Lockdown re-evaluated Cristian Vogel’s approach to his latest album The Rebirth of Wonky. Danny Turner explores the innovative producer’s workflow and use of the Kyma software environment

Born in Chile, raised in the UK and now situated in Copenhagen, Cristian Vogel immediately took an avant-garde approach to music production, as reflected in his debut techno album Beginning to Understand (1994).

Having developed an innovative career in stage and club culture spanning three decades, Vogel’s innate curiosity for experimentation has now begun to move deftly beyond those confines.

An award-winning and highly experienced studio engineer, Vogel is a leading expert in the software environment Kyma – widely considered the Holy Grail of sound design. With his latest album, The Rebirth of Wonky, the producer found himself forced to innovate within the parameters of a limited home studio setup. The result is a no less remarkable addition to what is an already visionary back catalogue.

You graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in 20th Century Music. What did that entail?

“It sounds a bit last century doesn’t it? At that time there wasn’t much music technology education in the UK. I’d already been self-taught using home computers and synths and put out a white label in 1992, but it was difficult. Ironically, 20th century modernism asks exactly those questions about whether you need to read and write music to become an accomplished musician. I found a course and got accepted on my enthusiasm for using gear rather than any musical qualifications and managed to blag the keys to the studio. I was there all day and night using their Akai S1000, Tascam mixing desk and tape machines, and taught myself to mix there.”

Is being able to read and write music necessarily beneficial for people who make electronic music?

“To be a lifelong musician is a long road and a vast system, so you might not actually know what you’re supposed to be doing for quite some time. Taking the music conservatory route might be a career path that gets you into an orchestra or ensemble, but how can you know that’s what you’ll end up doing? You might prefer the freedom of jazz, where notes are handy but that’s not what makes the music come alive. In that sense, you’ll find it an obstacle if you can’t improvise because that’s not something they teach you at music school so much. But electronic music’s special because you’re not really working in a discrete pitch space anymore. I do touch on intervallic concepts like the quantisation of oscillators but I’m certainly not in need of advanced music theory or harmonic theory – the computers I work with are doing a better job of figuring out what notes are coming next than I probably could.”

Your interest in sound has always had an innovative edge to it. When did you notice that first materialise?

“As a kid I remember it manifesting when I started to hit drums and play along to stuff. I found I was suddenly no longer able to listen to songs on the radio without isolating the drum playing, and the more I explored that, the more I started to differentiate all the signals in the mix. These days I like to call it sound innovating – the drive to always innovate in sound. It’s not necessarily about originality, that’s a different thing – it’s about creating new sound. In certain fields of music there’s more of an emphasis on that. For example, with electroacoustic music it’s an aesthetical definition that what you’re going to hear is going to blow your mind because the composer has arranged everything in such a way that it’s delivering a completely innovative musical narrative. Pop music is the exact opposite – it must be pretty hard to innovate in pop.”