Previously : Focus on... L4YØN (French version)
on... Mr. Bickle (French version)
on... Naif (French version)
on... The Cool Moonmist Mountain Band (French version)
on... Kevin Follet
on... TSF (TomaSound Factory)(French version)
on... Fading Call(French version)
on... leloopar(French version)
on... Contra Maerorem(French version)
on... Big Crease(French version)
on... VAPA(French version)
on... NEO 10Y(French version)
on... Neon Fiji(French version)
on... Franz Matthews(French version)
on... Panaviscope(French version)
on... Ulisess(French version)
and on... Moodssupply(French version)
Focus on... Thulium Ray
French version here
From now on, every month on HomeCooking Share , a regular user artist will be presented, put forward. In addition to his music, which can be found everywhere on the site, this is an opportunity to get to know each other better! For this new episode, focus on Thulium Ray
HomeCookingShare: To begin, who are you?
Thulium Ray: Thulium Ray(Gav & Jon)
HCS: How would you define your music?
Jon: If Autechre & Boards of Canada had a bar brawl (in space).
Gav: Trying to squeeze unique melodies, sounds and sonic contrast from our tools.
HCS: What made you decide one day to embark on this musical adventure?
Gav: We'd been friends for years messing around in bands, Djing at raves and making electronic music together at college. A fair few years passed after that without either of us making much music together, we’d also both lost a bit of passion for making electronic music using traditional DAW software that we started with; staring at an empty arrange screen on a DAW provided little inspiration. So we started to mess around with cheap analogue hardware like the Korg volca range and real-time computer synthesis and sampling. One day we just met up and started jamming / messing around trying to make the weirdest noises and beats we could. The results sounded pretty cool and the fun factor quickly returned. We started regularly jamming and recording it, upgrading our gear as we went. Through the years that followed our sound and vision started to then naturally develop from there on really into Thulium Ray.
Jon: What he said! We have such a shared musical history throughout our childhood, we both started playing guitar as well as a love of Metal, Jimmi Hendrix, Brian May, Radiohead and then on into electronic music like Drum and Bass, Idm and so on….
HCS: Your influences?
Gav: My first love of music was heavy metal weirdly, bands like Sepultura, Pantera and Meshuggah. Electronically though we’ve both been influenced by late 90’s drum n bass and dubstep as well as experimental electronic artists through labels like Warp, Hyperdub and Planet Mu. Were big fans of artists like Squarepusher and Boards of Canada and respect the timeless music they’ve created and the craft they’ve developed. But our tastes are fairly eclectic anyway, we’ll listen to anything that’s decent from jazz to classical, so I guess that’s all helped to influence us in the process.
Jon: The first gig I went to see was REM at 11 with my family and remember seeing Radiohead as a support act. They were a revelation to me at that age, it started a musical journey with bands and guitar music spawning into an obsession for all things music technology.
HCS: If you had to leave on a desert island with 3 discs: which ones?
Jon: Squarepusher - Go Plastic; Talking Heads - Remain in Light; Radiohead -OK Computer
Gav: Squarepusher - Go Plastic; Meshuggah – Nothing; Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
HCS: The perfect track to cook?
Jon: Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) By Talking Heads
HCS: Small technical point: with what material do you work?
Gav: We tend to jam for 2-4 hour sessions playing a bunch of hardware samplers and synths, then we sort of archive it and almost forget it and move onto the next jam. Eventually we revisit these jams using our trusted Reaper Daw and edit out any good songs. We often find that usually in a 2 hour jam for example, there will be 1-3 songs in there. If an unedited song has stood the test of time and still makes us feel something, we’ll then edit it down into a track and mix it. We like jamming because it helps us to get lost in the moment relying on our musical instinct. We sample all sorts of stuff from ovens at Lidl supermarket to mechanical machinery using modular synths as well as soft synths.
Jon: I tend to jam using modular computer software and sampling, it just integrates so well into our workflow, recording everything in multi track for later mixing. It takes up a lot of hard disk space though! Our current jam sessions folder is 562 gigabytes and that’s just the jams!
HCS: Not easy to break into the musical jungle, even with talent ... what do you think about it?
Gav: I guess it’s fair to say that it isn't easy to break into the musical jungle with the competition to get eyes on your music in crowded social media platforms, not just from other great musicians but also big organisations. Within that jungle though there are some really talented artists and musicians and I think we’ve just tried to find them and connect and gain inspiration from them. We like the music we're creating and where it's going so we just try to focus on that and the connection we have with our followers and any potential new listeners.
Jon: Personally I find this the hardest thing to wrap my head around, mainly because it is a business and the modern world of content is so vast. Being good at marketing is a skill no-one ever prepared me for! We acquire so much technical and musical knowledge, but really it comes down to forming good relationships with your fans and trying to offer them your own unique take on music.
HCS: And finally, if you have something to add (pretty much what you want ...), here we go!
Gav: We're currently working on some new remixes with a wicked French artist called ‘Chaos Studio’, his remix of our song ‘F3’ is coming out in early June, we’ve also just remixed one of his tracks ‘Terror’ and that should hopefully be coming out in early July. Spectrum 7.7 from our first full length EP was recently featured on an awsome new experimental ambient podcast called Cosmic Sonics on episode 3. The podcast through Third eye records has been showcasing some really interesting new electronic music from around the world, so worth a listen if you like your ambient space music. Since lockdown we’ve also ramped up the jamming too so there will hopefully be more thulium ray releases coming out later on this year.
To continue in music the discovery of the artists, here is their latest track uploaded : "Gallium Excite"
To be continued... next month!