[S05E06] December 2023 - Honey Bizarre


The December 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast features theremin music from Canada, Germany, Italy, Finland, and the USA. Host Rick Reid interviews Gilda Razani and Hanzō Wanning, members of the German duo Honey Bizarre.

▶️ Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

FEATURED MUSIC*

  • "Sagittarius A-Star" - Stephen Hamm (Vancouver, BC, Canada)
  • "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" [Mozart] - Gilda Razani with Hanzō Wanning (Dortmund, Germany)
  • "Cosa Prova Una Scimmia Nello Spazi" - Vincenzo Vasi (Bologna, Italy)
  • "Suru" - Kepa Lehtinen (Helsinki, Finland)
  • "Silent Night" - Armen Ra (West Hollywood, CA, USA)

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower  0:04  
This is Theremin 30. 30 minutes of theremin music news events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid  0:19  
Hey, welcome to the December 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast. This month I've got music from the USA, Canada, Finland, Germany and Italy. And my interview guests are Hanzo vining and Gilda Rosani they'll be talking about their latest music project called Honey bizarre. Let's get going now with a groovy new single from Stephen ham that Theremin man here is his psychedelic sci fi themed track called Sagittarius A star.

We launched into the music with a spacey new track from Stephen ham called Sagittarius A star. It's the first single from a forthcoming album. You can see the music video performance of the song on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. And after that I played Hell's vengeance boils in my heart, better known as the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, performed there by Gilda Rosani on Theramin with an orchestral backing track by Hanzo, Vining, Gilda and Hanzo are my interview guests this month and later in the show, I'll be visiting with them about their new music project called Honey bizarre. After the next break, I've got music from Vincenzo Vasi and from Kipper Liikanen. So stay tuned

I'm gonna stray from the usual format a little bit here to make room for extra music and interview time. There isn't much on that Theremin 30 calendar for the next few weeks to talk about so I'm skipping my usual calendar segment this month, but you can always see the calendar on the Theremin 30 website. If you have a Theramin related event you'd like me to put on the calendar send me a note with all the details you can reach me with the contact form at Theremin thirty.com Italian thereminist Vincenzo Vaci recently released a 10th anniversary remastered edition of his Roxio electrico album that's available for download or you can order a limited edition CD cassette or vinyl LP from his Bandcamp page. Here is the first track on the album. Cosa proba una schema and Ella I don't know how to say it. In English. It's called what a monkey feels in space.

We started that set with Vincenzo Vaci with what a monkey fields in space from the 10th anniversary edition of his rasio electrico or electric arm album. You may also know Vincenzo as part of an eclectic Italian duo called oppo Poyo. After that I played su or sadness from finished thereminist and film composer kept by lentinan you can watch the music video on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. Coming up later in the show I've got a Christmas classic from Armin raw. And after the break I'll visit with German duo honey bizarre so stay tuned.

Earlier in the show, we heard classical music from gilda Rosani and Hanzo Vani. They are also known for experimental jazz and for some fascinating purely electronic recordings. I spoke with them a few days ago about their current music project, honey bizarre. Gilda Razani and Hanzo Vani. Thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

Gilda Razani  16:24  
Thank you for having us.

Hanzo Wanning  16:25  
Yeah, thank you. So glad

Rick Reid  16:29  
I've played your music on the show over the last four years a few times. And one time it was released under your names. And one time it was bloody red roses. And another time. It was about Aphrodite. And now you've got a new band. Tell me how did the two of you get together? And why do you have all these different names?

Gilda Razani  16:51  
About Aphrodite is another band. We play there with the drama and Tani visa, it's new formation, this new song and a little bit more than bigger and more dreamy, 

Hanzo Wanning  17:08  
dreamy more.

Rick Reid  17:10  
For people that aren't familiar with you to introduce your part in the musical collaboration, What instruments do each of you play?

Gilda Razani  17:17  
I play of course, the Theremin. And I play also a saxophone and I play the arrow phone and I play the soma type. And of course, I like to make this electronic rules and noises and so on.

Rick Reid  17:34  
 And Hanzo How about you?

Hanzo Wanning  17:35  
I'm a classical and jazz piano player and composer. But since my youth I'm deep in electronic music of all parts of all sides. Also,

Rick Reid  17:44  
how did the two of you become musical collaborators?

Gilda Razani  17:51  
We met up in a bar and talk about music. And so after time, we started to make music together.

Rick Reid  18:01  
And how long have you been performing together and recording together?

Gilda Razani  18:04  
Oh, I think 15 years 

Hanzo Wanning  18:06  
15 years,

Gilda Razani  18:07  
15 years, Yeah. 

Rick Reid  18:09  
Wow. 

Gilda Razani  18:09  
We're married too.

Rick Reid  18:11  
Oh, well, that makes it convenient for rehearsing.

Hanzo Wanning  18:16  
With all the positives and negatives

Rick Reid  18:23  
did you become musical partners first, or did you get married first?

Gilda Razani  18:31  
No, we started the saxophone Piano Duo. And then after time we founded a band and so on and so on.

Rick Reid  18:39  
I really enjoy the variety of music that the two of you create bloody red roses in particular, which happened just before the COVID lockdown this wonderful, almost frightening electronic music that I would expect to hear in a horror film. 

Gilda Razani  18:55  
Yeah, bloody red roses is now Honey Bizarre.

Rick Reid  19:01  
And it's a very different sound. Now it still has its basis in electronics, but it has a sort of almost an ambient sound to it. It's almost an ambient I want to say jazz but that's not quite right. How do you describe honey? Bizarre?

Hanzo Wanning  19:14  
Yeah. It's quite difficult to describe because it has so many sides, but you're right. It has a strong ambient side of music in it. What would you say?

Gilda Razani  19:28  
Ambient side but also a dancing side to side and this is because the sentence is music for dancing and dreaming. The songs deepness Strange is more Indian and LeBrons game is more than that

Rick Reid  19:58  
what's your process for compose? Sing this wonderful music to start by improvising on your instruments or

Gilda Razani  20:05  
Yeah, at first, we improvise. And then we sew the material, and then we improvise again. There's some good ideas from the first improvisation. Yeah. And so after time after time, after time, we say, Okay, this is the main theme. And this is a good group. And then we make a composition.

Rick Reid  20:29  
Hanzo what would you add to that?

Hanzo Wanning  20:31  
The first step for me is that I'm looking for some electronical sounds, or soundscape, or electronic elements when I'm putting them together. So I'm in general able to improvise, because I always make a new kind of instruments. For me, just for the improvisation, it's, I need some preparation, before we can start. And with all the colors in my book, then we start sometimes one or two hours, then we listen to everything and fall asleep. And after we we listen once more. And sometimes we have only one little idea in this one hour, which we really like. But sometimes we also had an improvisation about 20 minutes, and we take the whole improvisation, just because they're also recording MIDI. I sent this MIDI data also two very different songs again, but we had this material in general, and we use it for nails, let's say 99%, with very, very different.

Rick Reid  21:33  
The Theremin draws attention to itself, both in concert and in recordings, because it's so different. So how do you balance out the Theremin with all the other instrument sounds you have available to you?

Hanzo Wanning  21:45  
Very often we are looking for some hot spots for the theremin. So it's not the instrument which you can listen to the whole time of the song. It's very nice to have some spots for

Rick Reid  21:57  
it. And then of course, Gilda you play other instruments. So you might choose a saxophone instead of a Theramin sometimes, 

Gilda Razani  22:03  
yes, but in Honey Bizarre, I do not play the saxophone I play is the arrow for I play. Also, there's so much anti but I play also from Holon it's called a will phone and it's like electronic. Saxophone, also with other sounds is the kinds of electronic saxophone.

Rick Reid  22:25  
You have several different theorems. I know you have Mogae and you have a sub scope.

Gilda Razani  22:30  
Yeah, but I don't play anymore. I play only the Etherwave Pro and the Claravox in the moment. I like to play two different sides of Theremin music. I like the classical Theremin playing, but also I have own sound. I created my own sound because I love Jimi Hendrix. And it's my role model. I like to play like guitar and because of that you can use in in the song deepness strange. This is my sound, distorted sound somehow I created

Unknown Speaker  23:22  
How did this honey bizarre project come about? 

Gilda Razani  23:25  
We first study with roses, but we let this formation and created us new and so now we are honeybees. About Aphrodite is more jazzy, and honey bizarre is the old bloody red rose.

Rick Reid  23:42  
And the bloody red roses songs. I just just loved everything I've heard and music videos are wonderful. You're so creative in so many ways. Besides music. The visuals are just just amazing.

Gilda Razani  23:54  
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Well, to that you can see it also in our honey bizarre formation.

Unknown Speaker  24:06  
I see on the photography that you've done so far for honey bizarre that there's an airplane theme. How does that relate to your music? And how did you come about that?

Gilda Razani  24:14  
In our info, we said that we are driving in space with full words. Improvising for freedom and, and dancing. So we make our photos in very old airplane.

Unknown Speaker  24:30  
We had a photo session in a museum of airplanes in Austria. 

Rick Reid  24:37  
So you have a new album coming out in January

Gilda Razani  24:39  
because the vinyl is finished in March. Our release is in March. Not in January. 

Unknown Speaker  24:46  
how can listeners hear the first single or two from the new honey bizarre album?

Gilda Razani  24:50  
You can go to Spotify or iTunes or Apple Music or Deezer or other and then you can hear our two singers From any desire or you go to our web site and then in the spring we have our IBM release there it's also to all flooding red roses song now or honey bizarre. You can hear it. 

Rick Reid  25:15  
Okay.

Gilda Razani  25:15  
Yeah, yeah

Rick Reid  25:29  
another recent project you did, which is the Queen of the Night aria from a magic flute? How did that come about? What motivated you didn't record that

Gilda Razani  25:38  
only, I mean, not not 

Hanzo Wanning  25:42  
just for fun.

Unknown Speaker  25:46  
Just for fun, one of the most difficult pieces in opera

Gilda Razani  25:51  
because I like to play. So in this way, it felt good.

Rick Reid  25:56  
You get to visit with some of the other well known Theremin players around Germany.

Gilda Razani  26:01  
I hope to see them soon. But I think perhaps because of Corona, I don't see them for quite a while. Yeah, quite a while. I hope that this is in the future. No problem.

Unknown Speaker  26:14  
Well, thank you so much for visiting with me today. I really enjoy your music and I encourage people to find any of your bands online because they are all wonderful. 

Gilda Razani  26:26  
Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It means a lot for us. You're saying this.

Unknown Speaker  26:34  
To learn more about honey bizarre click on the link in this month's show notes at Theremin thirty.com You can also see their music video for a little deep Miss strange on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. Let's finish the episode and this calendar year with the lovely holiday him here he is Armen Ra with silent Night.

Unknown Speaker  29:17  
A big thank you to Steven Hamm, Gilda Razani and Hanzo Wanning, Vicenzo Fonzie, Kepa Lehtinen, and Armen Ra for sharing their music with us, and to Gilda and Hanzo for visiting with me about their honey bizarre project. I'm also very grateful every month to the listeners who support this podcast with small one time or monthly donations. I wish everyone listening a very happy and peaceful holiday season and a wonderful new year. I'm your host, Rick Reid, and I'll see you again in the year 2024.

David Brower  29:50  
You've been listening to the Theramin 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin 30 dot com
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[S05E05] November 2023 - Andrew Levine

(photo credit: © 2022 Nuno Martins)


The November 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast features ambient, experimental, and improvisational music from the USA, England, Australia, Portugal, and Germany. Host Rick Reid interviews Andrew Levine about his recent album Quadruple Quadrature Questions. (photo credit: © 2022 Nuno Martins)

FEATURED MUSIC*

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

David Brower  0:04  
This is Theremin 30. 30 minutes of Theremin music news events and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

Rick Reid  0:19  
Hey, welcome to the November 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast. For the next half hour I've got some new and not so new Theremin music from around the globe. I think we can all agree that the Theramin is an unconventional instrument that can be used to play conventional music. On past episodes, we've heard jazz, pop, rock, classical and other familiar styles. This time around though, I'm going to feature some unconventional music, ambient, experimental and improvisational performances that take the theorem and in some interesting and unusual directions. We'll hear recordings by Eric Ross, Chris Conway and Peter Whitehouse, and My special guest this month is Andrew Levine from Hamburg, Germany. He has several new albums out and we'll be talking about how he recorded one of them during his concert tour of Portugal earlier this year. And I do want to mention up front that the music selections for this episode were a bit too long to neatly fit in the 30 minute format of the show. So I'll be playing excerpts from the full length recordings. To get our Sonic journey started. Let's go back to the future from the 2014 Eric Ross album Music from the future here is a track called Pluto's court.

We started the show with a track called Pluto's cord from the 2014 Eric Ross album Music from the future for Theramin and ensemble. If you aren't familiar with Eric, be sure to check out my interview with him and the June 2019 episode of Theremin 30. After that, I played Theremin immersion a brand new track from Chris Conway. It's from his Theremin ocean dreams album, which is actually a stripped down reworking of his deep ocean dreams album. Chris edited a single version exclusively for this podcast. After the break, I've got the Theremin 30 calendar of events and another dreamy experimental Theremin performance from Peter Whitehouse. Then later in the show. I'll interview Andrew Levine about his new album quadruple quadrature questions. So stay tuned.

It's time now for a look at that Theremin 30 calendar of Theremin events. On Thursday, November 23. Charlotte Dubois has a concert in Turku of France on Saturday, November 25. The radio science orchestra performs at the National Space Centre in Leicester, England. On Sunday, the 26th supernormal are onstage in Portland, Maine, USA. On December 2, Torvalds. Jorgensen performs with the castle state orchestra in Kassel, Germany. It's the first of several concerts they're featuring film score music. On December 16. Miss Terry performs holiday music with organist Yan Willem doctor in our house Germany, and on December 17, electric storks are performing and Rotterdam, Netherlands. For details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on Theramin thirty.com. If you have a Theramin related event you'd like me to list on the calendar send me a note with all the details you can reach me with the contact form on the Theremin 30 website. Peter White House of Brisbane Australia is a relative newcomer to that Theremin. But he has already shared some really interesting experimental recordings on his SoundCloud page. Here's an ambient drone piece he calls stretched cacophony.

That was stretched cacophony by Peter Whitehouse. You can find more of his experimental Theramin recordings on SoundCloud under his username Wanko 42. Right after this break, I chat with Andrew Levine. So stay right where you are.

Andrew Levine is an experimental electronic recording artists based in Hamburg, Germany. He has at least six albums out this year, including one called quadruple quadrature questions. I caught up with Andrew a few weeks ago to ask a few questions of my own. Andrew Levine, thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

Andrew Levine  16:05  
Yeah, thanks for the invitation. Rick, I'm happy to be here.

Rick Reid  16:09  
You have some of the most interesting and different music than I've ever played on the show. I don't know if you'd call it new music or experimental. What's the word you give for that style of music you play? Well, I

Andrew Levine  16:20  
usually say free improvised music, but there is actually so many potential names for that. The first one, actually talking about this kind of music was Karlheinz Stockhausen. And he called it intuitive music.

Rick Reid  16:37  
What does that mean to you?

Andrew Levine  16:38  
Well, it means to me that basically you go into a concert or a recording session with like, no preconceived ideas. The only thing you will definitely talk about his how long you're going to be playing. And maybe who was going to start, but sometimes even that is not defined.

Rick Reid  16:55  
There are no rules other than the length of the performance. 

Andrew Levine  16:59  
Yeah, there are really no rules, you would listen to what is happening, good listen to what happens when you try to play the instrument. I mean, we all know the Theramin. So especially if you try to use the full range, so maybe like five or six octaves or something, then the techniques that are developed for what I call Theramin plus, so just using the Thurman to determine the pitch and using my other hand to mix different cameras in real time, you don't really know what you're going to be getting. I mean, you know, this is going to be a high note, this is going to be a low note, this is going to be somewhere in between. But depending on which Thurman you play, is the ether wave. Or is it the Clara Vox which is quite linear,

Rick Reid  17:46  
you play the open Theremin to you. 

Andrew Levine  17:49  
Yeah, I play the open Theremin. And that's actually really nice for for traveling because it's really small as everyone else. And it's quite a good Theramin. And the calibration function works well, although sometimes it drifts. But with this kind of music, you can basically also depend a bit on what you get from the instrument. The thing is, if you try to listen to what is happening with your fellow musicians, and if you just like see what you get from the instrument, you're going to find, hopefully, find the direction that you want to move in and then you just take that direction, and then possibly you pick up something that here somewhere else or you're contrasted, you try to develop a small melody just because you feel like it, you might quote something I mean, why not? You just try to keep an open mind and see where the music will take you

Rick Reid  18:44  
Did you start out with more traditional mainstream music education?

Andrew Levine  18:48  
Yeah, so I've been playing the violin since I was about six years of age. And then at some point, I started singing. And when I was about 1718, I spent one year in the United States on a scholarship in McLean, Virginia, I went to school with like a lot of music possibilities, and I wasn't a choir and in an orchestra and choir was just like so much easier. You don't have to practice on like, nobody expects a singer to train for six hours a day. And that's the normal time you have to spend playing the violin. So I gradually drifted from violent towards singing then I started taking singing lessons and enjoy that very much. And when I came across a Thurman and it came, like across my path several times, watching some YouTube videos, something and in 2010 I decided to just go ahead and buy one and I got the ether wave plus because I thought well has this interesting possibility of also taking out control voltages and using that for something I didn't have any idea what it was about, actually, at that point, but I thought really cute my options open. And the moment I set up the Thurman the moment it had, like warmed up and and was able to do something I realized why it made sense to have studied violin that long and have studied boys because it's like so close, you have to be able to correct quickly when you're like slightly off or more than slightly off. And you have to praise in a way that it's like a vocal ease, like when you're singing. So all of these things helped me but of course, I still came from a background of written music. So you have a sheet of music, and you can read it and you can just play with a violin, you can sing it, whatever. 

Rick Reid  20:39  
Now you've had a really busy year, you did a tour of Portugal and recorded several performances and put that out as an album. You've got a new album out quad, Dre. 

Andrew Levine  20:50  
It's quadruple quad what your questions.

Rick Reid  20:54  
And what is that title mean? 

Andrew Levine  20:57  
Well, we have four people asking all kinds of questions. And we were like set up in kind of like, square shaped arrangement. And stuff was just like bouncing around from one to the other. And I just had this idea that oh, this sounds like a crazy title for the crazy music that is like behind that.

Rick Reid  21:21  
Now was this recorded in a studio? 

Andrew Levine  21:25  
Yeah, I was in Lisbon, the end of April. So I did like some solo concerts. And then I went to Porto, for one I came back to Lisbon. And Ernesto, the alto player picked me up on May 1, which was actually not that easy, because there was a demonstration going on in the middle of town. And he got out of his car and waved at me and I saw Rocky, that must be the guys. So there was two of us AirMesh to go to Vegas, the alto player and Hulu Pena, he plays bass clarinet. And we drove for a while to a small studio outside of Lisbon that is owned by flax, and he's a guitar player who comes from the rock music. But he's grown tired of rock music and is very much interested in trying something new and finding new things and working with the experimental music scene here and he has a small studio, which is quite cramped.

Rick Reid  22:24  
And then you have more than just your Theremin in your corner of the room.

Andrew Levine  22:29  
This was a more reduced set because I was flying. I took the open Thurman, I took small modular rig, because the open Thurman has these beautiful control voltage outputs. So you can do a lot of stuff with that. And I took the stereo field, I took a cracker box. And I took the Zoma pipe microphone. On this trip,

Rick Reid  22:49  
the stereo field, it's got like circles with metal contacts that you touch with your fingers.

Andrew Levine  22:55  
It's actually like a crackerbox, a double crackerbox and steroids. More or less.

Rick Reid  23:01  
We'll have to have listeners look up a cracker box. Yeah. And that's something that Yeah, well defies definition, probably.

Andrew Levine  23:07  
Yeah, it's actually the first circuit bending instrument, which was developed in the 1970s. And you have these six touch plates that you can connect with your fingers. And basically you become part of the circuit. So I really like that disparity between Thurman where you don't touch, and the cracker box and the stereo field where you do touch because if you don't, there is like nothing happening. And you can use the stereo field to make all kinds of crazy noises. But you can also use it to create control voltages. You can also use it to process audio. It's an amazing instrument.

Rick Reid  23:49  
Do you use hand signals? Or is there any other way that you can communicate with the fellow musicians while you're recording and while you're performing?

Andrew Levine  23:57  
Well, mostly you just listen very, very attentively to what's going on. Because that's also an indicator if you like being too loud, I mean, you you're supposed to be able to listen to everything that's happening. So en esto he plays like very, very gentle stuff on his alto. So he's like fiddling along, or like I don't know, we're using the word from his bowl to make like very, very soft sounds. And then there is Bruno. He's making louder or softer sounds with the bass clarinet. And then there's the electronics coming in from flax, and you basically listening to everything and that's actually the best connection because you can listen 360 degrees, you can hear everything that's going on around the view. Whereas if you look someplace, you can only like connect to one or two people that are standing where you're looking, 

Rick Reid  24:52  
and how can people listen to your album or better yet, buy it. 

Andrew Levine  24:55  
It's available now on Bandcamp of course, but also on Apple Music iTunes, Amazon mp3 I mean you can get this album, quadrupled quadrature questions you can find that basically everywhere right now

Rick Reid  25:09  
to wrap up this episode of experimental Theremin music here's an extended excerpt from quadruple quadrature questions this track is called Dream of the Bumblebee you can hear the full length version of this track on Bandcamp.

Thank you so much for joining me once again on Theremin 30 And thanks to this episode's featured artists Eric Ross, Chris Conway, Peter Whitehouse and my special guest Andrew Levine. Be sure to click on their name links and this month's show notes. And as always a special thanks to the listeners who support this podcast with small one time or monthly donations. Until next time, I'm your host Rick Reid. I'll see you again soon somewhere in the ether.

David Brower  29:48  
You've been listening to the theorem 30 podcast visit Theremin 30 on the web at Theremin 30 dot com.
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[S05E04] October 2023 - Monelise



In the October 2023 episode of the Theremin 30 podcast, host Rick Reid plays theremin music from Canada, Denmark, Australia, and the UK. Rick's guest is singer-songwriter Monelise. 

▶️ Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast platform.

FEATURED MUSIC*

*The full-length recordings featured in this show were used with the knowledge and permission of the artists and composers. Please support the artists by visiting their websites, purchasing their recordings, and attending their performances. 

ADDITIONAL MUSIC

INTERVIEW GUEST

CALENDAR OF THEREMIN EVENTS

MEDIA LINKS

SUPPORT THIS PODCAST

CONTACT

CREDITS 

Copyright 2023 Rick Reid 


--------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIPT

Please note: This transcript was created with the help of speech-to-text AI.  It may contain some errors.

00:00:04 David Brower 
This is Theremin 30, thirty minutes of Theremin music, news, events, and interviews with a new episode about every 30 days. Now here's your host from Denver, Colorado, USA, Rick Reid.

00:00:19 Rick Reid 
Hey, welcome to the October 2023 edition of the Theremin 30 podcast. Thanks to Halloween, of course, October always seems to be a special month for theremin music. It's also a special month for eating too much candy, so I'll be snacking on some fun-sized Snickers bars throughout the show. I have some great theremin music for you to snack on over the next 30 minutes, including new music from Unidentified Funk Object from Canada, The Night Terrors from Australia, and a reworked track from Kristoffer Rosing-Schow of Denmark. And my special guest this month is UK-based singer-songwriter Monelise. Let's get started now with some sci-fi disco music from Unidentified Funk Object, the Nova Scotia-based band featuring Dr. G, Greg Melchin, on theremin and vocals. Here is “Studio 51.”

00:09:43 Rick Reid 
We started the show with “Studio 51,” a groovy tune from Unidentified Funk Object from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. After that, we heard “Club Silencio,” a hauntingly jazzy track from Kristoffer Rosing-Schow. It began several years ago as a recording by his band The Counter Fictionals. Kristoffer recently re-released a remix of it and added a layer of theremin, and he made a single edit just for this show. To hear the full-length track, check it out on Spotify and YouTube. After the break, I've got the Theremin 30 calendar of events and the latest single from The Night Terrors. Then later in the show, I'll visit with Monelise, so stay tuned.

00:10:34 Rick Reid 
It's time now for a look at the Theremin 30 calendar of theremin events. On Saturday, October 14th, Veronic plays the Solar Eclipse Festival in Arequipa, Peru. On Sunday, October 15th, Wilco Botermans will host a theremin meet-up at his home in The Hague, Netherlands. Ernesto Mendoza will teach theremin workshops in Mexico City on October 14th and 21st, and he will perform at the Museum of Natural History on October 25th. The Divine Hand Ensemble performs in Philadelphia on October 27th. Also on the 27th, Modulator de Ondas perform in Vigo, Spain, and Itchy-O plays the first in a series of Hallowmass concerts here in Denver, Colorado, USA. Finally, on November 4th, the New Note Orchestra performs at the Royal Opera House in London. For details about these events and many more, check out the interactive calendar on theremin30.com. Oh, in this bit of news, I want to mention that season 2 of Loki is now streaming on Disney Plus, and the soundtrack once again features Charlie Draper on theremin and Ondes Martineau, so be sure to check that out. The Australian duo The Night Terrors have another single out this week from their upcoming new album. This track is called “Levitation.” 

00:16:56 Rick Reid 
That was “Levitation,” a new single by The Night Terrors. Be sure to check out the music video on the Theremin 30 YouTube playlist. There's a link in this month's show notes at theremin30.com. Still to come, a visit with Monelise, so stick around.

00:17:21 Rick Reid 
Monelise is a UK-based singer-songwriter who featured the Moog Theremini in her 2019 album, Hauntology. We've played a couple of tracks from the album in previous episodes. Now we get to visit with the artist herself. Monelise, thank you so much for being on the Theremin 30 podcast.

00:17:39 Monelise 
Thank you for having me.

00:17:41 Rick Reid 
We've featured your music a couple of times in previous shows, and one of the reasons I like to include it is that so many of the artists on Theremin 30 have theremin as their primary instrument, whereas you have your voice as your primary instrument, and then you add all these interesting layers, including the theremin.

00:18:00 Monelise 
Yes, exactly.

00:18:08 Rick Reid 
So how did you get introduced to the theremin?

00:18:10 Monelise 
I was doing my master's in music at Goldsmiths University in London, and I think it was around 2018. We were having just a small showcase amongst the students on my course, and I went and performed 10 minutes of my music. Then one of my coursemates told me that she just felt so much melancholy from my songs, and she told me the theremin would fit so perfectly in these melancholic atmospheres. I was like, oh, the theremin, what's that? So in 2018, I still didn't know what the theremin was, so I went and researched it. Obviously, I fell in love in like one second because it sounds like a ghost, and it really did fit completely perfectly into what I was creating. Coincidentally, that year, 2018, was when I felt like I really found my sound and sort of stepped into this identity that felt like me. I think the theremin was this perfect finishing layer for my music. So after I got introduced to the instrument, I went and took a couple of lessons. My first teacher was Lydia Kavina, who I know you also interviewed on this podcast, who is just amazing. She's like a theremin virtuoso. I also took some lessons from Charlie Draper. So that was how I got introduced and learned a bit about how to use the theremin. 

00:19:24 Rick Reid 
How did you find your first theremin? Did you just wander into a music store and ask for one?

00:19:30 Monelise 
Theremin is, you know, such a niche instrument that, at least from my knowledge, there's not like loads and loads of options available. So I really did just look at the classic Moogs, and I took the synthesizer, the one that looks like this little spaceship-alien-type creature, the white one.

00:19:48 Rick Reid 
Yes, the Theremini.

00:19:50 Monelise 
The Theremini, exactly. It's also a lot more flexible, and it does fit, I think, better with my music because you can add loads of different atmospheric effects. And I mean, I do honestly, if I had to choose, prefer the sound of the non-synthesizer theremin, like the classic. But for me, the Theremini was sort of a more obvious choice as a relative beginner and somebody who used the theremin more for atmosphere than as a key featured instrument, so to speak.

00:20:17 Rick Reid 
What other instruments do you play besides the theremin?

00:20:19 Monelise 
So the primary instrument is the piano. You know, I also play different keyboards and synths and anything piano-like, plus my voice, and the theremin is number three.

00:20:37 Rick Reid 
It seems to me that playing the theremin is a lot more like singing than it is like playing a keyboard instrument. Has that been your experience?

00:20:44 Monelise 
Absolutely. Because a lot of people will ask me, like, oh, what's a theremin? When I start telling them about instruments I play, usually nobody knows, or 80% of people don't know what a theremin is. So then I start showing them YouTube videos, and first they're like, wait, is that lady singing? Like, is that her voice? How is she singing without opening her mouth? So nobody can immediately make that connection between the subtle movements of the hands and this sound, which sounds like something between a violin and a voice and a ghost, like I said. I think it really sounds like it could be a voice, like an otherworldly voice.

00:21:21 Rick Reid 
Your music is very much otherworldly and ghostly. I would describe it as something like a gothic romance.

00:21:29 Monelise 
Gothic romance, I love that. Oh gosh, I was just having a discussion with someone, you know, like two days ago about how my music sounds like gothic romance. That's so crazy that you use that exact same terminology.

00:21:40 Rick Reid 
Do you feel that that's limiting, where you kind of have a brand or a trademark sound like that? Do you ever just go crazy and do heavy metal on the side?

00:21:49 Monelise 
Well, you know what? Actually, I'm very, very shape-shifting, believe it or not. And my second album, which is coming out October 27th, is going to be very different from Hauntology. Hauntology was definitely, you know, pun intended, a very haunted and haunting album.

00:22:06 Rick Reid 
I think it started as a stage show. Is that right?

00:22:09 Monelise 
I was telling you about my master's degree at Goldsmiths. So that was a year between 2017 and 2018, and I had a graduation project, which was, well, we could pick between making an album or a one-hour live show. So even though I was very resistant to it, I ended up picking the live show, which was more out of my comfort zone. But I'm so glad I did because I learned so much from it. Yeah, so all of my songs that year kind of came together into this live show, and hauntology—the name was actually coined by Mark Fisher, who used to also lecture at Goldsmiths University—refers to a sense of feeling perpetually haunted by the past. So it doesn't just mean haunting, you know, as an adjective. It means this very uncanny sort of feeling, almost like being trapped in the past or haunted by the past and unable to get out of it. That was the feeling that I tried to capture in those songs on the album. So after all of that came out in a show, which was very audiovisual, like a lot of props—there was this old record player on stage—then I was like, well, I need to capture this in the studio album. So I started creating the album, which wasn't that difficult of a process because I used most of the same arrangements as in the live show. That was a very interesting way of doing it a bit backwards, like the live show first and then the album. But yeah, great learning experience.

00:23:28 Rick Reid 
I saw an e-mail newsletter from you recently about theremin meditation music.

00:23:36 Monelise 
Yes, so my Patreon page is actually relatively new, but my fans have been coming over there, which I'm grateful for. And I've been offering some unique perks to my Patreon supporters, one of which is indeed my meditations. I started creating meditations a few years ago, but because the theremin is such a transportive instrument, so otherworldly, I realized it would be the perfect instrument to integrate into my meditations. I recently released two singles from my second album, the first of which was “Blackbird's Breath.” So I was kind of embodying the spirit of this blackbird through a theremin melody, you know, somewhat but not really inspired by the song, plus some spoken word, meditative journey-type things. I guide the listener to connect with the spirit of the blackbird's breath because actually the blackbird's breath is a metaphor for the spirit of creation. So I created a meditation that guides people to connect with that spirit within them in order to create this very unique, transportive experience featuring the theremin. So I've had some really great feedback about those meditations.

00:24:42 Rick Reid 
How do people get involved in your Patreon program?

00:24:45 Monelise 
So they would have to go to the website patreon.com/monelise. You can also find the link to my Patreon on my website, monelise.com, or my Instagram, instagram.com/monelisemusic, and you can sign up. It's only, I believe, $7 a month at the moment. I was like, I don't know why it's equal in every currency. That doesn't really make sense, but basically it's seven. And yeah, you get loads of, like, at least four to five posts per month. Once you join, you access the entire archive. I have secret songs on there that I've never released. I have a new custom meditation every month. My patrons also get all the merch discounts. They hear all the announcements first. Soon we're going to start having private Zoom hangouts too. Yeah, and it's non-obligatory to continue. So one can even just join for a month, check everything out, and if it's not for them, they don't have to continue.

00:25:35 Rick Reid 
Thank you so much for being on the show. I enjoyed visiting with you, and I always enjoy listening to your music.

00:25:40 Monelise 
Thank you so much for having me, and I love this podcast. It's amazing.

00:25:43 Rick Reid 
Let's finish the show with a full track from the Hauntology album by Monelise. This is called “Fire into the Fog.”

00:29:30 Rick Reid 
A big thanks goes to Unidentified Funk Object, Kristoffer Rosing-Schow, The Night Terrors, and my special guest, Monelise. And a special thanks goes to the listeners who support the show with small one-time and monthly donations. Until next time, I'm your host, Rick Reid. See you again soon, somewhere in the ether.

00:29:50 David Brower 
You've been listening to the Theremin 30 podcast. Visit Theremin 30 on the web at theremin30.com.


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