A veteran of Toronto's experimental music scene, Mike Hansen has also shown his sound installations in galleries across Canada and can be heard Wednesday mornings on CKLN 88.1. Ron Nurwisah interviewed Hansen via email.
YOU'VE BEEN DOING EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC/SOUND ART FOR A WHILE. HOW DID YOU GET STARTED? I started doing turntable and tape experiments in high school, back in the early 70s. A friend of mine and I would sit in my bedroom and tape the television and spin and scratch records while drinking beer. I believe this would be a while before DJ-ism arrived. After that, in the early 80s, I did an all-night radio program at CKLN 88.1 where I would do long and large sound sculptures on the radio. Looping, scratching and odd mixing. Not looking for dance mixes, but creating themed atmospheres.

WHO, OR WHAT, ARE SOME OF YOUR INFLUENCES? When I first received Christian Marclay's Record Without a Cover, I was stunned. This is what I have been doing and it blew me away; the fact that it came without a sleeve and that the environment and playing was to enhance the recording, make the skips and pops better. That was my first introduction to turntablism. At that point and time, I still hadn't resolved what I wanted to do in music, so I was a jazz drummer. After that, a plethora of recordings started to appear from artists like Martin Tetrault, Janek Schaefer and Phillip Jeck. I dropped the drums and started playing the turntable.

YOU ALSO DO A LOT OF SOUND ART IN GALLERIES, BUT ALSO DO LIVE PERFORMANCES. HOW DO THESE COMPARE? DOES ONE TYPE OF WORK INFLUENCE THE OTHER? Well, the sound art I've shown, and continue to show, doesn't allow me to control the sound. The sound installation I'm currently showing, 'œItch,'? is quite related to my turntablism. The installation is played by gallery visitors. It is designed to allow people to experience improvisation and DJ culture. One of my first sound installations also worked under a similar principle and the visitors played a control surface that caused a record to play a loop and you were to create composition through the switch of record loops.

'œAVANT-GARDE'? MUSIC SEEMS TO HAVE MADE ITS WAY INTO MAINSTREAM FORMS OF MUSIC (HIP-HOP, DANCE, NOISE-POP, ETC.). WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT? I feel this is happening because popular music has become boring, premeditated and contrived. Pop music has done nothing but recycle itself. The only way you can stand apart from the masses is to incorporate the experimentation, like Mike Patton's Fantomas, Black Dice and a huge range of Japanese artists. Improvisation is the only art left in music today.

YOUR NEW RECORD IS INSPIRED BY BILL EVANS. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? It's not really inspired by Bill Evans, but it is a take on what is seen as one of the most important figures in modern jazz. I took on Bill Evans as a statement that EAI can take the same stature as Bill Evans. Evans' improvs are now compositions, and are an important part of the jazz songbook. But jazz, in a lot of ways, has become the same as classical music. You stick to the text and vary from that written note. I will admit that there is still a great deal of improvisation in jazz music, but it is only done around a specific theme, the theme of the song being played. These days, I'm using records less and less and if I use vinyl, I'm just as happy playing the ticks and scratches on the disc. If I'm to use a record, I process it to the point that its original content is no longer relevant.