EX.655 Surgeon Talks Live Performance and Improvisation

RA Exchange

"Live improvised hardware connects so directly to the fundamental rawness of electronic music." UK techno lynchpin Surgeon reflects on his connection to machines and making music on the fly. Surgeon, also known as Anthony Child, has been one of techno's most influential and consistently brilliant artists since the mid-'90s. For the last decade, he has spent most of his creative resources on developing his abilities as a live performer, in his usual techno environment as well as more abstract settings. As Child reinforces in this live Dekmantel Exchange with Aaron Coultate, his live performance practice is at the heart of his creativity. "There was literally one day I woke up and realized that having the computer—DJing, as it were—was getting in the way of taking this form of performing further," he says. "That was determining the structure of what I was doing. And to be truly freeform and improvisational I had to be free of this imposed structure." This archived conversation comes on the heels of Surgeon's most recent LP, Crash Recoil, which RA music critic Kiana Mickles hailed as "one of his best albums ever." To get an inside look into this risk taking artist's production process and approach to dance floor composition, listen to the episode in full.