In case you have followed my writings and various ramblings for any longer period of time, occasionally I might sound like a broken clock. However, good things are often worth emphasizing, and it’s not like I’d recycle myself that much – I hope. Either way, I know that I’ve talked plenty of times about how important it is to actually feel music instead of just hearing it, and how certain artists are able to transcend the border between the listener and the artist, and come up so close that it’s as if you’d be fully immersed in something, being a part of something external far bigger than you are. And as we know, there’s a few vibes as golden as that of belonging to something, whether an individual experience or a group of people, or anything else. This week’s Weekly Featured Artist is one such example of music and its makers elevating mere listening to something else entirely. They fell to my lap somewhat randomly, and it’s sufficient to say I’ve rarely gotten the rug pulled from under my feet to such effect as this one did. Intrigued? Good.
Sopa Boba is a Belgian/Dutch electronic modern classical collective whose debut full-length That Moment came out via Sub Rosa on February 21. Due to my previous involvements I got asked to write a premiere for the first single off of this monolithic piece of contemporary art earlier, and knew right there and then that I simply need to get into the bottom of this as pervasively as possible. So I did just that, contacted them and sorted out an interview that’s probably as magnificent in scope as that record is, so buckle up and get prepared to get your head filled to the brim with every possible detail concerning this project opening up below like a meadow of blooming tales.
Being an adaptation of the eponymous text by Moldovian writer Nicoleta Esinencu, This Moment is a seven-chapter story about the downward spiral of a capitalist society drenched in irony and satire. Sopa Boba was founded by Pavel Tchikov (Ogives), G.W. Sok (Oiseaux-Têmpete, The Ex), and Jean Vangebeergen, with the intention of creating an oratorio performed by means of modular synths (also the harsher kind, mind you) and spoken word, with the addition of a neo-classical style string quartet. All of the personnel involved are nothing short of masters of their craft, and it truly shines through throughout the entirety of That Moment.
As said earlier, I swung some questions to the artists’ way, and both Tchikov and Sok (a.k.a Jos, from here on out) were kind enough to lend me time from their schedules to go over, well, everything regarding Sopa Boba. Beginning with the most obvious, how did an endeavour of this caliber get started?
‘It started when the Belgian dramaturg Jean Vangeebergen reached out to me in 2019 to talk about a project he was working on, it was based on a text called That Moment from Moldavian writer Nicoleta Esinencu. He had been working with the text in order to adapt it for a theatre piece and ended up with the conviction that he didn’t want a theatrical form for it, rather a musical one.
‘After the first reading I was completely familiar with the pitch. Indeed I spent the first 12 years of my life in Russia in the nineties, where corruption was a common thing at every stage of the daily life. As a short example, before my appendicitis operation the doctor proposed to my parents three different sizes of scars to choose from; the smallest one was the most expensive, and the cheapest was more than 40cm tall, while they only needed less than 10 cm to do the job. On top of that it was better to give doctors presents, such as coffee, alcohol, or golden crosses, which were magically making them work better. And there’s tons of anecdotes like this one.
‘That Moment tells the story of all of those eastern people at the times, where an established political environment was moved out and replaced with chaos, allowing certain people to write their own laws, and where the capitalist logic invaded the minds, with commercial values, materialist propaganda and in combination with poverty it was destroying the values of humanity. We were kids wearing cheap fake eastern-brands clothes, dreaming that one day we could put on the true ones. ‘That moment when you’re Adibas and you’re dreaming of becoming Adidas‘ says Nicoleta.‘
Tchikov went on to elaborate that vocals were a significant question mark for a while. Having been a G.W. Sok fan for a long time, and having met him previously, Tchikov felt that his voice would fit the story perfectly. Knowing he does a lot of collaborations these days, Tchikov wrote him a message, crossed his fingers, said the magic words, and to-be-history ensued. Jos shed further light on the matter as well;
‘First time I met Pavel was in December 2018. Some guy wrote to me that he was organizing a pre-Christmas event in an abandoned church in Liège, with basically a couple of improv bands, local befriended musicians, and he thought it a good idea me being a part of all that. I knew neither him or anybody else there, I thought it was a ridiculous idea, I had no idea what I could add to the event and so I said yes, okay I’ll do it. If he’s crazy enough to invite me, then I’ll be crazy enough to accept the challenge. The event was quite nice, actually, a young, enthusiastic scene and a really good vibe. Pavel in the middle of all his… totally dedicated to what he was organizing. About a year and a half later he invited me again… if I would like to do a set with L’Œil Kollectif, the improv collective he’s a member of. To be honest, improv isn’t really my thing, so of course I said yes, again. And then a few months later he approached me for That Moment. I read the story, liked it very much, it was dark and cynical yet at the same time somehow also painfully funny. How could I say no, right?‘
With the basis already being rather gripping and quite frankly a lot to take in, how would one approach writing the music itself for something that’s destined to be a rather meaningful and significant piece of art right out of the gates?
I found myself pondering this question quite a bit, since the way I see it is that there’s multiple solutions and outcomes to it. You’d want everything to be in balance but still emphasize on everything as much as possible, so ultimately it’s kind of a tightrope act with more participants failing rather than succeeding. Sopa Boba are one of the select few who actually manage to walk their way to the other end without wavering a single bit on that journey, and it really makes a lot of sense that the composition process was a natural one, as Tchikov explains it;
‘I set the compositional frame very quickly. At that time I was diving into the electronic music, and I didn’t produced a fully electronic album yet. In parallel I was thinking about composing for string quartet since a long time, but I dared not. Exploring musical territories I don’t know is always a driving force for me, so I thought that combining those two would be exciting. And I also had that intuition that building an album on the opposition between electronics and the string quartet would serve the text.‘
Speaking of text, I’ve personally been a fan of G.W. Sok’s output ever since I discovered Oiseaux-Tempête years and years ago, so hearing him detail his own approach to things was of utmost fascination to me;
‘I don’t know much about musical structures and all that, so don’t ask me to hit a certain note or something. I might hit it, but mostly by accident. But what I do know is how to adapt to what is happening musically, my voice usually seems to find its place in the music without me actually knowing how to do that, and through the years I have learned to singspeak my way through and over the music surrounding me.
‘At first the idea was there would be three to four vocalists, but budget-wise that turned out impossible, so then we decided I would try and do all the various voices on my own. Jean helped a lot with finding the right voice for each person; not too theatrical, not ‘acting’, just slight adjustments of vocal intonations, so that it became clear that at certain moments someone else was talking.
‘Finding my way in the music was partly a very structured thing, partly some kind of intuition. In certain parts of the compositions it is important that I am tight with the music, which I don’t always found easy, because it’s not always four-quarter timing, sometimes it’s in six or seven, or idontknow, and when I am telling the story I often cannot hear where a new musical bar or pattern begins, but eventually one starts to recognize sounds and beats and little clues (a high-pitch violin screak, a vague bass-like dadadum, a whispery paper-like crackle), and once I hear it I hear it. At other times I feel more free to find my own tempo and cadans. Which can be tricky for the strings and the modular, though, as I am not always there were they would expect me to be. But even then, after a whole series of rehearsals that, too, same as with the story itself, becomes familiar.‘
The combination of often harsher sounding electronics and classical isn’t exactly the first thing that crosses one’s mind when thinking about experimental music as a whole (to me at least), and I think that a major part of why Sopa Boba had such an impact on me was its unexpected nature. I’m always interested in hearing about artists’ own influences for my own little mind map, and such questions can yield uncanny results. In Tchikov’s case, he name drops clipping. and Low being meaningful sources of inspiration when it comes to some of the electronic parts and the general production, whereas the classical side of this record didn’t really need external influence.
That Moment being the first time for him to write music for strings, I can imagine how interesting of a process it must have been, to learn the dos and don’ts and ins and outs of something like that. There is always that certain type of edge involved in creating something where you’re pushing yourself to this extent, and it does show positively on the album. Tchikov then however went on to add that having listened to composers like Arvo Pärt in the past undoubtedly has had and will have its own influence even if indirect, but well, water is wet and all, you know.
That said, decisions and the ability to make them are in key position when making things work, as already established above. Simultaneously, the natural aspect tends to have a say in the final produce as well. Vangebeergen cut the text in seven chapters and suggested some ambiences (like slow, depressive, loud riff, surf rock, elevator bossa-nova, etc.), while pointing out the different characters in the story. All of that already gave a raw structure and some indications of the different sections of the album’s timeline.
‘In the beginning I quickly had some of the main riffs and strings parts in mind, and I also jammed with my guitar and then replayed those parts with sequencers and synths. Later on some of the electronic sections were produced within ‘modular’ philosophy; setting up a patch for a section, playing and recording the performance, and then depatch and no way to get back. I really enjoyed exploring that new hybrid production set up with Ableton Live communicating with the modular via CV Tools. It allowed at the same time to be very precise by sending written controls from Ableton, while keeping all the randomness and generative approaches of the modular inside of the box
‘On the strings’ side, I usually have the main voice in mind and then I just sit down and drift on the piano and fish for the other voices, or do it straight in the DAW with sampled strings. However, sometimes I can hear the voices very clearly, so when it’s ripe, all I have to do is just to write it down. That happened for some of the sections. Usually I will record all the instrumental parts, with a raw arrangement, and some midi strings. Then Jos would record his voice over it. At that time we’ll point out the adaptations we have to apply on the arrangements to give the vocals enough room and fluidity. Then there will be another stage of rework for instrumental parts. When ready, Jos records his definitive vocals. And the real strings of course.‘
While the above fits to the criteria of the decision making and planning things out in advance, the natural aspect of course reared its head here as well;
‘An interesting thing I like about the global structure of the album, which came out naturally and not as a result of planning, is that the first tracks are about the childhood, and they’re all the most raw and aggressive. I guess it’s a bit how lots of kids discover life, sort of a full speed truck crushing into your face. Little by little their candor is smashed by the adult world, their innocence turns into awareness, their dreams become more and more unrealistic. And all of this happens with no pity at all, and to beings without defense. Sometimes infancy may be a very violent stage of life, indeed it is in that story, and unfortunately it’s the story of a lot of kids. I’m happy about how the music turned out to express that point of view.
‘Then the kid grows and becomes a teenager and later a man owning power, so from the middle of the album the music calms down and becomes more and more serene, illustrating the man taking control over the world around him, but there’s still that sort of nostalgia reminiscent of the loss of his integrity, of all his inner treasure he had when he was a kid.‘
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t really thoroughly half-reviewed the album itself during this feature, but I think my excitement for it speaks for itself enough for you to give it a proper listen. Also, at times, it’s cool to just shut the fuck up and let the grown-ups talk, so to speak. After all, Sopa Boba is a novel act even though it has been developing for a while, and I love to be able to give a platform for someone like them without interfering that much. And in addition, I’m certain that each and every single one of you even remotely interested in avant-garde musings have hogged up the album by now.
Sopa Boba are currently performing live with the full string quartet while looking to book more shows, and have also prepared a smaller scale version of the band for such occasions when needed. While there’s currently some shows taking place in June in Belgium and Holland, a bigger tour is in the hopeful pipeline for the autumn as well. You’ll best stay alerted for all of those things and more via Sopa Boba‘s Instagram and Bandcamp.
Now, when all that’s out of the way, we’ll leave you with a seed of pensive contemplation. When talking about the story, Jos mentioned that the story told on the album became familiar in unforeseen ways – in ways that each of us are dealing with right now to an extent or the other, either thanks to our corrupt governments, warmongering neighbouring countries, stuck up people around us, no-good-bosses, whatever fucking ailment you can really think of. It wasn’t always like this, was it?
‘But a very strange happened over time. The story, when we started working on this album, about two, three years ago, we thought the text was about Eastern Europe, where where corruption was a common thing at every stage of the daily life, as Pavel already mentioned earlier. And I agreed with him. For him it was like true, real life. For me it was a bit like how western people having a cliché view of what is happening in the eastern parts. Corruption, greed, abuse of power, like a cheap-rate B-movie almost. But by the time the album was almost finished and about to be presented to the world, we started to realize that whatthefuck the world had changed, and it had changed so quickly that right now we are actually living this dystopian B-movie ourselves. All of a sudden this whole album has become more relevant than ever. Much more than we ever expected. Much more than we would ever like to hope for.‘
The world around you needs you now more than ever.
Header photo by Gaëtan Streel
