We´ve been busy bees at Cymbidium during the fall, and some new releases are on their way soon. One of these releases will be Saine´s third album on Cymbidium Records, titled Long Time No See, to be released on the 1st of December as a special christmas treat from us. It will be available for purchase through download stores digitally and as a limited vinyl edition - more details on that to follow soon at our label´s website and at sainemusic.com.

While he himself doesn´t like to put labels on his music, the previous albums (Imagine This, 2007 and Break A Pattern, 2008) included elements from hip hop, jazz, house and experimental electronica. Known for perfectionism and a desire to experiment with different musical influences and ideas, rather than settling for the norm, we were more than curious to find out what path he had taken this time.

So when we heard that Saine had finished his upcoming third album, we thought it would be a good moment to do an interview. Among other things we wanted to know where he draws his inspiration from, what are his working methods like and what does he think about some current affairs - like the state of music industry. So without further due, here´s what he had to say.

Saine, pictured here with perhaps his secret furry collaborator on the new album? Photo: Tiina-Mari Pitkänen    

Q: How does the recording process start - is there a certain theme, emotion or thoughts that you want to express with your music?

A: It´s different each time, but often the inspiration hits when you least expect it. It can be an interesting picture or a phrase overheard, anything really.. I’m intrigued with chaos theory and I really like the randomness of music creation, one thing leading to another etc. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy sampling so much - the idea of different recordings from different eras uniting as tiny pieces of new music and how it all somehow falls into place across history.

Q: How do you think this new album is different from your previous ones. Did you use different working methods - how has the sound evolved?

A: I´ll never see the forest from the trees myself here, but I´d like to think it´s more “me” than ever before. I´ve put a lot of focus into finding my vibe, keeping a comfortable distance away from short-term trends. A common response of course, and it´s always better to just listen for yourself, but a lot of music is being released now so I do think it´s good to sit down every once in a while and think about it.

I´ve aimed to broaden my techniques by using unorthodox methods and “instruments” quite a bit – my girlfriend´s shoes made for nice percussion, the spin-dry program of a washing machine pitched 8 octaves up resulted in a great organ-sound and so on.. I do enjoy working with plugins in the digital realm as well, they offer a whole new world of different options. Sometimes I like to experiment with a sort of butterfly effect by creating endless chains of sounds evolving in slightly different LFO-phases etc, so there´s just weird music happening you have very little control of. It can be great fun sampling from something “chaotic” like that.

Q: Your sound seems to rely heavily on sampling, any particular reason?

A: I also often record “traditionally”, but indeed, sampling comes very natural to me. I like to blur the line between recorded and sampled, since I essentially think such a line is useless – it’s all just sound. Blurring that grey area until it’s impossible to tell where something “traditionally recorded” ends and something sampled starts is a lot of fun as well.. Synths are great too, but I’m drawn to the fact every sample has a story, using an attack of a snare sound from 50 years back, together with a clean digital snare can bring a nice contrast. I usually much prefer textures created like that to say, music that contains elements all from the exact same source. I guess I think of it a bit like layering paint on a canvas.

Saine uses Renoise as his main DAW, saying it suits his workflow perfectly thanks to its smooth-to-use sample mangling features

Q: When beginning to work with a track, do you have a vision in your head on what it should sound like or is it just something that develops spontaneously during the process?

A: Yes to both I suppose.. I usually hear the track before starting to work on it, but in the end it will turn out something completely different - often it´s best to just let the music decide how it wants to flow. It’s a bit like life in general, we got this illusion of control hehe..

Q: What is your recording process like, do you work intensively during several hours at a time? Do you prefer the day or night time?

A: I prefer night time, but for practical reasons I´ve done most of the actual work during daytime. Months can pass without any progress at all and then suddenly there´s a few weeks of 12 hours lasting inspirations in a row, it can get pretty exhausting too..

Q: Do you always work solo or sometimes collaborate with other musicians as well? What about vocals, do you see yourself working with singers/rappers in the future?

A: Most of my work so far is done solo yes, no particular reason there, except the fact I often actually enjoy working alone.. The tracks on Long Time No See don´t contain featuring artists - in that sense it´s a very personal album. I also love to collaborate, but those projects have often ended up being jams, not finished releases. About vocals, well I´d love to, but I´m not in a rush with that. Things need to fall in place naturally you know.. Plus instrumental music has the power to do some amazing things – perhaps it also also offers more freedom to me: with instrumentals the beats and harmonies are not there just to support something more important.

So this has suited me very well so far, but I definitely see myself working with vocalists in the future as well, it´s a new world with a lot of beautiful possibilities - and I do love listening to vocal music as well. For something fresh out of the oven, you can check my SoundCloud for a recent hip-hop joint I did with the rapper Mercury Waters. A really talented MC there.

Q: Which musicians have inspired your work? What have you heard lately that you think is really good?

A: You´d surely get a different answer each day, but okay.. My morning fired up with some Bill Evans, one of my all-time faves. And I´ve really been into the new release by Eric Lau: Makin´ Sound. I´ve also relived Natural Yogurt Band´s supercozy Away With Melancholy recently. Phew, so many of them. From the mainstream side of things, one of my favourite releases this year is from Erykah Badu with her New Amerykah part 2. Her sound doesn´t seize to amaze me.

Q: Do you think electronic music has developed linearly and we are now seeing better material than ever coming out, or do you share the view with some rock fans for example, who think the best rock music was made in the 60´s and 70´s? Is there a golden era for electronic music?

A: There are no rights or wrongs with a subject like this, for example even I prefer 60´s and 70´s rock myself to most modern rock (I’m a huge Led Zeppelin fan!) while the golden era of electronic music is perhaps happening as we speak, but it´s always a matter of perspective. Good music tends to happen all the time at all places, it just comes in different shapes and sizes and people will always argue about the shiniest golden era.

I do think it´s funny how we assume that progress keeps leaping forwards, yet audio quality for example has sunk during the past 30-40 years when judging it by the average Joe´s listening situation. This is perhaps part of the reason why 60´s and 70´s rock sounds so much more alive to me. We´ve gone from really high quality analog recordings, skilfully pressed vinyls with amazing dynamics and proper hifi-systems to over-processed and often over-compressed MP3’s being listened to mostly on laptops, horrid home-surround-systems or iPods..

The difference in quality is so huge that it´s not just something audiophiles can hear. Not always that black and white of course, as we have plenty of people caring about audio today as well, but it´s an alarming direction. Well, as connection speeds will increase and we move on from MP3 to uncompressed audio formats, it will all be fine eventually I guess haha..

Inspired perhaps by other art forms, Saine made the cover design and artwork of the album himself, partly by rubbing a wet dish cloth on inkjet printer photos

Q: How do you see the situation of the music industry at the moment?

A: Recently I´ve felt positive about the future, still on the alert, though.. A lot of doors are opening up wide now that the dinosaurs can be properly challenged, thanks to new means to share media etc. In this sense I think it´s hypocritical to simply blame piracy for everything: it´s an obvious side-product of such change and has also helped push progress forward.

Still I couldn´t say how long this whole process will take or whether it will produce the results artists are truly hoping for. Ah well, vinyl sales are going up I hear, and in the digital realm we´re moving on from compressed audio (argh) to file formats like FLAC. So if someone actually figures out how to get more than 0,0000000001% of sales to the artist´s pocket in the future, I think everything is possible, and I´ve got my fingers crossed..

Q: According to some statistics (good article on the subject) in 2009 there were up to 35 000 albums released which sold less than 1 copy - is making and releasing music today too easy?

A: Haha, a good question and a tricky subject. You can never really define music as being worthy of releasing or not - so my answer is no. The internet has certainly brightened things up in terms of low-budget music making/releasing. it´s all subjective, to measure art is impossible and that´s just how it should be. Indeed it has become easy to release music and naturally there are vast differences in quality, but the really alarming issue lies in how artists (don´t) get paid and that should be something to discuss instead.

This often leads to someone saying: music will be rewarded if it´s good enough, but from my standpoint this couldn´t be farther from the truth, and it´s a dangerous way of looking at art in general. Of course financial success is always easiest to measure, but quickly leads to completely distorted priorities: music being made for the worst possible reason. In a nuthsell it´s never the “good” or “bad” music that will suddenly start bringing in the money any more than it is the music that is being worked most hard on, or is critically most acclaimed etc.. For whatever reason a lot of people have a hard time accepting that art just doesn´t work in a neat predictable manner like that at all. It never has.

One often-used example of artists sometimes not getting recognized is of course the famous painters that never got noticed until after their deaths. Call me naive but I absolutely believe art is a valuable thing in itself and selling actual records, paintings or books shouldn´t be the only measurement on whether someone is eligible to earn their bread with their art. Firstly we´d need to accept an artist as something else than a nine-to-five worker or a lazy person doing nothing but eating up other people´s taxes. An artist is obviously neither.

Q: Many of the biggest sellers of today, like Lady Gaga seem to be more celebrities than musicians, how do you see this? And who is to blame for this direction: the labels looking for “wrong” type of acts or the people buying the records?

A: It’s a whole different ball game, I hardly dare to comment hehe.. The way I see it, that´s an extreme example of the previous topic and instead of labels or consumers, I personally blame the values our capitalist society is fundamentally built on, hippie as it may sound. Perspectives get distorted if things are valued purely based on success and fame. Music is just one example of this, but to avoid this interview becoming a political and social rant, I’ll have to mention that every once in a while there´s also some really extremely good music to be found at the extreme mainstream - MJ was no joker. It’s just getting a bit rare now that’s all, as the biz gets tougher and marketing imagery seems to play a bigger part each day.

Q: The music industry is also divided into smaller segments today, which all have their own stars, who despite being heroes among their own genre, might not get much main stream media interest. With the ever-declining record sales how do you see the future for musicians wanting to make a living within a niche music genre?

A: The future still holds a lot of bright possibilities. Music and other media will be available to everyone at all times (via streaming or such) and play counts will increase exponentially as this happens. So it depends a lot on whether someone comes up with a fair payment system tied up to those play counts.. Spotify hasn´t quite cut it yet as it seems, regarding actual payments to artists – it´s a shame. The artist getting zero point something % of plays/sales is insane, even in theory it can only work for the rare cases of U2-type super (cough..) bands, but for the rest of us..? This needs to change.

Q: How do you see the situation for electronic music in your native country Finland, as opposed to the rest of Europe for example?

A: Finland doesn´t completely seem to understand the concept yet.. Well, it´s definitely going to the right direction, Basso Radio has helped a lot with this in southern Finland for example. We´re still obsessed with naive Pro Tools heavy metal and cheesy party-rap for whatever reason hahah, and with electronic music we seem to adopt whatever was hot 5 years ago in the UK. But I´ll say this: it´s improving by the minute and there´s a ridiculous amount of talent in the Finnish underground, these people just need to get heard.

Q: What about in general, do think people have as much respect for electronic musicians as they have for musicians who play traditional instruments?

A: Sure, maybe not a couple of decades ago, but we´re now finally very close to a point where you don’t have to speak of “electronic” or “traditional” music anymore - after all 99% of music already falls somewhere in between those extremes, so it’s about time we start talking about just music.

Saine - Shaker by Cymbidium Records

That was all the questions we had prepared, so thanks to Saine for taking the time to answer them, pretty heavy subjects in there as well. Hopefully after reading this you have a better idea about Saine and his music. We would be more than happy to receive any comments or any questions that you´d still like to ask Saine. Also it would be great to hear feedback about what you´d like to read about in our blog in the future.

The best comments and questions will be rewarded with a digital version of the brand new album by Saine.

The release date for Long Time No See is set to 1/Dec/2010. To listen & to buy Saine´s previous albums, go to: www.cymbidium.fi/releases.html