Agathe Max: SHADOWW

Navel-Gazers #56 is an interview with Agathe Max who is going to talk to us about SHADOWW. My spell-check is already acting up on this one, but thanks to some informative and rather thought-provoking liner notes, I’ve been able to attribute a source for that spare W, intentionally placed here - I think - to denote something called Shadow Work. It’s something maybe very akin to the artistic process where we uncover new elements of expression, normally suppressed at the surface levels of day-to-day communication. The music of ‘SHADOWW’ is certainly that way or so it seems to me, balancing a series of gorgeous beat-less passages which drift by in a floating, tentative sort of way - that is, the odd numbered tracks - against the alternating high-energy even-numbered tracks, which feature some of the most inventive use of rhythm I’ve encountered in some time. It definitely comes across as music which has been conjured up from the subconscious… fortunately, the artist is a most approachable person, known here in London for her adventurous collaborations with other players of all kinds. And I don’t even need to venture far, neither of us do - we both live in Hackney borough so we’re having our discussion live at the resonant and beloved Springfield Park Bandstand. Let’s press record!

AC: Thanks for joining me on Navel-Gazers! First why don’t you tell us about your background? How did you get started with music, from the very beginning?

Agathe Max: I started at a very young age. My parents were always very into classical music, so it kind of impregnated my mind as a child. When I was around the age of 5 I told them I wanted to learn the violin. I started to play at the age of 8 at a classical music school in my hometown, which at the time was really the only way to learn the violin.

AC: …your hometown?

Agathe Max: Bourgoin-Jallieu, near Lyon, a very small town. So, ten years of only doing classical music in conservatoire, and I liked that but I knew it was not the path I would choose. When I left high school, first I moved to London for a sabbatical year, before going back to uni in France, and then I started to play with different people. I met my first musical companions and we had our first band which was quite proggy… you know, the first step when you’re 20 and you play music with people.

That was a learning experience because coming from an academic world and then starting to play with all different people, I started to slowly deconstruct what I learned. It really took ten more years to disconnect from the academic world, with free-form playing and improv.

However, then I also studied electroacoustic composition in Lyon, just before I moved to the UK. So that was also a different perspective on how to play music.

AC: So what’s your relationship to the violin? It’s a special ingredient on ‘SHADOWW’ but doesn’t seem to be right at the centre like some of your previous work… in fact when I saw you perform recently, I think you weren’t on violin at all… or I don’t recall, it was very dark!

Agathe Max: That’s the thing! With the violin, I always want to reach something that is beyond the violin. When I started to use electricity with the violin - like a guitar - going through delays, loops, all different effects, for me that’s trying to reach something which at the end, doesn’t really sound like a violin. On ‘SHADOWW’ sometimes you can hear sounds like that, which you would think are made from different instruments but are actually still the violin.

It’s interesting because with this album, first for awhile I thought I’d reached some kind of dead end with composition on the violin.

AC: Do you mean partway through?

Agathe Max: No, a couple of years before. But then I got access to some new effects and gear, and that opened another door.

AC: I see. So had you stopped with the violin at that time?

Agathe Max: Well, I was playing with bands, just not on my own. So I was playing with Charles Hayward for example, although with him I play the viola. And I did spend a couple of years working on another solo album which is very different, it’s just songwriting - this is not released yet - there’s some violin there but it’s integrated more in arrangements for the songs.

I don’t know, it’s almost like I had to finish some sort of a cycle and do something different. But now I’m back to explore more.

AC: So you’re pretty positive on the violin now.

Agathe Max: Yes, absolutely. I guess I’ve had the instrument in my arms since I was 8, and now I’m 47. It’s almost like my third arm or something!

AC: It’s funny, I just published an interview with this guy who had a violin for many years, but then it was stolen. I identify with this sort of thing, as here in London I still have my clarinet from when I was a child. It’s the thing I’ve held onto the longest, by far.

Agathe Max: You have a special bond with it right? You mention your friend with the lost violin, I always think I would be so devastated if Stanislas - oh, my violin has a name, it’s Stanislas! - were ever lost or stolen.

You know, I did some thinking on this as part of the Shadow Work…

I really don’t want to be attached to any form of material possessions. I think now, I’d be sad, but not devastated anymore. It almost got smashed once. Luckily I managed to repair it.

This songwriting album which I worked on - it’s called “Melancholic Animals” - there’s a song there talking about how if the house went on fire, that would be a form of freedom, detaching myself from belongings. Even a sentimental object… you keep everything in your heart anyway, perhaps the object is just a physical aspect of the feeling.

AC: Wise!

Let’s talk more about ‘SHADOWW’. Right from the beginning there’s a sense of purpose to this music. I don’t know if you think of it as any kind of big grand gesture but it comes across as a really definitive album with a lot of consideration behind it. How was it all conceived?

Agathe Max: I got this amazing effect which is a synth pedal. It’s like a mini-synthesiser controller. This was really the first thing. And also a new sequencer-sampler device which I got for a show I was doing at Cafe Oto in May last year. So it really started with experimenting on my own, improvisation. All the pieces came together quite fast.

I also wanted something quite… rhythmic.

AC: There’s a funny use of rhythm here - it seems to appear on every other track? Only tracks 2, 4, 6 and 8 have repetitive, pulsing rhythms… I thought maybe the pattern broke on track 9 but then I saw that’s not technically part of the album! Is this intentional?

Agathe Max: Well an album for me is always a sort of journey… for example Track 1 here is a sort of introduction, leading into Track 2. But then yes, that’s intentional. It’s creating a kind of dynamic on the album, like a landscape, or a scripture.

And I really wanted some drastic cuts. Something you *click* into and suddenly it’s something different.

I’ve used rhythm in the past, but not in the same way. The last time I really used rhythm was on a homage to Brian Eno’s ambient work which this label out of Bath, BoxBedroomRebels, asked me to produce. But on ‘SHADOWW’ it was a much longer process with editing all the different cuts. The rhythm was created by cutting the sound into all these micro-slices. It was time-consuming.

AC: Yeah I really notice that on Powerful Beings for example. All this pounding rhythm but it’s as though each individual beat is different.

Agathe Max: Yeah, see it’s the sampler-sequencer. You can take all these different sounds and make a rhythmic pattern with them. Then you can shape that pattern so it keeps evolving into something new. I also like working on different lengths of loops, where you play them together and then it’s the sensation of something repeating but it never falls at the same time. I like that feeling: something is kind of logical but it’s not what you think it is.

AC: I have to go back and listen for this stuff!

Tell us about that shadow work, the namesake of this album. I think of shadow work as digging into hidden areas of the psyche, which also seems to relate to descriptions I find on your website: “diving into someone’s inner world”, “a search for rareness in music”… could you elaborate on this?

Agathe Max: Yes, if you research the topic you’ll find that Carl Jung was at the basis of this, giving that name “shadow” for the subconscious mind. You could think of it as something scary, with the word shadow very connected to the darkness and such, but actually it’s more of the opposite. It’s finding those aspects of your life or your feelings you’ve been keeping really deep inside, most of the time because of the conditioning of the society.

You could say that when you’re born, you’re a whole being but then you’re so conditioned that you lose parts of yourself. Shadow Work is just trying to figure out which parts of yourself were left behind, and become whole again.

(Lou Bolla)

My friend Lou Bolla, who was also a performer, an amazing musician, I knew she was doing this Shadow Work for herself and I was going through a difficult patch in my life. I asked her to help me. I knew that we could understand each other because she was also a musician. We had many conversations together and she helped me with different techniques.

She passed away… but afterwards I found that on my phone, I had a recording of her voice from when we were doing the sessions. She always had some very strong messages, and once I asked her to repeat what she said and I recorded it.

AC: How long is that passage?

Agathe Max: Very short, maybe one minute. And I used that specific passage to make a piece of music. That’s the track SHADOWW which is on there as the bonus track. It’s the first one I did, before working on the album. I wanted to make a piece of music for her and all the community of people that she knew who are also connected to art and music. I also wanted it to be quite dancey - it was fun to make and I knew that she would have loved that. And you can hear her voice on it.

AC: You seem to play in a million different groups here in London. What are those like and how do they differ from working on your own?

Agathe Max: Yes, well I have the band with Charles Hayward, Abstract Concrete, that’s lots of fun. Then I play with UKAEA - my partner Dan Jones - that’s more heavy, with a lot of electronics. I do have lot of collaborations and projects. I don’t like to put any boundaries in the way I play or the people I play with. I always learn something new.

Playing by myself, perhaps I’m improvising more, or improvising in a frame… when I play with other people, the focus is different - even if I’m improvising, it’s responding to someone else, or sometimes you’re working with a composition or a song.

I like the balance of working in both worlds. I can go off on my own and dive in to something in my head, at my own pace, but then when I switch and go play with others maybe I don’t mind if someone asks me to play “this”, in “this way”…

AC: You’ve got it out of your system!

Agathe Max: Yes. Yeah exactly.

AC: What are you up to next? Anything current or upcoming you’d like to mention, or further thoughts for our readers?

Agathe Max: Well I mentioned that songwriting album… I don’t know when I’ll release that, whether I’ll self-release it? It’s a bit difficult currently with labels, like everyone’s in economic shock or something. It’s “Max And The Tygers”.

AC: Max And The Tygers but it’s just you?

Agathe Max: Well… it’s me! But sometimes there’s a bass player and a drummer so they are kind-of the “tygers”. It’s mostly me.. I also worked with a producer, who was also a housemate. We spent a lot of time on it in the lockdown. So it goes back a pretty long time, and it took a long time, although there was never any deadline… I think sometimes it’s good to take time to do things.

But it’s done now. And it’s very different from anything I’ve done before. I play the guitar… and I sing!

Then another album with my partner Dan (UKAEA), which is two worlds connected - his world/ my world put together, so that’s really nice.

Then there’s the second album of Abstract Concrete which we’re recording at the moment.

AC: How exactly is that one produced? Do you all play live in the studio?

Agathe Max: Well Charles and Otto the bass player record live. Everything else is overdubbed.. because with the nature of the viola for example we want to get the acoustic sound as well.

So yeah. …then probably another solo album as well, haha.

I’ll end with some words which I’d like to remember from my friend Lou, she said: 

"On all powerful beings, co-creating with the universe, no other human being has any power over me".

Thank you so much.

AC: Thank you for talking to me Agathe!

Agathe can be found at her website https://www.agathemaxmusic.com/.

Images

All images Agathe Max / uncredited except as follows:

0) (album cover) Marko Righo

6) Jung's model of the psyche

7) Estie Joy (@photoswotitook)