This Thursday [9PM-2AM] is the relaunch of ‘Spectral’ in The Sound Room, a live music series and residency originally activated in 2020 from curator and resident Kamran Sadeghi. For this edition, he is joined by Gábor Lázár, an electronic music producer and sound artist working with forms of abstract rhythmic patterns and textural elements, arranging them into repetitive, serial structures to explore our perceptual and cultural relation to electronic dance music. He uses self-developed software to create such compositions and to perform live involving computer controlled stage lights that allow the listener to have a full-body perceptual experience. Kamran sat down with Gábor to ask some questions ahead of their Sound Room takeover — read below.

Kamran: Did you discover anything new about yourself or your process while making your recent record “Boundary Objects” on Planet Mu?

Gábor: Throughout the years, I have realised that I don’t really like how music making tools predestinate how we make music, and how that piece of music determines how the listener thinks about music, and how this causality is monetized and industrialized. I really enjoy making an interface where I can create my own alternative causalities and connections and observe the results of it.

Kamran: Do you design anything other than the instruments you use?

Gábor: Instead of finding the same challenges by using other people’s tools I find my own challenges by creating my own tools. In other words, If you would want me to tell you how I think about music and sound then I wouldn’t make a composition for you to tell it but I would make a tool for you through which you can explore my thoughts and my way of thinking about music.

My visual identity is created in close collaboration with Daniel Kozma, graphic designer. When I work with him, we try to create a system of a visual identity that is based on Daniel’s knowledge and both of our taste. Later I can use that system to create tour posters without bothering Daniel too often.

Kamran: Does your music ever take cues from nature?

Gábor: Not intentionally but of course it does. The ecology of processes inside compositional tools is always present and alive. If beauty exists at all then it is probably not created but unexpectedly made by the system and discovered, explored and observed by the designer of the system.

Kamran: Do you feel expressive when you perform?

Gábor: I feel kind of introspective during performing, I don’t think about the audience, I totally forget that they are watching or listening.

Kamran: You also control your own lights live. Are you creating a sensory experience more than just a musical experience?

Gábor: We can say that listening to sound is already a multimodal sensory experience or multi-sensory experience since you hear the sound and feel the vibration of it when it is loud enough. Listening to a live performance at a venue is a very different experience than just listening to a record at home. Extending my performance with specific lights is not just about involving another sensor of the human body but translating the logic behind the music into another medium. It’s something I’m keen on doing.

Tickets for Spectral w/ Gábor Lázár + Kamran Sadeghi [Thu Aug 25, 9:00PM – 2:00AM] available via Dice + RA.