Latest / Electronic Music / System 7 - Steve Hillage & Miquette Giraudy
Transcript
- Hello, and welcome to the Sound on Sound podcast about electronic music and all things synth. This episode features System 7, featuring members Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy. They started in the '90s and have been making albums and performing live ever since. In this episode, we talk about the studio setup, live performances, inspirations, and collaborations as well. We also talk about Mirror System, which is their ambient chill-out band that they also perform under. [upbeat music] I want to really start at the present. What's happening in the studio right now with System 7, and what's grabbing your attention creative-wise? Well, right now, we're not much in the studio because we're doing a lot of live shows. Mm-hmm. And we're promoting our new "Flower of Life" album. I think the next thing up is we've got some remixes we're going to do, that we've agreed to do, that we were putting off until after we've finished this. How's the live stuff going? I think we've got our live sets about the best it's ever been, actually. Something we've been sort of tinkering with for the last 35 years, and happy to say it seems to be getting better, which is always nice. I was taking a listen to the record this morning, the new album. It's a really great up-tempo, quite hard techno album. Quite different from some of your other stuff. How do you approach, as System 7, making your music? How do your songs start? Well, firstly, this is the first full System 7 album we've done since 2015. Mm. And we're pretty techno-orientated at the moment. Each album we do is a snapshot of where we were at when we started working on it, so we're very techno-orientated. But obviously, it's got our own sound, it's got our own take on it. Mm. And it does end up with a couple of chill tracks to make the balance. Although we've also got a separate chill-out project called Mirror System- Yeah ... which is much more chilled. And the last studio album we did was a Mirror System album a couple of years ago called "Route 77." Can we talk maybe a little bit about how you guys make a song? Are you starting with jamming? Are you starting with loops? What's the process behind a System 7 track? It's very different. Every song's got its own little story, isn't it, Miquette? Yeah, we start by anything. It can start with the noise of a radiator, or the fridge, or the tap, or whatever, and it can go from, or an idea or a loop or- And then we jam around- We jam ... and get an idea. Actually, increasingly, believe it or not, I get ideas just pop into my mind. Yeah. And I hear a snippet of what's almost like a complete track, and I try and hold onto that audio vision and then gradually sort of find bits that sort of help to make it into a reality. That goes right back to my time in Gong. Yeah. There was this one famous incident with one of the best tracks we did with Gong, which is on the new album called "Master Builder," and also we redid it with a Steve Hillage band called "The Glorious Ohm Riff." And this is a riff that just one morning, about 6:00 in the morning, just popped into my mind. I didn't have anything to record it on. Mm. I didn't have my guitar. That was in the rehearsal place, which was 20 kilometers away. Yeah. I just sort of held onto it, and I tried scribbling it down, and then I went and woke up the bass player and I sung it to him, and he said, "Oh, that's great. Let's go to the rehearsal room now." So we jumped in the car at 8:00 in the morning, went down to the rehearsal room, and started playing this thing. Yeah. And by the end of the day, we had a track. The rest of the band turned up. Brilliant. Somehow or other, things pop into one's mind, isn't it? You spoke about Gong. What creative instincts from Gong still exist in your work today? Is there any compatibility between the two? I think a lot, actually. Yeah. We still use some of the, we might call classic Gong sounds, but in a dance music context, like particularly the EMS synthesizer and the glissando guitar, which is a sound made by stroking the strings with a metal rod. Yeah. And in fact, that was one of the original ideas we had when we were starting System 7. We thought it'd be really cool to use some of our sort of sounds with really sort of on the money dance beats. Yeah. And that was the original idea, actually, in many ways. Obviously, with Gong, you had the guitar. That was quite heavily led by that. But what's your main creative tool now? Is it synthesizers or samplers or...? I still do a lot of stuff on guitar. Yeah. But quite a lot of the sound sources of stuff we do is from the guitar, but it doesn't necessarily sound like a guitar on the record. We discovered fairly early on, we knew right from the beginning of System 7 that just sort of blasting lead guitar over a house beat, it doesn't cut it. Yeah. Everything's got to be more integrated. And obviously, a lot of what we do is informed by ourContacts and collaborations we've done with DJs. In fact, we do DJing as well. We find the DJ experience really informative about how to make tracks and move crowds. How does that DJ experience cross over into your actual work with System 7? What do you take from that medium and bring it into System 7? Just a sort of an advanced intuitive knowledge of what works- Mm. In a dance music context. Mm. And I think we're actually getting a bit better. I think as well, we've been doing this a long time. Yeah. But one of the things we say, if we're not still learning or feeling that we're growing, then maybe that's the time to sort of pack it in. Yeah. You've obviously worked together for a very long time. How does that relationship translate in the studio? Are you sort of leading together, or does one sort of follow the other, or do you come in, Mikiet, with a track and go, "I've got an idea here"? How does that manifest itself from the beginning? Well- Well, in some ways, Mikiet's often the instigator, and I'm the finisher. Right. [laughs] Because I have my experience as a producer, so I'm fairly good at mixing. So, I end up being the finisher. Mm. But Mikiet is very often the starter. Yeah, I love to start. Comes up with wild, random stuff. And she comes up with lots of different ideas, and then I can then pick one and think I could make a really good track. And when you're making a track, what tells you that the track is in the right direction? What are you kind of feeding off? Uh- Is it just gut instinct? Yeah, it's a kind of an instinct. We've been doing this a long time now. We've made quite a lot of albums. We've done lots of live shows, lots of DJ sets. It's kind of an instinct. But for when we're doing an album, a System 7 album, it's a question of is it working as a track? Is it working as a groove? And does it fit with the overall pattern of the album? Because we're still interested in making an album as an album, not just a collection of tracks. It's not just a compilation- Mm ... of what we did over the last year or two. We think of it as an album, and this current album, "Flower of Life," we spent a large amount of energy on the track order and trying to make it work as an order. And actually, we had the order well before we finished all the tracks. So we finished them- Mm ... with the idea of how it's going to go into the next one. The running order is something that actually has been lost because of the advent of streaming, right? Yeah. Because so many people are concentrating on individual tracks. But me personally, I always loved the idea of the album, right? The starting point. Yeah, the story. Yeah, the story. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And we're still pretty attached to that concept. Mm-hmm. What is the central hub of your studio setup today? The main tool where we do the mixes is Pro Tools. Okay. And Mikiet's main tool for developing ideas is Logic, and we also do stuff with Ableton. Okay. So quite a mixed bag there. Yeah, yeah. We've got- Yeah. The main beast is Pro Tools. Right. We've got quite a powerful rig. Mm. And yeah, it's pretty simple, our setup, actually. We downsize it quite a lot, and I've got a guitar pedal unit, which is the Helix LT Line 6. That's permanently plugged in, but digitally. I use a digital output, AES, EBU digital- Mm ... output. And then a lot of the sounds are with plugins. And then Mikiet's got her EMS. Yeah, I do a lot of things with my iPad as well, with Animoog. Okay. And which I love. How does that work with the- Oh, Mikiet loves the Animoog. I love the Animoog. It's a great little app. And then a few keyboard, depending a bit what's happening. What's changed for you the most in your process? The size. [laughs] Yeah. Got smaller. The size, the temp- We like that ... the tempo. The tempo was like, the sync. [laughs] Oh, syncing. Yeah, yeah. Syncing all the things. Syncing. We were- Made such a big difference ... syncing used to be a nightmare. We've gone beyond that now. [laughs] Yeah, synchronization was a difficult thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Now you just press play, and hopefully, it all works. Yeah. Do you impose any limitations on your work? Well, we've got, could go completely crazy. I mean, millions of tracks, and we try to avoid that, really. Less is more, is a good concept. Yeah. And also, another concept I used to like, particularly when I was producing albums for other artists, is the best is the enemy of the good. If you keep trying to make it, inverted commas, "perfect", you can very easily end up chasing a tail. Mm-hmm. Ever-decreasing circles. Let's get the thing good, and that's probably as good as it will be. Yeah. [laughs] How do you know when a track's finished? Very instinct. Gut instinct. That's the whole arts. Yeah. It's the same as a painter or something like that. They know when the thing is finished. Mm-hmm. That's why we live. Yeah. [chuckles] But with Pro Tools, for me, increasingly, I'm mixing as I go. Right. I'm not saying, "I'm going to do all the recording, then pull everything down and do the mix." It's not like that. Well, that's what we used to do- I'm just saying, yeah. Yeah, before. Yeah That's really changed. A long time ago, right? That's a real change. You would do the recording process. Mm. It's just the tweaking starts from the word go, really. Also, that's one thing, in a way, that I miss is in the past, we had everything on the 32 tracks. Oh, that was the real old days. And everybody was like- Yeah, before automation ... we were all playing with all the faders and getting there and switching it on and off. Could be excruciating, no? Excruciating, but in the same time, it was like another instrument. Yeah, it was an event. Yeah, and you'd have four faders. You'd have four faders. Yeah. The engineer would have four faders. Yeah. And you'd get everyone in to play their little bit, right? Yeah. It was great. And there was almost a performance element of that, right? Yeah. It was. No, that was good. Yeah, that was fun. How does that studio sound translate to the live sound? How do you do that? The live sound, live performance, is very much based around DJing. And we make cut-down mixes of the tracks that we DJ mix together, and some we often run one track with another track, and then we basically play over the top. That's basically it. Pretty simple, really. Everything goes through a DJ mixer, Pioneer- Okay ... DJM. I actually prefer the sound of Allen & Heath. Mm. I like the effects on the Pioneer. And what elements are fixed as opposed to improvised within your live setup? The basic mixes of the tracks are basically mixed. We're not remixing them as we go. Mm. We couldn't do that. I couldn't play guitar and mix. I'd need to be Shiva with lots of arms, which unfortunately I'm not. Not in this life. Maybe in another life. But we do change the set around on the fly. We sometimes add new tracks. And obviously, there's quite a big element of live playing, so that's different every night. And another thing, we like to try out live tracks before they're finished in the studio. That's another thing that's part of the album-making process, is we often try one or two unfinished tracks to see how they're working on a big sound system. Do you do that when you're DJing? Do you take a rough version? Yeah. Yeah. But also on the live sets- Okay ... we do that. Three of the tracks on the new album we were playing for at least a year before we finished the album. And we try different sound on it to see if it works. So, it's lovely to have the mixture of the studio and the live. It's like you can bounce from one each other. Personally, that's what I really like. Steve, what do you play? You're playing guitar and synths? Yeah, I've got the guitar and I'm DJ mixing the tracks. That's basically what my job- Running what software? Ableton, or- Ableton. Yeah. And Miquelle has got her Logic set up. Okay. Very much similar to the setup you have in the studio, actually. Yeah. She brings her studio set up with her. And make little sequence, or it depends. Two iPads. Noise. Logic on a laptop and the EMS. Mm-hmm. I'll say another thing about our live is we've been very fortunate. We've had a bit of success in Japan in the late '90s and early part of the-- We made a bit of a breakthrough in Japan. We've been there many times playing. We're hoping to go there again in October this year, which will be our 36th time. Wow. And playing to Japanese audiences is really informative. They're fantastic because they're very loyal, they're very friendly, but they really listen. Mm. And you know they're listening. You can do one little thing, and you'll get a response. It's really good, and has really helped us get our live set to a high quality, playing to Japanese audiences. You said earlier about cross-collaborating with people. How do you choose the people that you'd like to work with? Well, that was right from the very beginning. Most of the '80s, I was working pretty much full time as a record producer for other artists. But I started my contract with Virgin Records. Every so often, they'd ring me up and say, "Steve, fancy doing another album? Like another rock album. It'd be really good, I think. You might be able to make some progress in America." I said, "No, I'm not sure I'm ready yet." Then finally, as things developed, I called them in 1989. I said, "Hey, I think I'm ready to make an album now." And then he said, "Oh, that's great. Let's have a meeting." So we went and had a meeting, and they said, "Oh, tell us what you want to do, Steve." And I said, "Well, Miquelle and I want to do an album, but it'd be a bit different. We want to make it really dance music orientated. We've been getting very much involved in the acid house revolution, and that's where we want to go." And I was expecting them to go like, "Oh, Steve." [laughs] No. They went, "Oh, that's a great idea. Fantastic."We've just started a new dance label, 10 Records. Mm. We think you should be one of their artists. And we were over the moon and then they said, "Well, how would you like to approach this?" And we'd just recently become good buddies with Alex Paterson of The Orb. Mm. And we met Youth. Yeah. And we thought, well, there's a lot of people we've met we'd like to collaborate with. And they said, "Oh, great idea." So we put together a whole list of people we wanted to collaborate with, and then the guy from 10 Records, the late great Mick Clark, rang me up and said, "Oh, Steve, you know who's in London at the moment? Derrick May from Detroit." And I said, "Oh, wow, really?" Because I knew that 10 Records had released an early techno collaboration with Detroit artists, which I found very inspirational. And so we went to meet Derrick May, and we got on like a house on fire. Particularly, he was impressed because of the fact we knew some German artists, like Can, and in particular Manuel Göttsching of Ash Ra Tempel, because his record E2E4 was an iconic- Yeah ... record in the early ambient techno sort of times. That's right, yeah. And so we got on really well with Derrick, and he became one of our collaborators, and he introduced us to other Detroit artists. So this is how it happened. It's just one thing led to another, and that's how our collaboration happens really. One of the things we've always liked about the dance music world is a lot of it's based on collaboration, because the whole remix thing. Yeah. Basically, a remix is like an extended collaboration really. When you get someone cool to remix your track, you're basically wanting, trying to get him to put a bit of his musical world to fuse with your musical world. That's basically what's happening with the remix. And, obviously, when we've played at a lot of multi-artist events and we meet lots of people and lots of connections. We had a good early connection with Underworld. Yeah. Because their sound engineer, John Newsham- Yeah ... was our live sound engineer in the 1970s. Yeah, that's right. With the development of Turbo Sound and then Function One. It's all one big family in the end of the day. Everyone bumps into each other, don't they? Yeah. Particularly in the rave scene and the techno scene, right? What feels creatively unexplored for System 7? It's hard to say right now because we've done this sort of burst of albums, because obviously the pandemic caused a big sort of rupture in our whole creative cycle. Mm. So once we finally got it established, and that's what led us to move down to Somerset with our studio. And finally, we got up and running in sort of late '22, '23, and we decided we're going to do this burst of album. We'd done the Mirror System album, then we did a live album recorded in Japan in 2024. Mm. And then we've done, obviously, the main thing was to do a new System 7 album, which we've now done. Now we're entering into a fallow period, so I wouldn't say we're not quite sure what our next step will be. I think it's like the world as well, suddenly everything is AI and was that going to be an helper or was that going to be the end of the world, basically? [laughs] How do you feel about that? I'm an AI skeptic. You're more of an AI semi-enthusiast. Yes, because- [laughs] ... I have seen the arriving of synthesizer and the way, first all the classical people were saying, "Oh, it's not a real instrument." Mm. And, basically there is good musician and bad musician, and you can use, to tap your fork against a glass and make a fantastic sound. And in a way, I hope, and I think AI could be like that. It could be a fantastic helper, certainly. I hope so. But it could be as well the end of music. [laughs] Hope it's not the end of music. Yeah. Well, I've got some unfulfilled artistic aspirations to do stuff with orchestras. Okay. And real strings, because I did do a spell where I did a lot of record production with Algerian artists, particularly Rachid Taha, and we used to go to Cairo and do string parts with Egyptian string players. And we did one massive gig in Paris where we brought an Egyptian orchestra over and I got really heavily into strings, particularly Arab strings. But I've got unfulfilled ambitions in that department. How do you see that manifesting itself and creating itself? Oh, I know who to call. Yeah. It's just a question of I've got to get my music composition boots on and- [laughs] ... Because I can actually read and write music. Because at one point I had classical guitar lessons. I was already getting quite good at guitar, but when I was 15, I thought it would be good to have classical guitar lessons. I quickly realized that with the classical guitar, you hold the guitar differently with your thumb behind the neck, whereas for rock and folk, you're holding it different with the thumb over the neck, and that's how you can bend the strings. So I realized that that wasn't for meFingers-wise. But the one thing it gave me, it taught me how to read and write music on the guitar, which is not very easy, because it's not like a sort of linear map like the piano. It's sort of like we're going in different directions. Right. If you rebuilt the project today, what would you do different? I wouldn't rest on my laurels, but I think it's all been pretty good. It's got an organic life of its own, and I wouldn't change much, really. We followed our instincts, and I could say our spiritual guidance, and it sort of led us to nice things, and I think that's the thing, is to keep open for inspiration. We do not have the master plan. [laughs] I think if it was something different as well, I would use it, because then I would have think about it and do it. And finally, it's the opposite to that question. What would you keep exactly the same? Ooh. Our friendship. More with you, madam. Yeah, our friendship. Our friendship. Our friendship and mutual respect. How do you maintain that after all these years? With a lot of fight. A lot of fighting. Not that many. No, not that many, no. [laughs] Just like, it's for Sound on Sound, isn't it? Yeah. Lots of fights then. [laughs] No, we're very different. We completely different people, and we kind of fascinate each other. I don't really know how she's going to react to something. She suspects how I'm going to react to something, but then I surprise you. Yeah. Even today? Yeah. You think he's going to laugh, and in fact, he's going to get really angry. [laughs] Things like that, for example. [laughs] Or vice versa. Before we go, I do want to ask about Mirror System. How did that come about, and what was the reasoning behind it? Well, it was a sort of creative reason and a practical reason. The creative reason was that we obviously had a sort of developing strong relationship with dance beats, but we also had a skill in making ambient tracks, and there was a point where we thought people didn't quite understand whether System 7 was an ambient project or a dance project. So we thought it was better to sort of split them, and it gave us an opportunity to do completely ambient albums, or with a bit of beat, but not the same sort of intensity of beat and System 7. So that was a creative move. And, the other more practical thing is that quite a lot of festivals, they have a main stage, dance music festival, have a main stage and a chill-out stage. Yeah. And this gives us an opportunity to do two shows. And there are a lot of things that we had, like some sound that were not really, we couldn't put in System 7, and they were kind of waiting to behave. I don't know how to say it. They were there, and there was a good place to put them. Yeah, it gave us an outlet. For you to be able to show that side of you off. Yeah, more. Yeah. More. Although, with "Flower of Life," we wanted to actually have a couple of chill-out tracks on the System 7 album. And we're really happy the way it works, because it goes to a peak, and then it sort of tumbles down into a- That's right ... ambient pool, and we're very satisfied with that. Yeah. It's a great album. I listened to it this morning. It's fantastic, actually. Thank you. I really enjoyed it personally. Thank you very much. It's definitely going to be on rotation regularly. Where can people find you on the internet, and do you have any social media that you maybe want people to know about? Well, Bandcamp is very big for us now. Okay. That was one good thing we had in the time of the pandemic, is we put all our back catalog up on Bandcamp, and that's a really good site. So, our record label's A-Wave, A hyphen W-A-V-E. A-Wave Bandcamp, or System 7 Bandcamp, or Mirror System Bandcamp. And then we've got our Facebook pages, System 7 page and Mirror System. Our website is in a state of disrepair at the moment. I don't have the time and energy to do much with that. Mm-hmm. So it's more like Facebook and Bandcamp are the main things. Well, we'll- Side door of Instagram. Can I just thank the pair of you for coming along today, Micquet and Steve. Thank you so much for your time. It's been great talking to you. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was really good, really enjoyable. [outro music] Thank you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode, where you'll find further information along with web links and details of all the other episodes. And just before you go, let me point you to the soundonsound.com/podcast website page, where you can explore what's playing on our other channels. [outro music]