01. Who are you ?
Carlos Ferreira is an ambient/drone musician from Porto Alegre, Brazil. His work is concerned with the nature of listening and sounds’ capability to function as a trigger for memory. He uses the electric guitar as a main source to create time-dilated soundscapes, aiming for an immersive experience. Artist at Past Inside The Present (USA) and Modern Obscure Music (Spain), he has albums released by this and other labels around the world, such as ARCHIVES (Spain), 梅レコード / Umé Records (Japan), Atlantic Rhythms (USA), Aural Canyon (USA), Histamine Tapes (USA) and Giraffe Tapes (Georgia) among others, in addition to producing special live sets for Dublab radio in Osaka (Japan) and Los Angeles (USA).
02. What are you listening actually ?
My references are quite a vast mosaic. I think anything can be a creative vector – a photograph, a film, a book… my album “Hakanai”, for example, was inspired by books by Yasunari Kawabata. Musically my influences are also very diverse. I can mention the most obvious ones, like Brian Eno, Lawrence English, La Monte Young and Susumu Yokota… but I also have a very deep relationship with extreme music and noise, like Swans, Boredoms, Napalm Death, Merzbow… actually I notice a lot of similarities at these two ends of the spectrum. Both create a certain sense of hypnotic catharsis through sound. A relationship of dilated time through the simple or the excess.
Currently I’ve been listening Xiu Xiu, Jim O’Rourke and Moby a lot.
3. How you came to music ?
When I was a kid, my favorite toy was a portable cassette recorder that belonged to my dad. I remember spending whole afternoons recording the sound of my voice, as well as the sounds of my home environment. I believe my interest in exploring sounds has been with me ever since. When I started producing solo albums by myself, ambient music was a natural path to be followed. I don’t believe it was something I searched for, it was just there.
4. What gear do you use in studio/live ?
The guitar is the instrument by which I express myself, it is my voice. But I like to think of it as a sound object, as something that produces sound from electricity. So I try to explore its sonic possibilities, through extended techniques, effect pedals and computer processing. So, my gear, both in studio and live, is basically an electric guitar, a bunch of pedals and a computer.
5. Do you have an anecdote or a memory to tell us about your music ?
When I make music I like to think of myself as a painter – but painting with sounds.
6. Which artist would you dream of working with?
Hard question… there’s a lot of amazing artists I would love to work with. But today I would mainly say Ben Frost, Eiko Ishibashi and Daniel Johns.
7. What are your plans for the future?
In the last years I had the pleasure of meeting and becoming friends with great artists from the ambient community around the world, so my main plan for the future is definitely visiting and performing with them!
ARTIST LINKS
https://www.facebook.com/CarlosFerreiraSounds
https://www.instagram.com/carlosferreirasounds/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCshfzBfR_5-4Cue4Voiy48g
https://carlosferreira.bandcamp.com/
Photo : Leo Caobelli