Analogue Aspect
Analogue Aspect is a graphical outcome of united world of thoughts, connecting everybody who feels drawn to analogue-electronic music instruments, analogue photography and any kind of different forms of artistic expressions created with those. Analogue Aspect is not a club where you can belong to complying with certain standards or paying a membership fee. Analogue Aspect is a reflection of everyone’s soul who loves rolls of film and warm waves of current.
What does the artist name - OTK1 - mean?
You are also producing dub techno and experimental electronic music. What exactly brought you to drum and bass?
To be honest, my first experiments in electronic music actually were drum and bass tracks back in 1998. I met two fellows from the drum and bass group Lu:k and it was with their assistance and technology which helped me to create my first sounds. After some years I started to produce music which can be categorized under electronic music, IDM and dub techno. So on the contrary, it can be viewed as me going back to my roots, taking along all the experience and vision I have gathered during the years between.
How do your tracks come together?
Good melodies and moods don’t come that easy for me. Sometimes I compose for several days, just to delete everything in the end because I’m not satisfied with the result. I never keep or save the sounds created with the synthesizer. If something doesn’t sound as it should I always start again from scratch and due to that the result is never the same. That’s why I always take my time to think everything through beforehand, what and how should be done to get the sounds I have in mind from the very beginning. Tracks come together after several hours of real-time recording. In today’s world my producing methods probably seem prehistoric, but they seem to suit me perfectly. Of course there are computers involved but they are mostly used for recording sounds from external devices.
Photography. Where does your love for traditional film-based photography root from? Who are your mentors on the path?
What inspires you?
Why do you seek inspiration from the world, but produce only in the safe isolation of your home studio?
Analogue devices are big and heavy... If I used only a laptop it would be possible... But...
But have you tried to create music somewhere, outside the home studio?
Once during winter I spent a week with my wife living in a lonely homestead in the deep forests of South-Estonia. I had my whole equipment along and hoped that it will produce me some good music there, being away from everything and so. But this house, which belongs to my wife’s relatives, is believed to be haunted. I was sceptical about that at first, but while being there, especially at nights, I really got the feeling of somebody watching me. During the nights of the whole week I was trying to get things going, but the creepy feeling just wouldn’t go away and I got pretty scared at times since all the spooky stories were circling in my head. Only dark rooms and silence. So I finally returned with a car full of the same boxes of equipment with no result at all. Nevertheless, I still plan to go back and produce something there because the place is actually incredibly beautiful and inspiring, both the nature and the house itself. To be completely honest, then I actually did manage to create two tracks in spite of it all. Still, they will be waiting for the future and the return to the place – the sound is kind of tense and a little forced, not so natural…
What brought you together with Nemos Music?
I remember an e-mail years ago where someone, whom I didn’t know at the time, asked me whether it would be possible to get any of my dub techno tracks. That guy had heard me when I was warming up Scion and really liked the sounds. Some days later we were already sitting in a cafe, the table in front of us full of cd-s and for some reason I gave him all I had. That was Ülari, one half of a drum and bass duo Nemos. That meeting has now evolved into a deep friendship which has brought us OTK1 soundscapes on this vinyl record.
Can you describe the role of Nemos Music in your return to atmospheric drum and bass?
If one is not looking for influences from the wide world then the immediate surrounding environment plays an essential role in any type of creation. I was kind of away for ten years, but still there were certain artists whom I still listened to. After meeting the Nemos guys I discovered the whole thing again. Of course I was also inspired by their (Nemos’) tracks, which I really like a lot. Probably Nemos as an artist was the main impulse for my return to the drum and bass world.
Still, the first tracks for Nemos Music resulted in a dub techno remix (*). Why?
It takes a lot of time for me to change my course and settle in. The fact that I liked Nemos’ music did not mean that I’d instantly be able to craft my own vision of drum and bass into music. One thing is to create on the basis of examples, to create something new is completely different. It took me quite a long time to find the vision. There was a moment when I simply started experimenting and the drum and bass tracks finally found their shape. It just became clearer and clearer in which direction I should move. How to convert the moods of past into future. At the time of the remix I just wasn’t there yet, that’s why it was a dub techno remix.
* Joel Tammik’s remixes of „Kuues Meel“ and „Moving Tatari“ on Nemos’ debut album „Tulevikutee“ (NEMOS1)
Future plans.
I have a vision about OTK1’s style and further development, still, there are other projects which take time too. But if we’re talking about releasing OTK1 in the future then of course under Nemos Music. Both are representatives of quality in today’s over-flooded world. That’s what inspires me. With my musical language I would like to encourage young artists to work harder in the name of creating quality music.
What do you expect from „Trails“?
This album could perhaps be a milestone of quality drum and bass world. So the style would shift in a higher gear, as it was perhaps ten years ago. So I’d expect that drum and bass would move away from strictly club-based tradition and lose its primitive characteristics. That drum and bass would reclaim the title of „quality listening“.
OTK1's ideology
INTERVIEW, july 2009
not so friendly officials were visiting electronic factories and checking whether all electronic and other components/parts produced were up to quality standards. If requirements were met, the qualifying stamp was applied. My first vacuum tube producing sounds for me had also the stamp „OTK1“ on it. Hence the artist name.
Already at that time they were light-years ahead of everybody else with their visual concepts – even now their works seem fresh and some may say rather futuristic. From the later period I find Ansel Adams and Merg Ross as very inspiring, to name few. But there are really a lot of other inspiring photographers who are looking on the world from a different perspective, people who can bring small details to life.
Car on the other hand won’t give me the freedom of going everywhere I want. I mostly seek views of nature, the sea, small villages and so on. In a car you are literally „inside“ a car, separated by glass and metal. On a motorcycle all the different weather conditions and views work their ways into your mind, all the dead-tired feeling and completely-wet situation later don’t seem so negative at all although they might at first.
