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a few questions answered by robert hampson on the 1994 album ‘motion pool’ by main

when my editor at the wire proposed this idea of writing on the broader implications of 'less is more', i immediately thought of ‘motion pool’ by main as a distillation of the ideas and forms that had taken shape in loop. the following is a series of questions that were answered by robert hampson, the architect of both main and loop

questions:

with the statement on the back of that album ‘drumless space,’ rhythm was not necessarily eschewed but often made evident through a refined riff bolstered by studio tricks, electronics, samplers etc. when you were making that record, how did the concept of ‘drumless space’ guide the album?

in looking at the themes of loop — just from the titles themselves, ‘fade out’ “this is where you end,” ‘heaven’s end’ — there is a recurrence of annihilation. yes, this is something that simon reynolds mentions in blissed out, but i had wanted to revisit this idea once again but in the context of ‘motion pool’. as loop progressed through ‘a gilded eternity’ and you began main, that annihilation was manifest in sound. by the time you arrived at ‘motion pool,’ i find myself returning to a metaphor of the earth gone and the remaining satellites cast in vertiginous orbits circling that void. is a science-fiction reading apt? if not, where would a better metaphor be located?

what were the working methods for ‘motion pool’? this seemed right on the cuff of digital workstations becoming prevalent, but with midi, samplers, and global clocking, i have a sense of how such a precision was maintained throughout those recordings. could you elaborate on what technologies you were using and how you and scott approached them?

can you talk about your initial inspirations to the big rock ’n’ riffs? what is your perspective on the recent, re-activation of loop in the light of the deliberate deconstruction of those riffs through main?

will there be an ‘array 2’?

how did you and stefan mathieu begin with to work together as main? is there anything else you are working towards as main?

i did catch loop perform in san francisco. that must have been 2016, and i was pretty sure that you played ‘feed the collapse’ or was it another main track? are you still performing that song? how do you see those early main albums (‘hydra-calm’ ‘dry stone feed’ and ‘motion pool’) in relation to loop nowadays?

answers:

Basically, with ‘Drumless Space’, it was very much the idea of trying to abandon the rhythmic element identified with traditional percussive sound and making it more kinetic with what I had liked to describe as ‘outer sounds’.

Derived from other sampled elements, the notion of rhythm was built up by programming these samples in a similar way a drum machine was programmed, but the less percussive nature of the sound made interesting counterpoint elements, which could then serve as a layering textures to build around.

So, it served as very much as a directive in the making of Motion Pool. It has a very clear path of starting with more song like structures and gradually losing those stylings over the course of the record, until it became simply sound design and abstraction.

As soon as Main had started, it was a very evident approach to simply stripping away at the traditional sounds of a guitar, which was not new in any sense in experimental music approach, made by the like of Keith Rowe et al, but we were trying to find sounds that became so abstracted, it wasn’t identifiable at all as to what it was.

It wasn’t immediate, there was obviously a hangover from what I was trying to do in Loop, but it was a thought process and intentional for it to slowly evolve with each release.

Gradually, of course , guitars simply disappeared completely as being used as a source for sounds. They had reached the logical end in Main by the time of the Hz project and just evaporated.

I think it’s safe to say, I have an obsession with decay. It’s always been about things breaking down or simply fizzling out. Metaphors aplenty!

But, I have said this before, I like a notion of mystery in all the things I get involved with. I don’t like to explain things away too easily. I love the idea of people creating their own worlds or ideas around this kind of music. I like to think that there’s many different notions of what a certain track or piece can be about and that they can be wildly different.

The lyrics are always left to interpretation and the vocals are simply an element buried within other elements.

There are perhaps statements on the notions of decay in our world, how we could stop it, a dystopian view that we can’t and we have to simply accept that these are they way it works out. Everything has a starting life and a logical end.

Science fiction certainly plays a part as an influence. I’ve always loved the works of Philip K Dick and early J G Ballard was a massive influence, which remains to this day. Anthony Burgess, William Golding, Aldous Huxley, Ray Bradbury et al, they all have a great influence on how I like to shape these ideas.

Early Main recordings didn’t employ anything close to samplers or midi. It was all done in real time to tape or we used tape loops.

I was very suspicious (in hindsight, very stupidly) of samplers at first. But really that came from the very generic sense they being used in i.e. sampling a drum break.

But when I was working with Godflesh and Justin was using an Ensoniq EPS 16+ keyboard sampler, I became intrigued. It was real lightbulb moment for me and gave me the idea of replacing traditional percussive sounds in rhythmic patterns, which of course lead towards the ‘dreamless space’ concept, that kinetic energy coming from those ‘outer sounds’.

So i quickly got myself the Ensoniq and set up a Atari ST computer with the original Logic programme, then made by Emagic.

Triggering all these tiny samples with midi from the Logic was just a whole new galaxy opening up in front of me, and I never looked suspiciously again at that kind of hardware.

It easy to forget that in those days, sample memory was absolutely minuscule and buying memory expansions was very expensive.

But as in all things, less is more and it simply made you work harder for the goal ahead.

I did find the Ensoniq very limited in what could be achieved so that didn’t hang around that long once I embraced all this new tech, and I went straight into the world of Akai samplers and then upgrading to a very basic Apple computer.

This was all still triggered by SMPTE codes running off a 16 track tape machine and midi and then all the mixes were done live to DAT. We were not in the world of digital editing then. No ProTools for us… we simply could not afford it.

As Main and my solo work had become purely an experiment in abstraction, musique concrete and acosmatique textures, I did find myself going against all the tendencies I had maintained for so many years in my mind. i wanted to maintain all that I had created down the line, but felt an urge… I really felt like making a huge noise with guitars again, I can’t really put in fine detail why I had such a big change of heart. It still makes me laugh now that I did a complete about face on that.

I had been badgered by others for years to possibly make Loop a going concern again, and I had swatted away those notions more times than I can count.

But, simply put, one day I just really felt like going back to those styles again and seeing what might happen.

I do hope we will make more new Loop music, it’s there to be done. It’s been a strange couple of years, I’ve had a lot of issues to deal with, including someone trying to use the name Loop and it interfered with my workings so much so, i had to go down legal routes to put an end to that. It was not easy and basically takes up a lot of working hours, effort and financing to make people realise they’ve made a very serious error in simply adopting a namesake with such a long history and thinking it’s all ok to do so. The mind boggles… it appears Google wasn’t their friend.

I have to be honest, it drove me to thinking of removing myself from all this mess, it seemed more trouble than its worth. It did at one point make me want to stop Loop again.

But, no-one can deny I don’t have the patience and persistence needed to get through this kind of crap, and a large heaping of sheer bloody-mindedness helps too. I and many others were appalled at the situation that arose, and many other artists came to my defence. It truly mended a very weathered heart to know that I wasn’t losing my mind and fighting over a lost cause. Thankfully, thats over and it’s back to serious business.

I was aware of Stefan and his work obviously and we met whilst both working at the GRM in Paris.

We got along well and I had wanted to make Main a collaborative project again. I had not worked with anyone for a very long time, everything i was doing under that moniker or under my own had been very much solo affairs.

I really wanted to work with other people on ideas and projects and bringing that element back into the fold for Main was the obvious choice.

Main is certainly still a going concern and at some point, there will be more new Main pieces. Loop and all this legal maelstrom has taken up my time for quite a while and Main is just gently resting for now.

The next thing I have is reactivating my Chasm project. I have been working on that and it’s looking like it will be released on Karl O’Conner’s Downwards imprint.

No, we haven’t played any Main material in Loop. We’ve talked about doing Flametracer and There Is Only Light for a bit of fun, but that hasn’t been addressed yet. It may or may not happen.

The early Main material has trace elements of Loop. It was how I envisioned Loop going after A Gilded Eternity. It’s obvious it’s got my fingerprints all over it, it’s my signature I suppose. I like to think that all the things I do have some sort of link, a signature and that they are all part of the same jigsaw. All the pieces fit in some way or another.

#robert hampson #loop #main #motion pool #jim haynes

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