Unedited text of email interview with Philip Shelburne for the Wire Magazine.

Bio

Dag-Are Haugan, born in Tromsø, Norway, 1970.
Grew up in Tromsø, lives in Oslo, Norway.
Holding a master degree from the Academy of fine art in Malmø, Sweden.
I started a couple of pop-groups in Tromsø in the late 80`s.I played guitar and did the vocals.I wanted to go where no-one had gone before with my music, but realised it was impossible to force the other group-members into avant-territories.So I started for myself with a four-tracker, using mainly guitar and synth.The result was released as the 7inch "n for 19" on the norwegian DIY record-company MykeDroner in 1998.
If there is one moment in my life that I decided to work with sounds, it has to be the first time I heard "Sister" by Sonic Youth, opening with the dry and monotone drums on "Schizophrenia".I got the record as a present on my 17th birthday back in 1987.

Espen Sommer Eide, born in Oslo, Norway, 1972.
Grew up in Tromsø, lives in Bergen, Norway.
Have a Cand.Philol. degree (norwegian master) in philosophy / aesthetics. Played several instruments when I was young - including the trumpet, flutes and drums. Played in a couple of experimental groups inspired mostly by 4AD music, or more naive pop / "broken microphone-stand" kind of settings. I was probably the most dictator-like drummer the world has ever seen - always yelling out orders from behind the drums! So I finally bought a sampler and started making electronic music in the mid-90s, and released my first album as phonophani.

Where did the name "Alog" come from?

Dag-Are had an idea of making a cover for our first 10inch record that was a rip-off of the "BASF" logo, so then we needed a 4-letter name, and after a short brainstorm that was it. In hindsight the name probably may be related to the very lo-fi and an-alog way our first tunes was made. They where recorded on Dag-Are`s four-track tape -recorder in a kindergarten basement in Tromsø, where we could set up our stuff after the kids had gone home. It was all an accident. Espen had some discarded samples from his fathers big-band record collection on his computer. We actually didn´t know each other that well, and probably because we where nervous we started playing all sorts of instruments we could find in the studio on top of these samples. It was only intended to stay within the confines of the kindergarten.Later some off this material ended up on "Red shift swing".

The ECM catalog describes Espen as 'Digialman' and
Dag-Are as 'Analogman.' How does your process break
down ? are your roles really that divided?

At gigs we have different roles, Dag-Are plays instruments like analog synth and double-bass bow on cymbal, and Espen is handling two laptops. In that sense we are "analogman" and "digitalman". But when it comes to studiowork we both use all sorts of equipment. We invented those two personas because we tried to figure out what kind of "band" we are, and in a band the individuals often has fixed roles. Instead of calling ourself "the drummer" and "the guitarist", we were looking for something more catchy. We try to come up with good ideas for possible roles like this, or play around with pop-world myths and icons, because it then gives inspiration to the music making process.

I'd like to ask each of you, individually, how your
solo work relates to Alog and vice versa. I could
swear that I hear some of the same vocal samples in
'Violence and Magical Danger' that I heard on the last
Phonophani album? is that true?

Espen: Well, you are right on that point. It is the same basic sound. But it is not strictly a vocal sample but actually the computer singing. I just enter the words and make the melody, and the computer does the rest. Anyway I guess it is a good example of the way we have worked recently. When we meet for a few intense days to prepare a concert etc. - I naturally have other stuff filling up my harddisk and during improvs sometimes one gets into these folders. But it is not a problem using the same sound in different contexts as long as the result is good. Originality has nothing to do with the source-material. You will probably be able to detect some of Dag-Ares solowork too on "Duck-Rabbit" on his forthcoming "9 Solitaires" on (K-RAA-K)3. Right Dag-Are?
Dag-Are:If you look at Alog, Phonophani and Dag-Are Haugan as a family-tree, you might find that my solowork is the branch the furthest away from the trunk.My solo-recordings differs from Alog in being minimalistic were Alog is complex.In my own recordings there isn`t a drum in sight.I build up my work with layers upon layers of droning guitars.But if you go deep into the Alog-amalgan you might find traces off the low-flying sonic guitars there too.If not as actual sounds then as ideas.We are not protectionist, we are totally into sharing information.

So tell me more about your process. It sounds like a
vast array of sound sources find their way into your
music: field recordings, samples, lots of improv
sessions. Is that all there is to it ? just sit down
in the studio with a lot of sound sources and stitch
them together? What instruments do you play
yourselves, also? 'Drunk DJs,' for instance, sounds
like it's probably you on the guitars??

Yes, on "Drunk DJs" we both play guitars, like a cowboys-in-the-sunset kind of ending. And if you listen closely you can actually hear Espens dog "Peggy" walking across the living-room as we play! We have no sound-hierarchy.It is not important to us weather we have made the sounds ourself or if it has been previously recorded by others.Our job is to blend it right.
We don´t live in the same city, so we work independently on soundsources.When we meet Espen has packed his laptops with sounds and Dag-Are has a battery of recorded sounds on MD`s.We sit down and plays things for eachother, quickly sorting out what is crap and what is useable. Then we pick up the instruments we have at hand like; guitar, double-bass, tablas, trumpet, harmonium, flutes, fender rhoades electric piano, tape -echo etc, and improvise over some samples that Espen has fired up. Occasionally a field-recording sneaks in from a random MD.We record everything.Later we organise , animate and cut up the material on the computer, often using our customized "Dream-effect". Often new tracks has been made the night before being "premiered" at a live-show.The finished tracks may sound more or less like a random collection of coincidental and found sounds, but actually is painstakingly put together! We are both control-freaks and every click and every bleep is chosen with the utmost care. Dag-Are may spend hours removing a click that no other human ear can hear.

Very seldom does your work utilize traditional beats.
Do you come from dance-music backgrounds? Most
experimental producers, it seems, have at least some
relationship to Techno (etc.), even when it's not
explicit in their own work. This is more a point of
curiosity than anything. Additionally, you even flirt
with pop music a bit ? I can hear subtle references to
My Bloody Valentine in some of the bending guitars,
etc.

You hear right! "As complicated and as beautiful as always" is meant as a small homage to My Bloody Valentine- being 10 years since the release of the masterpiece "Loveless".What might sound like bending of the guitars on our track is actually cut-ups from a commodre 64 game-soundtrack. If "Red shift swing" was our take on jazz then "Duck-rabbit" is our take on pop music, you might say. All our beloved 12 min. improvs where violently compressed down to the pop format.The beats are generally inspired more by hip-hop than techno. We tried to turn that hip-hop kind of groove into a more free form of rythm.
We actually have no background from dance-music or techno, other than listening to some of that stuff. Espen has a background from different "broken microphone-stand"-groups and Dag-Are comes from guitar-pop-groups. Of course if you count Biosphere as a techno act Espen probably has some relation to that as he released his first Phonophani- album on his label Biophon.

I saw on Alog.net that you've created a software
application. I don't use Mac, so I can't run it,
unfortunately. What does the application do? Are you
active in programming? More and more musicians I know
seem to be distributing applications of their own
creation ? Twerk, for instance, has recently released
a few things to the .microsound community.

Espen: Yes, it is a rudimentary max-patch that we used live last spring. There is a growing community for programming plug-ins and patches like this, which is nice - almost like being a romantic community of instrument-builders! One always comes up with new ways of manipulating sounds on the computer through various repeatable steps, and I like the idea of making these procedures into a new program that one can play with live. Its like making our techniques and methods into instruments.