Liziuz is a lesser known name in the current electronic music landscape, yet his debut album Geschichten des Lebens, coming out on Dominick Fernow’s Hospital Productions on March 23rd, shows a great deal of passion and craft that sets his work apart from most of the techno releases I’ve listened to recently.
Liziuz takes his time to explore the limitations of certain sounds or instruments. He dwells in endless possibilities, from which he patiently selects only that which mostly fits into the whole story that’s unconsciously building up into one long track, which then gets sublimated into 2 versions, mirroring each other, one ambient and one techno. By doing this, he’s escaping the limits that some artists impose on themselves when creating music, while assembling a psychedelic kaleidoscope where field recordings, analog drones and echoing voices all work together.
Geschichten des Lebens is a truly psychedelic endeavor, but not from a musical perspective, but rather in that original greek etymological sense, a mesmerising sonic manifestation of Liziuz’s mind, going beyond what we might expect from a techno or ambient release.
Ahead of the release of the album we are thrilled to stream the techno version (below) and we also had a chat with Liziuz to discuss the autobiographical aspect of Geschichten des Lebens, what deep listening can do to your ego and more.
The Brvtalist: First off, please walk us through the process of creating Geschichten des Lebens, and what inspired you to make this album.
Liziuz: Well, there is no big master plan behind the making of the two versions, neither there is a deep psychological explanation I can give you to satisfy this interview. I started to make music a long time ago and therefore I had a lot of stuff collected. When Dominick asked me to do a tape (initially it was supposed to be a tape) and told me I can do whatever I want, I didn’t know what to do. I had all this music, but I needed to get a sense of a story. So I took the tracks that had the biggest meaning to me and I drew them into a line, as you would write an autobiography. In the beginning you have all these memories and experiences and once you write them down, you start to see the bigger picture. You begin to realize that it made all sense the way you worked it through. I mean I never wrote an autobiography…
TB: In a RBMA lecture, Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))) (known for their long droney tracks) talks about deep listening through the use of time and distance, a practice I see becoming less and less used in the context of online streaming platforms, where people can easily skip through tracks and not really, genuinely, listen to the music. What are your thoughts on this?
L: Through online streaming platforms I actually have cultivated a habit of listening to podcasts more frequently. All I can say about it is that it seems like everybody always blames the technology, like these streaming platforms destroy our attention span and ability to listen to tracks longer than two minutes. I don’t think so. I think the people who are not able to genuinely listen to music have never been able to do it. If there wasn't such a thing as streaming platforms, they would distract themselves in other ways. I believe there is a pretty strong correlation between a short cut attention and the need to distract somebody. If you engage yourself in a piece of music you can resonate with deeply, you will start to loosen the structures of your person and discover those “rawer” versions of yourself. But you have to be strong enough to go for it and willing to go on, fighting with your ego in order to see yourself more clearly.
Of course there is more out and faster access to it as well, but you don’t have to listen to it.
Liziuz - Geschichten des Lebens (Hospital, 2018)
TB: Why did you prefer to record 2 long tracks instead of multiple shorter ones?
L: I really like the idea of a story expressed in a musical form. I’m not an author and not good at writing, but for me a single track is like one scenario in a book or movie, capturing one emotional development. But personally the crucial part is overcoming this particular emotion and transforming it into something else. Those three seconds between the one track finishing and the other one starting is enough to lose the connection and reset your mind to the next one. It’s like reading a book, and after every scenario there is one empty page in between, it would just drag me out of the experience.
TB: I like to see these tracks as the duality of the human nature, where the ambient version represents our inner, more authentic but also raw self, and the techno version is the persona, that constructed self we want to put out there in the world, while both being necessary to balance each other. How do you see these tracks and what would be the result of these personal interactions and transformations?
L: First of all, that is really a nice interpretation. I was never really interested in crafting a narrative around the music, so it is interesting for me to see what kind of impact it has. Choosing this title and the names of the tracks, it sort of structures your perception beforehand and your interpretation, because let's face it, if I would call the album the “fairytale of a lunatic”, you might have come to a complete other interpretation. I wanted to keep it raw and let it not be rationalized and structuralized, but at the same time it is impossible not to do it. Because our mind does it naturally, it needs to create those “personas” around the raw images, so it can understand and predict it into future events. Personalization on a higher level I guess, so that’s the game between those two interpretations, keep going on in a loop until eternity.
I like to follow your interpretation. I guess what techno certainly does is to provide structure, even though it can get really chaotic. So the popularity of these genres shows a demand of certainty, something you can rely on. On the other side the persona we construct has to be under surveillance at all time and needs to be reevaluated and adapted when the environment changes. Therefore it is necessary to go back to this more raw and pure form of our self, so we can look at it and identify what’s needed to be changed. I have been always interested in the transformative aspect of this process and constantly seeking for techniques and methods to develop and evolve.
Liziuz (Photo by Becka Diamond)
TB: The title of the album roughly translates to "the story of life". Would you consider this release an expression of your life journey, of the process of creating or rather the end result which encapsulates all your past personal and creative experiences?
L: Well, I guess, the title of the album already implicates a certain narrative. Choosing these simple words, you already put some sort of interpretation. I’m more interested in this fact than telling you my interpretation of it.
TB: Is the music a reflection of the city you're living in and of your environments or rather of something more intrinsic and personal?
L: Well, I guess both in a way. I mean your environment defiantly influences your Person and vice versa.
TB: Finally, what can we expect from Liziuz in the upcoming months?
L: I don’t know what to expect from myself!
Thank you to the artist for taking the time to speak with us. This is one of our favorite releases so far this year so be sure to pick it up on March 23rd via Hospital Productions.
-Marie Bungau
Liziuz (Photo by Becka Diamond)