Arthur Hnatek.
Keep the process open.
Arthur Hnatek on Undertow, drums as a source of sound and live electronics beyond the fixed grid.
Arthur Hnatek
A long improvisation, three minutes within it, and a piece whose shape was already there. On Undertow for Hessle Audio, Arthur Hnatek listens into his drum recordings: finding melodies in resonances, preserving small shifts in timing and treating edits as a rhythmic tool. We talk about how open-ended playing became four tracks that belong together, and why the creative process continues onstage.
Arthur Hnatek brings drums and electronic sound-making together. In this conversation, he traces the improvisations behind Undertow and the instruments through which he continues that work live.
Finding the piece within the performance
You began with long drum improvisations without a plan. When you listened back, what made a particular passage worth keeping? Could you take us through one moment that became the starting point for a track?
I think it was mostly instinctive. I wasn't necessarily looking for the most interesting rhythm or the most technically successful moment, but rather something that had a particular feeling or character to it.
The title track, Undertow, is a good example. It came from a drum improvisation I recorded in a studio in Winterthur, Switzerland, which lasted around 15 or 20 minutes. The final track is basically three minutes taken straight from the middle of that recording. What's interesting to me is that the structure, the changes and even the ending were already there in the original performance. I didn't really have to rearrange anything. It was more about recognising that this little piece of music already existed within the longer improvisation.
When drums become melody
The release notes describe melody and atmosphere emerging from the drum recordings themselves. Can you give us one example of that transformation — what the original sound was, and what you did that made you hear it differently?
I've always been interested in the tonal side of drumming, and I think I already approach the drums in quite a melodic way when playing. For this EP, I wanted to explore that further, using the recordings themselves to generate melodies and harmonic textures.
Loom is a good example of this. I used tools like the Torso S-4 sampler, the Tetrachords Eurorack module from Cycle Instruments, and various resonators and spectral processing plugins. Some of these allow me to tune the resonances of the drums to specific notes, while others use the drum transients to trigger MIDI notes and additional sounds. I really like this idea of the drums generating not only the rhythm but also the melodic and atmospheric elements of a track.
In that sense, the live performance is more of a continuation of the creative process than a reproduction of the recordings.
Beyond the fixed grid
Once you're editing a performance, how do you decide which uneven bits to keep? Was there a moment on this EP where making something more regular actually took away what you liked about it?
My intention was actually to avoid quantising the recordings altogether. I wanted to preserve the natural movement of the playing, including all the little shifts in timing. That's also why some tracks on the EP move between different tempos or subdivisions. I like the idea of breaking away from a fixed grid and letting the rhythm evolve more freely.
Sunder is an interesting exception in a way. I recorded several grooves to a click track, so there was a fixed tempo, but then I edited the recordings quite heavily, cutting and rearranging them to create this almost chopped, quantised feeling. So rather than correcting the timing of the playing, I was using editing itself as a rhythmic tool.
Four tracks from twenty
How did the conversation with Hessle Audio begin? Did their response change anything about the tracks or help you recognise what belonged together as an EP?
I've been following and enjoying Hessle Audio's output for many years, but I hadn't really considered sending them my own music. A friend of mine, Banu, who's a musician based in Berlin, heard some early versions of the tracks and casually suggested that Hessle might be interested. That gave me the push to send them over, and I was really surprised by how quickly they responded.
At that point I had a SoundCloud folder with over 20 tracks, all coming from this same period of experimentation. What I found really inspiring was how carefully they listened through everything and were able to identify four tracks that worked together as an EP. I was so immersed in the material that it was difficult to see the bigger picture, so their perspective was incredibly helpful in shaping the release.
Continuing the process live
When you bring this material into a live setting, what do you want to leave open to the moment? Is there a part of the process that you deliberately wouldn't want to reproduce exactly the same way twice?
I'm actually not trying to reproduce these tracks live at all. A lot of what happened during the recordings was quite spontaneous, and recreating those exact moments would be almost impossible anyway.
What I find much more interesting is taking the processes I discovered while making the EP and bringing those into a live setting. I use my drums alongside instruments and effects like the Elektron Digitone, Torso S-4, Tetrachords and Eventide H90, many of which were also part of the production process. But rather than playing the finished tracks, I use these tools to explore completely new ideas. In that sense, the live performance is more of a continuation of the creative process than a reproduction of the recordings.
Arthur Hnatek
Interview by email · Editorial and image art direction: SCENE:ID. vog.photo · Courtesy of Arthur Hnatek