The British artist talks about his transformation from guitar-based songwriting to modular-driven electronics on Downwards Records

Transmission 269: Interview with MICROCORPS

Alexander Tucker is a British musician and artist whose electronic project MICROCORPS emerged in 2019 after he abandoned guitar-based songwriting. He works with modular systems and triggered samples of his own cello and bass guitar—strings bowed, plucked, and struck, then processed until acoustic and synthetic sources become indistinguishable.

Title: Clear Vortex Chamber
Artist: Microcorps
Genres: Ambient, Avant-garde, Electronica, Experimental Music, Industrial Music
Label: Downwards Records
Description: Alexander Tucker discusses MICROCORPS, modular systems, and Clear Vortex Chamber in depth, now on Downwards Records with Regis, Broadrick, and Phew.

His latest album Clear Vortex Chamber, out now on Downwards Records, came after he discarded a year of material and consulted Karl O’Connor (Regis) on production. The record features collaborations with Justin K Broadrick, Regis, Phew, and Elvin Brandhi. Tucker’s background in fine art and experimental comics informs the work; he cites Alan Moore’s (read our interview with Alan Moore) Swamp Thing (read our interview with Alan Moore) and Tarkovsky’s Stalker as touchstones.

Featured image © AgnesHaus

What first pulled you toward creating music?

I started classical guitar lessons and hated it, then traded my classical guitar in for an electric and a small practice amp, which I immediately started to use as a noise machine to make feedback. Once I got a delay pedal it was game over. I got really into creating humming drones and overdriving the amp, much to my mother’s disgust. I used to make rudimentary sound experiments on these TDK loop tapes, but it was years after that I finally got an 8-track recorder. In between that time I was singing in hardcore and post-rock bands, with occasional forays into improvising with friends, until I joined Detroit space rock band Fuxa for a summer, where we toured with Sonic Boom’s Spectrum outfit.

Can you describe the environment you were working in when MICROCORPS first took shape?

Back in 2019 I made some changes in my life and I was getting a little bored with making songs with guitar, I felt like it was becoming formulaic. Also, that first period of my life of making music under my own name felt like a particular time and character that I didn’t really relate to anymore. My love of electronic music was building and I was watching and meeting more artists that were inspiring me, like Mal from Cabaret Voltaire’s band Wrangler, Nik Colk Void, Chris Carter and Cosy Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle. Nik and Chris in particular introduced me to modular systems and the compositional possibilities of these machines. I’ve never worked inside the box or even used midi and I’m still learning all the time about electronics and modular. I’ve always been someone who’s taken a small nugget of knowledge and run with it whilst recording the process of that journey. I was immediately taken by the power of these machines.

Were there particular non-musical inspirations, visual art, books, or films, that fed into your early ideas?

Since about the age of 13 I’ve been a total disciple of comic writer and novelist Alan Moore, in particular his run of Swamp Thing for DC comics in the late 1980s. And most recently his complete re-wiring of HP Lovecraft’s cosmic horror Mythos in graphic novel Providence. Also films like Alien, Aliens, Blade Runner, Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Mirror, Ring and of course David Lynch is constantly in the back and front of my mind.

You mentioned discarding a year’s worth of material, what convinced you to start from scratch?

I was unhappy with the recording process I’d been using and was increasingly disappointed with the results, so I discarded quite a lot of work, which I’ve never done before. I got some great advice from Karl O’Connor aka Regis about production techniques, got myself a new interface and program and started from scratch. Also, got a bit more advice about using the modular system from friends which totally opened up a new path for this new collection of tracks.

Clear Vortex Chamber is built from both machine and acoustic sources, what drew you to that collision of worlds?

I really like this idea of the rudimentary and technological colliding, or the idea of a forgotten technology from the past that’s been discovered in the present day and can still interface with modern technology. Something that’s mutated and evolved, producing new sounds both old and new. The acoustic sources are cello strings which are plucked, bowed and hit with mallets.

How much of your fine art background feeds directly into your music-making process?

It’s basically the same thing, both the visual and aural side of my work occupy a similar world, each is an extension of the other. There’s often an unspoken imagery in my music and come from my visual work and ideas. I’m always quite happy when people pick up upon this within certain tracks, it’s interesting to see how a non-visual intention can be expressed through a piece of work and still resonate with the listener.

How much of the album was mapped out versus discovered during the process?

This album was born out of learning new processes within the modular system and working with cello and bass guitar samples as a focus for each track. I don’t really map anything out before hand, I start patching around a certain technique and idea, there comes a point were there’s a balance between my guiding the machine and the machines guiding me and taking me down unexpected paths. I do store up ideas and certain atmospheres I want to investigate but these are more abstract images rather than planned. There were also certain artists I wanted to collaborate with but this is also an unknown quantity and a stab in the dark for something that could be an interesting convergence of sound and ideas.

Did the album’s concept evolve during production, or was it fixed from the start?

Nothing is ever fixed from the start. I didn’t really mean for each track to be based around these cello samples of my own playing. But as I started to compile the album from the tracks I liked, they mostly seemed to be these tracks apart from one or two. Maybe the only fixed idea was imagining composer Arnold Dreyblatt making a techno track. Working with vocals and other vocalist is also an important part of the album, processing and manipulating voices to become integrated into the fabric of the track. I like the point where the tonalities of the voice unravel into wordless sonics.

Did any of the collaborations change your vision for the record?

Not so much a change to the overall vision. But the individual collaborations completely change the initial track that I’m sending to each artist, there’s definitely a moment of changing my initial perspective of the track and then getting the collaboration to balance out between the myself and the guest artist. And then it becomes a new thing, something I wouldn’t have imagined happening.

Has working with experimental comics influenced how you think about sequencing an album?

I wouldn’t say the comic work influenced the sequencing of the album. The name MICROCORPS was from the unpublished second issue of World in the Forcefield that Breakdown Press dropped. I have this character called Microcorpse, I liked this idea of an entity who is a microscopic deity that decomposes at a molecular level, who’s rotting matter disperses into the consciousness of a host and becomes one with them.

Are there sounds or techniques you deliberately avoid because they feel overused in electronic music?

I haven’t really use melodies so far in my electronic music, although there are some melodic vocals but the actual electronics are more about pure frequencies and drum patterns. It’s that love of something that’s quite rudimentary. I’ve been mainlining Pan Sonic again, for the past couple of years, so that’s definitely a big influence on enjoying these pure tonalities. I like to limit myself with the possibilities within electronic music and melody sometimes brings in too many established tropes. But I do like the suggestion of a melodic line that’s corrupted by processing the cello or my or others voices.

Do you see the next album as a continuation or a clean break from this one?

I do have something I’ve been working on that’s a complete departure from the last two albums, which is more of a composition and electroacoustic album. It’s finished but I’m still looking for a home for it.

Photos courtesy of Microcorps

Matteo Damiani

Matteo Damiani is an Italian photographer and author. Curator of the sites Retrofuturista.com; weirditaly.com; china-underground.com and others