The fall of 2006 finally saw the long-awaited fantasy dvd “Fundamentals” from the Dutch multi media project Wave World aka Gert van Santen, Harry Kessels and computer graphics and animation designer Rolf van Slooten. A good reason to have a chat with the band.How did you guys meet each other and what made you decide to start the Wave World project?
The idea of starting a musical project started in 1995 during a meeting at a local concert in Wageningen, The Netherlands, where Gert was doing PA for a Peruvian singer and a guitarist. Harry was introduced to Gert by the guitar player, and they started talking. Very soon it became clear that their musical ideas were complementing each other very well, and that same evening they decided to start a musical project.
The band’s first steps into music were released on the album “Species”. How was the music created?
Yes, within the Wave World boundaries, “Species” was our first musical project.
Before we started working on “Species”, we had already done a joint project called Solipsist Paradise, resulting in the album “Aware” in 1996. This album was well received and even made it to regular airplay at a number of Dutch national radio shows!
This triggered our motivation to continue working together. But the question was: what style are we mainly interested in? The “Aware”-album was a mix of styles, and we really were looking to focus on a style that suited us best and fitted our taste.
So we started experimenting, producing a large number of tracks in the studio and frequently evaluating, discussing, reviewing while continuing to make more pieces.
The period from 1995 to 1998 was an extremely creative period allowing us to spend hundreds of spare hours working in the studio and recording sound samples in nature.
Gradually it became clear that our attention always was drawn towards complex ambient pieces containing building blocks that were created separately, then blended into an overall track. Having so much raw material, the time had evidently arrived to publish some of it, within a consolidated style. Species was the direct result of our first effort to group together some of this material into one common style.
Rolf van Slooten joined the project as third member quite soon. How did you get I touch?
At that time Rolf had already been working quite a lot on a virtual world on his own, which he planned to release someday as a motion picture. We worked with Rolf for the production of the artwork of “Species”, and he said the music of Wave World would fit perfectly with these images. At our next meeting Rolf told us about this ideas of making a movie of this new world he wanted to create, a voyage through space. It would start out on Earth and end up on a new, very green planet where things were peaceful. We came up with a storyline for this new, imaginary world, a story that could be told as a live concert movie and a novel. But our enthusiasm and ideas also brought us a huge amount of work upon our shoulders.
What happened musically & visually after “Species”?
The album “Structures” contained the tracks performed at the 7th Alfa Centauri Festival in 2000. Having quite a large archive with accumulated material, we decided to publish a third album with another distinct style. This ended up to be “Dimensions”, with space & experimental tracks. In 2001 the triptych “Species”– “Structures” and “Dimensions” were released as the “Continuum- part I” box set.
What made the band decide to release “Another Strange Day on Gonxa” ? (which seems to be kind of a retrospective album with early pieces) years later in 2002? From the mountain of rough material made in the period from 1995 to 1998, we assembled two albums, each with its own distinct style. The album “Species” contained relaxing ambient pieces with some sequencing work, while the album “Another Strange Day on Gonxa” consisted of intensive sequencing tracks of a somewhat more upbeat nature.
“Species” was released at the occasion of the promotional Alfa Centauri festival in 1999, and “Another Strange Day on Gonxa” remained on the shelf until 2002 when it was released on the occasion of the KOMP2001 festival in Poland. This was due to the fact that some of our fans knew the tracks existed, and kept asking us to release it. Some people also had a raw copy of some of the tracks, and it was their enthusiasm that finally made us decide to go for it. We are very glad we did it; it is one of our best selling cds!
How came the initial video-release about?
When Rolf joined the group in the summer of 1999, the project was literally catapulted into its next level, both in terms of ideas and scope. Having both music and computer graphics as our working terrain, and a number of concerts lined up, we anticipated that besides the cd products, a video of our movie would be a sought-after item. With the release of our video, we hit the nail on its head. Particular interest came from the people who had seen one of our concerts. The first VHS-tapes were prepared in the spring of 2001. Many fans still wanted to have the tape just because they were the first ones who saw the live performance in 2000.
When travelling for the gigs in Pennsylvania, we thought that one suitcase of NTSC-tapes and T-shirts would be sufficient for our stateside debut concert as part of Chuck van Zyl’s ‘The Gatherings’ series in Philadelphia. While the first loose green Wave World balloons were wandering over the University campus during a warm October evening, and while we were putting on our monk robes just before going on stage, someone came in to tell us that the table with merchandizing, cds, T-shirts and videos had sold out – within 1 hour! There was even a person who came in, bought each product and left (hence missed a great concert, but that’s a different story!).
And the band went to the UK and USA for concert and further promotional activities, which resulted in a 2cd release
The double album “Cloudseeder” has been released at the occasion of our concerts for the radio program “Echoes” (John Diliberto and Kimberly Haas) and also contains live recordings from our radio concert for Chuck van Zyl’s program “Star’s End”. All the basic material of this album has been programmed on laptops in combination with a small sampler (Korg Electribe ES-1). The reason for this was, we were travelling quite a lot at the time, and during travelling there was quite a lot of free time. So we decided to go for this challenge and do something completely different. Harry and Gert feel this album is still their favourite.
Do tell us the story behind he Russian release “The Falls of Varnal”? Who e.g. compiled the tracks?
In 2000, we were approached by a Russian record label Record One, asking for our permission to publish a number of previously released songs into a selected set of “Best of” tracks, so to speak. This album, christened “The Falls of Varnal”, was to be distributed and marketed in the Russian Federation. Simultaneously, a mutual agreement was made for concerts to be given in Russia at the time of the release. At the moment, Wave World still owes Record One some gigs! This is a typical example of the fact that, when you are working with 3 very creative and busy people, it is extremely difficult to do everything you think of. During most of our meetings, we think up at least 10 new plans (honestly!), which we sadly know we never will be able to put into practice!
The Wave World journey continued with the release of “The Winds of Laax”.
During a concert in Philadelphia in 2005, the first version of “The Winds of Laax” movie was presented. It has been very well received, and we are very eager to finish this movie early 2007.
Please explain why it took so long to accomplish all materials and completing the film on the long awaited dvd “Fundamentals” which came out fall 2006?
Unfortunately, other priorities in our lives have withheld us from completing the dvd within due time. This is an indication just of how extremely busy we have been with our other projects as well, inside and outside Wave World. The direct result of our busy lives for the dvd has been that 1 month of full-time work had to be spread out over a period of four years. Time and again, the “dvd finalization meetings” as we have started to call them in the course of the last few years, proved to be the best way to continue the other on-going audiovisual projects as well.
Why aren’t all images featured on all former cd-releases implemented in one way or the other on “Fundamentals”?
With the contents of the “Fundamentals” dvd, it is filled to the brim. All 9 gigabytes of the dvd have been completely utilized. The previous artwork was part of these releases, being part of these musical endeavours as separate projects. I understood the band already has a new multimedia project in the works scheduled for spring 2007
While continuing to apply the method of creating an expanding universe, Wave World is heading towards completion of the “Winds of Laax” concert movie. When ready, a tour is planned across a number of European countries. This tour is possibly extended to the U.S.A. and Asia. This all is going to happen in 2007.
The new multimedia project is called “Membrane”. It will be a dvd with abstract 3D computer visuals and up tempo electronic music. There will be a lot of danceable beats, but it certainly won’t be “hardcore”. Our old fans will be surprised, but we are sure the music will also attract a lot of “new” music lovers.
The “Membrane” dvd is planned to be released in the second or third quarter of 2007.
