Sangre Voss Mix
For #65 on our Tapes series is the champion of maximalist left-field dance, Sangre Voss.
He’s been pushing sounds out of South-East London since his debut Dance Class EP, released via Third Place in 2019 and now runs the eclectic pseudo pseudo as a platform for the more under-loved and peripheral genres. Having also featured on Rhythm Section and Fabric Records, in 2020 Sangre released Expressions of a Mind in Slumber 2017-19, a collection of ambient compositions woven together with samples of his sleep talking which received support from the likes of Avalon Emerson and Bradley Zero.
Tracklist
Enzo Minarelli - Québec Smack
Battlefield 2 [OST] - (MP_EUROPE) INGAME1_1
Neotropic - Memories
Black Seed - Tagism
Emeka Ogboh - Everydaywehustlin
Xingu Hill - The Conquistador Closes His Eyes
Haruomi Hosono & The Yellow Magic Band - Shambhala Signal
Ibril - Singularité
Siu Mata - Celsius
Low Khey - Control X
Delay Grounds - Clatter (Suze's Heeley Mix)
Bakumatsu Roman [OST] - gekka1_0026
Kuupuu - Bubbatalon
Steve Pepe - Posterdati
Sangre Voss - > two M
timeblind - coltan and cassiterite
Amazondotcom - The Most Foreign Country
Sangre Voss - Adjective + Noun [unreleased]
Sangre Voss - Du Uh Hu He Hu Ha
Ausschuss - Cruise
Javian - I'd Rather Be Dancing
Hey Sangre Voss - hope you’re good and welcome to the Origins Tapes series. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Hello - thanks for having me! Yes I’m Sangre Voss, Devon is where I’m from and SE London where I reside. I like good times and hanging out with my friends.
Can you tell us a bit about this mix?
I put my DJ setup in the basement hoping to infuse some of that subterranean influence into my mixes but my housemate stripped the place of essentially all the furniture, so for this mix the CDJs/mixer were on various sized cardboard boxes and I was sat on the edge of an airbed. I also recorded at least some of it whilst making a birthday cake for my mum - mixing on a few levels eh.
Not sure if any of that really made its way through, but musically I ended up exploring some of the more scatchy end of things. I think I’m probably drawn to these kinds of sounds because they have that acoustic/organic quality despite sometimes coming straight out of a digital process and they’re generally quite creepy and mysterious which is normally a good thing in my eyes. A lot of these tracks feel kind of unsettling and I think I get a weird pleasure from being unsettled.
Tell us about your recent release ‘Konon’ on International Extraterrestrial, what was your inspiration behind it?
Konon came about after Thom (Parris) got in touch asking if I had any demos for IEM and I sent him a fat playlist - from that he picked a few that stood out to him and we went from there. I think this could be potentially one of the more varied releases I’ve done - I’m so happy that Thom could draw some common thread through the tracks because I think I’m more interested in covering different ground in a release than necessarily drilling deeper into one area.
Since the tracks were pulled from such a wide pool there wasn’t really a single coherent inspiration I’d say. There are definitely more recent influences from 2000’s video game sound tracks (which also appear in the mix too) in tracks like Forever Ubleh. Du Uh Hu He Hu Ha was originally much slower until my friend Nicolazic suggested upping the tempo and it suddenly started having a bit of that Nyege Nyege feel - it was cool for that influence to be hidden there in some way. Ramen Whispers came out of two weeks of pretty intense Covid isolation alone. I reckon it was probably that state of mind that convinced me to wedge-in such an indulgent bhangra breakdown.
Your sound seems to be heading in a more experimental direction - where does your love for left-field/off-kilter sounds come from?
I’ve always wanted my music to be fundamentally fun and maybe that just comes out experimental sometimes? I find that I’m often trying to keep myself interested in my own productions whilst I’m working on them, staving off the boredom. I think this involves a lot of subverting my own expectations, in a way that might also light up some part of my brain in a vaguely pleasing way (at least that’s the plan). This comes in layers because once I’ve spent long enough on a track then I’ve become more accustomed to that original weirdness and then feel the need to add fresh weirdness to maintain my interest
Sometimes I listen back to a track the day after a session to get a sense of how it sounds to fresh ears and it can be quite a lot to take in… I might then tone things down a little but a lot of those creative decisions stay baked in. I like the idea that music can be kind of naturally optimised to create this constant attention diversion from moment to moment.
And pseudo pseudo? How was the platform born?
pseudo pseudo, like a lot of creative projects out there right now, was a lockdown child and a means for some escape at the time. I had this idea for the concept of pseudo pseudoness centering around the intentionally fake and this felt apt since I was essentially designing a music collective/event in a climate (i.e. Covid) where such a thing couldn’t even exist. I’ve since invited some really cool musicians to guest on a residency on Noods Radio and then most recently paired up with Curiosités to put on a small night at Spanners with Nicolazic and Ella Blou which was so heart-warmingly lovely (and potentially did not actually happen).
Any other releases in the pipeline?
There are some tracks I’m really excited about that I’m getting ready for a potential Third Place release at some point! One of them has all these detuned bells and maybe too much slide guitar. Otherwise, I’ve already had a couple of releases this year (Konon and then also Sepica on Ghost Dance) and that’s made me very happy so we’ll see what happens.
What are your go-to’s in your production set up, could be hardware or software?
Hehe well I sample a lot so it’s probably all the plugins I use to make my samples sound a bit less terrible - generally a lot of Fresh Air (Slate Digital) and Soothe (oeksound). It isn’t really trad audio gear but I’ve also got to give a shout out to Sononym for sample organisation. I’ve picked up loads of samples over the years and it’s just by far the best way I’ve found of making any sense of them. It has some really cool similarity searching but even just the shuffle function I use all the time for throwing up new ideas.
Where can we find you over the next couple of months?
The lovely Next Door Records people have invited the magnificent Will Hofbauer and I to Westival later this month and then I’m getting very excited for Chantelouve festival in September because I’m in proper need of all that alpine musical restoration.
Thanks for being a part of the Tapes series!
Interview by: Isha Kewlani