In the experimental stage of electronic art, a musical genre that continues to evolve, David Block, whose most well known musical name is The Human Experience, plays across the musical landscape to depict this multifaceted genre and the variety of textures it has to offer. Along with his down tempo sunrise bass sets, Block is also known for his work with producing music with traditional musicians, such as Rising Appalachia in their collaboration album Soul Visions. Performing all over the world for festival such as Symbiosis in California and BOOM festival in Portugal, Block’s musical influences range from India to Central America.
In an interview, Block opens up about his new projects and inspirations, along with his beliefs in art’s transformative nature, and the true message of his music.
Can you tell me a little about the new album that you are working on now?
The best way I can describe it to people is in the vein of what I did with Rising Appalachia for Soul Visions. This project is called Waves. It is principally two other singer/songwriters, Paul Weinfeld and Danny Musengo. There is one song that we did called “Here for a Moment.” It’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before.
How did you get connected with Paul Weinfeld and Danny Musengo?
I got connected with Danny through a musician in New York named Matt Geraghty. He has a project called 21, where over the course of 21 days he brought in 43 different musicians to record improvisational music. He had some of the most unbelievable musicians in the world, everything from Jordanian singers to African harp to Brazilian percussion. So all these people who had never met before would come in and record, and at the end of the day they would pick the best song and record a video. Anyway, I got invited in, just to listen into one of the sessions, and I ended up doing a live production session. I listened to all the music. Then, at the end of the day, I brought in each musician one by one and recorded and created this song which ended up being called “Here for a Moment.” The vocalist that was in on that session that day was Danny. He and I talked right away and said we should really do an album together, but I was busy and they didn’t have a budget. A year later I said “I don’t care, you don’t have to pay me, let’s just do it,” and it’s been amazing.
You do a lot of collaboration with live musicians. How does that relationship between electronic music and live music fuel your production?
I come from a traditional music background. When I originally started making music, it was definitely much less electronic than now. It was mostly loop oriented, and then it evolved. The original vision was to create this organic electronic sound. It just happened to be that a lot of the tools I was using were electronic based.
I’ve always loved dancing. I didn’t have a lot of friends who listened to electronic music growing up, maybe just one or two, and when I started traveling abroad I was exposed to all these other genres of music that I’d never heard before. I slowly started blending more and more electronic sounds. It’s definitely been interesting; when I go through my catalog, I see so many different genres. I tend to go through periods. When I moved back from India my music was very Asian influenced, and in the last year and a half or two since I’ve started working with Rising Appalachia I’ve done a lot of soul, funk, and jazz. The collaborations with other musicians are what keeps me majorly inspired. There is an endless amount out there, and so many styles of genres. I find that working with other people brings a new flavor to what I do and I’m able to bring something new to what they are doing
I’d love to hear a little bit about your project Cat’s Pajamas — it’s so different than your other musical tastes. I’m curious about how that came about.
Well, I love music in general. I originally got turned on to electronic music in 2002, 2003: DJ Tiesto, Paul Van Dyke, that kind of stuff. Then, in 2009, after I was traveling in India, someone played Blue Tech for me on my 23nd birthday. I had never even heard of that genre. I was like, “oh my god this is incredible! This is a genre?” Then I kind of wrote off anything with a straight beat for a long time, until 2012 when I played BOOM festival in Portugal, and discovered all this other stuff, like psytrance. But psytrance was too aggressive for my taste, and a friend of mine was playing this deeper house, very melodic. I thought, this is interesting. My friend said, “Yeah there’s a lot out there that I think you really might enjoy, that kind of blend between four to the floor and broken beat.” So she gave me this whole catalog of music that included this artist named Nicolas Jarr. He was one of the first people that I listened to that I was like, oh yeah, he’s experimenting with a lot with noise. It kind of turned me on to making something with straight beats. It was daunting to try to launch another project, but I still wanted to create new music. aI started writing the Cat’s Pajamas stuff and it’s definitely evolved. I learned about different four to the floor genres, whether it’s tropical house or minimal techno, and I really love it. I love exploring different genres. Now it’s been a couple years that I’ve had the opportunity to play it a bunch, but there’s still no album, just a bunch of songs that that are 90% finished.
When you start new projects like that, how do you think your new music is received by your listeners?
You know, it’s different every time. I can only try to compare what the experience must be like to when I find an artist who releases different genres, because I find that most artists try to stick to one or two sounds. For example, if you were listening to my album Harmonic Transformation, compared to my album that’s coming out, Waves, I don’t know if you would like it. I hope people like it, but it’s definitely different.
Do different kinds of drugs affect the musical genres you are creating?
I started exploring psychedelics pretty young, like 16, and it definitely gave me an alternative perspective on reality, and has influenced my music. I don’t use a lot of drugs; they are more of a medicine for me to explore different states of consciousness.
Do you ever choose a genre and have a complimentary dose of something that you know will influence that state of mind?
I’ve only used psychedelics while writing electronic music a couple of times. I tend to not want to be in front of a computer when I’m in that state. For me, psychedelics are about what’s happening during the experience. It’s more the take away after that’s shaped my music. That being said, there are different states of consciousness in which I enjoy listening to different kinds of music. I can understand, for example, why people like repetitive house music when they are high on cocaine. It’s not my flavor and that drug is not my flavor. I do find that people who have had psychedelic experiences tend to be more open to music that sounds psychedelic. That can put you in a psychedelic state without the drug. I haven’t experimented too much with writing songs on psychedelics, but different medicines have shaped the different kinds of sounds that I prefer to create.
There’s a specific kind of dance that your music brings out in people. How does your relationship to dance impact the music that you create?
I love dancing, very much. I love creating music for dancers, and I’ve done that a lot since the beginning of my project. After the first year of it I was touring with Android Jones and Phaedra with this project called Phadroid. It’s an audiovisual dance and one of the most psychedelic experiences you can have without drugs. One of things that drugs do is lower our inhibitions, including barriers that we’ve created in how we look and move. The experienced dancer can certainly achieve that, but a lot of people have barriers up. Having some kind of psychedelic experience removes that barrier, so that your body just wants to move — you can’t stop it.
I had an interesting experience with a good friend of mine recently at Symbiosis. He is not really a dancer. Everyone is a dancer, but he’s just not connected in that way. He came up to me the morning after Tipper and I played back to back for sunrise this year, and just had a powerful LSD experience. During Tipper’s performance, his hand was moving in this serpentine way, and he was like, “What’s going on? Is Tipper just unlocking this? What’s happening?” The person that he was with was a dancer, and she said, “No babe, this is the spirit of dance. Your veil is just thin and it’s moving you.” And he totally got it, and seriously got down for a couple of hours. It was one of the most profound dancing experiences of his life. You don’t need drugs for that.
That’s what’s amazing about certain kinds of music — it has the ability to unlock certain parts of us. It just takes the right notes and formation to bring it out and expand it outside of ourselves.
Art has the power of transformation. That’s what kind of keeps me in and justifies the slightly selfish amount of time I spend working on and creating it. Sometimes I ask myself why I’m doing this, what’s the purpose of me creating music? Wouldn’t I be better just digging wells in Africa helping humanity? And I’m constantly brought back to art’s incredible transformational power. That is what keeps me going. Because listening to a certain kind of song can take you to a different place, and ideally, that is a place of shared humanity and expansion.
How does being a part of the West Coast festival culture impact your ability to be a creative?
It’s been incredible. I’m really grateful to have a community that supports my work. There are a lot of different ways that you can grow your career. I’m still fully grassroots with my management and my booking, so I control and dictate where I take my work. It’s been amazing to have the vast majority of shows I play be ones I really love, whether they are for a niche ecstatic dance in Houston, Texas, which I’m doing, or Electric Forest festival.
I’m at an interesting point in my career because I’ve tapped into a lot of different markets as a collaborator, and a lot of different styles, like Rising Appalachia, the Earth Harp, and Quixotic. My music is reaching a much larger audience these days. People are interested in drawing the community that I’m a part of into other audiences. I’m very grateful for my community, and I’m grateful for people who are supporting the message behind my music. It’s really important to me; it’s the most important bit. The music has been my platform to share some of that message.
And what is that message?
It’s about shared sense of community. It’s less focus on stuff and things, and more on our beautiful Earth. There is plenty for all of us to share, and the music creates this point of connection for people – that’s why I do my very best to always play my music. Whenever I play, I just go back to having faith that the work that I’m creating is going to inspire the shared humanity experience that you get when you go to an epic dance party.
Hopefully the music inspires people to create something. I always say I don’t really care what it is that people want to create, as long as it’s really, truly coming from their heart. If all human beings were inspired to share what they felt were their greatest gifts, we’d have a very happy, healthy world.