Endless Detours: Q&A with John Roberts

We all thrive on knowledge. We thrive on expressing our innermost thoughts through a medium we hope to master: whether that’s through words, film, craft, or music. For the reclusive figure of John Roberts, it’s the latter. Roberts is a producer whose trade has transported him across the pond, from modest years in Cleveland to the underground rumblings of the Berlin techno zeitgeist. Making a name for himself in Germany, he also became the first American signing for Hamburg’s post-minimalist platform, Dial Records.

Roberts’ thought patterns are expressed via beautifully textured layers of instrumental sounds, and he tells his story while awakening a sense of melancholic intoxication in the listener. Debut album Glass Eights landed to critical acclaim back in 2010 and, after a string of carefully built EPs, we can expect his latest release – Ausio – to allure listeners astray with a fresh array of intriguing sounds, deep reflections and delicate melodies.

We caught up with Roberts via Skype ahead of the new EP, out 12 May on Dial, to get to know what makes him tick.

The Skinny: Your early production days were spent creating music from whatever synthesiser you could borrow from Guitar Center. How do you square the with the widespread availability of tools for budding producers these days?

John Roberts: I think there are always small pockets of people doing interesting things, and then larger groups of people doing less interesting things.

Has anything in particular caught your attention?

I read an interview with Beck this morning and I thought I should listen to his new album as he's an artist I've always appreciated; but I don't listen to much new music, or music in general... I don't have any sort of stereo system at home so, at the moment. I just listen to music on my phone when I'm walking. I've been too lazy to load new songs on it though, so I've just been listening to two songs from the band Suicide on repeat.

I like listening to the same song over and over again. I think Suicide songs are especially good for this sort of thing because a lot of them are very linear, like long straight lines and I think it's sort of nice to walk to a song that seemingly goes on forever.

You were the first American to release a record on Dial. What's that been like?

It’s nice, but there’s a few more Americans now. Last year, a long time Dial friend Scott Mou released a really great album [End Times] on the label under the name Queens. Then, I think this year or next year, DJ Richard from White Material is also going to release an album on Dial which should be nice. Dial has always based itself on friendship, first and foremost.

Your connection with Dial (no pun intended) began in the MySpace era. Free services like SoundCloud are a great way for emerging artists to publish their music, but with its threat to sales, do you think it has a viable future?

I don't know, all of those things are a bit difficult for me. I'm really disgusted by all of them in a way. I think they are really boring pits that are easy to get caught up in, but then they are really helpful for disseminating information quickly. But with SoundCloud specifically, I think the question of hurting sales is really irrelevant as almost no money is made off of selling records now anyway.

It's like what we talked about earlier with the availability of tools for creating music. Of course, there are always going to be people that use these websites in creative ways and find ways to use them to get exposure but then there will be millions of other uninteresting things to wade through on there. Websites like SoundCloud become less and less interesting to me personally... as does spending time on the internet in general.

What do you think to artists using social media to develop hype for a release or live shows? Burial is the obvious anti-poster boy for this.

Well, I think it works for some people, but it depends on your personality. Some musicians love to show the world what they eat for breakfast every morning, some love to show them only the records they release, and some love to show nothing... so whatever works, I think.

Do you think the attachment of personality affects a listener's enjoyment of the individual's music?

I don't think it will put everyone off. I think some people really love the idea of being kind of figuratively talked down to, or witnessing someone's arrogance. I think some people love that sort of thing. I think ultimately music, or entertainment, is really just about a fantasy. It's like the Kardashians: everybody hates them but their show is one of the most watched shows on TV.

You've mentioned before that you want to stay true to house music but have some melodic, pop elements, which you achieved with Glass Eights. Fences adopted organic sounds from various sources – so, where is your sound at now?

It’s taking endless detours. House music has always been a mix of a number of different genres, so there really isn't a limit to what you can reference or borrow from as far as I can see. Making music has always been more like curating to me; just taking pieces of sound which are appealing and collating them together. But I also don't care about being a ‘part of’ house music or anything like that necessarily. I'm just interested in exploring my own interests musically.

Your work consists of a lot of samples. Do the samples in Glass Eights and Fences tell a story?

Definitely. Songs always tell a few stories at once: the story that the artist wanted to tell, which the listener never really knows, and then the story that the listener reads into a song. With sampling, I guess there is another layer, since you then have pieces of whatever story the original artist you are sampling wanted to tell.

You're playing Sankeys for the first time at the end of May! You've mentioned before how you're tired of the experience of electronic music being seemingly stuck in a loop of club nights. What do you see for the future of live electronic music performance?

I'm more interested in anti-performance than performance, really. I've had the chance to play in a few really old clubs where the booth is completely separate from the dance floor and I really liked that. I think, as a spectacle, seeing musicians is kind of a boring concept. I'm really interested in sharing the music that I've produced, but I'm not interested in putting on some sort of intense stage performance. The best show I ever saw was Panda Bear a few years ago, who didn't move much for his entire set, and I think about that show all of the time... I like an honest performance. I love live music, I really do, but I just like the focus to be on the music rather than the musician. A show in pitch darkness would be ideal!

Maybe for future live performances you could have a sidekick on hand to flick a massive off switch at a certain point in the show.

I'll have to look into that.