Ross Healy is an Australian electronic experimental artist based in Bendigo, Victoria. His creative arc has moved from the early engagements with popular(ish) music in the ethereal band Eden, to the proto-industrial pop of This Digital Ocean moving into the ambient drum and bass of Amnesia and 56KHZ. After this point the idea of forms of music was swept away and Ross has spent the fruitful years after as a dedicated experimentalist, modder of equiptment and proponent of electronic experimental music through the label VICMOD.
Innerversitysound: It’s been a while since This Digital Ocean can you describe the period to us, the ideas that surrounded your early band and its specific set of ideas.
Ross Healy: I was first in a band called Eden where I played bass but grew I up playing drums and over time was more interested in synthesizers. Eden released an album and an EP in the UK in 1989 when I was 17 but I knew there was something better out there for me. I was always interested in electronic music and I would spend most of my wage and time in record stores like Central Station and Missing Link and the rest of the time was spent buying used analogue synths from the Trading Post at really cheap prices. I bought a Roland Jupiter 8 off a guy from Pseudo Echo for $500 and saw he had a TB303 and asked if he wanted to sell it, knowing it was ‘the acid machine.’ I scored that for $50 and another time a friend who was into guitar music had an Arp Odyssey being used as a door stop! I got that for free! I left Eden and formed This Digital Ocean. I was also learning how to compose music and as we couldn’t find a singer I decided I should do it as I was writing most of the music anyway. This Digital Ocean was signed to German label Machinery about 4 months after we started. After our second album was released in Germany and the US, I decided that I didn’t like the traditional song format and also felt I was giving too much of myself away in the lyrics. So I let that go.
Innerversitysound: Your move after that was Breakbeat /IDM as Amnesia which fitted squarely with the rave generation. While it maintained your stance as an electronic musician was this a pattern moving exercise, both aesthetically and in terms of how music production had changed, what for you was the major motion behind this morph?
Ross Healy: When I heard LFO by LFO in 1988 I knew the landscape was changing for electronic music where finally the voice was no longer needed or even the focal point. I grew tired of song structures and this was my way out of having to do that. I could finally write the music I had been really listening too Techno, IDM, Breakbeat and Ambient since 1988. ‘A brief History of Amnesia‘ was released in 1995, a very Breakbeat/Techno/ IDM orientated album.With TDO I would write 90% of the tracks and give it to the other guys to add what they wanted. Technology moved on, with the use of Samplers, an Atari 1040ste and my collection of analog synths, this allowed me to be in complete control. Which is really what I prefer when I have an idea. The end result was the Techno/Beakbeat/IDM album, Amnesia – A Brief History of Amnesia 2056-2068.
Innerversitysound: Drum and bass production methods were a fascination. Your 56K and Amnesia personas encapsulated this form indicating yet another change, but remaining somehow within a ‘templated’ vision?
Ross Healy: 56k was Simon Bowley of TDO and myself merging IDM and Drum n Bass. We use to visit in the TDO studio everyday. We had a break from TDO so we just decided to write an album. I always try to not make a copy of what had gone before. The only template we had for that album, 56k -Mercury Rising, was that it was to be Jungle/ Drum n Bass inspired but expanded upon. Around the same time I spent more time releasing Drum n Bass trax under the name Amnesia in the UK on the much loved SOUR Records. I also release a few recordings under the alias Horaku which was experimental Drum n Bass.
Innerversitysound: Then there is the shift away from club based music production to a more squarely experimental/glitch approach with your most stable guise as Cray. It is the most radical move of your musical production and marks a productive and artistically flourishing period of your life. Tell us about the change, how you found yourself in more fertile yet more oblique to the public eye.
Ross Healy: I was starting to use just the computer and I wanted a computer name for the music I wanted to make and Cray was that name. The Cray creation was really me getting bored with writing “beat” music and also at the time computers were really getting more powerful. I sold off some of my gear to buy a 486 Windows PC, which was great and terrible at the same time. After making all my music on the Atari 1040ste, which had really tight MIDI timing, I was using a computer that had the worst MIDI timing, so I just decided to focus on using that weakness and started using Sound Forge as my recorder and editor. For the first Cray album (Undo, Bip Hop, France) I created sounds with a cheap computer microphone, a Kurzweil K2500R synthesizer and lots of editing time spent in Sound Forge. At the same time I also created an album under the name Roland Oberheim – ‘Zen And The Art Of Hard Disc Recording‘ which used a software drum machine. I would created a drum pattern, record it into Sound Forge and then manually chop it up to create really off time percussive music that you could not dance to. It was really important for me to try and use something like a drum machine, that is suppose to have a steady clock, that is designed to make you dance and make an album that was impossible to dance to. There is nothing in that album at all that could, even for a second, be considered a regular beat. It was also my “goodbye” to ever using drum machine sounds and regular beats. This album was all but forgotten about until 10 years later when I found the old hard drive. It was release on VICMOD Records.
Innerversitysound: There have been some excellent moments in VICMOD Records existence. Could you describe the highlights for you, what drives you on and what lies ahead?
Ross Healy: Around 2006 I honestly thought I had stopped writing and releasing music and did loose interest for the first time in my life, having kids seems to do that but after a time I realised I had 60 full CDs of modular creations and electronic experimentations that I wanted to get out. This was back in 2005 when I became absorbed in my love for modular synths and a few years later discovered the Muff Wiggler forum. This is where I spend most of my time, talking to like minded artist. VICMOD Records really came about because I wasn’t hearing the music/ sounds that I wanted to hear. There were only a few labels in the world that impressed me, like Editions Mego, and I joined forces with Boyd Korab of White Noise Carousel and we started VICMOD Records releasing physical CDs at the start but moving over to a completely online world because we both wanted to spend our own money on more modular synths but also release music by other artists around the globe. Plus the stuff I wanted to release on the label was getting more and more obscure so online was the obvious choice. We have had some truly great releases by artists in the US and Europe and Australia plus I have snuck in a few of my own albums under aliases Ryou Oonishi and Oscar T Oram as well as Cray and my own name.
Innerversitysound: It would seem that your enthusiasm for modular synth building, fondness for the Buchla and formation and participation in VICMOD go hand in hand. This grassroots approach to knowledge, experimentation, DIY and group participation seems at odds with the ‘mythos’ projected by your original band. Tell us about the vision behind VICMOD and your more recent endeavours.
Ross Healy: VICMOD is a monthly meet where people interested in modular synths and learning to build modules came about. I was taking to Brett Maddaford about the need for something like a classroom but relating to learning soldering, watching early electronic music documentaries and generally having a laugh while talking all things synth related. VICMOD started back in 2005 and we still meet monthly. We also seemed to have inspired like minded groups around Australia and the world, which is great! We also perform live from time to time as VICMOD Enbsemble.
Innerversitysound: You have also released 4 albums on cassette labels in the last few years under the Cray alias. Why not release them on VICMOD Records?
Ross Healy: I had been asked by cassette labels such as Rocket Machine, SicSic and Digitalis for material and I broke my foot a few years back which left me bed ridden for a month. The outcome of that is that I recorded enough material for 6 albums. So far 4 full albums have been release and another album from that time is to be released on Rocket Machines in July this year. These recordings are slightly musical but still experimental using the Moog Voyager, Buchla 200e and so on.
SicSic example 1, SicSic example 2, SicSic example 3
Innerversitysound: I presume as a practicing experimentalist you have maintained a day job and a life outside of this field that connects you with the world outside of the music domain. What keeps you sane with the chaos of ideas that permeates the experimental domain.
Ross Healy: I do occasionally have my music used in adverts and on TV shows or the odd web page that needs sounds design. I actually prefer the ‘insane’ side of life. I have no interest in popular culture at all. I don’t watch the news or TV. I haven’t listened to any radio for 20 years and I don’t read newspapers or follow any pop culture fads. I want to live my life my way as much as possible and I am lucky that I can do that spending most of my time in my studio experimenting and making ‘strange sounds.’
Innerversitysound: Do you perform live much anymore?
Ross Healy: As I live in the country I rarely play in Melbourne. Most of the performances I have done in the last 4 years have been in Bendigo at Undue Noise set up by Jacques Soddell. There is a really healthy avant/experimental scene out that way.
Innerversitysound
