reading time: 12 minutes

More than likely, it requires multiple essays to discuss the connection between music and cars and how many songs or tracks were written about it. I leave that pleasure to someone else, but when it comes to electronic music and cars, french producer, DJ, and Live Act VOISKI is likely one of the artists where that “Sujet” comes out stronger than in others - in titles and sound. His synths appear like a Le Mans racing car in full force, just recently to be heard again in Delsins’ 150th (congrats DELSIN!) release “ The End of Fiction.” To honor the occasion we caught up with Luc Kheradmand, and spoke - a little delayed - about travel, gear and his approach to collaboration. And, of course, cars.

Hi Luc! It’s summertime and both holiday and festival season is in full swing - where are you taking this interview from and how are things?
Hi everyone :) I’m currently sitting in the sky on my way to Tokyo,  flying somewhere above the Black Sea near Varna in Bulgaria, to be precise. I am super excited to return and play in Japan after 3 years! 

You collaborate with multiple artists. One could say that the key to a successful collaboration is that all contributors can play out their uniqueness and merge them without losing their specific touch. That it’s about complementing and enhancing each other. What’s your way of doing this and choosing the artists?
My astrological birth chart shows a strange ruling passion for duos and collaboration with one person at a time. It really seems that I thrive in “duo mode” in art or life in general.
In a music context, it usually starts with a very strong friendship and mutual respect for each other’s work. Then you will always find at least one similarity in our work and one strong disagreement. Herein lies the tension that will make the combination alive and interesting. I think the secret is to recognize what makes your partner sound so unique. Find out what you admire in their work, where our strengths lie and combine the right forces into the project. With .Vril for example, I admire his work on drum treatment, so we thought he should take care of the drums of our Vrilski project and I would do the melodies. Same with Eliott Litrowski - I love the way he programs groovy funky drums, and also his weird sound fx and accidental sounds. He’s bringing all the fun to the album of our new Superski Project. 

You are a producer, live act, and DJ but also a photographer whose work seemed to be very much influenced by your years in art school. What were the most profound experiences and takeaways from that time?
I think I already told this story of how we’ve been locked in the auditorium by our performance teacher who really wanted us to listen to “Einstein on the Beach,” a 3h repetitive music opera by Phillip Glass. I think this happened in one of the first weeks after we started school, and it was definitely a strong way to start! Besides that, I remember a lot of empty moments wandering around in this new town, Cergy, a futuristic ideal city from the 70s that failed to attract families or businesses and that became our desolated playground for 5 years. That is how I got fascinated by transit points, waiting rooms, and uninhabited moments.

Talking about influences - what has inspired you lately?
Persian mystic trance music. It comes from my roots and childhood. I forgot about it for a while, but somehow it came back… I am very much into Mohammad Reza Mortazavi’s work at the moment, mysterious exorcism and ritual music from other regions of Iran.

As a producer and live act your synth sounds are very distinct, I even heard the term “voiski-esque” once, so many of our more gear-focused readers would be interested in what's your favorite piece of gear.
Undoubtedly a very strange and ultra-rare synthesizer called the Knas - Polygamist hand made by Karl Ekdahl in Baltimore in 2013.
It’s a crazy instrument that seems to be made for hesitant artists who cannot decide if they want to do Power Noise or PsyTrance. So you always end up doing something in between. It’s both colorful and harsh, grumpy and sweet, super playful and very serious too.  I did Megatrance 1 and 2 with it, and a Jomox 888 for the drums :) 
Every good friend of mine knows how much I love Jomox drum machines.

How do you go - let's say about the “curation” and arrangement of your machines/ tools when working in the studio? What matters to you most, and how often do you rearrange the setup?
This is an interesting question as I just happened to move from my old apartment and rebuilt a completely new studio room.
One thing I wanted was to have all the machines pre-routed to an audio patch bay linked with the mixer and have them all connected to a midi rooter, too. So that when I turn on the studio everyone is ready to go and can be called whenever I need. My previous studio was a mess, I had to manually plug every instrument I wanted to use, ending up not using them but a VST plugin instead.  I wanted to avoid all kinds of hassle I could get in my work environment. This way, if I ever feel lazy to use my instruments again, it has to be just a bad day or something. Maybe I should just go for a walk or nap instead.

During the lockdown period, you took pictures out of a beautiful window on the french countryside and offered a significant amount of tracks on your Bandcamp regularly that were produced during that time. Could you describe to us a bit about the process that occurred? How did it help you during confinement and how did you experience the creative flow?
Most of these confinement tracks were not created at that time. In fact, I wasn’t feeling creative at all during these days. I wanted to keep a connection with my supporters, knowing that I would not be able to share my work physically on shows anymore.
I happened to have this huge folder full of unreleased work that I comfortably kept for future releases, but that made no sense to me anymore. It felt like they were belonging to a long gone past. When the french lockdown started I decided to release them daily one by one and said I will stop at the end of it. 
It turned out to last 55 days, which meant for me to release 55 tracks .. that was pretty challenging, but it felt a bit like a deliverance. 
Having so many tracks sleeping in my hard drive for years was kind of a burden. It was surely comforting, but I needed to get rid of it to urge my creativity to come back later on in a different / better version of myself.

I remember we first met at La Station in Paris at a Giegling Party. I still have very fond memories of that place, as I never really connected to the club scene in Paris while living there. Following the closure of Concrete and the forced silence during confinement - how do you see the current electronic scene in Paris and in which direction is it heading?
There was a big industrial hardcore wave following the COVID madness. It was fitting well with the atmosphere. Everything was dark and scary, the faster and harder side of techno took off, and it made a lot of sense, of course, at that time. I thought it was the perfect soundtrack for a dystopian future in a context of a global pandemic, environmental crisis, and fear of nuclear war. For sure, you would not want to party on deep house at that point. 
Nowadays, everything is new, and a bit spread out. There are many new teams, new artists, new places, open airs, warehouses, and various music styles as well. I have the feeling the community became so much larger. Losing Concrete was very moving, but If I look at it now I have never seen my city so enthused about electronic music in 20 years. Parisian even go and party in the suburbs while you wouldn’t hold your breath for them to cross “the peripherique” for anything back in the day. You could forget about it, really. 

There is a place in Paris a few may not be able to forget…a bar called “Udo”. I heard about it from friends and heard you were a regular there…
Udo was super nice! One of the most friendly places our scene ever had!  It was a German bar created by hyper-passionate people :) I was there almost every week. I met so many friends and now colleagues at Udo. I miss that kind of places :) Actually, I would even go to Udo with the kids! It had this sweet summer in Berlin kind of vibe. 

This interview made me listen to your more ambient-dominated “Disconnections, Music for Clouds” again. Honestly, with the current travel disruptions in Europe, it’s still a very well-fitting title and a good companion for those journeys. What is your experience in post-pandemic life on the road as an artist and family man?
Ah! (horror scream) Travels became very chaotic indeed. A lot of delays and cancellations, missed connections, last minute visa panic. We really need to be hardcore, skilled travelers to handle the stress of some tricky situations. It’s a real work of patience and zen that actually started in this weird art school we talked about earlier. 
With the family, I would be more likely to drive my car, I love to drive and be responsible for the time I want to lose here or there.

“Sick Parrots” - the so-called “bundle of artists’ indecisions” was released in 2018 on your imprint Super95. The album contains tracks that seem to stretch the preconceptions of what is “ready” or “good enough” to be released. How do you determine that something is released or ‘parked’? Any advice also for young producers?
Some tracks take more time to finish than others, but in general, I try to finish them as fast as possible in a few hours. If the track needs more attention, it’s important to stop regularly before you get bored with it and start to think it’s not as good as you thought when you started it. This type of feeling comes after spending hours on a loop, and you end up trashing everything out of exhaustion. You always have to remember that no one is going to listen to this track for 5 hours on a loop, just like you did. 

Let your brain breathe and come back tomorrow or two days later. Make sure you forget about it and when you play it again, imagine that you hear it for the first time. At this point, you will have a clear mind about your work, and you will know if it’s ready or what adjustments you need to bring to finish it. 

Let’s now discuss your latest EP, “The End of Fiction” on Delsin. Delsin chose this EP as their 150th release - which is quite special for such a regarded imprint. Would love to hear more about your connection to the label in general and how this EP came about.
I've been following Delsin for years. I discovered them in a record shop in Paris and fell in love with their sound. I was getting every Delsin release I could find at that time: from Shed to Redshape, Taho, Vince Watson, Dynarec, Delta Funktionen, and of course, Newworldaquarium, which became a fundamental influence in my work. I remembered traveling to Berlin in 2010 to see him play on a label night at Panoramabar. Morphosis did a live set that I will always remember, a kind of live set I had to sit down and cried for half an hour right after it.  I don’t remember how I ended up sending them some music, I think it was around 2014 after I released on another dutch label called Field Records, they contacted me to do a release together and I joined this lovely family one year later with my first Delsin output. 

The tracks on the EP are in classic Voiski fashion with a more refined crispiness to them. Looking into the development of your sound, how do you experience it yourself?
I think you've got the point exactly. I wanted to keep the Voiski essence while bringing my sound to another level, taking advantage of the hours of production tutorial I watched on youtube during my COVID retirement. The crispiness mainly comes from a new crazy synthesizer called Norand - Mono, an absolute banger for unlimited creativity! 

The Release comes with artwork by dutch artist Boris Tellegen, who also exhibited a huge piece in the basement of the famous club TROUW. What brought that connection to life and what made you choose the cover artwork?
It's a historical connection of Delsin, actually. Boris collaborated for many years with them, first designing all the artwork of their Sublabel Ann Aimee since 2003.
As they wanted to celebrate their 150th release they asked Boris and the team for a classic Delsin / Delta design which I enjoyed very much! They just sent this cover picture as it is, and we loved it instantly.

One thing that always strikes me with artists, or what I am curious to understand, is the balance between intuition but also external inspiration such as art and nature… what needs to be given that you are in the state that unleashes your creative force?
This I never really understood. There’s a part of the mood or emotion going on at the moment, but since my work is also very techno(logical), there’s also a big part of randomness coming from the machine itself; from which instrument I decide to use and with which effect I would put it into this day or night - there’s a part of luck. 
This is why I don’t see myself as fully responsible for my creation, I’m more like a receiver, a curator who decides what I want to keep in what is being made at this instant. I rarely have an idea of what I want to do when I start to work.  

What is the interview question you always wanted to be asked but never were? And what's the answer to it
What would I do If I were not a music artist? I think something related to cars, ideally a designer or a taxi driver.