Space Is The Place — Interview with Telemetrik

July 18, 2008 by Sexy Fitsum  Send to a Friend

I met Marcio Alvarado, aka Telemetrik, at Chuck Palahniuk’s book reading last month with his girlfriend April, who I knew from before. As we were leaving the reading, he reassures me that “No, they’re definitely anal beads”, holding up these swolen bulbs of shiney goat poop-looking shits strung together into a sort of fucked up rosary that Palahniuk gave out to audience members. A few weeks later, sneaky April :) asked me if BYT would be interested in posting an interview with this drum-and-bass/electronica artist named Telemetrik. (I’m only just making the connection between the two halves of this deviled egg). After listening to a few of the magic bullets on his MySpace playlist, “Cosmos” in particular because Carl Sagan rules everything, I was past sold. I admit I can’t help myself when it comes to any style of d&b, be it straight jump-up jungle, intelligent, darkwave, whatever.

XLR8R contributor Chris Muniz ran following q&a. Duy Tran, official photog for The Rip-Off, shot all the shots. And Sexy Fitsum remains, well, pretty dang sexy. — Sexy Fitsum

The title: My Lightyear. Talk a bit about how the title came about and the meaning behind it?
It came while I was driving and miserable. It was kind of dark and raining and I wear glasses so I was seeing trails on the road. I started imaging what it would be like for a human to actually travel the speed of light. From there I really wanted it to be personal so I took ownership of the idea and made it “My Lightyear”. It just tied everything together so well that it was instantly the title. I’d finally found my cornerstone.

The LP itself seems to be conceptual in nature how does it all piece together and what sort of “story” or concept does the LP as a whole explore?
Its so hard to condense something years in the making into the margins of a magazine. But I can preface the concept with this: It’s possible that if humanity manages not to destroy itself we will see the explosion of artificial intelligence at some point in the future. I cant pretend to know what it will entail but “My Lightyear” is one possible dimension. It’s the story of two intelligences, one based on illumination and the other based entirely upon consumption.

I know your approach to music and production is very philosophical in nature. Can you talk a bit about your approach to creating music and the vibe you’re mining and/or hoping to explore?
Vibe is so important, there is so much innuendo involved in instrumental electronica, there is no vocal to really cue you and setup the emotion. Instead, your using different technologies like computers and synths to get a message across.

Last but not least, where does Telemetrik go from here?
I’m sort of on idea overload right now but I the ones that have to do with Telemetrik right now are: The “My Lightyear” CD release in Washington D.C scheduled for July 19th. Followed by a tour sometime in the fall. And probably the most interesting thing is a new website called EMEnetwork.com that will serve a lot of different purposes in the coming months.

Check the Telemetrik sites and the CD release party this saturday at Geisha.
» http://www.telemetrik.net
» http://www.myspace.com/mylightyear

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