FOLD Invites [KRTM]
KRTM is an artist who finds comfort in the chaos. From a young age, the Belgian producer and live performer Casimir Desmet was compelled to create and make sense out of disorder. From the influence of his uncle as a child, he found himself drawn to noise and contrasting senses, constructing his own makeshift drum sets from paint buckets, pots and other bits of scrap that he found lying around near his uncle’s studio. From his parents he also gained a sense of wonder from music, inspired by the outlandish record sleeves of Zappa, Pink Floyd and their contemporaries.
It was perhaps, therefore, the eccentricities of his upbringing that fed into the penchants of his musical career. Since launching into the hardcore/techno scene over a decade ago, Casimir has always sought to become a catalyst for people to find what unsettles them and dance with it. Remarking himself on what has now become the benchmark for his studio output, he seeks a balance between control, predictability, anti-climactic events and anarchic grooves, all married together in fierce juxtapositions that evoke a sense of excitement at the weirdness of it all. Now with 10 years of releases behind him, he has nailed a sound which takes listeners on a mental rollercoaster, diving between pleasantries, discomfort, and even horror.
With his second full-length album dropping on 26th April on ARTS, and accompanied by a painstakingly-created film (already live via HATE Magazine), Casimir created an exclusive mix exploring his earlier material, and took the time to share the story behind this new album, how his discography has evolved over time, and why the meaning behind his music is, as he puts it himself, far simpler than most would assume.
It’s been a long time since any of us have managed to step onto a packed dancefloor. So, any updates to your hybrid live sets that we can expect when you return to the booth?
I certainly can’t wait to try out some of the new tunes I’ve been making during lockdown. In fact, that might be the first thing I’ll play out - just to test if they actually work - as I haven’t heard them on a big sound system yet!
You’ve played at many of the biggest techno festivals in the world. Do you find yourself playing different types of music when you’re faced with smaller crowds compared to larger ones?
Not really - the energy is different but I’m pretty maladaptive when it comes to changing my music because of a crowd. If the crowd doesn’t respond to the music, that’s OK with me - I just play mostly my own tracks and the music that I love, and that depends on my mood. Most of my music is in order to dance, but also to become confused and lose yourself. Even if I tried to adapt my style to the venues where I’m playing, there is no good in trying to please people to be accepted.
Touching upon the creative process in the studio, it’s often the case with producing that there is sometimes a sort of conflict between working in line with technicalities versus creative flow. How do you solve any clashes between getting abstract ideas out from the mind and into the expressions of your musical hardware/software without losing the main intention behind it?
Work quick, and don’t stay working too long on time segments or phrases. Keep on writing even if it’s bad in the first place – it doesn’t mean it will stay bad. If you react with another sound that communicates well with that bad sound, then these sounds form relationships which might have been impossible before. I let probability take over sometimes, but I try to follow the guidance of ideas that pop up throughout the process. Sometimes that means doing nothing but listening and being patient until something happens that is undeniably beautiful. I want to be there when that happens.
Have you ever tried any unusual methods of getting ideas down?
It’d be hard to explain an unusual method, because if you explain it, it’s no longer unusual. New methods become conventional pretty quickly and conventional methods can be effective but are easily boring again. When I’m working on something new, I always try to find something new as well. There are so many ideas yet unexplored. Music is too exciting to narrow down the possibilities. Plus, what works for other people wouldn’t necessarily work for me.
Your forthcoming (and second full-length) album ‘It Will Make The World A Better Place’ [ARTS], was something that happened organically. Tell us the story about how it came to exist and the reasons behind it.
I met David [FOLD’s Head of Communications] in Bulgaria and immediately had a good connection with him, so we kept in touch over time. Around mid-2020 he asked me to make a podcast for FOLD, and I started working on that far too late and close to the deadline. I had just finished a podcast for HATE and I had become a bit bored with the podcast format at the time, so after that, I didn’t want to repeat myself anymore, too.
So, I thought, what if I collected all my drums that I’d recorded in the last year and started jamming to see what would come of it? But the project quickly became bigger than I could have ever imagined. When I thought I had finished the podcast, it felt like this “podcast” idea was now really out of proportion, so I sent it over to Emmanuel from ARTS, plus a few close friends, just to have a listen. Emmanuel advised me that I shouldn’t release it as a podcast, because it was getting to a point that it could become an album with a little more work - this was in a matter of days. I’m so happy that David has been supportive of this idea since day one even though ARTS released it in the end.
You remarked that it came about almost unintentionally, and within a surprisingly short amount of time. Has the way you have changed as an artist compared to when you first started out informed any of the creative decisions going into this project?
My confidence was high at that particular time and I was also following a small set of rules I had made which enabled me to write freely and without any technical bullshit. My foot at the time had a broken bone and two fractures, so I couldn’t move about so easily. From that, I had to pack a bag with food and drinks so that I didn’t have to constantly move about. My time working on the album was sitting down, taking no breaks, with what I had in front of me.
Because I record so much every day, I end up with a lot of unused material. And if you do that for more than a decade, it starts to get interesting to dive in and reshape that material, which becomes like your own massive library. I selected a good amount of digital and analogue percussion recordings I knew could work for this project. I still crafted some bits during the recording sessions, but most of the older drums I’d cut up again and put in a couple of hardware samplers so that I could jam. The main synths I wrote in less than two afternoons. Then I’d record some jams with all the material I have. I’d cut out some phrases and mix it all down a bit. It all was very direct and intentional so after finishing the basic writing of all the tunes, I didn’t have to add much after.
An accompanying film to the album debuted via HATE Collective on the 12 th April. The film encapsulates an antagonistic sense of unease, with hazy visuals and glitched out overlays. It’s almost as though the viewer takes the role of a peep-hole voyeur to a bad trip. Why do you think that these feelings are so interesting to explore through music?
The film took me much longer than the writing of the music, because I was going through all this media at a very slow but patient pace. I wanted to create a sort of visual encyclopaedia of all the things that are thrown at us through the media. It’s not always a pleasant experience, so I tried to make these images of our planet (and beyond) with its conflicts more appealing. There is beauty in horror depending on how it is presented.
My main goal was to make everything resemble moving paintings but fashioned with an electrical pulse instead of a human hand. It heavily resembles a moving version of the paintings and monotypes I made over the years in my visual works.
What was the process for the filmmaking?
The music and the film were made almost simultaneously within the same studio. Because I was doing everything myself, I could swap roles whenever I wanted - sometimes I’d make parts of the film and then go back to the tracks to cut out parts. This film scrolls through a landscape of advertising, TV history, military images, hospital images, space, mainstream media, politics, and so on. All of this seems thematically connected but fragmented into pieces that cut out abruptly. I was mainly just trying to find the rhythm of images so they could be a guideline to the music and vice versa. Concepts don’t matter if ears and eyes are happy.
Your exclusive mix for us explores much of your older discography rather than your newer music. How would you describe those chapters of your life compared to where you are now, and how does this mix reflect that?
It’s been a long road towards finally feeling liberated and free of any constraints in genres since I first started releasing music. I can say I feel more confident technically but also musically to leave the supposed layout of techno and hardcore music now - though it’s been trial and error most of the time. This mix is also just a fraction of my work.
When looking at your entire discography as a whole, what do you feel you have evolved from in your past material and what, in turn, have you carried forward?
Some parts feel quite nostalgic. It might sound cocky to say, but part of the reason why I make my own music comes from being discontent with current music. So, making my own music helps me cope with that!
Do you feel that your discography reflects your own personal life too?
It channels all my biased emotions and moods and at the same time gives me balance in life.Take that away and you get a grumpy, childish and immature boy that doesn’t know what to do with himself - so it’s highly functional!
I just want peace and kindness in the end. But art, music or whatever culture, should be liberated from these direct associations. In your creative work, you should be free to do whatever you want - try it! People should be more kind to one another and be more brutal in their creative work.
Your 2018 album ‘Consumer (The Worst Of KRTM)’ was a particularly wild body of work, and bore all the hallmarks of your tongue-in-cheek undertones, from the deprecating title to the track names. Yet underneath this veneer sits real hard-hitting music. Is there a reason why you like to blend these outrageous titles (and images) with your music?
It’s a thrill - just like when you go to the cinema. I love to have an experience when I listen to music and watch music videos or go through the artwork… Some might remember when Regis put on his yellow gloves during an early millennium DJ set? Whatever relevance that has, it’s up to your imagination to find out what that means - I love that. On top of that, his music is so unforgiving and repetitive, beyond hypnotic - it almost leaves you in an eternal state of paralysis if you listen for too long. I wasn’t there (I was 11 in 2001!) when that performance took place, but that video gave me a sense of what techno could be if you challenged your audience. I just get really excited whenever music and images are contradicting or have an unpredictable relationship. I don’t understand why some people even separate music from its visual or lyrical counterpart - it’s part of the same work, so why not take full control and create a universe with full attention to all the elements of a work? It’s too much fun when it all comes together.
That first album was released on PRSPCT Records, while your newest album drops via ARTS on 26 th April. What do you keep in mind when choosing labels to release on?
I don’t send demos anymore, unless they ask me to. I think it’s just too foolish to “make music for a label”. It’s too much unwanted fuzz - I want to concentrate on making music that interests me, not music that fits on a label.
But it certainly took me some time to find the right people in the industry that understood my direction and took me under their wing. I’m just very lucky that my contact with ARTS and PRSPCT is not only business but they’re also good friends. I will always love them for making me part of their platform, but they are genuine people, which is often very hard to find in this industry.
How did Belgium and your past influence your journey into and through music? Are there any other places that have really inspired who you have become as an artist?
Yes to places - but people for the most part. I started raving in Belgium during my adolescent years, slowly traversing from black metal to hardcore rave music. We would rave in abandoned warehouses around Ghent and all the way to squats and free raves around central Europe. It was a different time for me, with no real goals or motivation towards life. Admittedly it was a bit self-destructive at times, but I’ve met beautiful people in those raves that didn’t seem to have an end. Some people we have lost, some people have fallen out of that loop and started a different life, but I’m sure all of these people still have vivid memories of those days. It was overwhelming for me and changed my outlook on life for sure. Even when creating music, I often experience heavy nostalgia for those days.
Are there any other projects sitting in the pipeline that you can tell us about?
It’s better to focus on the present. I have no idea what will happen next, but I’m creating more stuff currently for sure…
Words by Emily Rose