MARGEN MAGAZINE'S INTERVIEW WITH GABOR CSUPO
Translated by Brandon Scott
Intro by Carlos Jáuregui
It’s unusual for us to feature in our pages a famous Hollywood personality, but Hungarian Gabor Csupo is a special case. Besides being one of the producers of some of the most famous animated series in the world—among others The Rugrats and the first seasons of The Simpsons—, he has a secret passion for avant-guard music. Encouraged by this passion, he created the music label Tone Casualties and its sub-label, Casual Tonalities, as a division of Klasky Csupo, which has its offices on Sunset Blvd.
Added to his fervor as a music fan, Csupo has always cultivated his composer facet, signs of which we saw in his previous Zombient Music, a magnificent album full of strange electronic maneuvers, now expanded and more in context, in a masterpiece with as contradictory a title as the content it hides: Liquid Fire.
Even when the list of musicians Mr. Csupo thanks is enormous, going from Zappa to Eno to King Crimson, Holger Czukay, Bartok and Steve Rich, the avalanche of musical references in this double album isn’t smaller, a true blend of unbridled imagination and structural homogeneity. As in a Simpsons episode, where the story line is a succession of gags and parallel stories that astoundingly end up coinciding, Csupo’s music is a wonderful journey to nowhere in particular. There’s a continuous movement of different styles and cultures that circle you and surround you, leaving behind musical remnants which can’t be assimilated but after several listening sessions.
From Kraftwerk to Marta Sebéstyen, from Crimson to Chemical Brothers and from Gabor to Csupo…an absolute masterpiece, we repeat.
Our admiration for Gabor Csupo is two-fold. First, for the impact of his musical career, which with just two albums (Zombient Music and the magnificent Liquid Fire—Tone Casualties), has surprised us by smoothly unifying universal and avant-guard styles. But also because he’s one of the most important producers of TV animation and the impelling force, along with Matt Groening, of that 90’s ‘fetiche’ series The Simpsons, which Csupo helped develop by producing its first seasons.
Klasky Csupo is Gabor’s production house, located on Sunset Blvd., which also houses Tone Casualties—dedicated to new electronic music—and Casual Tonalities—which produces avant-guard Rock.
In MDEA Vol.04 you’ll find a previously unpublished track, exclusive for us, of this magician of Hungarian sounds. Only when you listen you’ll know what we’re talking about.
Margen: As we suppose you must be a little tired of talking about your role as a Hollywood producer, let’s talk about music, starting by your beginnings in this field.
Gabor Csupo: I went to music school for 8 years in Budapest. It was called Hernad Music School, and studied there from when I was 6 years old until I was 14. I basically studied all the traditional elements of composition, with a specific focus on Hungarian composers, such as Zoltan Kodaly and Bela Bartok. At the beginning of the 70’s I was very interested in progressive music; you know, Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Brian Eno, etc. The complete list of influences can be found in the credits of my last album, Liquid Fire.
M: Liquid Fire is your second album and it’s very different from your first one, Zombient Music. It’s the globalization against the ‘hermetism’ that Zombient proposed…
GC: Zombient Music was a lot darker and a lot more improvised. I’ve been always fond of melodic structures concealed under the music’s surface, there was a lot of that in Zombient, and I believe that attitude hasn’t changed in Liquid Fire, even though the influences are more obvious, from all neo-electronic currents (Hip-hop, Trip-hop…) to ethnic rhythms and vocals. Liquid Fire is, without a doubt, a more immediate CD to the audience, more so than Zombient was.
M: It’s amazing the amount of sounds and styles concealed in Liquid Fire.
GC: I worked on that project for a year and a half. I did it with a lot of effort, passion and energy. I wanted to produce an album which reflected my mood changes as I was making it. I’m a very passionate and changing person, I jump easily from joy to frustration to amusement. By looking at me you may think I’m a calm and shy guy, but my inner emotions are explosive and very dynamic. All of this is reflected in my music and in Liquid Fire.
M: It is true that there are plenty of lights and shadows in your music, you go from a ‘runaway’ rhythm to a meditation mood without us even noticing, and the listener changes his mood as the record plays. Liquid Fire is a dense album in terms of the elements in it; there’s electronic, world, prog, contemporaneous; but the final result breathes and it’s well structured, like the expressionist films of German Cinema.
GC: Yes, there are lots of lights and shadows in this music, lots of contradiction, lot of liquid fire and intersected and music styles, from folk songs to modern electronic rhythms, sacred music from the 18th century, to ambient textures and ‘noisist’ rhtyhms.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary was a big influence for me as a child. I see you’ve noticed the relation. I’ve always liked the distortion of beauty.
M: When one listens to a Liquid Fire track and you hear that explosion of sound, one can’t help but wonder if you work based on the stratification of sounds.
GC: I guess you could put it that way. Normally I start with a melody, a loop or a rhythm and I begin to build textures based on it. Then comes editing and more stratification. I don’t like traditional formulas. There are two kinds of composers: the ones who follow the rules and the ones who cross the road and take risks, these are the real artists, and I apply this to film, painting, literature and any kind of artistic manifestation.
M: You feel a certain weakness for rhythm, right?
GC: I don’t believe so. For me it’s more important to find a texture that works. Not all the parts need rhythm except when you want to apply an emotional impact or make the piece more dynamic. It’s the beauty of the silent prairie before the storm explodes.
M: I asked because your music is so lively, even in its most ‘atmospheric’ moments…
GC: Yes, but it’s the general feeling that I’m more concerned with.
M: I suppose it must have been difficult to put in order all the material for this double CD, because it’s very well structured.
GC: Look, when I was done I put the music in a CD and I listened to it for 2 weeks, taking mental notes of what needed be changed and about the order of the songs. Then I went back to the studio and made changes in approximately half the songs, even though all were modified to some extent.
M: Do you have more material ready?
GC: I composed some ambient pieces for a show in L.A. I also created some loops for Bret, my wife, who’s also a singer and a musician. In my next album, Kalmopirin, some of this will be out. These are more serene, more concentrated pieces, not as explosive as Liquid Fire.
M: What are your projects related to TV and Film?
GC: We’re working on a project for The Wild Thornberrys on Nickelodeon and Paramount, but my main project is based on Charles Bukowski’s writings entitled The Way the Dead Love, which is an independent animated film for adults directed by Igor Kovalyov and Laszlo Nosek. Maybe the most ambicious project I’ve ever been involved in.
M: How’s your relationship with Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, of which you produced the first seasons?
GC: Matt and I don’t keep in touch as closely as we once did, as you can imagine, we’re busy with our own projects. We speak on the phone sometimes, and when we see each other at a festival we say hello.
M: Can you say a word to our readers, who admired you before for your brilliant career in visual production, and who now will listen to Liquid Fire and will admire you as a composer?
GC: Well, I send my best regards to them as well a big thanks to the people of Margen, who do such a magnificent job.
TONE CASUALTIES
6353 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA. 90028
©2001 Klasky Csupo, Inc.
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