Mira Calix
Mira Calix grew up in the siege economy of apartheid-era South Africa. Scarce imports drove her to leave the country, seeking musical immediacy. Once in London, her love for bands like My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins propelled her towards what labels like Warp Records were doing, and pretty soon she was at the heart of this new electronic movement. As she tells us during the 2003 Red Bull Music Academy, Mira has been a heavy pusher of fresh sounds ever since, whether behind the counter at Ambient Soho; or convincing a member of the London Sinfonietta to play the violin with their teeth.
Hosted by BRENDAN M GILLEN You might know her best as Mira Calix. [applause] But we’re about to find out a lot of things that you might not know and about a pretty interesting path to how she ended up back here in South Africa right here today. So, let’s start it out way back. You’re born in Durban? MIRA CALIX Yeah, I was born in Durban, and I haven’t been back here for a long time and I ended up living in London, living in England like probably quite a lot of people. BRENDAN M GILLEN Was that like straight out of high school or something? MIRA CALIX No, I studied photography. And then I moved to London, really because I wanted a lot of things that I couldn’t get here at that time because I grew up under sanction. So, I really wanted to be able to get gigs, and I grew up sort of buying old copies of the Melody Maker [magazine]. They used to get shipped in and we got them six weeks late, so everything you read about had already happened. And I really wanted to have that experience to go to things and do things and buy records. Records were very expensive then, and I believe they are still very expensive now. BRENDAN M GILLEN So, when you ended up in London, where did you start working or what did you do to make a living? You’re there in London, you’ve got to do something. MIRA CALIX Yeah, I had to do something. I did a lot of crappy jobs. I waitressed and did loads of things. And I landed up very luckily, by accident, working in a really great record shop called Ambient Soho. At the time I was doing bookings for a club, which was based at Heaven, which is quite a well-known club in London and it was called Megatripolis. I was doing bookings for the ambient room, and I walked into this record shop that had just opened called Ambient Soho, and obviously I saw the sign. So I went in, and the guy who owned it was going away the next week and he asked if I could work. So he just left me the keys, and I started working there and that was really great. Basically, yeah, worked in a record shop. I got lots of really cheap records ’cause it was all at cost and just got to listen to records all day, and that’s really the first time I heard a lot of Detroit techno stuff. I’d really come into electronic music through indie music, through bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stereolab and Spacemen 3 – bands who were using drum machines and who were using keyboards and synthesizers, but not really mainstream electronic stuff. And it doesn’t stick to a verse/chorus pattern, so even though they’re using guitars, which I really still love, the actual structure of tracks is quite free. So, it was very similar at that time – that was ’91, ’92 – and it was very similar to stuff that was coming out on Warp. Even though it sonically sounded different, it had the same feel in the sense in that the structures were very open. BRENDAN M GILLEN That was a pretty exciting time. There was so much going on. It was almost like an electronic music revolution that was happening internationally. MIRA CALIX Yeah, and I think especially, I mean, internationally differently, but especially in England, because at that time [coughs] – sorry, I’m really dry – the first Autechre album came out. You had the Aphex Twin Ambient Works and you had a lot of that stuff. There were a lot gigs and a lot of people doing their first gigs in London and loads of parties and really good things. BRENDAN M GILLEN From throwing these parties, did you ended up playing at them? I mean, you’re working at the record store? You must have all the hot records. MIRA CALIX I landed up playing kind of by accident because I was working in this club and they were doing a night and they asked if I could play and I just went, “Yes!” But I didn’t really have a clue. I’d never even really looked at a mixer. So I just got all my shit together and took it down there and just played it. And, um, not very well, which I still have that problem, but I got another gig and then I got another gig. So I kept playing and people kept booking me, so I must have been doing something right. But it wasn’t the mixing part of it. And that was it, really. It just kept going, and it’s been ten years of just wandering around going, “Oh, they’ve booked me, fantastic!” BRENDAN M GILLEN So back then, when you were booked, what DJ name did you use? MIRA CALIX Oh, I was just using my name because my name is Chantal. BRENDAN M GILLEN So the name Mira Calix, does that come with the productions? MIRA CALIX Yeah. I did my first record in ’96 for Warp, and it was just a two-tracker 10". At the time, I was actually working at the company, and I didn’t really want to put a record out under my name. I was a little bit bashful, and so this name kind of appeared. It’s one of those things that just made sense. I really can’t explain it in any other way. I wrote it down, and it looked good and I really like phonetics. It sounded really nice and it sounded like a nice person. So, I used it. BRENDAN M GILLEN Yeah, I always thought you were some weird Scandinavian lady. MIRA CALIX Yeah, there’s actually a town in Sweden called Calix, but I didn’t know that at the time. BRENDAN M GILLEN So you start DJing. How did you go then to working at Warp? MIRA CALIX I did a lot of jobs, basically. I did a lot of jobs all at once. I worked for a record company called 4AD, which is probably best known for the Pixies. I don’t know if anyone here knows the Pixies. BRENDAN M GILLEN I’d say they’re best known for their album covers. MIRA CALIX … and for their album covers. BRENDAN M GILLEN The Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance. MIRA CALIX And Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance. And This Mortal Coil, old bands I really love. So, I was working there, and I was running a fanzine with some friends and we were reviewing a lot of Warp stuff we got sent in. One day I phoned up to speak to the girl there who did the press stuff and she’d left, so I applied for the job and did loads of interviews and got it. BRENDAN M GILLEN When did you start working there? MIRA CALIX I started working there in ’93. BRENDAN M GILLEN So this is pretty early on. MIRA CALIX Yeah. BRENDAN M GILLEN So, what was it like when you first came there? What was the first release you were responsible for? MIRA CALIX I did Amber [Autechre Album from 1994]. BRENDAN M GILLEN Oh, really? MIRA CALIX I did that freelance before I got a job there. BRENDAN M GILLEN [laughs] Not that Amber! MIRA CALIX No. [laughter] BRENDAN M GILLEN How long did you do the press stuff? I could imagine that can get really aggravating. MIRA CALIX Yeah, it does get aggravating. I did it for about three years. But it was a good job, mainly because it was a lot of music that I really loved. And that was my motivation for doing it. I really wanted other people to hear this stuff and press is not a really great job. But you get to actually try and communicate, and it’s a step along from working in a record shop. In a record shop, people come in and you say, “You should really buy this, it’s great!” And when you do PR, that’s all you’re doing, you’re trying to get it out there. BRENDAN M GILLEN You do this first record, and when did it go from recording to performing? Did you ever perform? MIRA CALIX I actually started playing live this year. So, I’m a real slow person. Before that, I’ve just been DJing. But it went really from that first record, which I, at that time, honestly, just thought, “I’ve put a record out and that’s it. I’ve got it, this little piece of vinyl and I can show it to my grandchildren and – fantastic!” And I really didn’t think that it would go much further than that simply because I was just making tracks for myself. But after a while, I carried on making tracks. And Steve and Rob, who owned the label, they really pushed me and just offered me a deal and kicked me out of the office as a bit of a nuisance. And that was it, really. BRENDAN M GILLEN That’s cool. (music: Mira Calix – “Sparrow”) MIRA CALIX That’s “Sparrow.” That’s from my first album. BRENDAN M GILLEN So, that was recorded like ’95 or ’96? MIRA CALIX That was recorded in probably ’97 – ’98. BRENDAN M GILLEN After your first album, then did DJ gigs really pick up? More people asking you internationally? MIRA CALIX Yes, but actually I’ve been doing a lot of that before. So, I’ve been playing in Europe mostly. The one thing about the kind of stuff, I tend to play more in Europe than I do at home, weirdly enough. It’s great because I’ve been to Latvia, Slovakia and loads of places I would have never ever been. And Iceland. You know, it’s pretty amazing. Obviously, I’m sure it picked up. If you put a record out, it always does. But I’d been playing quite a lot before that. So, it was just a continuation. BRENDAN M GILLEN And when you go out and play do you play abstract music? MIRA CALIX I tend to, yeah. I mean, I tend to play… it really varies. It depends where I’m playing because I’ve done a lot of playing with bands opening up before them or playing between bands. I really like doing that sort of thing, so I do a lot of gig stuff. And it depends very much who I’m playing with, because I’ve got a really wide taste and a very broad record collection, and I tend to sort of have to, you know, you can’t carry your record collection with you. Well, you can in an MP3 player, but I tend to play with records, so you can only carry so much. So, I tend to sort of try and go with what I’m playing and be sympathetic to who I’m playing with because I’m usually playing with people I like. I don’t play with people I’m not into. BRENDAN M GILLEN What’s an example of a band that you’ve toured with? Like the music of the evening? MIRA CALIX I’ve played a lot of one-off’s, obviously with a lot of Warp artists. I’ve played with a band called Pram who I really like. BRENDAN M GILLEN Oh yeah, Too Pure. MIRA CALIX Too Pure, yes. And, I’m trying to think … a lot of the Sähkö people. I don’t know. Loads. BRENDAN M GILLEN So, you usually play off vinyl. How do crowds react? Do people still stare at you like you’re supposed to be like... MIRA CALIX ...an exhibit. BRENDAN M GILLEN Acting like, maybe if you touch the bass fader and so, like, “hah!” [makes an exaggerated move on the mixer] MIRA CALIX I think it depends on where you play. Sometimes I’ve had that, and it’s really freaky because I don’t do much. I’m not Jeff Mills, you know? And I’m not a sort of, whatever, craze or something. I’m not there freaking out on the mixer. I think when loads of people look at you, you sort of think, “There’s nothing to look at, you might as well look over there.” But in other places, people just have a good time. They dance or they sit around or they do whatever they want. I’ve had those kind of gigs where everyone is [staring]. But the thing is, when everyone’s right there, it’s usually because they’re really interested, and you have to sort of remember, although it’s intimidating to have a wall of faces in front of you, they want to know what the records are. My best is when people are trying to read labels as they go ‘round, which I think is practically impossible. BRENDAN M GILLEN You never figured it out? MIRA CALIX No, I just hand them the record sleeve because you can see they’re just straining, you know? I don’t sort of feel it’s a secret. I’m quite happy to tell people what I’m playing. That’s the point that I’m there for. It’s to share what I think is really good, so I’m quite happy to actually share it and not make them try and figure out what white label it is or something. BRENDAN M GILLEN And your gigs. Where is one of the most bizarre times you’ve had playing in front of people? MIRA CALIX I’ve had a lot of really, really bizarre experiences, but I think a really great one was in Iceland, because it was in a school and you couldn’t smoke. And I seriously need to smoke when I play. Everybody was seated – proper school halls. Everybody was seated on school chairs. It was very strange because I started playing and people would clap more or less after each record. And I thought, “OK, this is pretty surreal, but I’ll keep going.” I had not experienced that before. And then, after about half an hour, I put on “Windowlicker” [by Aphex Twin], which hadn’t actually come out yet, and it was the most amazing thing. You just saw chairs flying, literally. Everyone just got up, and all these chairs just moved to the side in about 30 seconds. After that, it was just crazy. BRENDAN M GILLEN How often do you go into the studio? What motivates you to go into the studio? MIRA CALIX Usually just craziness. I actually just really need to be there. Because I go away, and I tour quite a lot. I don’t have loads of time in the studio, and it’s really quite precious to me. When I have time in the studio, it tends to be in short blocks, and I go in because I really wanna go in and have some fun. For me, going in the studio is just a chance to play. Although I use analog synths and I use a computer and I use a lot of digital stuff, I also really like recording and using found sounds, so I made a record that’s pretty much just made of pebble sounds. It’s an adventure, it’s like being a Girl Scout or something. So you got to get out and record stuff, and then you got to get inside and play with it. And, you know, all the gigging and stuff is great and I really enjoy it, but I think probably most of the people here make music. When you’re in the studio, that’s when you’re really happiest because it’s when you get to make yourself happy. And there are no other elements that are going to distract you from that. I did this project last year that basically was to do with the Museum of National History in Geneva. The idea was to compose a track just made out of insect sounds and then to go and perform it in the museum, which was pretty amazing because I was sort of standing there under a dinosaur’s skeleton and stuff. I had to make 30 minutes of music. [noise from a trash compactor outside] BRENDAN M GILLEN Based on a trash compactor? [laughing] MIRA CALIX Yeah, why not. So there was this idea of writing a piece, but you couldn’t add anything to it, so you had to just make it with the insects. You could affect them, you could do things to them, but you couldn’t add any instrumentation whatsoever. This is just a little part of it. They actually gave me a lot of insect sounds and the rest of the stuff, I actually just put a microphone in a shoebox and just put it outside basically just to protect it from the wind. So, yeah, really simple school kid stuff. That’s a really good way because you can just leave it running and just come back to it and hear what you’ve got. [plays some of the insect music and rolls another cigarette] I basically took this piece earlier this year and worked with the London Sinfonietta, which is an orchestra. And we did the piece again, but we did it with an orchestra and the material that I had, which I sort of reworked. And then, we actually had live insects on stage at the south bank of the Royal Festival Hall, which is the first time they have ever done that. That was quite amazing. We managed to get tiny little cameras in there. And [the insects] were not supposed to eat each other up, but for some reason they decided that there was gonna be a massacre, so there were loads of people squirming in the audience. And there was a huge, I don’t know, sort of 20-30-meter screen of all this insect annihilation. But I actually thought it was great. It was alive, you know. It really worked. BRENDAN M GILLEN You talked about working with this symphony. Do you draw from any classical music background? MIRA CALIX I didn’t really sort of grow up listening to classical music. I do love a lot of I guess more contemporary classical or what’s considered classical, but maybe it’s more sort of early computer music that mixes with that. BRENDAN M GILLEN Like [Iannis] Xenakis? MIRA CALIX Yeah, like Xenakis and Stockhausen and things like that. I really love string instruments. I tend to like all instruments made of wood. So I’ve got a wood thing going on, and I record a lot of wood and I love the sound of wood – pianos and strings and cellos and stuff. So, for me, working with this Sinfonietta was amazing, because they’re very talented people. And just actually getting to hear what they could do with those instruments because we were working on this idea of the insects, so they were trying to make insect sounds with instruments. Which is actually – on one level, it sounds very corny, but when you hear it, it sounds pretty amazing that people can really work these quite simple, small instruments and make such incredible sounds come out of them that you don’t normally get to hear. You normally hear great violinists play Vivaldi, but this was actually hearing great violinists do that. BRENDAN M GILLEN Creep you out. MIRA CALIX Yeah. BRENDAN M GILLEN That sounds actually like a pretty amazing experience because it seems like they’re stuck in the sequencer mode or something, and you know that they are fantastic musicians. You know that they live and breath these instruments. MIRA CALIX And it’s people with perfect pitch and people with just amazing ears, and I think in any experience like that, you learn something. It was great because I learned something, but they did too. So, it was good. BRENDAN M GILLEN Was that version recorded? Will that be released? MIRA CALIX It was. I think it will be released at some point. It was an evening where they actually scored – that was an emphasized piece that we rehearsed and worked on – but they scored a Boards of Canada track and a Squarepusher track and an Aphex Twin track. And that evening, they also did a Stockhausen piece and they did Gyorgy Ligeti and John Cage stuff. It was quite an amazing evening of really – they sort of called it “Contemporary Masters” or whatever, something to that effect. So, it was all those kind of pieces and then they just scored electronic tracks. BRENDAN M GILLEN How big was the orchestra, like a full 72-piece? MIRA CALIX Sinfonietta is basically half an orchestra, so it’s half a symphony because a symphony orchestra can go up to hundreds. So, it’s just one set of each section. AUDIENCE MEMBER Can you tell us more about working with an orchestral arrangement? MIRA CALIX What I did was, I actually had the piece which is obviously what I had written, and it was actually that section of the piece. I do have the live recording of the orchestra version. BRENDAN M GILLEN OK, let’s put that out. MIRA CALIX But I need to learn how to skip [the CD player] because it’s the whole evening. BRENDAN M GILLEN OK, time to rock the deck! MIRA CALIX [To the participant] And then you can actually hear the difference. Basically, we scored the keynotes from the piece because all the string sections are made from wasps. That’s how I did it. BRENDAN M GILLEN Not the synth? MIRA CALIX No, there is no synths. BRENDAN M GILLEN Not a Wasp synth? MIRA CALIX No, actual wasps. So, we worked from that, and then we worked on an improvisational situation where I had my Mac and they listened to the piece and then we started to basically try and get them to improvise certain insect sounds and took it from there. It was really just sitting around and playing bits. So, it wasn’t fully scored. It was a semi-scored situation and then took it from there. They had quite a lot of input, although obviously I could say, “That sounds really great, we need a bit more with a clarinet” or whatever. So, it worked as a group. [music: Mira Calix – unknown] It was pretty amazing. Right at the beginning, there was actually a woman. The hall where that was performed, there was surround sound. Obviously, a lot of that you don’t get on the recording, but one of the violinists played her violin with her teeth, so that scraping that you hear at the beginning is just this woman playing it with her teeth. [laughing] It’s pretty mad to look at. BRENDAN M GILLEN Don’t those halls have like natural acoustic resonance and stuff? MIRA CALIX They do. And then it’s also mic’d up, and it’s a beautiful big theater. It’s quite incredible. AUDIENCE MEMBER You were speaking about Stockhausen earlier. Something amazing about Stockhausen is that he is being on the cutting edge for about 50 years. We had 50 years to try and digest the bastard and we still... MIRA CALIX ...can’t! [laughing] But that’s because he’s got more extreme nice and crazy operas with gremlins and things. AUDIENCE MEMBER And helicopters. That was even like about ten years ago. I’m just wanting to know, in your opinion and purely in your opinion, be as indulgent as you like, who do you thing at the moment is making stuff that is beyond their time and will influence people for the next like 20 or 50 years? Just in the way that Stockhausen started with in 1954 with his crazy stuff that was going to influence [John] Cage, that is going on to influence probably all of us today even if we might not know that. MIRA CALIX Even though we’re not aware of it. AUDIENCE MEMBER Of course. Who for you is making stuff that is out there and beyond their time? MIRA CALIX It is pretty difficult! I’d probably say Autechre, really. But if you’re looking in a sort of classical world, if you sort of look at that side of things, although it is older stuff, I’d say Tod Dockstader, because I think that’s really, it’s probably really come into its own now. I think we hear a lot of stuff that actually sounds so much like what he was doing, but he was doing it on tape and now people do it with VST plug-ins and stuff. But from that sort of world, I would say, it definitely fits that description. But it’s hard with people who are contemporaries or people who are around because it’s hard to sort of see. I think you more have to look at it where people don’t get it now and think, “But they’re probably gonna get it at some point in the future.” The reason I said Autechre was because that guy that I used to work for in the record shop, he had this thing, whenever they brought an album out, he started listening to the album before and then he’d say, “Oh, I’m getting into that now,” so he had this thing going. He was always one album behind, which to me is an indication of it being slightly too forward. AUDIENCE MEMBER I’ve got a friend, as far as music of this time, who is convinced of music of Muslimgauze being the same angle. As much as I tried to listen to the hundreds of Muslimgauze records, I can’t see it myself. What’s your interpretation of his work? MIRA CALIX I’m not incredibly familiar with it. I’ve got one Muslimgauze record, which I really, really like, but it’s hard for me to say because I don’t know it all. But that is a really beautiful record. But it’s very old now. AUDIENCE MEMBER He’s apparently done hundreds of them. There seemed to be one a week for a while coming out. It’s a very strange mentality, like, I’m not sure how his hearing process works. It’s not like a normal person. He’s doing something that is so particular to him that he has to do it. It’s like a driven thing. I mean, unfortunately, he has died now, but I was wondering if you could confirm or deny that, because a whole lot of Muslimgauze is coming out the last month or so and maybe he’s not... MIRA CALIX I don’t know, because as far as I knew, he died a good four years ago. AUDIENCE MEMBER Yeah, about three or four years ago. But it seems the releases just keep coming. MIRA CALIX I don’t know. Maybe it’s a friend? BRENDAN M GILLEN Tupac [Shakur] just had a movie. MIRA CALIX Yeah. [laughing] But it’s not quite the same situation. I don’t think his record company has the idea, like going, “We must cash-in now!” I don’t know what the story is but I also heard that he died. BRENDAN M GILLEN Any further crowd participation here? AUDIENCE MEMBER I was just wondering if Warp is gonna release that night of music with the score of the Squarepusher? MIRA CALIX Yes, I think they are. I think they’ll release all the Warp stuff. I don’t know if they’ll do the sort of John Cage and Ligeti because it’s obviously harder to get the agreements for all of that. But as far as I know, we’re actually going to – because that [night] was just in London, it was a one-off. And we’re going to do the whole evening, the whole program again in Holland and Belgium and France in June, so I think they’ll release it then. They’ll probably link it up. BRENDAN M GILLEN Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s time to... MIRA CALIX ...it’s time you went to the beach and went up the mountain and actually saw something. BRENDAN M GILLEN I’d like to thank Mira. Chantal! [applause]