Mustelide: Machines sing for you with any kind of voice
Mustelide is Natallia Kunitskaya, a Belarussian artist – a singer, music producer and - as she describes herself on Instagram - a sound designer. Why? Because Mustelide designs and creates her sounds from scratch. That is what she tells us about in the interview, but not only that.
Born in Minsk, she used to circle between there and Berlin, now finally settling in the latter. Natallia performs in many countries, including Poland. She is a natural born experimenter. The music for her latest album, Ginseng Woman, was created from sounds, transformed and supplemented with her various techniques – the sounds which were recorded in the USA via Symphony for a Broken Orchestra, an absolutely unusual musical project. It consisted of trained musicians playing faulty, damaged, often broken instruments coming from various music schools. This was to draw public attention to the fate of those instruments and to raise funds to repair at least some of them, and then return them back to schools. I invite you to the world of Mustelide.
Władysław Rokiciński: Mustelide. Has the artistic nickname chosen by you any specific meaning?
Natallia Kunitskaya: Mustelide – it has a double meaning. The first one is a family of carnivorous mammals (from Latin: Mustelidae), including martens, my totem animals, hiding in my surname in Russian. The second meaning is “must elide”, you can translate it differently, but I ment it as “must hide”. I really like hidden meanings.
Your Instagram site defines you using two terms: music producer / sound designer. I would like to stop at the second one: are the sounds designed? I used to think that the sounds could be - evoked, but - designed? How to understand it? Is this term specific just for the electronic music?
It can be a pretty detailed and artsy process to make sounds. For me it is not only focusing on music by its own. Making sounds, which are the material for music, can be a quite thrilling process. I try to make every sound from scratch, using analogue synthesizers or any recorded environmental sounds, so I build my sounds very carefully, adding some taste and colour to them, making them all fit. I try to decorate my music with amazing and weird pearls, when every item is important. I think, it is quite similar to design process. And I sometimes struggle to answer what makes me more excited: to create songs, or to create their cells. As far as the electronic music gives a musician the opportunity to be a creator and not just use the existing sounds, for example, of violins or guitars, it is a pretty popular approach to design your tracks and sounds.
A colleague of mine – a musician playing the organ, a graduate from a music academy - recently said something that surprised and astonished me. Namely, she said that the electronic music meant freedom for her. Unfortunately I didn't ask how she understood that. Would you agree with such a statement?
I totally agree. That is what I was talking about, you are not dependent on any particular sounds, forms, structures. The electronic music has no boarders, because you can create everything from scratch and you have so many tools for that. You can create any kind of sound, also using classical instruments, you can change these sounds in any possible ways, you can make your machines sing for you with any kind of voice. But I still think that there can be a lack of something in the electronic music too. Not of freedom though.
You are a DJ, right? This is the term which is for me - maybe even in general for the people of my generation - most understandable. My impression is that it is less used nowadays.
I’m just a DJ when I play the music recorded by someone else. Play means: I just push the Play button, mix the tracks with each other and try to support the good vibe with my music selection. That is what being a DJ means. But I dj seldom, so it is more like a hobby and you should better call me a producer. A producer is like the whole band in one person. It is not only a musician, it is a person who composes, records, mixes and performs all the stuff by themselves. So I really feel offended, if after having played a live show, where it is only my music and I play it on synths and sing too, people call me a DJ. Maybe it is so, because there is this stereotype of a person playing electronic music alone on the stage. But it is so different.
You perform in many countries. Are these usually large audiences, the events for hundreds of partying people?
Not really big, only if I play at festivals, or in Eastern Europe. In other countries, these are mostly underground events in small cozy clubs.
Please try to describe the atmosphere of such a concert - how do you perceive it?
The atmosphere of my regular gig is when everybody is leaving “here and now” space and travels to other dimentions. Well at least I feel like this, but I would love my audience to travel with me.
Is the music, which is played during your performances, an ephemeral music work that occurs just once - here and now - or are there any recordings with this music?
That’s funny how we both started to go deeper into this „here and now“ topic. So there can be options, one option is for songs, where I have to focus on singing and feelings. In this case I combine some prerecorded parts with playing synths to it and singing. Because I’m not so professional at multitasking. There is another mode as well, when I play my dance tracks with less vocals, then it is important to feel the rhythm and the dance flow, and have a lot of space for improvisation. In this case I build the structure of the tracks in real time, adding synths, effects and playing with all the sounds and parts. I never use a laptop in my performances though, I don’t trust the system.
By the way, you have already released CDs ...
Right, there are three albums released. My babies.
What must a DJ - or rather: a sound designer - have in herself, or himself, to gain popularity?
This person should feel comfortable and excited about what she/he is doing. And work a lot on music and communication. Plus be grateful and loving to the Universe, which pays back with good luck.
When and where, in Poland, one will be able to listen to Mustelide again?
I’m going to organize a tour soon because for the last few months I had a break. I had been touring so much, so I felt like I really needed some calm time in the studio. Anyway a show in Warsaw should be on the 25th of April. I’m not sure about anything while this COVID-19 situation though, because I don’t know how long we should quarantine, a lot of shows are being canceled now, mine too. So we’ll see. I would be happy to come soon
I wish you a lot of success and thank you for your time.
Thank you too. I wish everybody good immune and feelings system.
Polish version HERE