The New-York based artist guides us through Several Shades Of The Same Color.
Max Ravitz, aka Patricia, produces techno with a spelunker's wide-eyed exploratory flair. His new album offers infinite ways in which a listener can roam along with him. Released July 14th across three 12"s, Several Shades Of The Same Color was Bleep's album of the week and is featured among Bandcamp Daily's essential picks — they summarize it well: "The whole thing is a marvel, the kind of maze-like album that keeps revealing surprise left turns and secret passages. Several Shades reveals Patricia to be a true synth artist, comfortable in multiple mediums, bending all of them to his will." Below, Max fields our questions with patience and consideration. Sit back, cue up the kaleidoscopic trip, and get to know the mind behind the maze.
[ Several Shades Of The Same Color in The Ghostly Store | iTunes | Spotify ]
Suppose by nature an interview asks us to defy some of Several Shades Of The Same Color's listening tips ("Don't think; Just hear."). If that's alright, explain your mindset behind encouraging listeners not to over-analyze?
I could literally write a several page essay on this one topic, but I'll try my best to keep it reasonable... I'm gonna start with this immense quote by Igor Stravinsky (anyone reading who isn't familiar with Stravinsky, get familiar): I consider that music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc....If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion, and not a reality.... In my mind, music serves as an extension of language, aimed at expressing ideas that can't be described with words. Obviously lyrical music has the capacity to make this expression a bit more overt, but music began as a non-lyrical tradition and it's real power lies in abstraction. To our brains, all sound is just stimuli used to generate information. Our ears monitor fluctuations in air pressure, and our brain filters these fluctuations through past experiences to determine the source of the sound, and its meaning. For example, say you've watched an action movie with gunfire, after which, you hear a gunshot in person without seeing the shot fired, you will assume the sound was made by a gun, because you recognize it as similar to the sound from the movie. Your brain looks for these associations to derive meaning from sound, and in turn, generate the appropriate bodily response. Music, in its simplest form, is nothing more than a series of these air pressure changes, and our brain tries to translate this stimuli into information. Determining the source of the sound is often the easy part, as most people know what different musical instruments sound like, but our brains trying to understand the meaning of music is where the great nebulous mystery lies. Music journalism is often an attempt to translate this mystery into words, and its pervasiveness nowadays encourages people to approach listening from an analytical point of view where music has to have meaning. Personally, I don't listen to music in an attempt to glean its message. I'm not looking to understand why music makes me feel a certain way, the fact that it makes me feel things I don't always understand is more powerful than knowing why. If my goal as a musician was to convey some clearly discernible message through my work, I might as well just be a writer. Music inherently defies description, so the record's listening suggestions were meant to encourage people not to analyze it too much.
On that topic, what is 'body music' to you?
Well I consider body music to be any music that a listener can feel, as opposed to think about. I would say most lyrical music strays away from being body music, as the addition of words will lead the listener to consider what is being said. Also, to be clear, body music can of course elicit thoughts and ideas, but is able to do so without using formal signifiers like words. Ultimately, I tend to avoid defining musical concepts, as definitions can give rise to rules and restraints. I also avoid classifying music by genre , because in my mind, genres are essentially a set of guidelines for what a type of music is 'supposed to be'. In general, you'll find I have an aversion to the idea that music needs to follow any rules.
Your music is recorded live. Is there a certain effect or freedom or constraint to this approach?
My current solo recording process is aimed at heavily restricting what I allow myself to do. I used to spend weeks, if not months editing songs to death trying to achieve some sense of perfection, then I'd reach the end of that process and not even like what I made. After moving to New York, I met a few likeminded producers, and began collaborating more and more. Having worked in relative isolation up until that point, getting to see how other people would approach recording and production was very useful for me. Eventually I made a rule for myself that I could never take longer than a day working on a song, and if I couldn't finish it in a day, I'd just move on. In the past, I would get attached to ideas, and like one element of a song so much that I'd try to force it to work, but having a one day limit makes me move on from ideas that aren't working. In the end, I find the songs I like best, are the ones I make quickly anyways.
When performing live, how closely do you follow the recordings?Â
Not at all. My live and studio practices are two entirely different things. I've been collecting recording gear since I was 15, so I have a lot of equipment. On any given song I record in my studio, I can be using drastically different gear, so trying to approximate these different techniques live becomes difficult. My solution has been to just approach live performance differently. At shows, I play 90% improvisational material that has almost no relation to my recorded stuff. Occasionally I'll end up liking something from a live set enough to try and recreate it at home, but that doesn't happen often.
What were the conditions or emotions and logic that lead you to this record? When did the concept of three LPs, an epic, first enter your mind?Â
My only real goal in developing the record was to make something long. I wanted the opportunity to show a wider range of my musical interests than a 4-5 track record would allow for. I think that longer albums are often given more exploratory leeway than something like an EP, and I wanted to show some weirder/slower/different music than I had released in the past. I thought about doing a 2x12", but I became fixated on the idea of the 3x12", and was lucky enough to have Sam Valenti from Ghostly be open to the idea. The track-listing itself was arranged by a friend of mine named Russell Butler, who also releases on Opal Tapes, the label that put out my first and third Patricia records. I sent him the 15 tracks to listen to, and asked him to come up with the sequencing because I was struggling to do so, and I'm really happy with what he arrived at.
The title and artwork reflects the music's stoicism in ways I can't quite define. Can you?Â
Well the title has a few personal meanings to me, but I'm not going to share them, as I don't think they're relevant to the music. In terms of the artwork, it was done by my friend Molly Smith. I just sent her the music, gave her very little input, and she did all the heavy lifting. It was an incredible amount of work on her part, as all the images are meticulously-drawn pointillist pen drawings, and she did all the layout and graphic design work on top of that. It was a wonderful symbiotic working relationship, and I couldn't be happier with how the records came out. The chosen imagery could be related to her interpretation of the music, but that's really a question for her.
Spectral Sound is releasing the album in conjunction with your own label, Active Cultures. It's a pretty new venture — tell us about it.Â
Well I wouldn't even call Active Cultures a label, it's more a swirling entity lacking in form :) While releasing music will be an aspect of the project, it's really just a means to not only give myself more freedom to explore ideas, but also support my friends who are making interesting things. I find the idea of curation intriguing, so Active Cultures will allow me to flex that muscle a bit. Actually, Molly Smith who did the artwork for my record has helped develop the aesthetics for the project. I also worked with Bill Converse aka Tide Eman, who produced the Active Cultures record that came out in June. That was followed up by the Patricia LP co-released with Spectral Sound. There are a few other releases coming together, but the next record will be an archival release of music recorded by Todd Sines in the '90s, from around his .Xtrak and Enhanced days. I also recently started working on developing a website with a friend of mine named Jesse Pimenta, who records music as Dreams and has a record coming out on Apron records soon. Not sure what else to say, time will tell where it goes.
