Transcending boundaries, resisting conformity. This is what great creativity is all about and Kris Vango is the ideal person to let you into some secrets. Read our interview below.
Describe your sound in three words please!
Fluid, Metaphysical, Moody
How did you engage with music in the first place?
I started in metal bands and punk/hardcore while being influenced by artists such as Bjork, Aphex Twin and Mike Patton – I was making strange introverted electronic music from the moment I had a PC at 11 or 12, as a way to escape the harsh reality growing up the black sheep in Australian suburbia. It hasn’t really changed, I actually prefer to keep most of my music away from the public domain as it is kind of like my journals or diaries. My music engagement is and always was an escape into other dimensions.
How did you become interested in healing therapies and yoga and how much have they changed you as a person?
I think music is close to the aether. I am very blessed to have encountered many hugely talented musicians and one thing I see is there is a common esoteric madness, if you spend enough time moulding sounds, you can also learn to shape the relationship you have to your environment. This is confusing and enlightening I think, as we perceive our environment primarily through sound. Did you know in yogic philosophy, every sense organ is an element… Hearing is aether (water – taste, fire- sight etc) So sound is our conduit to the unknown. Astrology is also referred to as “the music of spheres”. So I think these therapies came to me through music. I was very much guided to these things by a force beyond my feeble human ego. They have changed everything. But they are tools anyone can use, and in cold terms are merely frameworks… or software for your human hardware. Yoga is training your body through geometry; shapes, angles, to be a cosmic antenna. It is opening the body to receive more cosmic intelligence. Astrology is the study of time and angles of planets. It is all mathematics really. I never liked the binary codes of intellectual maths, I am more interested in how maths feels. That is all these processes are to me! I think looking at it this way removes the pseudo-accusations that stop people from discovering their powers.
You insert a spiritual intervention to your sound which is prevalent in every song while experimenting with various genres. What is the idea and the message behind your album?
I find identity politics confusing but if I were to call myself anything, it would be non-binary. Not to look or present myself a certain way… but as a person I am orientated in the world allergic to binary options. So choosing genres and picking between a “this” or a “that”,gives me intense anxiety and is something I constantly avoid. Maybe to my detriment haha. So for me coming up with a way to make art that reflects my own spiritual and philosophical journey was the only choice. As I make these planet albums I am also living deep in their philosophies, studying astrological transits, their mythologies, all the modern sciences and quantum physics, also travelling to certain places to make rituals for full moons and conjunctions. The music is just a reflection of this process, in that way it cannot have a genre restriction. It needs to be a fluid creative space.
You have said that you want to create a body of work that falls outside commercial marketing techniques. How easy is it to approach a wider audience and do you care to do that?
Like everyone, especially in this world right now, I am constantly anxious about my public persona. Things like instagram and facebook create a nervous atmosphere and an increasingly dystopian numbers game. I am always fighting with this internally. Deep down I am committed to creating a body of work, something that goes beyond the smaller gains of “hits” and “viral”. Not because I think I am better, but because I feel that it is healthier for me to make it about my art, not that world. So yes, it is hard to be radical in this way in an increasingly homogenised public domain. But also is my choice so I have to accept it. I am deeply political about that, and I am defined by counter-culture, punk and disruption – so I find modern marketing (especially algorithims) dangerous, manipulative and dishonest… and something we should all probably discuss about more.
You are currently involved in various community and music projects. Would you like to tell us a few more things about these?
Right now I am producing some releases for a few other genderless aliens in Berlin and Athens. Also discussing a lot with some artists the possibilities for electronic music and rituals/shamanism in VR space and augmented realities. I am also putting together an exhibition on the topic PHYSICAL INTIMACY from these pandemic times, trying to remedy the trauma inflicted on human intimacy and body fluids that I have many artists coming together for works on. I am blessed to be a part of a very eclectic group of Berlin and Athens based artists who are working in a very lateral way away from hierarchies. Loads of work coming, I’m very excited to share it. I don’t want to name names cus i think is cheesy haha, but I have on my website links to the community I am working with and their work if anyone wants to check it out.
How would you describe the Berlin scene at the moment?
I think every person in Berlin would have their own description of it. Is amazing but I fear for its future post-pandemic. I would say I am closing the Berlin chapter in this moment and feeling more that I want to travel and move, but it is home and I will always have my family there. It is a beautiful place to meet other creative people. The people I have met in the club underground spaces have shaped me like an organism. I don’t see us as separate entities anymore, the Berlin scene is an interconnected psychic organism and every artist that comes out of it has taken pieces from all the other artists. I mean, I even met Lana Wachowski one time in Berghain – basically my sci-fi idol. It is where all the strange spirits pass through, and I think is a city where you collect that and it can either destroy you, or expand you. Or both haha. Right now I am in Athens hanging with trans-goddesses and talking about globalist dystopias… it is a strange time.
Tell us one thing we need to know about you!
Mmm, if you want to know anything about me, just ask me.
Thank you!
Follow Kris Vango
Soundcloud/Website
Secret Eclectic 