Interview by axis mundi.
Who is Shapestatic?
Kri, aka, Christopher Johnson of
Alex Falk of
What is the history of Shapestatic? How did Shapestatic
come into being?
We were longtime friends who decided to play
their live acts together and
consequently starting writing music
together as well.
What are the musical goals of Shapestatic?
What sort of sound can we expect to hear
from Shapestatic?
We attempt to bring the spirit of the goa trance music that inspired us
to be a part of this culture in the
first place, while remaining open to the
influences of many genres of music and
modern music technology.
Who influences Shapestatic,
be it musically, worldly, or spiritually?
koxbox, x-dream, the current state
of mass-media saturation in
Where and at which events has Shapestatic performed in the past? Any
future bookings?
US festivals and events like Gaian Mind, Touch Samadhi , 28th
Day,
family, and Fugu
to name a few. We are looking forward to making the
step from a regional to international ilve act. :)
Where can we find some of Shapestatic's new track releases, and under
which labels?
We started out releasing with Geomagnetic.Tv and are releasing our
album with Gaian
Mind Records.
Describe the current state of the
Shapestatic's
eyes, and the direction the scene and its artists are
going in?
The scene is growing steadily with many
regional families to guide it.
More and more music is coming out of the
Many people feel that the underground psytrance movement carries
the original spirit of "Rave"
parties that was lost to the club vibe long ago.
How involved has Shapestatic
and its members been in the growing
psy-trance
scene, and what sort of an impact will Shapestatic
have
upon the scene in the near future?
to our knowledge, Kri
is the first psychedelic trance DJ hailing from
the southeastern
united states, having starting spinning goa trance by 1996 after years
of "regular"
rave DJing.
UTTA Chaos and Touch Samadhi set the seeds for the flourishing
trance scene in the region.
We want to change the "status quo"
of
music that is being produced today by
reminding people that trance dance
music should be about more than just
pushing and pushing to the next "level"
of higher bpms
and shock value sounds.
Are there any outside artists that Shapestatic has collaborated with
in the past, and which artists would you
hope to collaborate with to
make music in the future?
We both like to work on tracks with our local
friends Psyonic and Babar,
if Primordial Ooze and Glowing Dragon
lived closer I'm sure we'd be at it
all the time.
What sort of gear does Shapestatic use to produce with in the studio,
and what sort of gear do you use to
perform live?
We use dynaudio
monitors, intel macs for mission-critical jobs and a sony
laptop for mucking around with a ton of plugins. Our favorite software
tools are mostly Native Instruments and
Steinberg applications while our
hardware favorites include the Access
Virus and ladyada's x0xb0x. Alex
also likes search pawn shops and thrift
stores for toys and instruments to be
circuit bent and experimented with.
Our live setup minimally is a pair of
laptops, but we prefer having at least
one additional synth
so we can both drop sounds, beats and melodies
on the fly throughout the set without
putting too much strain on our CPUs.
What sort of gear would Shapestatic
have in your "fantasy studio"?
SSL and Eventide gear for mixing and
effects, perhaps a few walls
of modular synth
would be nice with that.
What sort of importance does Shapestatic place upon the use of
hardware in your music production versus
software?
Every generation of computer
hardware/software puts their capability
further ahead of digital music hardware,
but it's still nice to have a
dedicated instrument that isn't trying
to download software updates
as you are trying to play an arpeggio on
the keyboard.
We believe in the best of both worlds -- dont go wild with vsts or
hardware.
If you want to use alot
of cracked plugins, try keeping them on a dedicated
"instrument" computer so as
not to risk damaging your main project.
These days, the technology is
increasingly made available for more
people than ever to be able to produce
electronic and psy-trance music
at home, without need for a gigantic
professional studio. How do you
feel this is impacting the music and the
world of production?
It means that there is so much music coming
out it is hard to filter
it all and find the diamond in the ruff,
so to speak.
Here's a broad question... when in yor opinions did "Goa Trance"
become "Psy-Trance"
and how would Shapestatic describe the difference
to someone who hasn't experienced that
sort of music before?
The transition happened
around 98.
form and psy
trance is more refined and processed. But its all
techno, right?