01. It's rather unusual to release a record based on remixes as the important second album after the debut (or at least to promote it as if it was an original artist album). why did you choose to do so?
Statement 1
Remixing my maze, my kingdom, my music, you got one essence of me
It's an original album that takes place in a triptych 3 different faces of me that work independently but gives together a rather complete definition of my world.
My productions, as moody, personal, honest and chaotic as if I wake up in the morning like I was falling from march every days.
The live I'm playing now with a drummer, as idealistic, intense, sincere and wild as I'm braving an ice storm and my survive instinct makes me sing and dance in order not to freeze.
The remixes, as sunny, groovy, seductive and haunted by my shadow as if the ghosts were wearing gold.
02. i'm focusing on this aspect, because on your first album you made it very clear that artistically you are in control of everything. (which - as you probably had to experience quite often - lots of people still don't seem to get into their heads, if the artist is a woman...)
Statement 2
No Revolution in my ranks, I am still the leader of my machine's army
No revolution in the world, females are still underrated in technology fields
My musical production is a rather hermetic territory.
Except my drummer that is touring with me since a year, I have never let someone enter my world.
I'm tyrannical, but I also have a stubborn vision of what I want to create.
As I don't want to do any concession with music, I denied a lot of collaboration.
But I wanted other artists to be involved in my project, the remix concept was the perfect alternative.
03. Obviously you had to give up parts of this control for this album. was that some kind of an experiment? just to see what could happen?
Statement 3
Choosing someone to reinterpretate your music is already an artistic stand
I was not in the producer role but more a conductor that choose his orchestra to reinterpretate the music. My choices of the remixers were very precise, always driven by my emotions, my tastes or the way these people were already parts of my musical trip.
St.Plomb and Kalabrese are the most amazing swiss producer and we've been evolving in the same music scene for years.
Dave The Hustler is my drummer but also a producer of his own, he is running now a great project with Paris The Black Fu (Detroit Gran Pubahs).
Ellen who has been supporting my music since I started, is a brilliant strong woman that built something very unique and powerful with her music and her label.
04. were you surprised by some of these new interpretations of your music?
(or maybe disappointed, too..?)
Statement 4
Remixes is not an under-category of music, it's a real genre
The track I was disappointed with are not on the album...
Roman's remix is a very special track, ambivalent like a trip to the moon and the sun in the same day.
He used my voice as an oldies 40's tunes, played the piano that way to finally turns that piece into an anguished, tensioned quasi aggressive electronic track.
My old demons playing around in his high-fi world. It's a modern moment of grace.
(btw: your first release ever was an EP with four remixes, right? released as //Diy - Miss DIY: Remixes?)
That was just a featuring, a friend's art school project.
My first release was *Black Sheep* on Viking Music in 2003.
That was James Holden, one year ago who pointed on that album and asked me to release one song of it on his *At the Control*.
In 2003 my release stayed rather anonymous, it was a very limited edition on a small label.
But after James has released his mix, a lot of people kept me asking where they could find this track and the whole album.
I said, yeah why not let the audience have a chance to hear that, I picked my favourite tracks and blowed them on the Dark Heat Collection I.
05. if i got it right "the dark heat collection" consists of three parts (remix-based cd, digital only release with unreleased tracks, and a live record available only at your shows) - which is also rather unusual. can you explain your ideas behind this?
Statement 5
The world turning virtual, live acts will channelize music
With new technologies, the way of consummating music is changing.
It is still a transition time, because we are in between 2 modes. The cd still exists and the mp3 is rising.
In a few time the cd's will only exist for archiving stuff. It's irreversible .
Good, I'm a progressive. I download movies and music...
But as a simple listener and fan of other artists, I miss the personal added material that was coming with the music, when you were buying a cd.
A little box with the cover, the lyrics, a poster, whatever that makes you feel enter the artist's world not only through the music.
As an artist, with a complex world to share, mp3 is cool, but not enough for me.
I want to deliver my music in a warmer process, than just the references of the mp3 as a packaging.
The musical box that used to contain the world of the artists will no longer exist.
My response to that cold wave process is the live shows.
Live performing will become determinant for artists who wants to built a strong relationship with their audience and distinguish themselves from a commercial music based on selling strategies.
This release in 3 steps conceptualize that vision .
1. The Dark Heat Collection I, the Virtual Release, the new method, direct, accessible that is archiving and assembling my main productions,
A Kate Wax songbank, you can pick the tunes you prefer.
2. The Dark Heat Collection II, the physical release with remixes, edit and news,
the dying warm old school method ;), with the lyrics, the cover and a bonus
which is a voucher to exchange with a live recording in each city I'll be playing.
the link is made.
06. do you already have any plans for a next album without any remixes on it after "the dark heat collection II"?
Yes'sss! I've accumulated so many emotions and energy while I was touring...I need to transform all that into music.
But I will be on the road again until september, so offer me some time for my birthday, or freeze the clock please.
07. lyrics and songwriting in the tradition of great pop music (and specially the 80s, synthie pop etc.) seem to be very important to you...?
Statement 6
Voodoo voxes and kick domestic is Kate Wax's style but Kate Wax style will never be pop
My identity is built on the singing process.
When I was a teen, I would have loved to be part of a rock band practicing in a garage after school, but I was not the kind of pom-pom good looking girl that everybody wanted as a friend. I was rather solitary. I walked the countryside and sung for the bugs...
I started later to sing in a classic formation as a leading soprano.
For the first time, I was feeling alive and existing.
I took my place in that world with my voice first.
Singing others music became not sufficient and I needed to produce music in order to sing my own lyrics, I had things to tell...
More I was producing instrumentals for my voice and more experimenting the sound became a playground like a mad laboratory.
I'm a kind of electronic songwriter, because my process of production starts with the words and the lyrics, then I compose the music.
My voice remain my main instrument and my deepest identity, it's is the most truthful and direct way of expressing myself and also because it's the constant parameter in my music like a conductor line, a coherence.
08. so what do you think about the mostly instrumental club music nowadays?
have you ever thought about producing a track without any lyrics, without any singing?
Statement 7
African electronic dance music will blow our minds
I'm fascinated by tribal, ancestral, traditional and religious music, asian but especially african.
When you're listening to initiatic african ritual, you understand where comes the hypnotical electronic music.
It's all about repetitive rhythmic loops that function like a voodoo incantation rhythmic is time and time is our own death good electronic music is a radical contemporary and pure retranscription of that fatal concept Ricardo Villalobos, Larry Levan, Arthur Russel, Thomas Brinkmann, Crowdpleaser, Drexciya, Carl Craig, Kenny Larkin, Gas...
They know about it.
I'd love to produce instrumentals, but I'm not wise enough to create music without singing for the moment.
I leave that for the sages, it will come someday.
09. did it help a lot that you had studied art before?
10. you've been doing music only for a rather short period of time, starting about 5 years ago, right?how difficult was it for you to immediately find your own voice, to focus on your own destinctive style - and not to get lost in the endless possibilities?
Statement 8
Thanx music, the transformer!
Painting, videos, installations, music are translators, a way to define your relationship with the world that surrounds you.
The medium is changing but the process is the same in every fields of the creation.
I am an observer; I digest the informations, articulate my vision and spit it out into a understandable language for other humans.
Music is the most incredible medium I ever worked with.
The one in which I feel completely free to express my emotions, follow my fantasies and built my kingdom.
Music become also a protection, an parallel world were I feel safe, in control and where I sometime escape the brutality of life.
Art school was a huge influence for me because the way I learned graphic design, is still guiding me in my way of working sound.
We were like scientists working in a lab of ideas, pushing visual experiments to it's extreme limits.
Free of any commercial constraint. I kept this in my music approach, an empiric and instinctive way of working.
This learning period gave me the strength to stick with my own ideas and it also brought me my first mean of production;
I met softwares and computers there.
That time, I also realized by seeing live act such as Autechre, that it was possible to produce music by my own, be totally independent with my computer and I started to buy some machines, sequencers, keyboards
I never asked someone to explain me the machines, because i wanted from the beginning to find my own methods, develop a very honest and unique language.
11. you included a "free tibet" sticker in your first album, made statements against animal cruelty and about feminist issues. so do you believe in art and pop music as a stage for political reflections and interventions?
I don't really believe in politic through an art medium, because art shouldn't be functional.
but,
Statement 9
Being a girl in that man-wired-cable -tech-world is already subversive
When I started it was so unusual to have a girl evolving in this electronic world, especially when you're doing lives, playing and programming computers.
Impose my identity as a nerd passionate by machines but very feminine in the same time.
The simple fact, my position as a minority in a majority stream is a political act, because I was contradicting the clichés and prejudices about woman.
That works with Tibet or any other causes and oppression.
I'm the minority but I got a platform of expression, I'm free.
I think that it's far more efficient than a loud discourse or a screaming song,
12. i read somewhere that you had plans to produce other artists. Have you done some production work in the meantime? Any future projects to do so?
I'm concentrating on the lives, I'm constantly thinking about it because it's an important part of my music. Deliver something different than the album and make the audience having a special moment is crucial to me.
As I already add the drummer in that trip, I think that it could be the situation I would collaborate with people.
Share the stage with other humans is transcendental and turns the show into something totally unpredictable.
Meanwhile, I'm producing music for the next album.
(You should be a medium with a fucking good intuition because the collaborations you are talking about are still secret) :)
13. Apart from performing live, do you like to listen to your own music?
Except for the technical aspect like mixing equing..etc, no.
It would be like reading my own diary, no interest.
All that matters to me is the creation process.
I scream, spit and blow but don't want to look at the mess
14. what are you looking for in music - in the music you like as well as in your own art?
Statement 10
Music is my output, my connection with the world
Music is my input, my way to understand the world