'œMetro Starman is a new project by Rik Maclean of Mara's Torment. Rather than exploring the creation of environment that he's done with earlier work, Rik has instead decided to use this project to focus on the idea of truth as related to context. Plus he gets to try a different style of music. Which is pretty cool.'? '“ Piehead Records website.
Bunk Bedouin had the following conversation with Rik MacLean.

What's your position on the electronic music tradition of protecting the secret of your toolset and composition process? Clearly it's an effort to instill some element of magic into an increasingly technological pursuit. If every musician were to tell their secrets, to tell where the music came from, then all of the illusion and mystical nature of music would be replaced by a litany of software, URLs, and stories about how your butt gets tired after sitting on the ergonomically incorrect chair in your bedroom for hours, micro-editing sound files.

What is your toolset and composition process? I have strong muscles in my butt.

How can you ensure that music as oriented in dynamics as yours is listened to under the proper conditions? I think that when music is created, it exists in a particular environment as made by the artist, and when it's experienced by the listener it exists in a different environment specific to their own creation. I guess proper conditions would be when those two environments cross in some capacity, and both artist and listener are able to share certain elements with each other.

Do you fear that you'll lose the skill or will to continue writing music? I honestly feel that way every time I complete a song. I get really scared that there are only so many ideas, so many songs inside of me, and that when they're done there won't be anything else, that I won't be able to tap into that energy any more. It's not as bad, though, as my fear of birds. I mean, shit, birds really scare me.

Most composers are writing music that only occupies the frequency range audible to humans. D'ya think our music would sound thin and simplistic, or cacophonous and overwhelming to the populace of Neptune? I've been thinking about that a lot just recently, that the ideas and experiences we have are all based around a particular frame of reference, that we can only understand and identify with laws of physics and science that we already know and that we believe to be true. A falling object accelerates at such-and-such a rate due to gravity in our known frame of reference, but does that hold true in a different frame of reference holding other factors? That may not be the best example for this question. I was thinking about it in terms of science and technology, but one could apply it to music as well. Despite all of its combinations and methods of presentation, music is built around very rigid forms and structures that we're conditioned to recognize as being somehow right. Given a different frame of reference, who knows what we'd hear?

So shouldn't we be encoding the most important works of mankind into frequencies that might be audible to cats on Pluto? Axis Bold as Love? The Bible? Nah, there wouldn't be any point, all those works that we see as being important and significant are examples of a shared experiential consciousness that's part of our own identities. It should be noted, however, that Trout Mask Replica has a context that transcends both space and time.

So, if we can't rise above subjectivity, why even write music? Why not simply manufacture designer trail mix for consumption while hiking in the Hollywood Hills? I have spent long hours trying to make both trail mix and muesli, and I can assure you that music is far easier.

Some would argue that electronic music's relevance has been diminished by tools that automate the process of composition, Apple's Garage Band for example. Thoughts? I don't subscribe to the elitist ideal that you have to do everything yourself from scratch. I certainly think you should be investing yourself in your music, creating something that reflects your own ideas, but I see nothing wrong with using those sorts of compositional tools. It's not what tools you use; it's how you use them. I would like to think that holds true with most things.

NOTE: SEPT. 12 WAS ORIGINALLY HEADLINED BY ACCELERA, WHO HAD TO CANCEL. THE BILL IS NOW ROUNDED OUT BY HAMILTON ELECTRONIC ARTIST MATT BOUGHNER.