I recently had the chance to speak with experimental sound practitioner Sara Gold for West Coast publication ReIssue. Read below for an excerpt and find the full interview here.
Kayla Guthrie (KG): Can you tell me how you got started in experimental music?
Sara Gold (SG): I’ve always been drawn to unique noises and sonic sensations. As a young raver, I was exposed to the weirdest and newest noises and wanted to capture that essence. My first official project was with a cello, contact mic looping, delay pedal, and a sound system with decent subwoofers. I found the resonant frequency of the cello and the room itself. I was trying to emulate minimal techno, just with an unconventional method.
KG: Your recordings and live performances have a very particular timbre and atmosphere. Do you aim for a certain mood in your work, and how do you approach creating that?
SG: Definitely. I’ve stayed in a relatively dark and somber, slow paced style of transitioning between improvisational movements. I use sidechain,1 tape delay and reverb together, which blend the elements of no-input mixing and analog that I have with a 909.2 The most recent movements have been inspired by waves as a concept. Different equipment over time have dictated different themes, modes and movements. I’ve had all kinds of cool gear.
KG: You work with some very specific equipment that I haven’t seen anybody else use, particularly your large format vintage mixers and TR-909. Could you talk more about your relationship to gear and how that works with your creative process?
SG: The no-input mixing came about kind of by accident. I was gifted a large format console mixer — I named it Mark, it was a Peavey Mark 2, a big beast. I was trying to get it to sidechain, but it sounded like mud. And I was like, I wonder what this one will sound like if I no-input mix it? It has a spring reverb in it, and it was such an extreme departure of feedback noise from a smaller, more modern mixer, say, like, a Mackie 1202. Mark 2 had a fuller, richer sound, and it was very exciting right away. So I started to buy those cheap on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace — old, large format mixers that were within my budget — and sidechain those with the lovely TR-909, which is a loan, I’m not allowed to say whose it is [laughs]! I’ve been using that for a while now, and there’s something about the techno purity of it: this early analog and very pure techno sound.
Even though it’s a big, maximal setup, the core of it is a really simple, minimal process: a sidechain, some reverb, and really beautiful, full, rich sounds. It’s like cooking: having the proper equipment and ingredients really makes all the difference.
Read the full interview here.