Professor Kliq's interview with Patrick Haour, Chief of Music, Jamendo

1. How did you start making music, and since when have you been playing under the name Professor Kliq?

Well, that's a long story. My uncle and my grandfather are jazz musicians and both had some very nice keyboards (for the time, as this was the early 90's). I was absolutely amazed by the sounds I could make with just pressing a single button or a single key (or multiple keys, eventually). This amazement followed me every step of the way from then on out. I got my first keyboard at 10, started using ACID 1.0 on my Pentium II at the age of 12 back in '99. In 2000 I got a copy of ReBirth, and my brother bought a beat-up old Moog Rogue which he didn't understand so he just donated it to me. Between the Moog and ReBirth, that's what really pushed me off the deep end. I've gone under several different monikers, but I've been "Professor Kliq" for at least 4 years now.

2. How far have you gone professionally? Have you toured, do you DJ in clubs..?

Touring? Wow. I'm flattered. Jamendo is about the greatest distance I've gone so far. I'm a kid, age 22, and I live about 20 miles outside of Chicago. I'm on my last semester at community college and I'll be transferring to Columbia in Chicago to major in Audio Production &Design. In the meantime, I work 30 hours a week at a gas station. I've never played a live show, nor am I a DJ. I'm a composer and a musician from stem to stern. I don't own turntables. Everything I do, from creating synth patches, composing and sequencing, programming beats, chopping samples, editing and mixing and mastering, is all on my computer with my small MIDI setup and a set of pretty satisfactory headphones. For the past 10 years, as long as I've been doing this, I've spent all of my time indoors.

3. What are your main influences, the musical tradition you would like to be a part of?

Ninja Tune, without a doubt. Once I discovered what Ninja Tune was and started listening to the roster of artists on that label, I felt like a desperate prayer had been answered. I honestly think that Ninja Tune has created its own genre - without genres. Everyone from Mr. Scruff, Bonobo, Coldcut and, most importantly, Amon Tobin, don't fit into each other's categories, but it all makes sense once you know they're on Ninja Tune. If a genie could grant me one wish, just one, I would want to get signed onto that label. I think I could die happy once I accomplish that. Warp Records also plays a similar role; I still have a low-cut jacket that I had a friend spray paint a giant stencil of the Aphex Twin logo on the back of it. I still wear it... Then there's lots of jazz, old school rap and hip hop, other names that I could go on forever about. Other than that, I grew up around a lot of jazz, my mother used to blast 80's house and techno-pop from her yellow RX-7 when I was a baby, and my brother introduced me to a lot of music at a young age.

4. How did you discover Jamendo and why did you choose to post your music there? What do you expect from the site?

My manager, Dan, website developer and very dear friend (www.whathuhstudios.com) threw my music on up this site without me knowing. He came to me one day and said "So hey, have you ever heard of Jamendo?" I didn't think much of it at first... you know, one more medium of which nobody will care about what I do, which is something I'm used to... needless to say, I was wrong. After not only seeing the response that I recieved from listeners but also the population real talented musicians with a community that followed them made me feel a lot less alone than I had before. I check Jamendo every day, as well as browse through the various electronic sections for music to listen to while doing homework. The Hi-Fi Hustlers are a good example... theirs was probably the first album I downloaded from Jamendo. Funny story: after a while of being on Jamendo, I recieved an email from this place called Subnav.com, asking me to be in one of their mixes. Hi-Fi Hustlers were all over that site... well the point is, Jamendo opened an entirely new world to me that I never knew could exist, and it keeps getting bigger for me every day.

5. Do you also sell your music, or just give it out for free?

Initially, my manager wanted to get me on iTunes. There was a small response, close friends actually bought the album, but that was about it. I felt like selling it was being a little selfish early on, not to mention that I do have a job... why do I need to make money on this stuff so early? I'm young and unsigned. I'm just a kid in my bedroom. The payoff of knowing that people are listening to it and perhaps even enjoying it is much greater than anything I could get paid. Thusly I decided that it should be free for as long as it can be (unless I miraculously get signed by someone, but donations are accepted).

6. You have a bunch of albums up on Jamendo. Are they your entire production as Professor Kliq?

Absolutely. Here in the suburbs, it is incredibly hard to find any musician that doesn't aspire to be in either a punk band, metal band, or the oh-so-popular jam band. There are actually several people, a few I know personally, who don't really look at what I do as actual music. They lump it into some kind of "DJ" thing. "Oh yeah, I heard your mixes." "Hey, you do some sweet DJ type stuff." That's wrong. I have twokeyboards: one with letters and numbers, another with black and white keys. That's how I get things done and they get done alone. (I do, however, have many heroes that are DJ's, one is a very dear friend. I respect DJ's, but a DJ I am not.) The two albums that are on Jamendo now are much older... I deliberately put the years they were being made behind the title just so folks would understand that... uh... they're not very good; at least that's what I thought, but apparently I'm my own worst critic.

7. Tell me about the new album: is it different from the others? if so, how?

I would say some of the biggest inspirations I have in making music is the context in which I associate ambient noise, like being at work, at school, doing homework, being at a friend's house, going for a walk, etc. I recently acquired the means to do some high-quality and incredibly convenient field recording which plays an integral role in the album. It is different from the others in that it pushes my boundaries a little further and gets a little more experimental (dare I use the term), but still focuses on both sides of my spectrum: slow and ambient, heavy and funky. It is also much longer, at 16 tracks and a little over an hour. At the same time, it also pays homage to my first album, which marked the beginning of my interest in pursuing music as much as I have. That album is up on Jamendo, called "The Scientific Method". This was essentially documenting my first attempt at making actual pieces which involved drum samples, recorded and composed sounds, as well as an invested attention to structure and album sequence. I release two albums after that, "Our Universe" and "Guns Blazin", both moving forward without looking back. I decided recently that "The Scientific Method" should be a series, whether or not I end up doing this professionally, in order to sustain the "Full Circle" that I see in how I grow and how I do things musically, which is a process of learning that not only never ends, but gets exponentially deeper with every step.
The new album will be up on Jamendo on October 10th, and it's called "The Scientific Method, Volume II: Experimens in Sound and Perspective"

8. What are your plans now? And what are your goals and dreams as an artist?

I've always had a hard time answering that question as I probably ask it myself every day. I've always been under the assumption that you really can't get anywhere in life without a piece of paper saying that you should, thusly I want a degree. There is a very good chance that I'm wrong, but it certainly can't hurt. Hopefully school will lend some connections to do what I could enjoy, preferably doing music for video games. To be completely honest, that's a plan B. My dream? Just like anys artist: get signed to a label and have a lengthy and successful career of putting out albums. I want to be just like my heroes. Like I said before, if I got signed to Ninja Tune, I'd feel like I've lived pretty close to a full life. I have plenty of ideas, particularly for doing live shows, pushing the boundaries of electronic music and how it's percieved, as well as (now bear with me) inventing and developing different kinds of electronic music equipment, particularly MIDI controllers.

9. Can you tell me about a moment/anecdote/fact that you would consider a particular achievement, something you're proud to have done or experienced as a musician so far?

I don't really have any "big" achievements to speak of... but one event does stand out... Back in high school, I didn't care about or do anything. Literally. My grades were so bad that I'm not sure why or how I graduated. I was taking a Music Theory AP class and doing horribly, of course, but had submitted an assignment for composing a Christmas song.

One of my teachers was really impressed and pulled me into one of the piano rooms in the hall and asked me why I was doing so badly in Music Theory... I'm not sure what I said, probably the usual crap... but he did say one thing: "I want to be able to say 'I had Mike Else as a student', that you went on to do something really huge." Nobody had ever said anything like that to me, and I'll never forget it.