Two and a Half Questions with Yann Novak

The Breeze Blowing Over was recorded during one of the hottest days in Seattle. Tell us about that day.
Well that day is kind of a blur, the piece ended up being about that weekend and what led up to it. That day was the hottest day that summer, that summer became my last summer living in Seattle and it was the first weekend I spent with my Partner. The story that led to that weekend's importance started when I saw my partner for the first time in Montreal when I was there to perform at Mutek. He was attending the festival and being the shy person that I am, I was fixated on him through the festival, but never got up the nerve to talk to him. I repeated my modus operandi later that year at the Decibel Festival in Seattle, again seeing and never interacting. We finally met in San Francisco at a performance he has organized which sparked a long distance dialog which would inevitably lead to this weekend in Seattle when we would spend some time together for the first time and inevitably be one of the catalysts for my relocation to Los Angeles.

So you sampled the sound of the fan, and then what?
With all my work I am interested in starting from a simple, often autobiographical point and intend to transform it into an experience for the audience that conveys my emotional state at the time the source was conceived. So I started with a 45 minute recording of my boxfan in the window, and altered it in every way imaginable, making variation after variation. Then when the recording could not bend anymore, I start to listen to all this material and see what sounds will become pieces that will help in accurately portraying this emotional state. Then the actual composition is built from improvisations with these sound in my studio, fitting things together until it sounds like an accurate portrait of how this experience felt to me.

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Read the entire interview on Headphone Commute

See also Headphone Commute review of The Breeze Blowing Over Us