MACHINE OIL

-Let’s start from the beginning - what’s your first memory of music that left an impression on you?

Machine Oil: Well, my parents were fans of country music. That didn’t really click for me until I got older, actually. And even then, it was only the really old stuff that I came to appreciate - like Johnny Cash or Hank Williams Sr. It’s not something I listen to a lot now, but it was always there, especially because of my mom.

-And look where that led you.

Completely in the opposite direction! When I was about eight or nine, I started playing violin, and from there it just kind of snowballed into bass, piano, guitar - all kinds of other instruments.

-What made you start creating music yourself, and when did that happen?

Machine Oil: I actually got really lucky. I went to a primary school that was focused on the performing arts. They had music, theater, and art programs, and it was also bilingual - which, for the US, was pretty unique. Maybe there are more schools like that out there, but in the town where I grew up it was a special program.

So all through primary school I had art classes, theater classes, and music classes. I just naturally gravitated toward music, started studying violin, and played classical violin in the orchestra. Then, as I got older, I was the tall kid, so I ended up playing bass because no one else could reach it! Around that same time, I picked up a guitar and started discovering punk rock, metal, and all kinds of other music.

-Do you feel like this path in music has been destiny for you, or more a series of conscious decisions?

I think it just happened when I was younger. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it was just what I did. Then, probably in my late 20s, I actually walked away from it for quite a while. Maybe not 10 years, but close. I didn’t pick up an instrument, didn’t play anything, didn’t even make sound. And it wasn’t until my late 30s that I got back into it after some bad experiences in the music industry. I completely stepped away, and then I kind of rediscovered my passion for it.

-What made you get back to it?

The town I grew up in, and the bands I’d played in - we had actually started a small record label. At some point, I decided I wanted to put out records again for other people, not just for my own projects. I released a few things, and that kind of reignited it. Just being around creative people again, around musicians, made me realize I still had something to say.

-What would you say are the core principles or recurring themes that have stayed with you and your work from the beginning until now?

Texture and melody. Even though you don’t always hear them right away, because the music I make tends to be noisy, aggressive, but also slow. Back in the early ’90s, I was playing in industrial metal bands, when that genre was still becoming a thing, before it kind of burned itself out.

I always gravitated toward the slower stuff rather than the really fast, because to me that leaves room for texture and layers. I love building things that are dense with different kinds of sounds. And even though it’s aggressive and heavy, I always try to sneak in some melody. It doesn’t always come across, but it’s there - sometimes it’s just static played at different pitches, sometimes it’s a piano buried deep in the mix. Even if the music isn’t meant to be “pretty,” there’s usually a trace of it somewhere. And a lot of times it’s unintentional, I’ll listen later and think, “Huh… I don’t even know where that came from.”

-In your live sets, do you leave room for improvisation, or is everything planned out completely?

It depends. Everything I do is built on patterns, but the structure is completely improvised on the spot. I’ve been doing a lot of that in the last few years. When I bring in other people and it’s more like a band, then it gets more structured - actual songs from beginning to end.

-Yeah, I have heard that Machine Oil sets sometimes include multiple musicians. What’s been your most exciting collaboration so far?

There are a few things that haven’t come out yet that I’m really excited about. I’ve got friends in the industry who are playing on some tracks that I’m hoping to release by the end of the year. It’s tough to pull everyone together because, for them, this is their job, while I have a day job - but it’s worth it.

There’s also an artist here in Arizona, where I live now, called mess.a.lina. She’s doing really interesting things, kind of trip-hop and industrial. About a year ago, I sent her some raw files of a track I was working on, and a month later, she sent it back completely transformed into a song of her own. I just said, “Cool, that’s yours now!” Then I took what she gave me back, chopped it up, and made something new out of it. Now I’ve got some other musicians jumping in to add their parts, so it’s evolved from this bare-bones idea I had into something much bigger.

-It’s like that game where you draw a head on a piece of paper, fold it, pass it to the next person - they draw the torso, fold it, pass it on, and at the end, you’ve got this wild monster.

I love stuff like that because you never know what’s going to happen.

-What do you want people to feel when they come to one of your sets?

Anything. And I mean that literally. For me, music should always make you feel something. I think the worst thing that can happen is if somebody just says “meh” and leaves - because it didn’t make them angry, it didn’t make them happy, it didn’t make them feel anything at all.

I’ve actually kept a review for almost 25 years now. Back when I was in a band called Scar Strangled Banger - an industrial metal band - someone once said, “This is the worst band I have ever seen live.” And I kept it. Because, you know what? He hated us, but he felt something. It stuck with him so much that he mentioned it later in an interview. That’s an impact.

Even with the early Machine Oil stuff, I’ve had people say, “I don’t know what this is… it makes me uncomfortable.” And I’m like, “Great. You’re feeling something.” The worst outcome is indifference. I honestly don’t care if someone loves it or hates it, as long as it leaves a mark.

-So what brought you to Riga and our studio?

My wife and I were thinking of visiting someplace new. We’ve been counting, and I think we’re somewhere in the mid-40s for the number of countries we’ve visited. So, we looked at the map and thought, “Where haven’t we been?” I’ve loved everything Erica Synths has put out in the past few years, and I knew the company was in Riga. I’d also seen other great gear coming from here - Gamechanger Audio, Elta Music. Clearly, something special is happening in Riga.

So, I messaged Girts on Instagram, like, “Hey, I’m going to be in Riga. I’ve got a bunch of your stuff. Can I just drop by and say hi?” And he said, “Yeah, absolutely.” He gave me a date and time, and when we came, we ended up spending four hours here. He showed us around, introduced me to everyone, even let me see some unreleased stuff. Everyone was incredibly welcoming. By the end of the visit, we talked about a residency. This year, when we came back, I reached out again: “How about now?” And here we are.

-During your time here, did you discover any new techniques or elements that you think you could carry on into your future work?

Yeah. In the studio, I had a few days where I came in and worked specifically on the Eurorack setup. I decided to patch a bunch of things without listening to them first - completely intentionally.

On the first day, I realized I was patching the same way I usually would at home, falling back into familiar habits. But since I had multiple days here in the studio with no outside pressure, I decided to throw that approach out. So, on Tuesday morning, I just started patching randomly, and only listened at the very end.

Sometimes it didn’t work, and I’d start over. But a few times, I stumbled onto something really exciting - I recorded and sampled those, and they actually became the foundation for some of the pieces I wrote here. I hope I keep that mindset going forward. It’s so easy to fall into patterns and just do what’s comfortable, but this experience pushed me out of that, and it was inspiring. Turning the sound off while patching is a great technique, because otherwise, if you listen while you patch, it starts steering you in a direction.

Sometimes that can be good - like when I have a sound in my head that I’m trying to recreate. But honestly, I almost never end up exactly where I planned. It’s usually something completely different, and sometimes that’s even better.

So thinking differently helps. Instead of going “oscillator - filter - distortion - effects - VCA,” I’ll throw all of that away. I’ll run the oscillator into reverb, then distortion, then maybe into a filter, then back into something else - maybe distort it again. I’ll just break the chain. And of course, bring in modulators to mess with everything.

-So what’s in your setup for this performance? What’s your weapon of choice in the studio?

I love a sampler, but I prefer making my own sounds. While I was here, I created a lot of material and sampled it all, so I could rearrange and work with it live.

At the core of my setup is the Digitakt 2 from Elektron. At home, I also use the Pērkons HD-01 to make loops, which I then sample and dump into the Digitakt. I just know that sequencer so well that I can work really quickly with it. For live work, that’s huge.

I also brought my LinnStrument MPE controller and spent a lot of time with the Steampipe - made a lot of crazy sounds, ran them through distortion and effects, turned them into loops, and sampled those too. That’s a big part of what I did here this week.

-Do you also do field recordings, or only sampling?

I do some field recording, but mostly to capture unusual sounds, not so much to use “nature sounds” in a literal way.

Actually, I recorded something at the hotel we’re staying at. There’s a 30-year-old parrot named Misha who lives there.

-You are making that up.

No! She’s in the breakfast room in the mornings, but afterward, they draw some heavy curtains, close it off, open her cage, and just let her hang out. So two or three times a day, I’ve been visiting Misha in this big, echoey room - tile floors, high ceilings, amazing reverb.

I recorded her making all these strange sounds, and then of course ran them through effects. The best part is that it ended up sounding like someone speaking in a language you can’t quite understand…