Estroe & Raaf

Interview

Both: How did the two of you find each other, and when did "we know each other" turn into "we play together"?

We both had our debut at Voltage Control Amsterdam in Paradiso, standing next to each other and taking turns with performances. I'd really only just started with modular. I'd been following Bertram a bit on YouTube, he'd just set up his channel around then. We both wanted to go to Superbooth, so beforehand we arranged to meet up, just to compare our cases and play together once. That first session showed us how much we added to each other's music, both of our sounds were lifted by it. Beyond the musical click, we clicked as friends too. After Superbooth we started making music together more often, and after a few times we decided, okay, we just want to perform as the two of us, it makes it so much more fun.

Esther, You had a long and successful run as a DJ, with a very distinctive, deep techno sound. What triggered the shift to modular synthesis — was it a conscious cut, or more of a gradual evolution?

About ten years ago, when I started working at the conservatory teaching electronic music, I was barely DJing anymore. I needed all my headspace to coach my students and direct my attention toward these young people, and DJing gradually gave way to passing my own knowledge on to others. Producing, something I'd also been doing for a long time, about twenty years, stopped working for me too. I had no headspace for it, no desire to work in the box, and I was already spending so much time behind a computer. I just felt no inspiration to create, for a few years. In the meantime though, I kept going to modular nights and events, and I was always fascinated by it. I just didn't think I could do it myself, it all looked so intimidating, all those cables. It wasn't until a few years ago that a colleague invited me into his class, while he was teaching his students, to explain modular synthesis. He explained it in a way that made it click for me, much less a technical explanation, much more a creative approach, and that resonated with me. After that I got to borrow the conservatory's Doepfer case over a school holiday, and spent a few days just diving in. I found it so appealing, so interesting to figure everything out. That was really the beginning, where I started building my own modular case, with the intention of getting my inspiration back and making music without pressure. Making music had started to feel like an obligation, and this felt like a whole new world I could explore playfully, without that weight. I also hoped modular would give me more background in synthesis and sound design. I'm completely self taught, I started making music back in 2005, and picked up a lot of knowledge working in the box, but I hoped modular would help me really understand how things work underneath. And it has, I keep learning more about synthesis, because now I have to figure everything out step by step

Do you miss anything about being a DJ, or does this feel like a completely different chapter?

I do sometimes miss the traveling, and the feeling of standing behind the decks. It's like riding a bike; you never really forget it, it still feels like my spot. Especially when I'm with friends who are DJing themselves, it feels strange, like, what are they doing there? ;-) But modular genuinely feels like a different world. I started it completely freely, without any intention behind it, so it didn’t carry the same weight DJing did. That said, with the current techno sound and its demand for authenticity, and a cabinet full of fantastic vinyl still sitting there, it does cross my mind that I might want to DJ again once in a while. Just not enough to actually take steps toward it, or start promoting myself in that direction again. I do teach dj-ing with vinyl and CDJ's at the music conservatory though.

You also bring coaching and Acceptance and Commitment approaches into your work with other artists — how has that shaped you as a performer yourself?

One of the reasons I find Acceptance and Commitment coaching so interesting is precisely because I struggled with performance pressure myself during my DJ years. I had trouble being in the spotlight, and that was a recurring theme throughout my career, on and off. Sometimes it went well for a long stretch. If I was DJing often, that feeling would fade a bit. But at other times, when I had to play at really big festivals, the pressure felt so intense that I'd literally stand behind my decks with shaking legs. That kind of pressure isn't unique to performing, it's really just pressure in general, the same thing anyone can feel in other parts of life. But as a DJ or performer you tend to feel it sooner and more sharply, because you have to deliver at one exact moment, in front of people, the same way a top athlete does. From that experience, I find it really important to support other people through the same thing. And now that I've started performing again myself, that pressure came right back, in full force. I'm quite prone to performance anxiety. I also notice that under pressure I have trouble concentrating. The first few times we performed, I sometimes had almost a kind of blackout. The exercises that are typical of ACT really help me here, things like thanking my own mind, staying close to my values, and not always taking my own brain so seriously. What I've noticed is that by coaching myself the way I coach others, it gets easier. And also, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. So I'm increasingly able to stay calm enough to improvise, or at least fall back on the different kinds of improvisation I've built up by now. But for me it really all comes down to calm. If I don't feel calm, if I feel pressured, that's when things go wrong, or at least, that's when I really struggle to focus.

Raaf: Your sound is often described as cinematic and arpeggio-driven, with a strong focus on harmonic development. How has your approach to the modular system evolved over time?

I come from a traditional musical background. I worked as a songwriter and singer, mostly in theaters, so my approach to the modular was traditional at first. I wanted it to play song-like structures within a modular context, and I got pretty good at that. The Hermod+ sequencer played a big role, because it does exactly that. Slowly, I began to understand the true potential of a modular system: modulation. The magic isn't in the harmonic structures, chords and arrangements you feed into it. It starts the moment you think, "Okay, it's playing this structure, so what can I do with it now?" That took some mind-bending, and a breaking of my traditional music education. I had to learn to think in modulation: how I can alter waveforms, and how I can build up not only harmonically but sonically. I still use structure in my compositions, but I now work with building blocks instead of an entire song that I know from A to Z. These blocks are loose and partly pre-composed, which I like, because I can still use a build-up or a harmonic shift to steer the music forward. What has changed is how I use them, and the building blocks are not in a set order anymore. I also try to keep them less dense, so there is room to improvise over what has been written. That makes every live performance fresh, and different from the last, while the structure still tells me where Estroe's and my set are going. Over the last six months or so, I've been improvising a lot more, even from scratch. Many of our sets are now driven by pieces that are completely improvised, sometimes with a pre-written piece added. I've made more room in my setup for experimental sounds, and I use a lot of FM synthesis, including through-zero FM. I also don't want too many modulation sources, because I like to play the modular as an instrument. My hands are still my main modulators, supported by a few LFOs and sample-and-holds. That is more limiting than a fully modulated patch, of course, but I think a certain musicality hides in that limitation. When you mostly rely on two hands and a handful of modulators, the build-ups you make are very musical. So I've designed my setup to leave room for improvisation and experimental sounds, while at its base keeping a harmonic, melodic focus.

What was your way into the world of modular — was there a specific moment or sound that pulled you in?

I have always been fascinated and inspired by electronic music. I was a kid who grew up in the 90s and I was obsessed with Björk, Tricky, Aphex Twin, The Prodigy, Underworld, what they did with music, and especially the people who created an entire musical world through electronic music that you could step into and explore. I used to lay in bed as a 17-year-old with headphones on my ears and a CD of Björk playing, with only the moonlight lighting my room, and I used to dream away. It was such a beautiful thing. I used to listen to that kind of music and I thought, oh, this is what I want to do, this is what I want to create. I have been creating electronic music since I was 18 years old, but I never really fully went for it. I did use it in some of my theater work, but it was always like a side dish. It was never the main dish. A few years ago, I wanted to make a shift in my artistic work. I needed a new impulse, and electronic music was the first thing I thought of. I already owned a Moog Mother-32, and through that I started exploring the possibilities of synthesizers. Then one day, I saw a video of Hélène Vogelsinger and of Caterina Barbieri, and they both approached modular synthesis in a very musical way. I listened to their music, and I thought, oh my, if you can do this with modular, I need to get into this. It was around the period that Emilie Gillet, the creator and owner of Mutable Instruments, announced that Mutable Instruments would be ending production. I was lucky to buy a Plaits, a Ripples and a Beads. Those were my first modules. And yeah, I've never looked back.

To both: How does it actually work, technically and musically, when you're both improvising live on separate systems — does one of you "lead," or does that emerge in the moment?

We make sure we agree on the key beforehand, and that our systems are properly clocked together. Both our cases lean into a slightly different focus, each geared toward a different purpose, and that complements each other well. We also read each other closely. During a performance we often sense at the same moment what a piece needs, and we play very much in tune with one another, which is actually why we started playing together in the first place, it just felt right immediately. So it's not that one of us leads. Sometimes we improvise freely, sometimes we play actual pieces, and when we do, whoever's piece it is takes the foreground while the other supports and builds around it. The transitions are the trickiest part, though we keep getting better at them. When someone starts with their own piece, the other makes sure something is already moving underneath, so it's easier to settle into.

What's the biggest challenge of playing a fully improvised live set as a duo, compared to a solo set?

We don't always do a fully improvised set. We decide per show and what we're going to do depends on the expected audience and what we feel like doing. Sometimes it's fully improvised, if it's a half hour set for example, that works well. But if we're playing for an hour, we usually do a combination; working from piece to piece and improvising over or around that. Actually, because we've performed together so often by now, playing solo has become more of a challenge for us than playing together.

Are there moments on stage where you realize "we could never have arrived here alone"?

Why we work so well as a duo is that Estroe's approach is very sound-design focused, very free, very experimental, not in the first place harmonically driven, but driven by atmosphere and details and minimal sounds, and building up from there. Raaf has a more melodic focus. He starts with a harmonic build-up, then finds the experimental sounds, and can breakdown his arrangements and find something more minimalistic. So we come from different directions. It's like yin and yang, or like fire and water coming together, and that is musically very inspirational. At a certain point, these two elements start to blend: freedom, experimentation and minimalism on one side, and harmonically rich, melodic playing on the other. Estroe sometimes starts to use more of Raaf's qualities, and Raaf starts to use more of Estroe's qualities. At certain moments when we improvise live, we think, wow, our universes are really merging into each other, and then what we create is really a combination of both our worlds. They don't destroy each other, they complement each other. It's like two colors that are blended into a new color, which is amazing. So in our live set, the one cannot live without the other. It really is a symbiosis of our heart and minds merging together.

What excites you most right now — new modules, new stages, or the collaboration itself? And where do you want Estroe & Raaf to go as a project?

What really excites us right now is noticing how nicely we're growing as an act. We know more and more about the theory and practice, and we're stepping on stage with more and more confidence every time. We're noticing a certain professionalism developing, which is why we now genuinely have the ambition to bridging the gap between smaller venues and more concert like settings. We'd love that, but above all we want to stay broadly deployable. So we want to be available for a danceable set, as well as an ambient listening session, as well as a more experimental, alternating performance. We're basically exploring and experimenting with all these different sound variants right now, so that we'll be versatile and ready for professional bookings.