Q&A with Sebastian Gainsborough aka Vessel
Photo: Christalla Crow
We caught up with electronic producer and composer Sebastian Gainsborough (Vessel) ahead of the world premiere of ‘Squint’ – a brand-new piece for string quartet, electronics and percussion.
Hi Seb, it’s great to have you with us again. What have you been up to lately?
Thank you, I'm honoured and excited to be working with Manchester Collective again. I've spent most of this year co-scoring a film, but I’ve also managed to squeeze in a fair amount of production work for a few other musicians – both of which activities are quite unusual for me.
This is your second commission for the Collective, after Paradise Lost. What’s it like writing for an ensemble?
Honestly, I'm never really sure what it will be like until getting in a room with the players, who are the true alchemists. I write, and hope, and pray that it will sound half-decent. I've generally been lucky enough to work with intuitive, exceptionally talented musicians with razor-sharp instincts. They do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to digging out the best of the music.
Tell us about ‘Squint’. How did it come together and what can people expect to hear?
I'm pretty reluctant to talk about what I write in detail. I know some people like to know the context or the story, but I personally don't find it useful, and ultimately, people will take away what they will. If I've done a good job, words should be irrelevant.
That said, and because I don't want to be a pompous ass, some buzzwords for the piece might be: female Christian mystics in the Middle Ages; the perverse, surprising joys to be found in grief, isolation and loss; and love, as always.
I should also say that ‘Squint’ features a text borrowed from a piece by Belgian artist Anouk De Clercq, who is a dear friend of mine and a long-time collaborator. I created the music for her piece 'One', and she very generously let me borrow the text from that – powerfully voiced by another dear friend and amazing artist, Helga Davis – and re-hang it on ‘Squint’.
Has working with acoustic instruments affected how you think about electronic music?
I have a different appreciation of the dynamics of individual notes in a chord now. But I don't instinctively partition off types of music from one another, or think, today I'm going to tap into this or that. I don't think about electronic music, or acoustic music, vocal music, punk or jazz, or whatever. The music is always serving the expression. Whatever works, works.
What are you reading at the moment?
I've been reading a lot around ‘Squint’. If you're feeling freaky, I can thoroughly recommend a book called ‘Crying in the Middle Ages’. I've also been reading the autobiography of the English mystic Margery Kempe; ‘The Mirror of Simple Souls’ by Marguerite Porete; and a couple of dissertations around that sort of stuff that are too boring to list…