Music
Get a glimpse of the future with Lanark Artefax
Before his new installation opens in Glasgow, the Scottish electronic artist talks sci-fi, mythology and avoiding nostalgia. “Most folk have lost faith entirely that there's anything new to be made…”
Scottish producer Lanark Artefax – real name Calum MacRae – has been quietly climbing the ranks of experimental electronic since 2015 with his mesmerising, minimalist brand of soaring, sculptural techno-meets-IDM-meets-classical. Following releases on UIQ and Whities, and a debut AV set at this year’s Unsound that had everyone buzzed, MacRae is about to launch an installation in Glasgow in association with Red Bull Music Academy. The Absent Material Gateway offers a rare, immersive insight into the mysterious organisation of the same name.
Ahead of the installation opening at Glue Factory, Lanark Artefax talks us through the Gateway, Glasgow, and how it feels to have Aphex Twin as a fan.
Sign up to visit The Absent Material Gateway here
In what ways did being in Glasgow influence your music? I read you used to sneak into local clubs when you were 15...
I have a sort of strange relationship with Glasgow and the music scene, having not been born here. I kinda don't have anything to do with it, other than I have loads of mates that are more involved. I just do my own thing. I don't really know what to think about that though. But certainly it's shaped what I do massively. Most of that stems from what was going on here during my teens, and certainly sneaking into nights underage was a part of that.
Would you have been into the work of Lee Gamble and Nic Tasker before releasing on UIQ and Whities?
Yeah, totally. I was, and still am, a massive fan of Lee's stuff. I hugely admire what he does, his ethos, his perspective on his relationship to his work, etc. Since putting out the record with UIQ, along the way he's had quite a big influence on what I'm doing now and what I want to do in the future. Hope he doesn't mind me saying that. Playing with him in Poland [at Unsound] was really special for me in that respect. As an artist he's a big inspiration. With Nic, it's much the same. I have a lot of respect for how he approaches running the label and that's ultimately why I released with them.
Lanark Artefax
© Press
I can't downplay how much it means to me to know that Aphex and Björk are fans of my stuff
Your music is generally categorised as IDM. Do you agree with that?
I really don't care what press people call the music. I don't make it to try to fit into any particular slot or group or whatever. I think it's fair to say it's IDM-influenced, meaning it's influenced by ‘90s Warp – but what isn't? I do like that music a lot. One thing it isn't is nostalgic, or harkening back to anything. Well, actually that's not totally true – that Touch Absence track started off as a bit of a throwback to a Mike Paradinas track, but it became its own thing in the end. I'd like to think that my stuff is quite different from most in that it's not trapped in this manic postmodern nostalgia trip. I genuinely think most folk have lost faith entirely that there's anything new to be made. That's nonsense.
Do you think of your music as club music when you're making it, or has its progression into DJ sets been unexpected?
I don't spend much time in clubs and so it's never really an angle that I'm shooting for when making stuff. Similarly I'm not really into dance music which is what most club music is rooted in. That said, beyond the club scene there aren't too many places that seem interested in hearing the kind of music I make. Glasgow is particularly rubbish at the moment for good experimental festivals and events. However, there's some interesting stuff starting to break through here so I think that's likely to change – I hope!
I read that Aphex Twin's Drukqs was the first electronic music you properly listened to, so how does it feel that he's a fan? And that Björk’s a fan too?
I can't downplay how much it means to me to know that Aphex and Björk are fans of my stuff. I consider both of them to be at the absolute apex of the art form and have felt that way from a young age, so seeing them enjoying my music is like... well, it means everything to me that my stuff seems to resonate these artists. I find it massively overwhelming.
You told Resident Advisor your AV set at Unsound was partly inspired by the film Arrival – to what extent has sci-fi influenced you in general? Is that a link we can consistently expect to see in future work?
Arrival actually wasn't one of the things we discussed when getting together references for the live show. However, after the fact, it kinda clicked that that was an idea that had sort of germinated in my mind. Although, from very early on Jacob [Chabeaux] and I had discussed incorporating semiotics and linguistics into the visual stuff. I thought the film wasn't that great, but they handled the linguistic stuff in quite a new and interesting way.
I think sci-fi has actually played a role in scrambling people's brains about what 'the future' really means
Sci-fi hasn't influenced me much. I think it's too much of a pulpy genre for me to get on board with completely. Aesthetically it’s quite a hollow genre, with the most, and perhaps only, interesting aspect being its effects of estrangement. Beyond that it's mostly just entertainment, sort of like video games – suppose that's why most video games are sci-fi – which is no bad thing at all. In terms of thinking conceptually about the future, I'm more interested in how people will recontextualise the relationship between things like art and the sublime as 20th century culture continues on down its current path of disintegration. It's exciting and scary! I think sci-fi has actually played a role in scrambling people's brains about what 'the future' really means, anyway – so I sorta just steer clear of it.
Can you tell us about the concept behind your installation for Red Bull? What should people expect?
The installation is more or less a kind of hybrid showcase/art installation of something I've been involved with since I was a child. A lot of people from the particular part of Lanark that I grew up in will be quite familiar with The Absent Material Gateway and the history and mythology surrounding it – although it's mostly speculative if you aren't actually involved with them.
Essentially the installation is a little piece of The Gateway that I was allowed to make somewhat public and integrate into my own work. It took a fair bit of persuasion for them to allow me to showcase a few of the objects as part of it, but ultimately The Gateway isn't particularly active, so I don't think they minded as long as it was more like a showcase, or exhibit, much like you would maybe get in a museum or whatever. I dunno, perhaps the install will help revivify interest in them again, but it's been a long time and I'm not sure we want that anyway.
On the music side, I've not really made much conventional sounding stuff since the Whities music. I'm quite bored of everything like that just now, so this was an opportunity to work on something quite different – more like musique-concrète for the world the installation inhabits.
Can you tell us anything else about the Gateway?
I always refer to it as a sort of new-materialist secular-millenarian type group, that doesn't have a particularly large membership outside of Lanark. The objects that are included in the upcoming installation are pieces from their catalogue that goes back quite a way, to the early ‘90s. I was really too young to understand a lot of the history properly, and nowadays none of us are really all that sure what went on – there's nobody that was around at the beginning.
Essentially The Gateway was started up after some people supposedly found what they called 'other-terrestrial' objects in the woods out in Lanarkshire somewhere, and it eventually grew into a kind of philosophical, spiritual, scientific research group. Maria [Sledmere] and I spent a long time with some of the original members pulling together scraps of the some of the history that was documented, but there's not much of it and it's hard to know what's accurate and what isn't. Most of what we collated is drawn together into some kind of narrative on the site for the install.
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