Interview: Manipulation ॐ Funk Lab ॐ Portugal

ManipulatioN

I noticed that music is a huge part of your life. Do you have any professional music training?

Music does drive most of my everyday engine, but I think most people I know share the same love for the feelings, memories and trips a good tune can bring you. I wonder if one day I’ll meet someone that says “I don’t like music.” Ha!

I had a few guitar lessons when I was about 10, but just for a year and then went on to playing with bands, different instruments and having fun with friends playing out. 5 years later I started getting curious about creating sounds adding synths and samples which was a whole different way of thinking about music, which lead me in a new direction to were I am musically today.

ManipulatioN

Are you from Azores Islands? What is this place like?
If you can make it there one day, even if for a day it will be a day well spent 
I grew up in an Island called São Miguel, of about 140k people and it’s one of 9 islands that make the Azores.
The landscapes are amazing, beautiful lakes, camping and good reasons to be outside. Everything is closer, you can be in the city or go out to the woods in 20 minutes and it’s a nice place to get lost in. Nothing like a walk on a saturday afternoon, stopping by a cafe with some tables set outside, maybe on a beach, having an expresso and feeling grounded to earth. Many pirates have passed by there centuries ago, so if you’re lucky discovering tunnels and secrets in the islands, you might find a treasure.

What software and hardware do you currently have in your studio?

The sound-generator I mostly use is inside my head and I use as the main piece of gear, for ideas/sounds/effects and other stuff too. For triggering: fingers, sometimes forehead if I pass out on the keyboard exhausted. Ears for Recording samples that then go back to the sound-generator!
(controllers: apc40, mpkmini, novationx25,roland d-50| hardware: mac, ableton, mackie monitors, complete audio 6 interface, tascam dr-100 recorder, allen & heath one dx). In moving a few times I I had to part with some hard synths, but the quality of soft synths today is good enough that you can produce equal sounds and have lots of flexibility. With a midi controller connected and well mapped you are on your way to weird land!

You’ve traveled and played to audiences all around, what is your favorite gig to play?

I don’t know if I have a favorite gig since parties are really special for different reasons, but of course there are always a few that just in remembering them bring me a smile. I love sharing music wherever I have the opportunity to do it but for example Guatemala recently was a special place, the night and morning were beautiful in a place called lake Atitlan, music was good and people had great vibes, interesting and interested, open and friendly.

Electronic music is getting more and more diverse, as technology keeps getting better, as people keep having new creative ideas on how to make music and on what it will sound like. I think it’s always a beginning of something new for all genres including Psychedelic Trance. There are many things that keep me very connected this type of psychedelic trance music, one of them being the idea of a better future and from what I have seen, there are lots of good messages to learn from a gathering, a party or a festival, one of them being that we all exist together in this world, we all share the same air and with love we bring people together and together we share a dance-floor!

ManipulatioN

 

ManiuplationN’s Seed of Sounds EP is also available currently on Beatport.com TX.

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