Nekro.Ruido.Rekords. is the personal label by my friend ANAX, a versatile artist involved in making music and visual art! Visiting her Bandcamp Page I had the chance to discover her various projects and curious to know more I have asked her to answer a few questions. Besides this very interesting interview ANAX, kindly passed to me also a very cool video of her astonishing performance as Complex Naïvety
at Zaratan Gallery in Lisbon on the first of June last year. On her Soundcloud Page, you can listen more of her music(various projects) including the last Live Set Streamed for PostCarbon Collective on the 27.05.2020!
If you are into industrial/rhythmic noise and pounding weird electro goings then you'll love this label and its productions.
A very big THANX To ANAX for her patience and help in building up this post.
Enjoy it.
:f*a^r:a¬w:a~y:
1000Flights- You have been active as a musician for quite a few years now, going back to the beginning would you like to write how you started?? what did inspire you to start to play such music?
ANAX- Well in the very beginning I always said: one thing I would never be is a musician!!! As a youngster I was much more into reading and drawing, I was a horribly dark introverted shy kid with no social skills, and all these bands coolness social stuff would get me anxious. I started listening to music later than normal, at my late teens, until then I only listen to silence, and digress on my weird thoughts. When I started listening music I remember devour quite a lot of different stuff: goth, metal, punk, jazz, classical, experimental, I never liked to stick to one style, I didn’t see music as a means to insert myself into some tribe, I wanted to know as much as possible and diverse, and then I got addicted like if I had to compensate the lost time. Only when I went to London I got in touch with other music styles like Industrial, Noise, Electronic and Techno. There I attended a lot of diverse events and gigs and started discovering weird electronic sand noise. After, I started hanging with this friend from WorkinKlass Noize (WKN) and getting curious about all these apparatus of cables and machinery. Later, after leaving London, I started singing with Doping, which was very important to give me confidence as I was too shy, but I’m also quite nerd so wasn’t very happy with my role as singer and start feeling very much the need to create my own stuff. When I ended up in London again at the beginning of 2018, I asked my friend Mattia (from WKN) to give me advises and start introducing me to this stuff. Thanks to him my first step into the world of machines& Pedals. Then I shipped myself and all my stuff to Portugal to concentrate fully on music, I was so very much excited with trying everything and get to know all the machines, everything was new for me. I guess after you consume a lot of music and art and got to know a lot of stuff and have been around a lot, you really feel the urge to start experimenting and doing your own things. I’m not a technical musicianI’m more of ideas and diversity.
So coming back to your question, actually, I haven’t been a musician for a few years now, it’s everything very new and fresh, it just happened I’ve done a lot in this last year. It came to me later than usual for people (like everything in my life), but I hate that idea that you have a stipulated deadline for doing things in life, just let it fucking flow and do not submit to the voices of the tribe priests and society rules.
1000flights- I know you have also a big passion for drawing and making collage-art... and you have used some of these artworks as covers for your productions. What did inspired you to draw and make collage-art?? are these graphics somehow related to the way that you create music?
ANAX-As I said before visual and drawing came to my life much before music, so it was always quite a present thing in my life, even though I have had long periods without making any visual art. About collages in specific, it’s something that came also recently and nowadays I find it the best medium for my creative expression. Actually, it started randomly while I was bored in Italy and found some cool sound magazines in the rubbish. And then while I was having a bit of nomad life, and would find some material – like this collages made out of a road map book I got in Barcelona and assembled in Scotland. I totally love it and find it very much of a spontaneous mystic process. As with the music I don’t feel like a musician, also with art, I don`t feel like an artist - but as a kind of mystic philosopher/scientist. Regarding the artworks of my covers, I do it specifically for that purpose, not using stuff I’ve done before. Yes the process of making graphic art is the same as music, and for me, they are not at all dissociated, they are complementing processes and most of the time the idea of the cover comes at the same time I’m doing the music, sometimes before or sometimes after. The idea behind the album comes much before though!ANAX-Yes Nekro.Ruido.Rekords is my personal record label and I use it only to release all my different projects with or without external collaborations, but I’m not releasing other musicians. I don’t use that slogan only for my record label but also for my visual art, and probably for any other stuff, I’ll do in the future. I wanted to summarize in a few sentences my intentions as an ‘artist’.The spelling errors in the phrase are on purpose, much in the line of the legacy of William Burroughs deconstruction of language in a way of freeing oneself from oppressive structures. The phrase is divided into two parts: “Aesthetik Alkemyk Terrorizm” +“Mind Revoluktion”. Art (Aesthetic + Praxis) + Intention = AestheticRevolution + Mind Revolution. Art as an aesthetic “pleasurable” object and a tool for (internal/external) revolution. 1 - “Aesthetik Alkemy” - like with alchemy: through a magic process, transforming and combining normal and foul things into something new of great aesthetic value with the power of changing life;“Terrorizm” - in the sense of undermining and resisting the imposed standards. 2- “Mind Revoluktion” - in the sense of questioning everything in all the fields and try to deconstruct one’s thoughts in order for them to be changed and improved. One of my aims is to dismantle this paradigm of music and tribe values, like if everything has to be inserted in a certain drawer. Why music styles are associated with specific politics – why some aesthetics are associated with some specific values? Why can’t we cross mix and be original? Can I be an antifascist and not like ska-punk and like power electronics and not being a fascist? How boring are social cliches and how lonely not to be boring!
1000flights- A(sqrt(-1)), Complex Naïvety, Kastrata and Threshold Posture are the names that you have used so far in your Bandcamp page! Are you changing the name according to any different project? or are there any specific reasons why you are using such names? Would you be interested in the future to release physical stuff like Cassettes or CDs?
ANAX- I have a few different alter-egos for different projects as I find it difficult to stick with just one since each of them has different characteristics – music-wise and in terms of content/critic. Some of them have punctual appearance while others I use more often – like‘Complex Naïvety’ and ‘Kastrata’. Also, in the beginning, I wanted to decentralize my persona and leave anonymous my real identity behind all of them... it sounds all much more romantic but can be confusing for other people to get and frustrating for me as no one gets it! For example, so far, I use Complex Naïvety more for upper beat techno and political critic, while Kastrata is a more slow beat dark ambient and social critic or mental disturbances – these are the only two until now that I have used to play live. Also, a new alter-ego A10X is about to emerge and I’ll use it for noise and circuit bending and questioning some topics through destructive nihilism. A(sqrt(-1)) is a punctual one, and emerge out of my first experiments with an analog synth. The album ‘Abstract Rebels: OverthrowingCertainties’ is a kind of dark experimental downtempo and it’s a critique to the academic system and how it often represses the progress of knowledge and discourage the use of creativity, confining us to the current standards of the idiots in power; I picked the cases of two original mathematicians (Galois and Lobachevsky), that disclosed and developed a whole new field of maths and were totally ignored and their theories rejected in the academy, as they were seen as ‘weird stuff’.Threshold Posture is also a punctual one, the album is made out of a recorded outdoor ritual action (which I have done with the collaboration of a friend) and mixed at home with other stuff; it’s a piece of ritual industrial, unique in time and charged with mystic spontaneity. I would also like to mention that I use a different (and only one)alter-ego for my graphic art – Askratx - which can appear under the short pseudonym of AX or A.X. And as I mentioned before I find the music and graphic parts inseparable – a piece of Art as a Whole!
I know this all might sound quite eccentric and arrogant, but it came actually very fluid and it couldn’t be any other way...About their physical release - I’m working on it at the moment, but for now, will be only in the format of CD. All homemade DIY stuff!
1000flights-You have been studying classical music and playing the piano in the past. Has this had a sort of influence for your actual compositions? Would you consider in the future an approach to your music more direct towards classical music studies?
ANAX- I did study classical piano for few years after I was 18, but could only afford to pay 1h per week which was a practical lesson, so all the theory I learn by myself, but I was very much into it and used to practice long hours every day. I was a very nerd at that period and at the same time decided to go to Uni to study mathematics and philosophy of science. The piano is an amazing complete instrument and gave me the foundations for understanding rhythm, melody and harmony. But being a virtuoso pianist is not my thing, as it’s very demanding, and can be frustrating if you start late and wanna do other things in your life. Also, I find learning only classical music quite limited as it doesn’t give you much foundations for improvisation like jazz does, for example. But answering to your question I don’t think piano or music education has any influence in my compositions, you don’t need to know much about music theory to play with synthesizers, I guess it’s more about creativity, experimenting and having a good sense of structure. I would definitely like to come back to play the piano and learn how to improvise, but not at all I wish to do something like classical with my music. It was good to have learned it has a tool, but after that, it's time to deconstruct all you have learnt and use your tools as weapons for innovation and transgression and question immutable values. I am a punk ideologically, and a long time ago I rebel against academics and bourgeoisie standards and sent everything to fuck off.I’m not making music for career or social status, and I do not intend in the future to come back to the academy or get stagnated in erudite music or only one music style.
1000flights- Last year you have been playing a few gigs in and around Lisboa, would you like to share your experience with these shows?Is in Portugal or at the least in Lisboa a music scene that is helping new musicians to come out and play live?
ANAX- Yes, the last year (2019) I’ve been playing quite a lot around Lisbon – in a social centre, club/pub, gallery and squats. This year I only played twice (once live and once streamed) with this new cool queer PostCarbon Collective coming out from Lisbon underground scene and composed by talented youngsters (whose some members have also been living in London), that I got to know through a friend who is also part of it. About the music scene in Lisbon (and I guess Portugal), I suppose there are people doing their stuff around, not much of a scene and not much around the stuff I’m into like industrial, industrial techno, harsh noise, coldwave, dark experimental electronics, etc. But I’m not the best person to ask about this kinda stuff as I don’t live in the city, I don’t go out much and don’t hang much in the art circles.
1000flights- Rhythmic noise and Industrial music seem to be a strong influence in your art both as a painter and as a musician would you consider exploring other forms of music in the future? and maybe taking an approach that goes beyond these music structures?
ANAX- I would consider ‘Rhythmic Noise’ a sub-derivative of ‘Industrial’, and yes it is a strong influence but not more than punk, goth, dark ambient, etc. So generally speaking, my two big influences are Punk and Industrial. The first came to revolutionize the role of music, used as a weapon towards the outside world and a tool accessible to anyone without music/art skills, criticizing social, political and moral values of the bourgeoisie society – what I would call external anarchy or political/social anarchy. The second came to question the inner structure of music, the essence of music and sound and its effect in our psyche, and the use of music as a tool to sabotage the external world; introducing new methods and instruments (punk still didn’t break with the previous
band/instrument structure) – what I would call internal anarchy or aesthetic/artistic anarchy. All the rest of my influences kinda fall inside one of these two categories. And yes, of course, I wanna explore a lot of different kinds of music, and if you listen carefully my albums they’re all different in style, even though all ‘darkish’. I am certainly stylishly conditioned by the instruments I play and the fact that I’m only one person. I plan in a nearby future to dedicate to Bass Guitar and Drums and start using it in my music. Also, I wanna play with other people and collaborate with a lot of different musicians, I wanna do weird stuff and crossbreed genres!
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