Text by Martijn Tellinga / Boca Raton

Enzo / Further is a split piece. Further, being the overlapping result of the basic elements provided through Enzo, being a number of shorter tracks, displaying several compositional ideas. Further brings these experiments together and melts them into one entity. It streams through several musical stages and spherical impression, creating an intriguing sonic blend. After several CDR , compilation and 7" - adventures, "Enzo/ Further" is the first album by Boca Raton.

Martijn Tellinga / Boca Raton interview (interviewed by Hideho Takemasa)

1. Please let us know your background of music, art, etc and the processes to start your Boca Raton project. What drives and inspires you to create such unique sound works?

My background is basically a selftought, gradually professionalised hyperinterest in music and fascination for sound. Since 2 years I have been studying Sonology at the reknowned The Hague Royal Conservatory. Boca Raton is my first entitled solo project, as I mainly cooperated with other artists first. Boca Raton is not a fixed thing (maybe I should use my given name instead..?) and develops according to my taste, knowledge and artistic goals. So I can’t really say there’s any initial concept behind the project, besides maybe an idea of ‘interesting music’. As I develop as a composer and musician, I tend to think more and more about form, workingmethods and shape, and use those as a startingpoint, rather than thriving to create some specific kind of sound, getting stuck repeating yourself. The pieces I’m working on lately tend to get bigger and bigger, and are hopefully to be seen as autonome sonic works rather than just my personal musical expression. This is a development I can only feel as an enrichment and am very happy with.

2. Well, I would like to know about the form, working methods and themes of your works. Could you explain them or the relationships amongst them?

Form for my work form is mostly described in a set of specific ‘rules’ which set boundaries for the piece to move within. These can simply be margins of numbers representing different parameters in synthesis, but also more abstract. For example movement, for every passages I draw certain lines describing the musical gesture over time. These can be algorithmic or have other relationships amongs each other, but can also ‘just’ be according to my idea of the moment…one could also think of musical representation of writings, or other extra-musical information. The main thing is, why do you make what you’re making? Because it sounds good? After some time, this became too thin for me. The reason I tend to work more and more within limitations is because your work gets a new dimension added to it, it’s not just some set of sounds anymore, which perhaps sound nice mixed on top of each other, but without any further direction or motivation. When thinking about form and workingmethods you automatically think about how to reach your goals with a limited amount of material or elements, whichs very much adds to the expressiveness and more important, gives the work a ‘face’, a layer of motivations, choices, etc. I am currently working on a series of tape-pieces which are based on the idea of ‘sonification’ (the sounding representation of extra-musical elements transcribed into musical parameters), but then applied to compositional structure. This series I will work on during my Master Degree in the coming 2 years at Sonology. Another clear example of form is a soundinstallation I’m building based on Morsecodings, which has a very specific sound of their own, but also a very poetic value I believe. As a musical tool it’s difficult but very interesting, music ‘telling’ you what you hear. I guess It’s just important to thrive to make something which goes further than your personal expression, and to create something which can excist outside of your taste-domain, music which represents a certain idea.

3. What distinguishes this album "Enzo/Further" from other solo works of yours? Morocco is listed on the credit. How did the place inspire you?

Enzo/Further is a jigsaw-puzzle really in which all loose parts are introduced in the first, rather short, 11 tracks, to make up one, more slowly developing longer piece ‘Further’ which includes all these elements reworked once more. At that time I was mainly working with microphonerecordings but started to bridge with synthetic sound more and more. I’ve used both types quite roughly really, as a sort of hearplay almost. Morocco is a fascinating and mysterious place. At the time I was working on this album, I went there and loved it, although it wasn’t an easy ‘holiday’-trip. I’ve made beautifull fieldrecordings there, which make a big part of the sounds you hear (in a manipulated or pure way). It’s a very open and rough country, with a lot of sharp edges. An atmosphere which I could hear back in a way in the album, after I finished these pieces. Just Sahara wind is a complete source for music. I’ve actually made a soundtrack with filtered desertwind for Finnish artist & journalist Sami Kallinen’s short film ‘The Fall’.

4. I know you perform live frequently. What are the more challenging aspects for you when you perform at these venues in front of a live audience? Why and how do you play in quadraphonic and multi-channel environments?

To attract an audience’s attention through work they have to concentrate for…very silent work, or slowly developing movements. To play for a large audience which can keep really concentrated and silent is very rewarding, to have the feeling people are really making an effort to appreciate your work. Furthermore it’s ofcourse very nice to play on high quality soundsystems and to hear a certain space influence your music in a complementary way..although the opposite happens just as often ofcourse.. I feel electronic music gets stuck easily on a stereosetting, that’s why I started experimenting with 4 (or more) channel performances. It simply opens up the environment and adds to the spaciality of the sound. Plus it gives you much more possibilities in a compositional sense. The placing and movement of sound becomes a whole different thing in a multichannel setting. You need to think about it and compose it, to make it work. On a stereo-system some (random) panning is usually enough to get the ‘stereo’ feeling, as is often heard. To work with more channels needs an idea. For me it became a very important aspect of my music and performances. It is easy to mess up though, when having more possibilities, keeping overview and maintain simplicity can become difficult.

5. Could you tell us what your activities at the Royal Conservatory provide you, and Boca Raton's future plans?

The Conservatory I find a very inspiring place with many interesting people to meet and work with. To learn about the historical context of electro-acoustic music proved very fruitfull for me. Also to learn programming in object-oriented software-environments and the use of algorithmic composition in my work are the direct result of studying there. The Sonology department has a rich history, many very interesting composers have worked there or still are today. Gladly I will be there for another 2 years, doing a Master-degree. There’s lots of things on the horizon, I will do performances in Paris, Athens and Lissabon in the coming year, and hopefully do a short tour in Japan in June 2005. I am currently finishing a soundtrack for an animation film by the dutch NIAF and am nearly done with a soundinstallation which consists of Morse-codings of arbitrary recordings I’ve made in the supermarket and other more common daily urban surroundings. This will be a co-operation with Jan Robert Leegte, a Dutch Autonomous artist (http://works.leegte.org). To top things off I am working on the develoment of a balloon-instrument together with Radboud Mens (http://www.radiantslab.com/rat/) and Danny de Graan (http://www.dannydegraan.nl/), two Dutch composers. This project will take place at the STEIM studios in Amsterdam, somewhere this summer.