations and compilations of artists from Asia and Africa, mostly. I organise some events, mostly in Berlin, do some audio mastering, remixing and editing for artists, occasionally compose music for theatre, dance, short films or cine-concerts, collaborate to the Staalplaat radio show once or twice per month, programming experimental music from Latin America, Asia and Africa, I give presentations and lectures now and then, and write a book about African and Asian electronic and experimental music. I often tour in those continents and across Europe (especially eastern Europe). I collaborate and improvise a lot with artists while being in Berlin or while traveling, various studio or live collaborations have been made with Mick Harris, Mark Spybey, Yan Jun, Effie Wu, Alok Leung, Aluviana, Choi Joonyong, Dickson Dee, Naofumi Ishimaru, Pei, Nguyen Van Cuong, Lin Chi Wei, Jawad Nawfal, Luo Chao-Yun, Hui-Chun Lin, Aldis Oslozs, Damo Suzuki, Mathis Mootz, Contagious Orgasm and dozens more. I had the opportunity to play twice for Ðào Anh Khánh Studio in Hanoi and once for the Guangdong Modern Dance Company in Southern China. I sometimes sleep. https://norient.com/index.php/blog/syrphe Page 3 of 16 Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 05:01:52 [JB]: Where are you originally from? [CF]: I was born in Zaire, when the country was still called like that. But I only lived there two years (in Lubumbashi and Kinshasa); I'm of Congolese, Greek and Belgian descent. I'm earthling. I then lived and grew up in Belgium. I left that country around 2003 to live in the Netherlands, until late 2005, then spent six months in far east Asia, kind of came back to Belgium or better said, between Belgium half of the year and the rest of the world other half of the year. I moved to Berlin in 2010, still traveling a lot though. [JB]: Why Berlin? [CF]: I was and am still somehow fed up with Europe. And the only place where I feel good here around is Berlin. That was Berlin or far east Asia anyway but for some personal reasons, back then, it was at least better to stay in Europe. Now things have changed. I could one day or another end up in far east or south east Asia. Berlin is to me like an island in a country I dislike a lot and a continent quite decaying. I may be wrong but I perceive things like this, pseudo economical crisis hence a so-called lack of money for education, health and culture, rise of fascism and philosophical and https://norient.com/index.php/blog/syrphe Page 4 of 16 Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 05:01:52 religious intolerance, sexism, racism, etc. I say «pseudo» because if goods, housings, food and social services were properly shared there would be no crisis. We don't lack of housings or food or gas, water and so on at all, they are simply not fairly distributed. The rigid and absurd German bureaucracy gives me nausea, this is an oppressive place where poor people are getting crushed day by day. The so called European model is an ultra-capitalist place where individuals pay tons of money to a corrupted state, dishonest insurances and wealthy conservative politicians. One could say it's a global phenomenon and yes, it is, it has even been constant in some parts of the world but I often feel we are close to what happened in the 1930's in Europe, at many levels. Meanwhile, some say Berlin is not what it used to be. I say it's good so; stagnation means conservatism. Berlin definitely lost some of its freedom but is still more opened than any other European capital. I know no other place where one can go out seven days per week, twenty-four hours per day and cross so many people from everywhere at parties, exhibitions. I learn and share a lot here: there are plenty of alternative scenes (any form of art). One can learn plenty of languages and customs, you meet creative people, etc. I like the local social interactivity: collective gardens, people's kitchens, artistic collectives, DIY places to print, to repair your bike, etc. Connections with real humans. There are some downsides of course but less than anywhere else in Europe to me. HISTORY OF SYRPHE [JB]: When did you start with the first attempts to create your own label and why? At what point did you decide to create an experimental music label with musicians and works coming from Africa and Asia? And which ones were the motivations to create a label with such approach? [CF]: The very beginning of the label happened in 2002, a follow up to my defunct tape label, partly due to a need to publish some of my music myself and to my friend Dimitri della Faille who was behind the label Hushush Disques in Canada. The first published CD was a co-release with his label. The decision to publish artists from other continents started in the mid 1990's with my previous label Sépulkrales Katakombes, on which I published some artists from South Africa, Japan, Chile and Brazil. But it is only in 2007 that I published a bigger project on Syrphe: Beyond Ignorance And Borders – An African, Middle-Eastern, Asian noise and electronic compilation. It took me two years to get in touch with enough artists to produce that CD. After spending months in the far east and having collected some more contacts in North Africa and the Middle East, it was time to show that there were some very active experimental and electronic music artists over there. https://norient.com/index.php/blog/syrphe Page 5 of 16 Syrphe: Noise Music in Africa & Asia | norient.com 29 Sep 2021 05:01:52 I had enough to hear people telling me there was nothing happening in those places; that they couldn't understand what I was doing in those countries, etc. When I studied electro-acoustic music at the conservatory, we never heard about any composers from non-Western countries, that disappointed me a lot. And if you study nowadays in France or Belgium, nothing has changed. According to most academics, Pierre Schaeffer invented everything, no one existed before him and nowhere else was there any experimental music composers.