PUSH IT 4 / Emissive

PUSH IT ISSUE 4 / EMISSIVE

This is the final installation of a four-part zine series. These independent publications are an attempt to help “fill the gaps” that exist in the Canadian Music Centre’s archive (please see previous issues for more info).

All photos of Emissive by a.Aliermo

on.cmccanada.org | @cmcnational

While experimental, avant-garde and new music have a rightful home at the Canadian Music Centre, I believe that there should be a place for electronic and dance music, as well as an archive of DJs too. It is time to expand our ideas and concepts of what should and shouldn’t be considered as part of the centre’s library. How can we maintain a memory of the past while acknowledging and keeping a vault of what is current for the future? Presently, some of the most experimental works fall under dance and electronic music.

Meanwhile, DJ’s are relentless researchers and champions of some of the most ground-breaking, earth-shaking music. Electronic and dance music, as well as DJ culture, are part of the evolution of the wider musical canon, and contribute some of

the most influential works that move audiences, communities and other artists. It would be a disservice to ignore this.

Back in Tkaronto, I had a brisk wintery stroll over to the apartment of Evan Vincent aka Emissive, where his meticulously set-up home studio was embedded. Both the studio and apartment (shared with his partner, an artistic director at an avant-garde music institution) were immaculate with plants, art and paraphernalia for tranquility.

The entire space was beautifully curated for maximum clarity, relaxation and creativity.

As Evan made himself a late breakfast of toast, he brewed an herbal tea for me. We conversed about psychedelic experiences and finding the balance

between feeling overwhelmed and surrendering to the moment in order to achieve a new found enlightenment. We also talked about music seeping into dreams when asleep, and whether or not they spark compositional ideas in waking life (not quite there for either of us).

I recently met Evan through our shared music scene. I knew he was an electronic musician who made dance tracks and that he DJ’d parties, but it was inspiring to see his space and delve into the world of his artistic practice. His demeanor and ways of discussing reflect his creative processes as they do his works: patient, thoughtful, intentional.

Emmisive regularly exercises his DJ skills, an aspect of being an artist that he highlights as

important to his career. “DJing informs my practice of making music by reminding me to think about the possible ways my music will be experienced and how my art exists in context with other music”, he tells me. Instead of a laptop program, he uses CDJ’s (turntables for compact discs) so that he can physically feel connected to the music. Further, Evan habitually cruises his neighbourhood with his field recorder, as a way to practice listening, and really hearing the rhythms of the city. Occasionally he might use some of the captured audio in one of his tracks, but mostly he does this as a listening exercise. While I enjoy a desolate urban landscape, he much prefers to be out there when the streets are bustling with activity.

Experimentation with gear, with sounds, with approaches, with an endless desire to keep learning and creating are essential to Emmisive.

It is beautiful and encouraging to see and hear about, and motivates me to consider how to everevolve my practice too. [april, @2kulit2kuwit]

EMISSIV EMISSIV

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Emissive is a Canadian DJ and producer. He runs the Planet Island party series in Toronto and is the host of Vitamix on Montreal’s N10.as Radio.

Emissive, born in Toronto, Canada as Evan Jamal Vincent, started writing music on his older cousin’s laptop as a young teenager.

The Emissive concept was created after living abroad in London, UK and being exposed to the city’s thriving electronic music scene. Emissive productions are diverse, the direct byproduct of chasing after inspiration, staying curious and always keeping an open mind to various musical influences.

I’m currently working with a “hybrid” studio setup that consists of a handful of hardware synths, samplers, drum machines and effects. They are all clocked to Ableton via MIDI. Audio is routed back and forth from the gear and my computer through a patchbay .

I also have hooked up an extra ADAT interface so I can run 16 channels of audio in and out simultaneously. I use an Ableton Push 2 controller and an Arturia Keystep to play MIDI and mess around with samples in Ableton.

My favourite pieces of kit right now are the Korg Polysix with the Kiwisix mod, the Psycox Syncussion SY-1M clone and the SP202. I’ve also been messing around a fair bit with recording things through a Tascam 4 track cassette recorder for some analog drive (sounds wild on drums), to speed up and slow down recordings or just to add a bit of crud to my sounds. My friend lent me his Moog Matriarch which is a really amazing 4 voice paraphonic semi-modular synth. It’s the first time I’ve had my hands on a synth I could patch in that way so I’ve been learning a lot, it’s very fun.

What guides your creative process? What is important to you when putting work out into the world?

I have had many phases of my creative process and what I wanted to say with my music. In the past I have been drawn to make music in hopes of sounding like other musicians I admire. The list of these artists is too long to be useful for this piece as this has been a trend in my behavior since I was a young teenager. I believe it is important to have influences that shape your creative direction but I often worry that the breadth of my influences has pushed me into too many directions at once.

I am currently working to unlearn the drive to sound like others and focus more on shaping my own voice. For me I think that means letting broader timbral decisions shape my output.

I know I am drawn to imperfection, honesty and the illusion of simplicity in the music I love to make. Other times I have created music in hopes of trying to unearth a fundamental

IN CONVERSATION

What instruments/gear do you use? What is your set up like?

truth about my own past experiences. My Ontario Space release was an attempt to crystalize memories from my childhood about Ontario Place and perhaps get at a deeper truth about our geographical collective experience. That place has undergone many transformations over the years but I believe it is still inhabited by whispers of our past experiences.

On a regular day though, because so much of my music-making is done with computers and machines, I typically just try to cultivate an environment where I can facilitate a negotiation between the often-unpredictable outcomes of hands-on experimentation with my own discernment and taste. When I am sharing my music, it is often a vulnerable experience for me that is fraught with uncertainty. I find that I need to be decisive and move somewhat quickly to prevent myself from second-guessing my output.

I find doing something laborious like bouncing a song down to tape can help me from going back to make small nitpicky changes.

Also, for me it is important that there is a visual accompaniment depending on the medium (album artwork, vinyl sticker, thumbnail, etc) that compliments the sounds. I tend to struggle immensely with this step. I am not very experienced as a visual artist so getting imagery that I like that fits appropriately with the music

can feel like a lot of work. There is a lot of amazing music I will never listen to because I think the artwork sucks. I often fantasize about improving my visual art skills so that I can do everything myself but regrettably I am only one person with limited time in the day. I am often on the lookout for visual artists to help me with this process.

Please tell us about your track “Love Perception”.

To be quite frank, this one is a bit of a mystery, even to me. The song was made quite quickly and rather impulsively. When I analyze the song in hindsight, I think it represents the highs and lows of my nightlife experiences in the city.

I love going out dancing and I cherish those moments I share with that community but I also acknowledge there can be a lot of complicated emotions associated with those experiences too.

Sometimes there’s jealousy, trauma, peer pressure, anxiety, addiction. The club has the potential to be a violent place or a stressful environment. A lot has to go into making sure patrons are safe and comfortable, yet with all that considered there is always room for the unpredictable human element.

It’s important for me to remember when I go out that I’m surrounded by people who are all going

through challenges in their lives and are maybe looking for some relief. I can be a pretty sensitive person and I guess often I am picking up on these emotions all around me. The club is a complex emotional environment and I strive to harness that in the music I choose to play and make for those atmospheres. To me this is the beauty of the whole thing, the way loud music can amplify or manipulate a collective emotional state. I’d be lying if I said I never felt self-conscious on a night out dancing and socializing. I think the ambiguous nature of the lyrics reflect the ways in which things can get complicated.

Overall though I feel like the positives of making

friends, sharing memories and connecting with music outweigh and give purpose to some of those difficult personal feelings and the tone of the track reflects the optimism and fondness I feel towards that aspect of my life.

Please tell us about your track *Quartz Register”.

As an electronic musician I find I am very much drawn to density in my art. With Quartz Register it really is an exercise in fitting in everything + the kitchen sink. Elements of the song are stacked on top of one another until the whole frequency spectrum is ready to burst. This closely mimics the way I start making a song. I just keep adding

ideas until I feel I have no more room to add more. Then comes the dance of finding a way to get all of the parts to coexist.

I am fascinated with the contrast that can occur with fast music that still manages to feel weightless. I wrote this track at a time when I was really relying on my imagination and my music for providing a sense of transcendence and freedom that I couldn’t get in my day-to-day life.

I hope that feeling comes through for the listener and affords them a moment of release.

Please tell us about your DJ practice, your production work as well as your collaborations.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, my experience as a DJ deeply informs my production work. My sense for timing, dynamics, negative space and layering rhythms are all reinforced as a result of my DJ practice. I am infinitely grateful to have this way of interacting with music that is so approachable and gratifying. It has helped me to stay inspired with my music-making and also allows me to share music in the public forum in a way that is potent, varied and unique. From a performance perspective, what I am able to do with my live sets is drastically different to what I am personally able to achieve stringing together music from all over the world and all over time in a DJ set.

These days I find myself making music as a means of deepening my understanding of myself and my own creative sensibilities. Where I was once perhaps more motivated by ambition and a drive to create music that could take me places in the world that I wouldn’t normally have access to, now I am using the process of creating music solely to access parts of my psyche and also to forge deeper connections with other artists.

Despite the ways in which it can sometimes be difficult, I am keen to collaborate with other musicians. What I love most about this process is the way it almost always results in material that either party would never have been able to

manifest on their own. This phenomenon never ceases to amaze me.

Do you have any upcoming projects you would like to tell us about or creatively what you are excited about at the moment?

Regrettably for me, 2021 was a year spent starting many projects but not seeing many through to completion. I am very much looking forward to tying up the loose ends on the pile of sketches, drafts and experiments I have initiated in the last year.

I have recently come to a rather profound and concrete realization of the frequency and extreme degree to which I am influenced by other people’s music. Having begun to understand this, I am looking forward to working harder to cultivate my own voice. I realize that my favourite influences are often highly unique artists in their own right and it stands to reason that I should honour them by following suit.

The nature of upcoming projects is such that I am unable to formally discuss them until there is an announcement but I do have a few things coming up in the next few months I am very much excited to share.

Is there anything else you would like to share about your work?

I’m not sure exactly how to say this but bear with me. I would like to stress that I have been buying, selling and trading recording equipment for upwards of 8 years (to be clear, I acknowledge that this is not a long time compared to many) and at many points along that journey I have found myself irredeemably fixated on that particular process, often to the detriment of the actual work of making music. This fetishization of synths, samplers, drum machines and the like is not a unique fixation but I have found personally that the more energy invested into that side of things is just less energy I can dedicate to actually making music.

This may come across as confusing or even hypocritical given how much gear I possess but if all of it were to break tomorrow I know I would still manage to make music on my computer or my phone. I find it is really important to remind myself that hardware synths and pedals etc are a luxury that are not essential to my creativity. Sometimes they can even be a hindrance, like when I spend 3 hours troubleshooting my midi routing instead doing the often-intimidating work of coming up with new musical ideas.

I guess what I’m trying to say is: don’t think you need to have a bunch of gear to make interesting music. I want anyone reading this to know that whatever you have on hand is good enough to make something beautiful!

USH IT