Perhaps best know as the co-founder of the world renown animation studio, Klasky Csupo (responsible for such hit TV series as Rugrats, Duckman, AAAHH!! Real Monsters, as well as early episodes of The Simpsons), Gabor Csupo's lifetime love of music lead to the formation of his eclectic, electronic and experimental releases (including albums from Paul Schutze, cEvin Key, and Holger Czukay), Gabor recently put forth his own innovative music on a double disc set entitled Liquid Fire. Fusing German rock, avant-jazz, and electronica with dark ambient, trip-hop, drum & bass, and everything else in-between, the Hungarian born Csupo knows no boundaries (or lack of energy) when it comes to his music. Scheduling an interview with outburn in his busy appointment book, the very personable Gabor chats about his empire of animation and his absolute passion for releasing and creating music.

How do you balance your workload between Tone Casualties and the animation studio?

I love music equally, if not more than film, so to me that's not really work (laughs). It's relaxing... it's a passion to find really cool artists who wouldn't have a chance to be on other labels. It's really satisfying, and I feel lucky enough to be able to put it out and have good distribution around the world so these artists are actually getting the chance to be heard.

Has it been difficult finding an audience for the music on your label?

I always know when you do something super artistic that it's never going to find a big audience, because unfortunately the general audience out there doesn't have that super sophistocated taste. They want to be able to relax to it or whistle to it or dance to it, and there's just a very small layer of the audience who listen to music as an artform. I went to music school, so I always liked to listen to stuff that was more challenging, especially in Hungary where I grew up. When you had enough money to buy just one album, then you really had to think. Because if you buy something really light, you listen to it three times, and you get bored with it, you've spent your money, which at that time was a fortune. So when I was growing up, I carefully chose to buy difficult music like King Crimson or something like that, because I felt I could listen to it over and over. And the more I listened to it, the more I discovered... it was very textured, deep rich music. That's how I developed my taste.

Did you go to school in order to become a musician?

I went to music school to learn about music theory and to concentrate on the classical music area. I switched over to art as soon as I got to high school. Iwent to an art high school and from there to the college where they taught animation. But for the first eight years, I went to an experimental elementary music school. Unfortunately, I wasn't a very good student, but I was always doing something else like drawing. It stayed with me and got into my skin... I love music!

Did your parents influence you towards music?

They bought a giantr piano and put it in the middle of the living room. They were hoping that I would play brilliant Beethoven sonatas by age 10, And unfortunately that didn't happen, because I boycotted it... they pushed me too hard. I still loved music, but I got bored with it at the end of the eighth year and went to art school.

I understand when you came to America, you bought a huge collection of records?

From Hungary I hardly had anything, but I first went to Sweden. I lived there for four years and I really didn't eat, but I bought everything I wanted to hear. I was very skinny in Sweden, let me tell you. I bought five or six-hundred albums while I was there and I carried that over when I moved from Stockholm to Los Angeles.

Why did you move to Los Angeles?

Because I met an American lady - Arlene Klasky, who's my partner now in the animation business. In Sweden , she was there visiting and she was from Los Angeles. We got together and she invited me to come to LA. And I said, "Wow! That's a good idea! I've heard about Los Angeles. It has a big film and music industry. It sounds like a good place." That's all I knew about it. So I arrived very naively with all my vinyls and just looked around and said, "Wow!" (laughs)

How did the two of you start the animation studio?

I started to work of Hanna Barbera for half a year, and then they laid everybody off because the TV season was over. I didn't want to go back there, because I didn't really like it, so that's when Arlene and I started to think about starting a small studio. We believed in ourselves, so we just started to do our own little things. We got a reel together, and as soon as we had that it in our hands, the business just exploded and everybody wanted to hire us. We figured out ways to make animation very attractive on the screen and not to cost us too much money. We also faked a lot of computer animation. We couldn't afford computers, so I hand animated everything that looked like computer.

At what point did you decide to start a music label?

Actually about 10 years ago or so, we had a bunch of artists in our office and we always got together after work. I kept buying all these instruments and keyboards, and we just started to play live music every night and we never knew who would show up. We started to record all these sessions, and the very first CD we put out was called Accidental Orchestra. Then my first solo came out second. I figured that's a great way to start the label, because I did it for me for free (laughs). And then later I said, "it's time to bring in other artists. I would like to put all this cool music out." And we started to enjoy creating really cool CD covers, and I started to get inspired by other labels who have dedicated themselves to great experimental music, like Extreme or Made To Measure in Belgium. I wanted to find artists producing great music and just put it out, so we started to branch out very slowly.

What were the inspirations for your album Liquid Fire?

I discovered this really great computer program called Acid Pro and started to experiment with it. I discovered a lot of sound libraries and mixed them with my own samples, and just started to create. It took me a year and a half, because it's a double album. It has a lot of songs on it. Once I got into it, I never knew how to stop (laughs). It was actually a hardship for my family too, because during the day I am busy and I couldn't wait to get home and sit down at my computer. I was doing music with my earphones and sometimes with the speakers, so everybody got crazy until three in the morning. I just couldn't stop. I couldn't even stand up to eat dinner because I could never leave the computer. It's like a drug. It's amazing. So I am taking a little break now, but I've already created enough new songs for another album. I'm also moving, so it's going to take a while before I get to it. But today I saw my equipment and I started to plug everything back in. I said "I have the urge to do new stuff!"

What is the concept of the Liquid and the Fire discs?

I just thought Liquid should be a little more calm and floating. And Fire should be more energetic, or if I ran out of dynamic songs that would only fit on Fire then I just called it something fire related (laughs). If I felt that it needed a human voice or element to make it more interesting or more floating, then I chose to do that. I never sit down and say I'm going to do an instrumental song, or I'm going to do a vocal one. I just keep building it. Or sometimes, I had a lot more stuff on it and then I took it down. So it's a complex trial and error kind of thing. I don't have a plan... I just do it.

There's so much variety on the album...

The reason why I chose Liquid Fire for the title is because those elements are totally against each other and they still mix somehow. I really tried with almost every song to mix different genres of music or different ethnic instruments. I really wanted to clash it in a way that is unexpected, but the end result is still listenable. I'm just fascinated by mixing elements which on the surface look like they don't belong to each other. Maybe that's why this CD looks like a little bit of everything, because my mind was crazy with all these musical ideas and I never knew what I was going to do next.