Aug. 2001 Gods Of Music Alive Review

by Jeremy Robertsen

I am very impressed with the "story" that is the song 'Alive'.

It is exciting to run across such a multitude of emotion and diverse tones in one piece of music. Tolga G. has created a small universe in 'Alive'. He has taken the elements of life and constructed them together in such a masterful way as to extract the true emotions that linger within everything. The recording quality is astonishing, and I dig the 'growly' sample. It sounds almost like a vibrastrap on a bad hair day.

'Alive' is like opening an inflatable life raft between your headphones, then stepping out into the garden of Eden where everything is beautiful and a bit sassy.

The percussion has a middle eastern flavor, and the 'flute' oriented breaks are the calm before the storm. As I listen to this masterwork over and again, I am drawn further and further into the darker recesses of the tunes actual structure. I am very impressed with this work.

Kudos!

Sept. 2000 The Voilet Collection Tolga Gurpinar Interview

by Rik MacLean

(Done while I was working on an unfinished album "Awake; before I decided to rerecord Alive from skratch.)

Tolga G. has appeared on a few editions of The Violet Collection with his blend of childhood wonder and otherworldly ambience. He took a few minutes to talk to us about some of the things he's working on, and where some of his inspiration comes from.

1) With your latest album you're attempting the rather ambitious task of writing, recording and producing an entire album in one month. What are some of the challenges that you've faced so far, and how have you overcome them?

My main reason for this attempt was related with the problem of keeping an album's focus and feeling stable from the beginning to end. I always wanted to complete an album around one theme and Alive would be such an album. But when I take the album and listen to it, today, it sounds more of a kind of series of one-off works. While working on the new album 'Awake', I got the chance to explore and work on some new techniques of audio manipulation and analog style steptime sequencing, beside ethnic things. And I've just completed a unique track, called "Aquamaria". It begins with an interesting symphonic part that I created by manipulating Chinese violin phrases, turning them into more western style and then layering them with cello section partition I played. Then it turns into a quite solid electronica track. It will be online in a few days. Probably I can't finish the album in one month, because I can't find enough time to work on an idea before turning it into a complete track. Even all the tracks I've uploaded so far need some more work. So I'll take it easy and try to do my work better.

2) You've worked in a number of different styles with your music. Where do you feel most comfortable, most expressive? What are some of the things you've learned working in other areas?

I'm still searching for the ultimate expressivity. Yes, actually that is the essential thing I look for in music, though I still feel quite isolated behind those synthesizer and keyboard things. I mean this machines still lack the full and spontaneous response to your body and mind and you spend most of your time programming them, instead of creating. To be frank, I feel much more free and expressive while I'm dancing... Maybe a human interface to a soundmachine, with many controllers that responses to many activities of your body, even the heat and your slight tremblings are the answer of what I'm looking for.

3) Tell me a little bit about The Story of Iloyd. The album seems to really connect with the memories and experiences of childhood. What sort of process did you go through writing that album?

Iloyd was my first album and it is yet a sketch of something I have in my mind. I always believe that most of us were much more loveful, genuine, brave and creative when we were children. We were seeking for love and we were exploring the earth. But the 'real' world made us into something half-dead, half-human.... (Couldn't find a better expression) And I wanted Iloyd to remind people those things. Yes, seriously Iloyd is more for adults, rather than children. While composing it I gave the importance more to the mimics, gestures and attitudes of sounds; beside melodies, notes and harmonies. The expression would come out of those mimics in melodies, rhythms, etc...

While I was recording and mixing the online version of 'The Story Of Iloyd', there occured the 7.4 magnitude Izmit earthquake, and this place is very close to Istanbul so the quake shaked us very well too! And after hearing the sound of earthquake (the one that comes from the underground), I couldn't resist to hear any bass sound for a long time. That is why the bass is too low in Iloyd.

Oneday I'll record Iloyd from the beginning to the end with some more tracks. Technically, it is not enough developed. But some people like its sound this way, and they tell me that they are afraid of me to distort/spoil Iloyd. The influence comes from the children themselves and from my own childhood. [I'm very into it. I even remember many things from my age 2,5. :o)]

4) Let's talk a little bit about the lightballs. They play a large role in your artwork, and there's a definite lightball presence in your music. What do the lightballs represent to you?

I was a bit too emotional about the landscape things during my childhood. I was dreaming of flying very high over the mountains and seas and was exploring new landscapes, new 'cultures' :) I, sometimes, was dreaming of falling from an endless cliff. That was the unconscious influence on them. And the lightballs themselves. I wanted them to be a kind of pure living creatures that surprise humanbeings and symbolise the concepts of love and exploration. Oh thank you, I hope my music is close to those pictures. I want my music to be bright, clear and colourful. :)

July 2000 Electronic Shadows Magazine, Tolga G. Interview

by Glenn folkvord

Who are your musical influences, and why do you think you like them?

I love Bjork & Jean Michel Jarre... I adore Bjork, because her music is full of love, and she is a master of having very gentle and very tough elements coexist in one piece of music. 'Human techno, fearless electro', people say... And Jarre, because his music is so expressive...

And I love Norwagian classical composer Edvard Grieg and Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. The track "Alive" from the album "Alive" has definite influences from de Falla. And Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is the influence for my very happy, electronic tune "A Room Full Of Creatures" from my album "The Story Of Iloyd", for children.

What are you trying to achieve in your music?

I am more into the expression side of music, more than the entertainment side. I am into bringing out characters, images, behaviours, statements, allusions, jokes through music. And I want these points to be the attraction point of my work, not the beats, the sounds, etc... (although the expression is kept within them.)

Forexample, what I wanted to do with my album "The Story Of Iloyd" was to bring out a music full of childish behaviours, mimics, grooves; thus remind the adults, the mentality of their childhood. We all need to look back how we were explorative, creative, brave, curious, genuine, dynamic and full of love when we were children; and think about what we become today...

The "Iloyd"project hasn't finished yet. This is actually just the beginning. I'll do two more versions of "The Story Of Iloyd" album, one will be directly for children, and one will be for big kids!!! :) The CD that is availble from MP3.com is a sketch version from 1998.

Turing back to subject "expression", I did composed the piece "The Lonely Seagull Of The Deserted City" as a half allusion half joke to Jarre's renown Oxygenian seagulls, for example. And I have a quite groovy happy house tune in my Francemp3.com page, "ChewingGum". Some French people like this track very much, and they dance to it. But still, this piece has an expression of its own, for me... Maybe the expressions of 'entertainment, dance, groove & happiness'. :)

Do you have any specific composing technique?

I sometimes just wander among the keys, and do some imporvisations. But mostly, I have an idea, a concept, a feeling in my mind - linked with what I live - and I sit and compose something around this concept and try to finish the track as soon as possible. But rarely do I work on a piece more than a year. "Alive" for example... I had to work on this track for one and a half years because of the complexity of the harmonic elements. There are even some 20 minutes versions of the piece "Alive". Today only the best bits are there in the 3.30 minutes version. But oneday I'll do an album around this Mediterannean theme.

How is your studio set-up?

I have a Roland JD990 with a vintage card + JV80 with orchestral board, but I do not use JV as a sound source anymore, also I don't use JD much as well. Instead, I've started to use soft samplers and synths, extensively. Gigasampler is perfect software sampler. It is 64 polyphonic and it lets you work with more than 1GB of sound set at simultaneously, as it does not use RAM to store the sounds. Instead, it uses the harddisk and capacity of the CPU and the cache. And one other great thing about software synthesis is "Reaktor". Everything is possible with it if you have enough CPU power. It can reproduce any analogue, FM, digital synth; vocoders, FX processors, and it has some very new synthesis resources, too. I started to use AKAI Sample CDRoms to use with Gigasampler.

What do you prefer in a synth?

Control, flexibility and trustablity. And the good thing is that this is what the electronic musical instruments industry is into, today, at last.

What do you think of today's electronic music?

Well, in my honest opinion, best electronic music today comes from other genres' musicians, more than people that are supposed to be electronic music composers. The problem is that people who are called electronic music artists are usually copying 70's electronic music; or Aphex Twin/Chemical Brothers likes doing something that I don't understand. I like happy electronic music or emotional electronic music. Don't usually like those "intellectual" or obscure music things. But I like Orb. Their music is something like 'memory encoding', I say... I also like Talvin Singh and some works of William Orbit, etc. Even Kraftwerk is always cute, beside being very mechanic.

What is your current album project?

I've just finished the album "Alive" and I'll work on three projects this summer. One is the ambient/electronica version of "The Story Of Iloyd", one is a completely new album, under one concept with transitions between the tracks or long, progressing tracks; and a happy dance album project with musician friend, Fokale. (I've composed "ChewingGum" for this project.)

If you have any concert experience, what was it, and what do you feel about the live situation?

Yes, once. It was a kind of music competition in one of the biggest concert halls in Istanbul. All the competitors, including me, were told to wait in a small room behind the stage, all together. And there was such a bad atmosphere there both physically and socially that I totally forgot about the excitement and was waiting impatiently for my time to come, in order to escape from here. And when my time came, and I was on stage; it was such a good feeling to breathe the fresh air. I just did my playback and I couldn't see any face looking at me, already, because of the powerful spotlights. I didn't even realise that I was on stage.

Describe your latest album.

"Alive" is a kind of romantic, orchestral but yet quite modern music album. More like a compilation album or a kind of soundtrack of a fragment from my life. Many tracks in it were composed directly with influences from my daily life, my friends, etc... but don't think that my life was ordinary during this period, first the great earthquake, the sun eclipse, my fall into a bog, and many more strange things...

And I just did the mastering of Iloyd's old recordings just after the 7,4 Izmit earthquake, which had shaken Istanbul well, too. And that is why the bass sounds in the mix is so low, because I couldn't resist to hear a deep bass sound for a long time, after hearing the sound of the quake.

(What a bad coinsidence that a 4.2 magnitute earthquake has occured in Istanbul a few minutes ago while doing this interview.)

What do you think internet has done, and will do, to artists promoting and distributing their own music? And how will the music business look in the future?

It hasn't done much yet, I think. But we have great hopes. The MP3.com idea is great. But most of the public either hasn't heard about this servise, or think MP3.com as an illegal pool of poor quality, gratis music. It may take sometime, but I am sure this is the future of distribution of music. One day there won't be a bussiness that gets the 95% of the money we pay to an album, and that controls all the music media.

Do you have other influences in your music, beside other artists? If yes, how does this influence your music?

Anything... Children, women, landscapes, pictures; even sometimes a smell, a noise, a fashion design... Beside all, love is my essential driving force to make music.

Why do you think every person on earth has a relationship to music?

Because, all is full of music!!! Well, we know that the story starts with prehistoric men discovering the rhythm to be able to move syncronically, during hunting... And then they must have decided that this thing was very amusing...

Actually I believe that the power of music is its universality of emotions, regardless of the cultures, languages...

What do you see for the future of electronic music?

I think, there won't be a phrase 'electronic music' in the very close future; because today, most of the music is electronic, already.

Is analog better than digital?

Not necessarily I think. Today we have the control and we can almost reproduce the organic quality of analog, digitally. Also digital is always more trustable and precise. But the digital attitude of synth companies during 80's was a disaster, for sure; to build unpretty black boxes waiting for Mr. Brain to come and program them, as musical instruments...

What do you do when you are not playing or listening to music?

Thinking about music, these days...

What is your favourite food, and colour?

Spagetti & Yellow.

If you were not doing music, what do you think you would be doing?

Beside music I am already studying professional photography at MSU; and earning money by designing book covers, and drawing AutoCAD projects, and webdesign. But I would like to be a professional dancer...